Now, THIS is a tank....!!!

[ostketten]

Actually, it really is not a tank at all, but a mobile Howitzer. You gotta love the Russians, they really know how to make BIG tanks. The pic is from the diecast 72 site and is a soon to be released 1/72nd scale KV-2 from Hobbymaster. The detail looks pretty impressive considering this thing is just a bit over 3 inches long. I will definitely be getting one of these, I'm really glad to see some of the manufacturers start offering more Soviet armor, maybe 21C will jump on the bandwagon someday???

http://www.diecast72.com/pictures/hm/hg3002.jpg

[Rowsdower]

Ah yes, I remember that one from the PC game Soldiers: Heroes of WWII. That thing was instant death to any house or even armored vehicle that crossed it's path.

[ostketten]

The KV-2 has an interesting history, it was developed as a "bunker buster" where it's heavy 152mm howitzer could be brought to bear against strong static fortifications such as those that the Red Army encountered at the Mannerheim Line during the winter war with Finland. In the context of the highly fluid mobile warfare practiced by the Germans it proved to be ponderous and highly vulnerable to infantry attack, although it came as quite a shock to the Germans when first encountered, as it's thick armor was virtually impenetrable by any German tank mounted gun at the time. Only the 88mm flak could penetrate it reliably. I remember reading somewhere that a single KV-2 held up the advance of a German division for 3 days until it ran out of ammo and was abandoned by it's crew. Quite a few were abandoned by the Russians in the early stages of Operation Barbarossa after running out of fuel and/or ammunition, and the Germans pressed a few of these in to service. All in all, an interesting and quite unusual looking armored vehicle, that unfortunately for the Soviets was obsolete by the time the Germans invaded in June of 1941.

[nfafan]

http://www.battlefield.ru/index.php?opt ... &Itemid=44

http://www.thetankmaster.com/images/AFV/T35/t35_8.jpg

[ostketten]

A bit of an oddity, the multi-turreted T-35 pre-dated the KV-2 and was the only five turreted tank in the world. Slow and mechanically unreliable, the few T-35's in service at the time of Barbarossa were mostly lost to mechanical breakdown rather than enemy action. Unlike the KV-2 the Germans had little difficulty knocking out the few T-35's they engaged in actual combat. Sort of a "battleship on wheels", needless to say they were difficult to command, and control the fire from all those different guns and turrets. Nice pics all the same though.

[Panzer_M]

Krupp had one at it foundry, US forces engaged it(Rather as Target-practice or in combat I don't know)

anyways. while the 15.2cm gun was impressive, but the tank was a dismal failure. The rate of rotation was horrid for the tank, and had to be used on relative level ground do to it was top heavy.

you didn't see sucessful big guns on soviet armour til the Su-122 and the later JSU series of tanks.

[ostketten]

you didn't see sucessful big guns on soviet armour til the Su-122 and the later JSU series of tanks.

True enough. The Soviets had great success with the ISU-152 http://armoured.vif2.ru/isu152_2.jpg which could be used in a direct fire role against static defenses, or in an indirect fire role as artillery. It also had very impressive anti tank performance and was much feared by the Germans, it was nicknamed "Zvierboi" (animal killer) by the Soviets because it could easily kill any of the "cats" (Panther, Tiger, etc). Ironically, the ISU-152 was based on the KV chassis with an entirely new superstructure and gun. Quite a few of these participated in the street fighting in Berlin in April of 1945.