Author: Sirchby

Т-22ср (А-22)

~ Sirchby

Source: Т-22ср (А-22)

T-22cp and A-22, with the related development projects, were medium tanks built by the Soviet Union, resembling many features with one of the well-known prototype tanks that appear in World of Tanks, the Object 907.

It’s basically because: The A-22 was the first batch model of the T-22cp -> and the T-22cp was actually a placeholder for further reserach of the Object 907. Starting from one of the most famous Soviet tanks in WWII, to the most produced Soviet tank in the Cold War, the development tree looks like this, quite arbitrarily: T-34 -> T-34-85 -> T-44 -> T-54 (T -55) -> A-22 -> T-22cp -> Object 907.

Design layout of the T-22cp

In 1949, a project was carried out to establish the armor layout design for the A-22, with the further development being based on the results of the work and calculations, and of course, it turned out with all the additional work. But for some reason, the final development went to the Object 907 for further examination. It should be noted that the hull layout of the A-22 was almost completely made of RHA plates, the hull layout of the Object 907 should have been made by cast armor parts.

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Chrysler T110 Heavy Tank

~ Sirchby

Source:  Yuri Pasholok – Chrysler T110 Heavy Tank

Speaking about the T110 Heavy Tank series, these vehicles successfully raised many questions among people, especially about their existence. Even after deploying the M103 Heavy Tank, the Americans were still not satisfied with its performance on the battlefield. Thus, it was decided to recreate it again with 2 methods – evolutionary and revolutionary ones. The former was an attempt to improve its performance by mounting an autoloader system, eventually resulting in the development of the T57 (120 mm) and T58 (155 mm, also a derivative from the T30 Heavy Tank). And the latter was an attempt to create the tank from scratch.

The T110 series’ history began in June 1954, when Detroit Arsenal had a conference concerning the further development of heavy tanks. The conference presented several options for development, including projects named TS-2, TS-5, TS-6 and TS-31. The TS Tank Concepts were supposed to achieve the most optimum design of a heavy tank, which was planned to bring them to the prototype stage within 2 years. The first basis on this matter was the TS-31, originally built as a combat vehicle armed with the 120 mm T123E1 gun, and it didn’t have a fully rotating turret.

The TS-31 idea was picked up by Chrysler Corporation to unfold the production of the M103 Heavy Tank. As a result, Chrysler Corporation and Detroit Arsenal cooperated to develop a new heavy tank, and it received the index “T110 Heavy Tank”. It should be noted that the US Heavy Tank designation was very conditional at the time, because the original T110 looked like this:

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Development of the Škoda T-40

~ Sirchby

Source: Yuri Pasholok – Skoda T 40 (Russian)

In Czechoslovakia’s history, their armored vehicle industry production was considered as one of the fastest in the world, but not well known by the rest of the world at the time. It was the first year post-war, when the Czechoslovakia Defense Security led the work on the creation of their own armored vehicles and weapons based on their experience gathered during the German occupation for their tests and new developments.

Most of the development projects were very interesting & useful-looking to begin  production with, but for particular reasons, including economic and political nature, they couldn’t start a series production, not even reaching the prototype stage. Nevertheless, they represented an important aspect for the future armored vehicle engineering. It’s worth noting, that tanks and self-propelled guns developed in Czechoslovakia were quite advanced than most of their neighbor countries at the time, but obviously still far below than the other countries known for their higher quality of armored vehicle industry production, such as United States of America, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union. As a result, returning its former glory as one of the leading power of the most advanced armored vehicle production failed, although that didn’t prevent Czechoslovakia to regain its status as one of the leading exporters of arms and military equipments.

Currently, the only source of information available regarding post-war Czechoslovakian military industry is the book created by Martin Dubanek. His book is dedicated to the Czechoslovakian arms and military equipment ranging from 1945-1955. Unfortunately, the book had a lot of factual errors, including the history of Czechoslovakia’s future tanks. But thanks to the work of Yuri Tintery (Jiří Tintěra), one of the leading Czech historians, some of these errors were able to be fixed to make it as precise as the history record.

One of the errors was very terrible, involving the tanks from the TVP tank series (Czech for Tank Všeobecného Použití / Main Battle Tank). Work on this project begun in October 1945 and lasted until 1952. As a result, instead of a series of  original TVP tanks, the T-34-85 was listed as the first series of the (production) line, and then the T-54. However, the middle part of this TVP development had been quite corrected. But again, there were particular reasons that made it impossible to put in service. In the meanwhile, TVP tank series provided from Martin Dubanek’s book included a tank that actually participated in a competing project. TVP project was developed by VTU (Vojenský Technický Ústav), and the tank that was attributed to the one of the TVP tank series, in fact, had a T-index in front of the Number 40, and was also developed by Škoda, also known as the Škoda T 40 project.

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