Editing T-34 (section)

==IRL==
[[File:T-34-76.png|thumb|76mm of the people's fury.]]
Evaluating the performance of the T-34 is a bit tricky compared to other WW2 tanks because the T-34 was a Russian tank and as such access to Soviet archives has been spotty at best over the years. Following the war the Germans who faced them in battle wanted jobs in NATO helping to fend off the Russian Bear so books written by them have incentives to overplay and 'enhance' the strengths of the T-34 to in part pull blame away from their own failings.

What we can say is that the T-34 was one of the most advanced tank designs in the world when it first hit the battlefield. Incorporating lessons learned from the tank battles at Lake Khasan and Khalkhin Gol, the T-34 had better armor, mobility, and firepower than many of its contemporaries, and was an ''extremely'' rude surprise for the Germans who first encountered it in Operation Barbarossa. Banking on their master race technological superiority, the Wehrmacht found that that their ''only'' real advantage against the T-34 was that, while the tank itself was awesome, Russian crews were ''Scheiße''. Poorly trained and inexperienced crews of conscripted peasants all too often didn't know how to take full advantage of the T-34's strengths.

Not to say the T-34 was perfect, though. Issues like poor mechanical reliability to bad steel quality, and a two-man turret, meaning the commander had to also load the gun while also leading, but as the war progressed, some of these issues were ''ironed'' out. Ultimately, the greatest enemy to itself tended to be the low-quality control the factory had due to Stalin issuing the general order of "Build them the fuck faster", and since the only thing Stalin loved more then killing his own people was ordering other's to kill his own people, Build them the Fuck Faster they did. Some historians have argued that building more T-34 at the cost of lowering quality instead if building them up to proper standard actually cost soviets more, as tanks come with a huge logistical trail and poorly made tanks consume just as much if not more fuel, lubricants and spare parts, not to mention crew you have to spend time and money to train. There were periods when quality control was so rock-bottom more then 50% of T-34 losses were from non-combat incidents, as things broke down and refused to turn on after few kilometers of moving off-road or even didn't star up right after being loaded off the train - building tanks twice as fast doesn't really pay out if only half of those tanks could reach their first battle in a working condition. The habit of building as many as possible has it's origins in the general high attrition rate of 41-42, in which the Soviets were on the back-foot while the Wehrmacht was at it's comparative strongest. Having something on hand that mostly works beats something better 30km away, that was lost or would arrive a three weeks from now after the Nazis had marched into town you were guarding.

By 1943, with the introduction of heavy German Tiger and Panther tanks (the latter being made in direct response to the T-34) resulted in the outdating of the base T-34. Interestingly, Soviet mechanized infantry were oftentimes just dudes with guns that sat on the top of T-34s, which while efficient, was also an understandably costly method of troop deployment compared to trucks or Half-tracks.

After sobering up from designing the KV-2, they up-gunned the T-34s with a new turret and 85mm gun, dubbed the T-34-85. This variant was capable of penetrating the Tiger and Panther tanks at reasonable distances, and the addition of a third crew member in the turret finally allowed the commander to do his job efficiently. While still not a one-on-one match to the newer German designs, the T-34-85 was far more cost-effective, with production figures of 1200 tanks per month, compared to the total production of 6557 Panthers, and so Soviet tanks would routinely enjoy numerical superiority in battle. 

After the war, T-34s were sold or given to many friendly powers around the world, from China and North Korea in the Korean War, to the MPLA during the Angolan Civil War. Virtually every Warsaw Pact member used the T-34 at first, including Poland and East Germany. Most were refurbished with new engines, tracks, and additional equipment, and some militaries like North Korea and Vietnam still have them in service.


{{Soviet Forces in Flames of War}}