Soviet Schurzen
I posted some information on Soviet protection research before, which included experiments spaced armour. Here is another such experiment, performed in the summer of 1943 at factory #112.
A drawing of the extra armour includes armour for the turret, but the prototype does not have it. Only the sides of the hull are equipped with additional armour.
The armour did not enter production. However, “everything old is new again” rang as true then as it does now, since the idea of skirt armour returned in 1945, this time to combat Panzerfausts. The additional armour was 6-8 mm thick and positioned 600 mm away from the main armour. A hit from a Panzerfaust created a 30 mm breach in the screen, but did not penetrate the main armour.
I guess this never came into existence, because Soviet tanks have rather strong side armor to begin with.
I believe this tank was the model of 1941 with F-34 canon. its not because of that reason, but because they need to allocate the budget for more advanced T-34 variants to combat heavy tanks faster after learning lesson from Germany. But ofc it was abandoned later because of T-54, T-44 or T-10M type series to replace T-34 and modernize the whole Russian red Army tank divisions.
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in the wartander, these shields barely protect against cumulative from an 85mm breakdown, and then provided that the projectile goes at an angle, and there are no screens at all in front, to be honest, this tank could be introduced not even as a separate machine but as an instance for a filed application because in fact it has no special advantages, and the panzerfaust punches more than 85 mm of armor
The only soviet tanks which ever added add on armor in larger numbers were the T-34E & KV-1E & T-28E, the STZ also got an additional plate on the front, it was simply not needed for the later tanks as the germans had panzerfausts no matter how much armor you had additionally they would pen it anyway, but it was effective against anti tank rifles in the earlier state of the war and this practically means 1941-1942.
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