They were in the works, but in all fairness they were in no particular hurry about it. They were able to up gun their PzIIIs with the 50mm L60, issue HEAT rounds to the rest of the short barreled PzWaffe and had decent AT Pak 38’s in increasing numbers (they even made the Stielgrenate '41 for their crappy Pak 36s, which performed extremely well at Cholm and were the bulwark of their AT defence) … and if all else failed they called up the 88mm Flak.
so it’s about the fact that they were not there, but for what was enough 45
I think we’re wandering way off topic.
They have better armor penetration performance than the 76
Object 248 or 245 but since warthunder only has 248 so 248
what would they use them SUs lend lease Shermans?
This is a War Thunder-ism, in the real War a couple of mm here or there were not relevant - if you’re worried about pen get closer. What mattered more is that in 8/10 combat engagements the tank would be firing HE vs the real AT threat - the Paks. Equally to spt infantry in any capacity you need HE vs strongpoints etc… This is why the world according to WT is pure gameism. There are tanks there that significantly overperform in relation to their RL utility because of a manicured context.
This is why the Soviets quickly moved past the 85mm gun and started building tanks with 100mm and larger calibers - as soon as they solved the issues of mounting these guns in a platform that could withstand the stresses of its recoil.
And since you appear to enjoy historical context (based on how many photos you post) Even the US was recalcitrant to upgun the Shermans to the 76mm caliber because they did not have a good 76mm HE shell. There are numerous sources that explain this in detail.
Armour penetration was simply not as relevant in the last 6-7 months of the war because the Germans had simply run out of tanks, and any engagements were fleeting and generally won by the allies. Any German success was generally due to the fact that as defenders the Germans were generally the ones to engage first which is one of the more important factors in determining the winner of an armoured engagements irrespective of relative calibers. The crews on both sides knew the war would soon end and would rather abandon the tank than test the actual caliber of the gun firing on them…
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yes i have complained about the firefly’s HE being so large and it seems to be larger than the 75s HE explosion
That’s not true.
The made 10 of them because the 57mm gun was a VASTLY better anti tank weapon than the 76 - then they figured they didn’t need the extra performance against P3’s and 4’s, plus the gun barrel had a really short life and accuracy problems, so they decided the extra AT performance wasn’t useful and not worth the complexity - better to not disrupt production lines that were churning out standard T34’s.
In 1943 they thought about making them again because now the extra AT performance WAS worth something… but by then they had 85mm gun SU’s that were simpler and more economic…
The Soviets didn’t “trash it”
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10 tanks in the Soviet constext was a drop in the ocean as far as being serious about anything is concerned. Just like design bureaus of the western military industrial complex, the Soviets were not immune from this either, and design contests/development of new ideas or trying to push available weapon utility to its limits were common.
This is why you see so many of the older tank chassis being re-used for SPA or TDs on both sides of the war in the East.
The various designers tried to push one idea or another, and in some cases no without merit. There are credible circumstances for the sponsorship of this development in the first place since the Soviets actually built them.
But then common sense prevailed and the “users” basically relayed that this is a bad idea for a medium tank which spends 80% of its time supporting infantry and combating AT guns that require HE rounds to destroy. Without de-railing the thread, do some reading on the subject, and you will discover for yourself. When the politics between designers/bureaus finished and the smoke cleared the reality of a requirement for effective HE overwrote these experiments and condemned them to history.
Only 10 I thought they made about a hundred of them
It has nothing to do with seriousness - it has to do with expediency in production lines - for hte same reason the British kept hte 2 pdr AT gun in production in 1940, hte Germans kept the 109 in production in 44, the US kept shipping Shermans instead of 90mm tanks - logistics matter!
Were some of those decisions questionable - sure - especially teh US one where the US had the massive industrial output to actually make that replacement given hte will power - but hte others were not - they were life and death.
The Soviets had heaps of plans that were perfectly “serious” - eg they were planning on replacing 76mm divisional artillery with 107mm, putting 107mm guns into tanks, and various other plans - faced with German tanks that were not nearly as heavily armoured as hte KV-1 they realised that those guns were, literally, overkill, and that more 76mm divisional artillery was better than small numbers of 107’s able to be produced at that time.
Logistics is all.
So did I - but the sources all say 10 in 1941, 1 conversion in 1943… happy to see other sources
Eg https://tanks-encyclopedia.com/ww2/soviet/t34exterminator
THE RUSSIAN BATTLEFIELD - T-34 Tank-Hunter - this one doesn’t mention production numbers, but only notes 8 being used by 1 brigade.
I’m not sure you understood what I wrote, or perhaps you focused in on the word serious and it was too cryptic for the context. I’ll remember to be more explicit next time.
I didn’t cite economic reasons because the discussion was purely focused on whether the 57mm was a good weapon or not.
Logistics and production costs is probably the other most important reason why they didn’t go further with the 57mm, and disrupt their production lines, although having said that the Soviets had enough production capacity between all their Ural tank works to continuously support various low rate production prototyping anyway.
I just gave you the more specific answer which Isaaev cites as one of the reasons that certain weapons were not adopted into the Soviet army.
Logistics and cost are certainly an important one, but nothing trumps the fact that its not combat efficient due to the poor HE performance, and if the Soviets were good anything, it was certainly at selecting those tools of the trade which were combat efficient !