Kliment Voroshilov tank
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The Kliment Voroshilov (KV) tanks were a series of Soviet heavy tanks, named after the Soviet defense commissar and politician Kliment Voroshilov. At the time of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in World War II these were amongst the large number of Soviet tanks that were superior to German tanks.
Contents |
History
After disappointing results with the multi-turreted T-35 heavy tank, Soviet tank designers started drawing up replacements. The T-35 conformed to the 1920s notion of a 'breakthrough tank' with very heavy firepower, but poor mobility and armor protection. The Spanish Civil War demonstrated the need for much heavier armor on tanks, and was the main influence on Soviet tank design just prior to World War II.
Several competing designs were offered, and even more were drawn up prior to reaching prototype stage. All had heavy armor, torsion-bar suspension, wide tracks, and were of welded and cast construction. One of the main competing designs was the SMK, which lowered the number of turrets from the T-35's five to two, mounting the same combination of 76.2mm and 45mm weapons. When two prototypes were ordered though, it was decided to create one with only a single turret, but more armour. This new single-turret tank was the KV. The smaller hull size and single turret enabled the designer to add more armor while keeping the weight within manageable limits.
When the Soviets entered the Winter War, the SMK, KV and a third design, the T-100, were sent to be tested in combat conditions. The heavy armour of the KV proved highly resilient to Finnish anti-tank weapons, making it more effective than the other designs. It was soon put into production, both as the original 76-mm-armed KV-1 Heavy Tank and the howitzer-mounting assault gun, the KV-2 Heavy Artillery Tank.
The 45-ton KV outweighed most other tanks of the era, being about twice as heavy as the heaviest contemporary German tanks. The KV's strengths included armor that was impenetrable by any tank-mounted weapon then in service except at pointblank range, good firepower, and good floatation on soft ground. Along with these strengths, its flaws were quite serious. It was very slow and difficult to steer. The transmission was unreliable. The ergonomics were poor, with limited visibility and no turret basket. Later, by 1942, when the Germans were fielding large numbers of long-barrelled 50-mm and 75-mm guns, the KVs armor was no longer invincible, and other flaws came to the fore. While its 76.2mm gun was adequate, it was the same gun as carried by smaller, cheaper T-34 medium tanks. It was much more difficult to manufacture and thus more expensive than the T-34. In short, its advantages no longer outweighed its drawbacks.
When Operation Barbarossa began, the Red Army was equipped with 639 KV-1s. So effective was its armour that the Germans were incapable of destroying it with their tanks or anti-tank weapons and had to rely on air support and anti-aircraft artillery (flak) to knock them out. At one point, a large German armoured group was delayed for 2 days by a single KV-1 near Ostrov.
Because of its superior performance, the KV-1 was chosen as one the few tanks to continue production following the Soviet reorganization of tank production. Due to the new standardization, it shared the same engine, gun and transmission as the T-34, was built in large quantities, and received frequent upgrades.
When production shifted to the Ural mountain 'Tankograd' complex, the KV-2 was dropped. The KV-2, while impressive on paper, had been designed as a slow-moving bunker-buster. It was less useful in the type of highly mobile, fluid warfare that developed in WW2. The turret was so heavy it was difficult to traverse on non-level terrain, and it was expensive to produce. Only about 250 KV-2s were made, all in 1940-41, making it one of the rarer Soviet tanks.
As the war continued, the KV-1 continued to get more armour to compensate for the increasing effectiveness of German weapons. This culminated in the KV-1 model 1942 (KV-1C), which was protected by very heavy armour, but lacked a corresponding improvement to the engine. Tankers complained that although they were well-protected, their mobility was poor and they had no firepower advantage over the T-34 medium tank.
In response to criticisms, the lighter KV-1S (Russian language: КВ-1С) was released, with thinner armour and a smaller, lower turret in order to reclaim some speed. Importantly, the KV-1S also had a commander's cupola with all-around vision blocks, a first for a Soviet heavy tank. However, the thinning-out of the armor called into question why the tank was being produced at all, when the T-34 could seemingly do everything a KV could do, much more cheaply. The Soviet heavy tank program was close to cancellation in mid-1943.
The appearance of the German Panther tank in the summer of 1943 convinced the Red Army to make a serious upgrade of its tank force for the first time since 1941. Soviet tanks needed bigger guns to take on the growing numbers of Panthers and the few Tigers.
A stopgap upgrade to the KV series was the short-lived KV-85. This was a KV-1S with a new turret designed for the KV-13, mounting the same 85 mm D-5T gun as the SU-85 and early versions of the T-34-85. Already-high demand for the gun slowed production of the KV-85 tremendously, and only 130 were built before the KV design was replaced. The KV-85 was produced in the fall and winter of 1943-44, and most were expended that spring and summer.
A new heavy tank design entered production late in 1943 based on the work done on the KV-13. Because Kliment Voroshilov had fallen out of political favour, the new heavy tank series was named IS, after Iosif Stalin. The KV-13 program's IS-85 prototype was accepted for production as the IS-1 heavy tank. After testing with both 100mm and 122mm guns, the 122mm gun was selected as the main armament of the new tank. Proving-ground tests showed that the larger A-19 122mm gun could defeat the armour of the German Panther tank. The 122mm fired a much larger HE round than the 100mm and there was a surplus of production capacity for the gun and ammunition. The IS-122 design replaced the IS-85, and began mass production as the IS-2. The 85mm gun saw service in the lighter SU-85 and T-34-85.
