In June 1941, Adolf Hitler’s army launched Operation Barbarossa, the largest invasion in history, sweeping into Russia with devastating speed.
The Red Army, poorly organized and underprepared was caught off-guard by the rapid Blitzkrieg tactics that devastated the Soviet air force on the ground and resulted in the encirclement and annihilation of entire army groups.
But not everything went Germany’s way. They were taken by surprise by a new Soviet tank, the T34, which advanced on German forces “like a prehistoric monster, shrugging off fire from half a dozen German tanks and destroying panzers with ease.
Known for its remarkable balance of firepower, mobility and protection, the T34 proved to be a significant and highly effective tank.
However despite its strengths, a significant number of T34’s, approximately 45000 were lost in battle during the war.
Join us as we explore the strengths and weaknesses of the T34, dissect historical battle strategies and uncover the true reasons behind these significant losses.
#t34 #t3485 #soviettank
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excuses all day long i taught the reds were so great guess not as in ukraine
hello, mister t34 meet my friend the 88
if the t34 crew retreated they were shot thats why they fought
Because of no radio communications, poor/no training and in the heat of battle, tanks were unable to change tactics collectively – especially when the command tank, using flags, was lit up.
It was a good tank, probably in the top 3. The main reason was poor training for many crews. I've read accounts of new ones being driven out of factories straight into battle, by factory workers.
No radios in T-34 tanks until way later in the war.
WW2 was a war of attrition. This video proves it.
Some of those T-34s rolled straight from the factory to the front lines with the guys who assembled it as crew: No training.
I read somewhere that that tank was designed by an American who brought it to the war department but some hero tank general had some problems with it 🧐 The designer obviously needed money and because it was killed in the US did the obvious and the Russians liked it.Bought the design/pattern and moved forward with it. And I believe the design of the main drive train alone is still used today
I can't believe you missed the main reason the T34 was inferior. No radio.
When are people going to learn when there is absolutely no chance what so ever for any conciquenses of any kind for a government and more specifically a tyrannical government run by a tyrannical dictator for producing weapon systems that are essential crap AND those producing crap designed weapons systems are told make them in numbers so great or you WILL be shot any level of effective quality control is essential impossible you get communist Russian weapons systems like the T-34
Soviet weapons manufacturering doctrine is essential entirely based on two principles above all others
#1 perfection is the enemy of good enough
#2 quantity has a quality of its own
The reason the Sherman M4 tank was one of the best made most reliable and most fast to manufacture of any tank of WWII we made over 45k of them and easy to transport overseas was a combination of those who designed and made it having an absolutely clear understanding of what the tank was going to do the fact it must be absolutely as reliable as possible and must make a single tank design that will be just as reliable in the bitter cold winters of Europe as in the burning heat of the south African deserts and the sweltering jungles of the pacific as once it left the factory it was leaving the continent never to return the M4 Sherman wasn't the best tank at any ONE thing but it was at least more than good enough at just about everything a infantry support tank must do and it was much much much more reliable than either the Panther or Tiger or T-34 tanks
And much much easier to work on
If you had to replace a transmission or final drive unit on a Sherman it took 3-4 hours
On a Panther or Tiger it took 3-4 DAYS and the final drive units on Panther were notoriously unreliable vs a Sherman's which a Sherman's transmission or final drive systems lasted at least 4x longer than the Panthers
Ask any infantryman in any army who is about to go into battle if he wants to be backed up with fewer tanks but with more armor a bigger gun but it brakes down 33%+ of the time or by 1.5-2x as many tanks a tank with a great gun for knocking out fortified enemy positions that is over 90% reliable
Any tank and/or armour vehicle, whether modern or WW2 era, always has its own strengths or pros as well as its own weakness or flaws or cons.
If i remember rightly from the books i got on tanks on both sides start of Barbarossa the main Soviet tank was the BT 7 that took on the German armour at the beginning.
The T-34 invincibility in 1941 is a myth. The perfect blend of mobility speed and firepower was over blown. The horrendous ergonomics, no radio, terrable crew training, terrible situational awareness, i.e. the commander was the loader who couldn't see anything . These problems continued until summer 1944. There is way more to tank combat than stats indicate.
