The T-34 won by numbers: Soviet factories kept making it cheaper
More than 57,300 T-34s rolled out of Soviet factories by the end of 1945, making it the most-produced tank of World War II. Its sloped armour and powerful gun startled German generals in 1941, but its real weapon was a production line that halved the price while factories fled east to the Urals.
The tank grew out of painful lessons. In 1939 the Red Army relied on the slow T-26 and the fast, lightly built BT series, both adapted from foreign designs. In clashes with Japan at Lake Khasan in 1938 and Khalkhin Gol in 1939, their petrol engines tended to catch fire. Engineer Mikhail Koshkin, leading a design team at the Kharkiv locomotive works since 1937, persuaded Stalin to let him build a more heavily armed universal tank using a less flammable diesel engine. Two T-34 prototypes were ready in January 1940 and made a punishing 2,000-kilometre drive from Kharkiv to Moscow.
Military doubts and cost worries faded after Soviet tanks performed poorly in Finland and German armour swept through France. Production began in September 1940. Early models had defective armour plates, and radios were so scarce that only company commanders got one while other crews signalled with flags. Its 76.2 mm gun and armour sloped at 60 degrees nevertheless gave it an edge over many rivals.
After Germany invaded on 22 June 1941, tank plants were evacuated eastward to the Urals in a rushed, gruelling operation, while the Stalingrad tractor works ran double shifts and built 40% of all T-34s between September 1941 and September 1942. Designers knew the tank's flaws, but only changes that made it simpler or cheaper were allowed until 1944. Automated welding, including methods devised by Evgeny Paton, helped cut the unit cost from 269,500 roubles in 1941 to 135,000. By 1943 output averaged 1,300 a month, the equivalent of three full tank divisions.
Early in 1944 the upgraded T-34-85 brought a bigger gun, and 22,609 of that model followed. The price of mass was staggering losses: 44,900 were destroyed or damaged, more than any other tank in history. Its lineage runs through the T-44 to the T-54 and T-55, the only tanks ever built in greater numbers.
Source: T-34
