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 the 1920s. 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, was en vogue. The T-28 and T-35 are both the results of this philosophy.

During the purges, 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 was alone amongst the remaining Marshals of the Soviet Union (and up to a point, against Stalin's wishes) championing tanks and he was 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 with the T-100, and the Kirowsky works 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.

At the start of the Winter war in late 1939, the Soviets decided to test their military equipment. The two designs, performed poorly during the attack on Summa. However, At the last moment, Kotin, a lead engineer at Kirowsky, 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, but one of the bright sides from this was that the proto KV-1 performed well. 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 by no means 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.

When the Germans started upgrading to 75mm and 88mm cannons, the "logical" solution was add more armor and create a new variant called the KV-1E, which for all intents and purposes was pretty much the Russian equivalent of the Elefant. The complaints were so bad about the tank that Stalin approached Kotin and told him to fix it in his typical Stalin way. Kotin and an engineer named Shashmurin thus created the economy version of the KV-1, called the KV-1S. It was faster, comfier, and more reliable than the E version, but also sacrificed a ton of the armor that made it so infamous in the early war. Ultimately the KV chassis was phased out due to the success of the T-34 chassis.

Two interesting but short lived variants of the KV were the KV-2 and KV-85. The KV-2 was functionally a fully enclosed turret mounted 15.2 cm howitzer, but it sadly underperformed and was cramped as hell. The KV-85 was also considered for providing competition to the German big cats, but the SU series of Tank destroyers were doing fine and it was found that the T-34 could just as easily mount an 85mm gun, so this project was largely abandoned.

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