Time Slip Reiwa Japan

043 - Tank Development Competition/Axis, Italy's Decision

The lesson of the Siberian War of Independence was the harsh reality that the new tanks sent out with confidence were inferior to the Japanese and even the Americans in all aspects of speed, offense, and defense, and this was what confronted the leaders of Germany, the Soviet Union, and Italy.

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Soviet Union

The KV-1, which had been deployed with confidence, was defeated in a one-sided battle. Although it had problems with its chassis, the Soviet Union had confidence in its firepower and armor. Nevertheless, the one-sided defeat infuriated Stalin, who shouted for the creation of heavy tanks. This led to the research and development of five tanks at once in the Soviet Union: three heavy tanks, a medium tank, and a light tank.

The heavy tank development team was tasked with defeating the Type 31 tank by any means necessary. The medium tanks were to assist the heavy tanks with mobility. The light tanks were intended for reconnaissance, and it was hoped that they would be able to traverse the vastness of Siberia during the war against the Siberian Republic. The three lines of heavy tanks were (1) a legitimate development of the KV-1 tank, (2) a tank with further enhanced firepower and armor, and (3) a newly developed tank with a new balance of speed, offense, and defense. The legitimate development of the KV-1 tank, (1), will be given the name of KV-2 from early on. The emphasis was on strengthening the undercarriage, which had frequently failed due to low mechanical reliability.

The KV-2 development team had learned the lessons of the Siberian War of Independence that the undercarriage of the KV-1 was one of the reasons why the Japanese tanks had shown overwhelming superiority over the KV-1 tank. The KV-1s could not reach a maximum speed of 20 km/h when they tried to charge and even broke down in the process. They knew that they could not win a winnable battle like this. As a result, the KV-2 became a tank that had been strengthened mainly in its suspension and engine. The main gun was a newly developed 85 mm.

Although the KV-2 had the characteristics of a heavy tank, it could be operated like a medium tank because of its high mobility, and many tank commanders demanded constant deployment of KV-2 tanks. The development team of the proposed vehicle No. 2 had been ordered to develop a tank with enhanced firepower and armor, but in the course of their studies, they realized that there were limits to what could be achieved by using the chassis of the KV-1. Therefore, they decided to reverse their thinking. What was important was the large firepower and heavy armor, and the objective was to destroy the enemy tanks. Based on the KV-1, they simply changed their mindset, thinking that it would be enough if the vehicle protected these three points.

As a result, Proposal 2 was completed as an anti-tank self-propelled gun with a fixed fighting chamber and a large-caliber howitzer. Stalin was puzzled by the results and the conclusions of the development team, but he was overjoyed when a single howitzer from the large-caliber 152 mm gun destroyed a KV-1 tank in a demonstration test using the prototype, literally shattering it, and ordered its mass production. From the caliber of the gun, it was named the SU-152.

Compared to the two teams that developed the No.1 and 2 models with relative ease, the development of the No. 3 model proved to be a difficult task. In the first place, the original KV-1 had been developed with the full power of Soviet tank development technology. There was no way that it could be easily reexamined from scratch to create a tank that could surpass it. Even so, in order to meet Stalin's expectations, the development team for the No. 3 tank went through numerous trials and errors.

The Soviet Union's top brass had strictly ordered that the vehicle's weight of 45 tons be protected in order to maintain a balance between speed, offense, and defense. For this reason, the main gun was not the large-caliber and powerful 152 mm howitzer used in the SU-152, which was unparalleled in size and weight, but a compact 122 mm cannon, which had just been developed, was adopted as the tank gun. As for the chassis, an advanced version of the KV-1 used in the KV-2 was adopted.