Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Welcome back to Kubinka.
This is a great place.
Today I’m standing in front of Obj 416.
The same design bureau that ran the A44 project back in the early 40s
had another crack in 1950 using similar principles to try to create a light tank of low silhouette.
1951 the design parameters had changed, they are now trying to create an assault gun, basically, a self-propelled gun.
By 1953, the design had modified a little bit more, with the turret we have available to us now, and we’re going to have a look at it.
The very first thing you will see, of course, is that the turret is to the rear, leaving us with a very long engine deck at the front.
Underneath that is going to be a 400hp 20 cylinder boxer engine.
That will send the drive through the transmission further forward to the final drives at the front, where the sprocket wheels are.
Other than that, you’ll see the headlight, the item to the front center is an infra-red headlight for night driving.
Nothing else of any great significance on the front of the tank, other than the tow hooks,
so we’ll quickly have a look around the side at the suspension.
Suspension and track were specifically designed for this vehicle.
You will note with particular interest the dual-wheel arrangement, six pairs per side,
combined with external guide horns instead of the more traditional center guides.
The pins themselves are of the single-headed type.
As near as I can tell there’s absolutely nothing keeping the things in, and unlike a T-34
I don’t see a ramp to knock them back in if they go out too far, so I guess there’s a trick to it that I haven’t figured out yet.
Other than that, the suspension is torsion bar, unsupported, a very simple mechanism.
The back of the tank is almost more interesting than the front.
You do have a very small stowage box here, and a blackout marker.
If you lift up the spring retained fender, you can see how much sag there is on the suspension.
You can also see the two square-headed bolts that are used to extend or retract the idler wheel for track tension.
As you move further back you have the two mounting points for the MDH smoke generators,
again, MDH stands for ‘Small Naval Generator’, with a quick-release option for the driver to pull if he has to.
Up on the turret there is additional stowage, there is a port here for the shell casings,
the empties would be manually thrown out after they had been fired, tow hooks, and that’s it.
Moving further forward, another very small stowage box, two large exhausts for the engine, and that’s it.
The next step is the engine deck, and this is going to be the easiest tank mount in history.
Easy as. You just step up onto the tank.
The first thing any real tanker is going to say when he gets up here is ‘what a wonderfully designed tank.’
The engine deck is large, flat, fantastic place to sleep.
Very few things coming up to interrupt your night, the engine is going to stay warm for a lot of the evening, very comfortable.
This is a very important criterion, of course, for tankers,
the first thing I said when I saw the Bradley when I converted over was “where the hell do you sleep on this thing?”
There’s no engine deck like there is on the tank.
I guess you can life the access cover.
Other than that, the engine deck is very sparse.
There are a couple of ports, there’s a fuel port on the right hand side, there is a coolant port, oil port,
and at the very front there is a port for the transmission fluid.
The transmission deck itself can be lifted, if you open up all eight or ten bolts, then get a couple of lads, lift it up.
Common feature, I guess, on a lot of Soviet tanks, and that’s it.
This is going to be a fairly quick tank to look at on the outside.
The next thing to have a look at is going to be the turret, and the object of the turret is to mount the M63 cannon.
100mm, fires similar ammunition to the D10.
You’ll note it has a quad-baffle muzzle brake on the end, just to keep the recoil manageable for a light tank.
The armour on this isn’t that huge, you’re talking about 3”, 75mm or so on the front hull.
The turret is effectively an expanded one of a T-54.
They had to make it much bigger, obviously, because you’re talking about four crewmen instead of the standard three.
That said, it is fairly well designed inside, so let’s have a look and see how to make it work.
First stop is the driver’s position.
Of course, he’s in the turret, and he has to be always facing forward.
What’s going to happen is that as the turret rotates,
the driver’s position is going to maintain pretty much a forward direction, aligned with the hull.
The catch is that it seems to have broken, and the astute of you will notice that I’m angling slightly to the left.
He does have, as I get my lanky legs up here, two pedals directly to his front, clutch and accelerator,
and he has the two steering controls in the normal position, the laterals to turn right or left.
As I move down, the gearshift is to the right, I count one, two, three, four, five forward gears and one reverse.
He’s got a couple of instrument panels, he has the direct one to his front, he has an auxiliary one a little low and to the right,
and there is one attached to the engine bulkead as well, but he can’t really see that as he’s driving.
Seat has two positions, up and down, and he is also responsible for loading the coaxial machinegun.
The primary control panel, which has engine temperature, pressure, presumably a speedometer which is missing.
The only two buttons I can figure out, one is the horn, the other one appears to say ‘starter.’
Two guesses.
There is one additional thing to point out. Although the turret is capable of a full 360 degrees of traverse, the driver’s seat is not.
So as the vehicle is driving around, you can only traverse to about 70 degrees,
that is a hard limit and the vehicle can traverse any further than that.
The loader’s position, I like.
I’m in a nice, swivel seat that allows me to access pretty much all of my compartment, and take the ammunition from all around.
First of all, you have 18 rounds of ready ammunition, just pull out out, put it on the loading tray here.
It’s a chain drive, so once you have the round on, you can move the tray over, and the chain will ram the round home.
The neat thing, and this actually took me a while to figure out,
is that once you have used up the ten or so rounds of ammunition immediately available to you,
you simply fold these out of the way and then you slide the next set of ammunition around from the far side.
Commander, of course, will help push.
Use these up, push these further to the back, get the next set of ammunition.
Once you’ve used up all that 18 rounds, there is additional ammunition stowage in the rear of the hull, directly to my front.
I have to say, this was a very neat idea, this would have been a fun tank to load.
Not much else in here, there’s an intercom system, a couple of lights, and we’ll move to the other side of the turret.
I’ve moved now to the commander’s seat.
I will say that it is kindof cosy, but it’s actually not bad, I’ve seen worse.
The direct vision scopes around the outside are actually derived from those of the M4 medium tank,
apparently the Soviets rather liked the design.
He has two rounds of, I guess ready ammunition, just over his right shoulder not on the sliding racks.
As you move around, he’s got a periscope to the front, absolutely covered with grease.
It’s kind of strange, it’s almost as if they wanted to preserve the small parts of the tank, but not all the tank.
Moving around, he’s got the electrical control box, I see a travel lock, and over his left shoulder is the radio.
The gunner’s seat is fairly simple, easily laid out controls.
He has a manual traverse, power traverse, pull in the palm switch and that way it’ll release the lock and rotate.
Under here appears to be the electrical trigger.
Selectors for the main gun and coaxial.
Manual elevation, still, and there is a manual firing device.
For sighting he’d have a periscopic sight here, and a direct vision telescope.
Over his left shoulder you can see that the azimuth scale is imprinted onto the turret ring
and the commander or the gunner can hit the smoke generators if required.
All in all, this is actually a pretty well laid out gunner’s seat. I like this turret.
The tour is a little bit short.
I’m not sure if it’s because it’s a rare, prototype vehicle we don’t have much information we can actually talk about,
or because it is just a simple vehicle and there’s not much to talk about.
I suspect it’s a combination of the two.
That said, I actually like this one.
It’s far more livable than most of the Soviet vehicles that I’ve had the pleasure of being inside of.
It’s almost a shame that it never saw service.
What happened was it lost out in competition to the SU-100P,
the vehicle that ironically it’s sitting next to right now, which itself never got incredibly far.
Anyway, that was Obj 416, I hope you found it informative, and I’ll see you next time.