KV

The KV series is a family of heavy tanks produced and fielded by the Soviet Union from 1939 to 1943. These proved to be nasty surprises for the invading German forces in Operation Barbarossa, as they were practically immune to the guns equipped on the Panzer-III and Panzer-IVs of the time. Only the 8.8cm Flak gun set on direct fire could penetrate their thick armor.

Their battlefield roles were eventually supplanted by T-34s and the IS series of tanks, respectively.

In Real Life

All right. Buckle up people, because just like with his successor the IS-2 there is a lot to be told about this one too!

To understand the origin of the KV series of tanks, one needs to start in 1926. The Reds wanted to modernize their armies, and Marshal of the Soviet Union Mikhail Tukhachevsky drew up a plan to do exactly that. Something of a visionary, Tukhachevsky in his Field Regulations of 1929 (amongst many other things) saw three main roles for tanks on the battlefield, and accordingly the need for three classes of machines:

• Infantry tanks, whose main role is to support the infantry directly. Those need not go very fast and be armed with howitzers and machine guns and be reasonably well-armored.
• Fast tanks, that need to flank, envelop and strike at the enemy's rear: artillery, airfields, logistical lines, and command centers. Speed is of the essence, along with decent firepower.
• Breakthrough tanks, whose role was to go straight for the enemy and blast them to smithereens, needed to be heavily armed.

Now, at that time, the whole concept of land battleship, i.e. multi-turreted tanks that could engage multiple targets at once and either be mobile rally points for the infantry or heavy attackers able to punch through the enemy's battle line was en vogue. The first such tank entered service in the mid-thirties, the T-28. The T-28... worked, but not in its intended role. With a 76mm howitzer, 4 machine guns, and rather weak armor; it could not fulfill the role of a breakthrough tank and was quickly relegated to infantry support. Undaunted, the Reds kept going and came up with the much larger and heavier T-35. With five turrets, two sporting 40mm AT guns, one with a 76mm howitzer and two with machineguns; it is truly the only land battleship ever put into production. But, for all it was bristling with weapons, the 45-ton heavy monster was plagued with problems: engine and transmission suffered from the excessive weight, and worse, the lessons from Spain showed that the modest armor of ~30mm steel would not stand up to dedicated AT weapons; rendering it useless as a breakthrough tank. Just like his predecessor, the T-35 wouldn't do.

In the meantime, however, things had changed in Russia, and not for the better. Stalin had decided to purge anyone who disagreed with him, and the Red Army was left in a state of total confusion, with those few remaining high-ups terrified of being next in line. One of Stalin's many victims was Mikhail Tukhachevsky himself, and the task of developing the tank arms further felt to a man named Kliment Voroshilov. Klim, as the Russians nicknamed him was... a complicated man, both in the good and the bad sense. Of importance here is that he alone amongst the remaining Marshals of the Soviet Union (and up to a point, against Stalin's wishes) championed tanks, and he was accordingly put in charge of equipping the Red Army with better machines. Thus, in 1937, two tenders were put out:

• one to replace the now aged fast tanks, a design that would eventually culminate in the T-34. (More info on that vehicle's page)
• one for a proper breakthrough tank, with three turrets and enough armor to take a beating.

The latter order proved a tough nut to crack. Ultimately, only two design bureaus dared put a design and prototype forward in 1939: the OKMO bureau under Nikolay Barkov proposed the T-100, and the Kirowsky works under Zhosef Kotin proposed the SMK. Both were eerily similar and only sported two turrets one above the other; because three turrets were just too damn impractical to build.

As luck would have it, Stalin decided to flex his muscles and invade Finland in late 1939, which turned out to be a terrible idea. It was however a good occasion to field-test the two designs, and they were sent to support the attack on Summa. At the last moment, Kotin prevailed on Voroshilov to also take two other prototypes of his 'SMK' along, that sported only a single turret but better armor, which he named the Kliment Voroshilov tank in his honor. the first battle for Summa didn't go well for the Reds, and, insult to injury, both the T-100 and the SMK performed abysmally during the live test. The KV prototypes, on the other hand, did okay. The Finns lacked any big AT gun to deal with them and they managed to do relatively well for themselves. Voroshilov (the man) saw the writing on the wall and ordered the single-turret model into production just before having a big fall-out with Stalin and getting sidelined. Thus entered the KV-1.

