The T-34 Tank: Soviet Armour That Changed WWII

Around 3.15am on Sunday June 22, 1941, the German army launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. It was the biggest and most expensive land offensive in human history. The Red Army was woefully underprepared. In the initial blitzkrieg, the Germans destroyed much of the Soviet Union’s air force on the ground and killed thousands of soldiers. However, one key weapon the Germans weren’t prepared for was the T-34 tank, which advanced on German forces – in the words of Generalfeldmarschall Paul Ludwig Ewald von Kleist – ‘like a prehistoric monster.’ He later called the T34 ‘the finest tank in the world.’

For this remarkable Soviet tank, WW2 was its raison d’être. It marked a significant shift in tank warfare, combining innovative design with formidable firepower and mobility, and was a vital asset on the Eastern Front. The T 34 tank proved instrumental in turning the tide of the war, and eventually thousands of them rolled into Berlin in April 1945, to seal the fate of the Third Reich.

Let’s take a trip back to the battlefields of World War II and beyond to discover the incredible story of one of the most famous military vehicles of them all, the T-34 tank.

During the Spanish Civil War, the Soviet BT and T-26 tanks went toe-to-toe with their German and Italian counterparts, but the weaknesses of the Soviet tanks – designed in the early 1930s – couldn’t be overlooked. They were prone to catching fire and susceptible to light anti-tank guns and even hand-thrown improvised weapons. It was clear to Soviet authorities that a new, more effective tank was required.

Legendary Soviet engineer Mikhail Koshkin, who started life as a maker of boiled sweets, was given the job of creating what turned out to be the most produced tank of World War II, and the tank that formed the spine of dozens of the world’s armed forces until well into the 1990s. Indeed it’s thought some are still in use today.

In 1937 the idea was mooted to replace the USSR’s ageing tanks, and the following year, design of the A-20 prototype began, which would eventually evolve into the famous T 34 Russian tank.

The A-20 prototype featured sloped armour and a Christie suspension designed specifically for tanks, which allowed for greater speed on rough terrain. The A-32, an improved version with thicker armour and a more powerful gun, was also created. By January 1940 the prototype was being tested. Two months later, the final prototype, named the T-34, was approved for production, featuring a 76.2 mm gun and a diesel engine.

Full-scale production of the T34 began in earnest at various factories in the Soviet Union, including the Kharkiv Diesel Factory, Leningrad’s Kirovsky Factory, the Stalingrad Tractor Factory, and the Krasnoye Sormovo Factory No. 112 in Nizhny Novgorod.

At the start of Operation Barbarossa, it’s thought around 1,000 T34s – the Soviet tank WW2 was famous for – were in the hands of troops on the ground. By the war’s end, the Soviets had built almost 60,000, a staggering number in such a short space of time. The total number produced by the time the T-34 tank was finally phased out was around 84,000.

The T34 was the second-most produced tank of all time, behind its successor, the T-54/55 series, of which around 100,000 were built between 1946 and 1958. It was also built under licence in countries including Poland and Czechoslovaikia until the late 1970s.

The most striking feature of the T-34 was its angled surfaces. Unlike earlier tanks, which were essentially basic metal boxes, the T-34 was meticulously designed with sloping armour faces. These angled surfaces had two key benefits. They increased the effective thickness of the plating a shell had to penetrate, and the oblique angle made it more likely for incoming shells to deflect off the surface.

During Operation Barbarossa, one famous incident underscored the effectiveness of the T34’s sloped armour perfectly. According to reports, early on in the invasion a single T 34 Russian tank suffered more than thirty direct hits by what was described as a ‘battalion-sized contingent’ of 37mm and 50mm German anti-tank guns, yet barely suffered a scratch, making it safely back behind its own lines within a few hours. The German tank crews ended up dubbing the T34 as the Panzeranklopfgerät, or ‘tank door knocker’, because that’s all their ammunition could do.

It was a truly formidable machine. Blitzkrieg pioneer and future Chief of the General Staff of the German Army High Command Heinz Guderian felt that in many ways the T34 was superior to the German Panzers. German field commanders reported what became known as ‘tank terror’, and Major General Friedrich von Mellenthin, commander of the 9th Panzer Division, said simply, ‘we had nothing comparable.’

The T-34 Russian tank played a vital role in World War II, and its incredible mobility allowed it to excel in the vast, varied terrain of the Eastern Front, from the brutally harsh winters to the muddy spring thaws. This versatility and resilience was crucial in key conflicts such as the Battle of Stalingrad, between July 1942 and February 1943, and the Battle of Kursk in the summer of 1943, where the T-34 proved crucial in shifting the balance of the war in favour of the Allies.

Indeed the Battle of Kursk – one of the largest tank battles in history – arguably marked the T-34’s most decisive triumph, solidifying its legendary status. Their large numbers and effective deployment against the formidable German Panther and Tiger tanks helped the Red Army to absorb and repel the German advance, eventually turning the tide of the battle in the Soviet’s favour. This decisive armoured clash not only marked the last major German offensive on the Eastern Front, but also showcased the T-34’s critical role in ensuring Soviet victory and shifting the balance of power in World War II.

Yet the impact of the T34 wasn’t just felt on the battlefields of the Eastern Front and on the final march into Berlin. In the Korean War, the Soviets supplied the North Korean People’s Army with around 200 T34 tanks, and it also saw action in the Vietnam War, the Suez Crisis, various civil wars, the Soviet-Afghan War, and the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

It’s thought a small number of T-34 tanks may still be in active service, particularly in African and Southeast Asian countries. However, the exact numbers and the specific armed forces using them aren’t well documented.

There were a number of different variants of the T-34, but the figures listed below are the specifications of the original 1941 model.

Weight | Up to 31 tonnes

Length | 6.68 metres

Width | 3.0 metres

Height | 2.46 metres

Crew | 4 – Commander/Gunner, Loader, Radio Operator/Hull Machine Gunner, Driver

Armour Plating | Between 16 and 60 millimetres thick

Main Armament | 76.2mm F-34 tank gun

Secondary Armament | 2 x 7.62mm DT machine guns

Engine | Kharkiv Model V-2-34, 38.8 litre V12 diesel

Fuel Capacity | 460 litres

Operational Range | 210 miles on the road, and 120 miles cross-country

Maximum Speed | 33 mph

It’s a common misconception that during World War II the Soviets produced what would be classified as a T34 heavy tank. T34 models did get slightly heavier – the later T34-85 variant may have weighed closer to 34 tonnes, but the armoured vehicle known as the T34 Heavy Tank was actually an American design, and shouldn’t be confused with its Soviet namesake.

It was intended to counter threats from Germany’s heavy tanks, including the Tiger II and the Jagdtiger, and two prototypes were built armed with a 120mm anti-aircraft gun and either a .30 calibre, or .50 calibre Browning machine gun. It weighed over 65 tonnes, it was 13 metres long and was powered by a 810hp, 27-litre Continental AV1790 V12 engine but it was deemed too cumbersome to be used by the US Army or the Marine Corps as an effective battlefield weapon and no orders were placed.

One remains on display in the National Armor & Cavalry Museum at Fort Moore in Georgia.

The T34 was a game-changer. Its innovative design, combining sloped armour, powerful armaments, and reliable mobility, allowed the Soviet forces to counter and eventually overcome the usually technologically superior but numerically inferior German tanks. It laid the groundwork for an eventual Allied victory in World War II.