Workers were no better than slaves at the T-34 factories in Kharkiv and Chelyabinsk. They fell asleep next to their machines, and woke to return to work. Little wonder its manufacturing quality was so poor.
Sloped armor was not revolutionary. The Germans were well aware of it. They also realized it wasn't worth it. Sloped armor greatly reduced ergonomics. Remember the T-34s turret was designed for the 45mm gun. The F-34 gun being much larger caused problems.
Another problem the Russians themselves in investigations of knocked out T'34s found almost 20% were knocked out by the seemingly useless 37mm at gun.
8:45 “…further endangering the crew…” Yeah, the tank blew up and burned like a Roman candle, killing the crew. Such flowery language for what is a catastrophic failure.
So that's why no tank aces for the T-34
Wow.
The concept of T-34 went way further than tank strategy in 1930s.
In earlier stage of war, T-34 was much worse in quality, supply line, maintenance, crew training, communication, optical. Not to say their commander was taught to be inflexibility, combination cooperation was severely poor.
While later on, the anti-tank capability and strategy of German was much more developed to render T-34 tanks advantages. The Soviet must relied more on quantity. So their loss in T-34 was constant even when the engineers could fix merely all the error about availability.
Up to late 1944 (German forces no longer effective in 1945), the Soviet lose 9/10 T-34s produced. By any means, operating T-34s was death sentence.
And yet the Russians proved that quantity always wins against quality
Lousy blurred video
WHY DIDN'T THE GERMANY COPY THEM AND MODIFY THEM
What, the T-34 was the best tank in the world, how could it have suffered massive losses? This is sacrilege. There can be no weaknesses in the "God of all tanks". It doesnt matter that the crews were rubbish, the tank was invulnerable.
Seriosly,myth of t-34 "inventing" sloped armor…..just another copy paste false narative video.
Anyway,it was a junk tank just produced in huge numbers.
85mm was so,so but still had numerous issues with one of the worst being low crew survivability,but hey in mother ussr human flesh was not worth much.
Germany wasn't prepared for a war. The production of modern fighting vehicles by Germany really picked up during the war.
Once a Russian tank got into action it had an average service life of 14 hours. That's not a typo.
Is it any surprise then that you rarely see combat footage of a painted t-34?
Eventually we're going to see t34's on the front lines in Ukraine.
No tank is invincible , Russian weapons usually are crudely made so T-34 suffer massive casualties is not a big surprise . When Barbarossa starts , soviets were caught surprised by the massive german offensive => massive losses ( Soviets wasn't prepared , this doesn't count as flawed doctrine) . As they try to fill the gaps and hold the front , they sent poorly trained men to buy time => massive losses ( manpower , materiel) . Soviet doctrine , especially deep battle was proven to be very effective at the end of the war , this tactic + mass offensive to break german defenses is very costly . To sum up , T-34 massive casualties is to be expected since WW2 was a costly war , Eastern front was brutal and it is the Red Army that bear the brunt of the Wehrmacht most of the time ( ~ 3.5 million german troops , 700,000 german-allied troops ) fought on the eastern front
Soviet tanks outclassed by german tanks in the Spanish Civil War??? The only german tank deployed was the Panzer l!!!The Republican Army had T26 and BT's🤦
Absolutely wretched situational awareness (why do you think you see so many photos of T-34s which have driven themselves into a ditch?), borderline useless optics, miserable reliability, wretched build-quality.
The most-destroyed and most overrated fighting vehicle of all time.
The T 34 engine life was max 30 hours
Massive losses compared to what? German losses, were, after all, 100 %, right?
And as usual, the people who make videos like this don't seem to realize that Soviet irrecoverable losses include tanks that were melted down due to mechanical wear-and-tear and/or obsolescence. For at least some Soviet tank types the "losses" due to mileage/wear-and-tear exceed the losses on the battlefield (which is a big reason why calculating loss rations of German losses that only count battlefield losses to Soviet losses which include both battlefield and non-battlefield losses is misleading)
If you look at Soviet steel production, you see it dwarfed by not on the US (which dwarfs everyone) but also Germany. So the Soviets correctly viewed the best use of worn-out or obsolete tanks was to melt them down for their steel to make newer, better, tanks.
I'm guessing the German army was the main reason.