This time we bring you a somewhat different Inside the Tanks episode! We have teamed up with our colleagues from Wargaming Asia to go “down under” and bring you this unique episode.
We have visited the Australian Armour and Artillery Museum which opened to the public on Saturday 6 September 2014. The collection consists of over 90 armoured vehicles and artillery pieces but we focussed on one very iconic tank – the T-72.
The development of the T-72 was a direct result of the introduction of the T-64 tank. The T-64 (Object 432) was a very ambitious project to build a competitive tank with a weight of not more than 36 tons under the direction of Alexander Morozov in Kharkov. To achieve that goal the crew was reduced to three soldiers, saving the loader by introducing an automated loading system. This and other steps allowed a reduced weight, but caused problems when looking for a reliable engine to fit in the smaller hull.
The production of the T-64 with a 115-mm gun began in 1964, but plans to build the T-64A with a more powerful 125-mm gun had already been made back in 1963. Problems with the first batch of T-64 tanks were centred around the 5TDF 700 hp engine and the auto loading mechanism. The engine was unreliable, was difficult to mend, and only had a guaranteed life span of a World War 2 era tank engine.
A strong lobby around designer Morozov advocated for the T-64 in Moscow, preventing rivalling developments and ideas to be discussed. The T-72 was the most common tank used by the Warsaw Pact from the 1970s to the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was also exported to other countries, such as Finland, India,Iran, Iraq, Syria and Yugoslavia, as well as being copied elsewhere, both with and without licenses.
Licensed versions of the T-72 were made in Poland and Czechoslovakia, for Warsaw Pact consumers. These tanks had better and more consistent quality of make but with inferior armour, lacking the resin-embedded ceramics layer inside the turret front and glacis armour, replaced with all steel. The Polish-made T-72G tanks also had thinner armour compared to Soviet Army standard (410 mm for turret). Before 1990, Soviet-made T-72 export versions were similarly downgraded for non-Warsaw Pact customers (mostly the Arab countries). Many parts and tools are not interchangeable between the Russian, Polish and Czechoslovakian versions, which caused logistical problems.
Yugoslavia developed the T-72 into the more advanced M-84, and sold hundreds of them around the world during the 1980s. The Iraqis called their T-72 copies the “Lion of Babylon” (Asad Babil). These Iraqi tanks were assembled from “spare parts” sold to them by Russia as a means of evading the UN-imposed weapons embargo. More modern derivatives include the Polish PT-91 Twardy. Several countries, including Russia and Ukraine, also offer modernization packages for older T-72s. The T-72 has a comprehensive nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) protection system. The inside of both hull and turret is lined with a synthetic fabric made of boron compound, meant to reduce the penetrating radiation from neutron bomb explosions. The crew is supplied clean air via an extensive air filter system. A slight over-pressure prevents entry of contamination via bearings and joints. Use of an autoloader for the main gun allows for more efficient forced smoke removal compared to traditional manually loaded (“pig-loader”) tank guns, so NBC isolation of the fighting compartment can, in theory, be maintained indefinitely.
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