Comments by "Chef Chaudard" (@chefchaudard3580) on "IS-2: When 85mm is not enough" video.

  1. The trade off is that all the weight, turret, gun and thick front plate, are placed on the front half of the tank, leading to a " nose heavy" tank.
    35
  2.  @ivankrylov6270  not really. The hull was designed for a lighter gun and turret. Using the 122mm in a well protected big turret unbalanced the tank. The T34 85 hull front armor remained the same 45mm throughout the war for the same reason. Using a bigger gun and turret had already overweight the front.
    13
  3.  @j.f.fisher5318  In fact, new designs, like the T-44 and T-54 had the engine and transmission mounted perpendicular to the tank. The turret could be, and was centered. There was no need for the engine to balance the weight of the turret. Transmission ergonomic issues in the T-34 were not due to its location, but because it was of a crude design. I've read once from a French book that the gearbox was simply an upscaled version of the famous WWI FT17 one. It needs to be confirmed, though. Anyway, because of the creep in engine power during the war, transmissions had to be power assisted, if not fully automatic, so the gear for the controls are not a big issue. The T-34 hull was not uparmored during the war, but not even after the war, despite the fact that engineers put a 70mm thick front glacis on the T-44, up to 120mm on the T-54. According to Wikipedia "Ground trials by employees of NIBT Polygon in May 1943 reported that the 88 mm KwK 36 gun could pierce the T-34 frontal hull from 1,500 meters at 90 degrees and cause a disastrous burst effect inside the tank. The examined hull showed cracks, spalling, and delamination due to the poor quality of the armour. It was recommended to increase and improve the quality of welds and armour." It would have been easy to uparmour front glacis after the war, by adding applique armour, for example, but it was not.
    1