Soviet Multi-Turret Tanks

Whispering Death

Whispering Death

Active member
Charge 7 brought this up in the other thread and it got me interested. I don't know anything about these pre-1941 soviet designs. Would someone care to educate me?
 
T-35

Whispering Death
The T-35 was a multi turrent concept that the Russians put into use in the mid 30s and early 40s. I'm providing the link for you. It will give you all you would like to know. Hope this helps.

Note: Notice the incredibly high profile the T-35 had.

http://www.battlefield.ru/t35.html
 
the t35 would make a nice target, and i wonder how many crew members it would take to aim, reload and fire two turrets. it also must be incredibly slow and heavy.
 
Outwardly, the T-35 was visually stunning with its huge dimensions, however its internal space was very cramped. When I visited Kubinka I was unable to get inside the T-35 (I'm 192 cm). The separate combat compartments were not connected with each other. Visibility from the vehicle was very bad, especially from the driver's position (he could see straight ahead and left only). However, the greatest problem was egress from a knocked out tank because the crew could escape only from roof hatches, and the crew from the main turret had to expose themselves at a 4-metre height under enemy fire.

The driver was in an even worse situation: his hatch could not been opened until the machine-gun turret rotated out of the way. If this turret was jammed, the driver couldn't escape at all. Escape from the rear turrets was also difficult due to the rounded antenna on the main turret. The tank crew could become "prisoners" of their own tank.
Click to expand...

Sounds wonderful don't they.
 
So I get the layout of the tank after reading that link but I've got 2 questions.

1) How was the tank supposed to fight? Was it supposed to run parallell to the enmy lines and shoot "broadsides" like a battleship or what?

2) What's the combat history of the T-35?
 
We have to consider that the whole industry was just taking its first steps. T-35 had so many weapons that the commander could rarely coordinate all of them effectively. This design as ridiculous as it is doesn't surprise me that they actually started producing the tank itself, the whole idea is from the early 1930's so what do you expect :)
If memory serves me correctly the Allied forces too had this type of tank with two turrets, one mounting a low velocity large caliber gun and the other had an anti tank gun.
 
Armyjaeger said:
We have to consider that the whole industry was just taking its first steps. T-35 had so many weapons that the commander could rarely coordinate all of them effectively. This design as ridiculous as it is doesn't surprise me that they actually started producing the tank itself, the whole idea is from the early 1930's so what do you expect :)
If memory serves me correctly the Allied forces too had this type of tank with two turrets, one mounting a low velocity large caliber gun and the other had an anti tank gun.
Click to expand...

You may be thinking of the M-3 "Grant" (AKA "Lee") medium tank. Built by the US it was also fielded by the British who named the tank after Grant if it had a cast turret or after Lee if it had a welded turret, but it only had one turret. It mounted a 37mm gun in it's single turret. Your confusion probably arises from the fact that it also mounted a 75mm gun in a sponson in the hull. While this gave it a second gun, it was not a turret and had a very limited angle of fire. It did perform quite well early in the war and the British used them to good effect against Rommel as few tanks at the time could withstand it's 75mm main gun. You can't really compare it to the T-35 with it's many design flaws. The M-3 served as the basis for the later M-4 Sherman which, while also having flaws of its own, was even more successful in it's implementation.
 
The design of the multi-turret tank comes from WWI. It was an idea that the Russians revived when everybody had discarded. I found a good site with data and photos. If you check British designs you'll see many of their tanks were multi-turreted.


http://mailer.fsu.edu/~akirk/tanks/

As for the T-28, it actually did OK in the Spanish Civil War, it was superior to the German Pz.I and the Italian Tanks the Nationalists had. By 1941, it was clearly obsolete.
 
This is all really interesting to read. I never knew that there was a tank with two turrets.. :shock:

:tank:
 
the russians were not the only ones with multi-turret tanks. The Germans had one with 5 turrets. It was an obvious failure but the nazi's sent them to Oslo for a picture session. It was a dis-information idea. the allies assumed that they were in production. The US had a multi turret tank called the M-2 (I think) It had a 37 mm in a central turret and two 30 cal MG's in two small turrets on the front corners of the tank.
 
Tank.jpg
 
Tank.jpg


This is a British five turreted tank from between the two World Wars. It had a machine gun turret at each corner of the tank plus a heavier gun in a top turret. This tank was for infantry support.
 
I can't see the picture, Lee Enfield. Any picture that is from Photobucket.com or any big company like that I can't see. My computer blocks it. :? Try another website to host it at. I can see some, just not photobucket and a few others.
 
Hey einfeld, about how big is the tank you posted. It looks about the size of a Sherman in the pic but it's really difficult to tell since it isn't like there's a man in the picture or anything to gague it against.
 
The tank must be 11 foot high, it is very heavily armoured. The problems with this tanks was it had No real hitting power from the main gun, also it had a very low speed so that the infantry could keep up. The photo is one of many that I took at Bovington Tank Museum in Dorset
 
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