Type: Russian light battle tank.
Table of Contents
Develop of the T-70 by N. Astrov’s staff started right at the end of 1941. The essential goal would be to boost the frontal armor as much as 45 mm to be able to shield the tank from 37 mm guns, and also to improve the main gun at minimum to a 45 mm gun in order to provide the crew moderate odds if German tanks were spotted. As painful as was the 2-man turret crew on the T-34, the one-man crew turret on the T-60 and T-70 light tanks made platoon co-ordination almost hopeless to all but the most trained. Nevertheless, this characteristic proceeded to go the same. Like that of the T-60, the hull of the new T-70 was retained uncomplicated for simplicity of production. The engine design was unusual, composed of a couple of GAZ-202 truck motors, a single on every side of the hull, each power plant running a single track by way of independent, unsynchronized truck transmissions. The objective was to make use of as much accessible elements as possible, however this was to turn out a disaster. The turret was conical like that on the T-30, with a common 45 mm tank gun. A few T-70 were manufactured in the heat of the period, but even before they could be supplied, it was obvious that the powertrain design was entirely unsatisfactory. The Astrov team remodeled it by putting the 2 motors in a row and utilizing a regular transmission and differential layout. To ease production, the turret has also been remodeled to make use of flat armor plate, and it was relocated to the left, with the engines to the right.
The T-70M was approved by the GKO for Red Army service in March 1942, but is typically named merely the T-70. A few of the first tanks nevertheless employed the first conical turret, however this was substituted with the flat panel turret after April 1942. T-70 creation occurred at Zavod Nr. 37 and together with T-60 production at GAZ and Zavod Nr. 38. It entirely replaced the T-60 in September 1942. The T-70 stayed being produced ’till the end of October 1943, by which time plenty of 8,226 had been produced.
The last manufacturing models (T-70A from mid-1943) employed the more potent GAZ-203 engine coupled with additional hull upgrades like a traversable MK-4 periscope for the driver instead of a basic view-slit. Operating, the T-70 been found useful but unexceptional.
In 1942, the Astrov staff started upgrading it to have capacity for a 2-man turret crew. This came out as the T-80 in the fall of 1943. The T-80 was basically the same as the T-70 apart from the new bigger turret, increased suspension, larger track and electrical turret traverse. Although a really smart light tank design, at this time of World War 2, Russian tank crews preferred a much more heavily armed tank to deal with newer German types, such as Panzer V Panther, Tiger tank and up-gunned Panzer IV. The resources committed to a T-80 might be far better used on producing the SU-76 which made use of identical elements but had greater firepower. Furthermore, by this point, sufficient quantities of Lend-Lease light tanks such as the Valentine became accessible for employed tasks previously fulfilled by the T-70 and T-60. No more than 120 T-80s were manufactured prior to when manufacturing was ceased. This was the final light tank accepted by the Red Army during WW2, however towards the war’s end, development started on a fresh amphibious light tank, the K-90.
Users: Red Army (for all variants).
Animated 3D model T-70
Specifications for T-70 Model 42
|Type||light battle tank|
|Engine||Two GAZ-202 engines with 2 x 70 hp|
|Length||14 ft 0.9 in (4.29 m)|
|Width||7 ft 7.3 in (2.32 m)|
|Height||6 ft 8.3 in (2.04 m)|
|Maximum speed||28 mph (45 km/hr)|
|Fuel consumption per 100 km||122 liters|
|Road radius||224 miles (360 km)|
|Cross-country radius||110 miles (180 km)|
|Vertical obstacle||2 ft 3.6 in (0.71 m)|
|Trench crossing||10 ft 2.8 in (3.12 m)|
Armament and Equipment:
|Main armament||45-mm-gun L/46|
|Max effective range||?|
|Secondary armament||one 7.62 mm DT MG with 945 rounds (number of rounds for T-70A)|
|Radio||9RF (range 24 km - only in unit leader vehicles)|
Penetration mm at 0° armor plates of the gun:
|500 meters||42 mm||80 mm||-|
|1000 meters||38 mm||50 mm||-|
|Muzzle velocity||2,493 ft/s (760 m/s)||3,511 ft/s (1,070 m/s)||2,461 ft/s (750 m/s)|
|Shell weight||3.1 lbs (1.4 kg)||1.87 lbs (0.85 kg)||4.6 lbs (2.1 kg)|
|Production||March 1942 - October 1943|
|Combat delivery||immediately after production delivery|
|Price per tank||?|
|Total production figure||8,226 (all variants)|
Service statistics of all T-70s:
References and literature
The Encyclopedia of Weapons of World War II (Chris Bishop)
Soviet Tanks and Combat Vehicles of World War Two (Steven J. Zaloga, James Grandsen)
Panzer und andere Kampffahrzeuge von 1916 bis heute (Christopher F. Foss, John F. Milsom, Colonel John Stafford Weeks, Captain Georffrey Tillotson, Richard M. Ogorkiewicz)
Panzerkampfwagen des 1. und 2. Weltkrieges (Andrew Kershaw)
Krieg der Panzer (Piekalkiewicz)