Some KVs remained in service right up to the end of the war, although in greatly diminishing numbers as they wore out or were knocked out. The 260th Guards Heavy Breakthrough Tank Regiment, based on the Leningrad front, operated a number of 1941-vintage KV-1s at least as late as the summer of 1944 before re-equipping with IS-2s. A regiment of KVs saw service in Manchuria in August 1945, and a few KV-85s were used in the Crimea in the summer of 1944. The Finnish forces had two KVs, a Model 1940 and Model 1941, both of which received minor upgrades in their service, and both of which survived the war. A single captured KV-2 was used by German forces in 1945 against US forces in the Ruhr.
Models
Note: the Soviets did not recognize production models of KV-1 during the war, therefore designations like model 1939 (or M1939, Russian: Obr. 1939) were introduced later in military publications. These designations however are not strict and describe leading changes, while other changes might be adapted earlier or later in specific production batches. Designations like KV-1A were applied by the Germans during the war.
- KV-1
- Model 1939Image:Kv1 m39.jpg – First production models, these tanks were prone to frequent breakdowns, but were highly resilient to anti-tank weapons during the Winter War. These tanks were armed with the 76 mm L-11 tank gun, recognizable due to a recuperator above a barrel. Most tanks were lacking the hull machine gun. 141 were built.
- Model 1940 (German designation: KV-1A) – Used the F-32 76 mm gun and a new mantlet. The main production model by the time of the German invasion.
- Model 1940 s ekranami ("with screens") or KV1-E – with additional bolted-on appliqué armour and F-32 gun.
- Model 1941 (KV-1B) – Up-armoured with 25 to 35 mm added to the turret, hull front and sides. Turret was now cast instead of welded. This tank was armed with the longer-barrelled F-34, and later ZiS-5 76.2mm tank guns.
- Model 1942 (KV-1C) – Fully cast turret with thicker armour or welded turret with thicker armour, again up-armoured and used an improved engine and the 76 mm ZiS-5 tank gun.
- KV-1S – A lighter variant of late 1942 with higher speed, but thinner armour. A new, smaller, cast turret and redesigned rear hull were used. 1370 were built.
- KV-85 – A KV-1S with the 85 mm D-5T gun in an IS-1's turret, 130 of these tanks were produced in September-October 1943 as a stopgap until the IS tank series entered production.
- KV-13 - Prototype designation for an advanced redesign of the KV series, which was renamed and resulted in the production of the IS-2.
Variants
- KV-2 (334) – A heavy assault tank with the M-10 152 mm howitzer, the KV-2 was produced at the same time as the KV-1. Due to the size of its heavy turret and gun, the KV-2 was slower and had a much higher profile than the KV-1. The extra weight also increased the breakdown rate of the vehicle and production was soon halted. The original KV-2 was built on the chassis of the KV-1, while the improved KV-2B was built on that of the KV-1 M1940.
- KV-8 (42) – A KV-1 fitted with the ATO-41 flame-thrower in the turret, beside a machine gun. In order to accommodate the new weapon, the main gun was restricted to a smaller 45 mm Gun M1932, though it was disguised to look like the standard 76 mm.
- KV-8S (25) – A KV-1S with the coaxial turret machine gun replaced by an ATO-41 flame-thrower, and the main gun restricted to a 45mm.
- KV-14 – Prototype designation for a 152mm self-propelled gun, accepted for service as the SU-152.
See also
References
- {{cite book
| first = Steven J. | last = Zaloga | authorlink = | coauthors = James Grandsen | year = 1984 | month = | title = Soviet Tanks and Combat Vehicles of World War Two | chapter = | editor = | others = | edition = | pages = | publisher = Arms and Armour Press | location = London | id = ISBN 0-85368-606-8 | url =
}}
External links
- LemaireSoft
- OnWar specifications: KV-1 M39, KV-1e M40, KV-1 M41, KV-1S, KV-85, KV-2
- Russian Battlefield: KV-1, KV-1S, KV-2, KV-8, KV-85
- World War II Vehicles
| Soviet Armored fighting vehicles of World War II | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Light tanks | Fast tanks | Amphibious tanks | |
| T-26 | T-50 | T-60 | T-70 | T-80 | BT-5 | BT-7 | BT-8 | T-37 | T-38 | T-40 | |
| Tankettes | Medium tanks | Heavy tanks | |
| T-27 | T-28 | T-34 | T-44 | T-35 | KV-1 | KV-2 | IS-2 | IS-3 | |
| Self-propelled guns | Anti-aircraft | ||
| ZiS-30 | SU-5 | SU-76 | SU-85 | SU-100 | SU-122 | SU-152 | ISU-122 | ISU-152 | T-60Z | T-70Z | T-90 | ||
| Armored tractors | Improvised AFVs | Experimental | |
| T-26T | Komsomolets | KhTZ-16 | IZ | NI | SU-14 | A-40 flying tank | SU-100Y | PPG | |
| Armored cars | |||
| D-8 | D-12 | D-13 | FAI | BA-10 | BA-11 | BA-20 | BA-21 | BA-3 | BA-6 | BA-27 | BA-64 | BA-I | LB-62 | LB-23 | |||
| Amphibious AC | Half-tracked AC | Aerosans | |
| PB-4 | PB-7 | BAD-2 | BA-30 | ANT-IV | NKL-16 | NKL-26 | RF-8 | ASD-400 | |
| Soviet armored fighting vehicle production during World War II | |||
| List of armoured fighting vehicles of World War II | |||
cs:KV (tank) de:KW-2 fr:Char Kliment Voroshilov hr:KV-1 it:Kliment Voroshilov (carro) ja:KV-2 pl:KW-2 ru:КВ-1 (танк) fi:KV-sarja