The KV-1... was not a good design: let us not kid ourselves, it was just as problematic to the Russians in 1941 as the late-war heavies were to the Germans: too big, too heavy, too prone to breakdowns, too sluggish; poor visibility and ergonomics, hard to drive (the driver had to sometimes hit the lever with a mallet to switch gears, so bad the transmission could get), collapsing bridges under their weight; and final insults to injury, weighing half the time more and costing almost three times more to produce than the true winner the T-34 despite sporting the same gun. It had however one big saving grace: armor. Lots of armor was evenly placed all around the tank and turned it pretty much into a mobile fortress early into the war. The KV-1 was virtually impenetrable by the early-war German Heeresanklopfgerät 37mm AT gun except at the most point-blank of ranges, early Panzer III's and Panzer IV's didn't fare any better; and only the mighty Acht-acht Flak guns could take one out with ease. While few of them made it to the battlefield in the early days of the war, The Germans quickly came to dread encountering the Russischer Koloss or Monster due to the insane amount of punishment a KV-1 could take before going down. Interestingly enough, at the same time another small batch of a different version sporting a 152mm howitzer was created to try and make the howitzer more mobile called the KV-2. That one was a tremendous failure and quickly discontinued.

By 1942, however, the Krauts had learned their lessons and were bringing bigger guns up to deal with the T-34s and KV-1s. Kotin then doubled down and started adding extra appliqué armor to the base KV model, creating the KV-1E (E standing for Ekranami, with extra armor). Now, adding weight to an already strained chassis without upgrading the engine and transmission was not a good idea and the KV1-E... was still a tough nut to crack for the Germans but even more of a maintenance nightmare, to the point Russian tank units started requesting T-34's instead. Tripling down, Kotin kept trying to add more armor and bigger guns to his already far too heavy machines, creating a staggering amount of prototypes that weren't ever approved for production. The only one that made it in small numbers was the KV-8 variant, which had a smaller main gun but a coaxial flamethrower to fry the damn Schnitzels in their trenches or bunkers during assaults.

Soon enough Stalin's ears were buzzing with complaints about the KV tank, and Kotin felt the noose tightening around his neck. He thus put one of his ambitious young engineers forward, Nikolay Shashmurin, and ordered him to "fix" the KV-1. Stalin agreed to give them a chance, with the condition it should not impeach mass-production (i.e. no completely new design). Shashmurin went to work, read AARs and interviewed successful commanders; and came up with a fix: replace the old transmission (based on the one of an old a Caterpillar tractor) with a much-improved planetary one similar to those the Germans used, add some quick'n'dirty ergonomic improvements making the life of the crew easier (like a cupola for the tank commander). Finally, he also critically assessed where armor was needed and where it wasn't, and cut out most of the extra appliqué armor and over five tons of 'superfluous' steel from the original design. Entered the KV-1S (S for Skorostnoy, 'speedy').

For all purposes and intents, the KV-1S delivered at first: the reliability issues that so plagued the earlier models had been dealt with. Stalin was satisfied and awarded both Kotin and Shashmurin a prize for their work. But the clincher came when the first AAR's came in: while tank crews praised the multiple improvements, said improvements had come at the cost of losing the heavy armor that made the earlier tanks so valuable, making the KV-1S more of a big medium tank than a true heavy tank. While it was useful, the thinning-out of the armor called into question why the bigger model was being produced at all since the T-34 could do everything the KV-1S could, while being much cheaper to produce.

This became so much of a problem that in mid-1943 the Soviet heavy tank program was close to termination. And then the Battle of Kursk and the Panther happened. Faced with a hard-as-nails death machine that could dish out the pain from long range, the Reds realized they too had to up-gun their armor park. This was the KV-series (and in a sense the heavy tanks as a whole) swan song, as at first only the larger KV-1S could easily be equipped with a bigger gun, and KV-85s rolled off the assembly line to fight those damn pesky big kitties. But when it became clear that the T-34 could also be equipped with said 85mm gun without sacrificing too much mobility or reliability, both the KV-85 and its planned successor the IS-1 were scrapped. The only one that manage to pull through was the IS-2 equipped with an even bigger 122mm gun, but ultimately the hour of the Main Battle Tank was at hand, and heavy tanks were sidelined after WWII until Nikita Khrushchev outright canceled them in the sixties.

Soviet Forces in Flames of War
Tanks:	T-70 - Valentine - M5/M3 Stuart - M3 Lee - T-34 - KV - Churchill - IS-2 - Captured Tank Platoon - T-28 - BT-7 - KV-2 - T-26
Transports:	M3 Scout Car - Universal Carrier - SdKfz 251
Infantry:	Rifles - Motor Rifles - Penal Company - Storm Group - SMG Company - Engineer Sapper Company
Artillery:	Katyusha - 152mm Artillery - 122mm Artillery - 76mm Artillery - 120mm Mortars - 82mm mortars
Tank Destroyers and Assault Guns:	45mm Anti Tank - 57mm Anti Tank - 76mm Anti Tank - 100mm Anti Tank - SU-76 - SU-85 - SU-100 - SU-122 - SU-152 - ISU-122/ISU-152
Recon:	Scout Platoon - BA-64 Platoon - Armored Reconnaissance Platoon - Reconnaissance Platoon
Aircraft:	Il-2 Sturmovik
Anti-Aircraft:	ZSU M17 - DShK AA MG Platoon
Midwar Monsters:	KV-3 - KV-5 - T-43