F-34 tank gun
Encyclopedia
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
tank gun
Tank gun
A tank gun is the main armament of a tank. Modern tank guns are large-caliber high-velocity guns, capable of firing kinetic energy penetrators, high explosive anti-tank rounds, and in some cases guided missiles. Anti-aircraft guns can also be mounted to tanks.-Overview:Tank guns are a specific...
used on the T-34/76
T-34
The T-34 was a Soviet medium tank produced from 1940 to 1958. Although its armour and armament were surpassed by later tanks of the era, it has been often credited as the most effective, efficient and influential design of World War II...
tank. A modified version of the gun, the 76 mm tank gun M1941 ZiS-5 (76-мм танковая пушка обр. 1941 г. ЗиС-5) was used on KV-1
Kliment Voroshilov tank
The Kliment Voroshilov tanks were a series of Soviet heavy tanks, named after the Soviet defense commissar and politician Kliment Voroshilov. The KV series were known for their extremely heavy armour protection during the early war, especially during the first year of the invasion of the Soviet...
tanks during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. Nowadays the two versions are often referred to just by their factory designations, as "F-34" and "ZiS-5", respectively.
The F-34 was designed before the start of World War II by P. Muraviev of Vasiliy Grabin
Vasiliy Grabin
Vasiliy Gavrilovich Grabin was a Soviet artillery designer. He led a design bureau at Joseph Stalin Factory No...
's design bureau at Factory No. 92 in Gorky
Nizhny Novgorod
Nizhny Novgorod , colloquially shortened to Nizhny, is, with the population of 1,250,615, the fifth largest city in Russia, ranking after Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, and Yekaterinburg...
. The gun was superior to both contemporary 76.2 mm
1 E-3 m
To help compare different orders of magnitude this page lists lengths between 10−3 m and 10−2 m .Distances shorter than 1 mm* 1.0 mm — 1/1000 of a metre* 1.0 mm — 0.03937 inches or 5/127...
guns, the Gorky's F-32 and the Leningrad Kirov Factory's L-11, but it was the latter that had already been approved for the new T-34 medium tank. The initial T-34 Model 1940 with L-11 was in production when Germany invaded the Soviet Union
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
. The F-34 was ready for production, but Marshal Grigory Kulik
Grigory Kulik
Grigory Ivanovich Kulik was a Soviet military commander and was born into a peasant family near Poltava in Ukraine. A soldier in the army of the Russian Empire in World War I, he joined the Bolshevik Party in 1917 and the Red Army in 1918...
's high-handed interference with tank appropriation had made the relevant bureaucrats too frightened to approve the better gun.
Grabin and the director of the Kharkov Locomotive Factory (KhPZ), the centre of T-34 production, conspired to produce the F-34 anyway, and began to install the gun on new tanks. The new T-34 Model 1941 tanks issued mostly to company and platoon commanders were immensely popular with their crews. Letters from tank units reached Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
's State Defence Committee
USSR State Defense Committee
The State Defense Committee was an extraordinary organ of state power in the USSR during the German-Soviet War which held complete state power in the country.-General scope:...
(GKO), which officially authorized production.
Also due to Kulik's meddling, the KV-1 heavy tank model 1940 had ended up mounting Grabin's older F-32 gun, more poorly-armed than the T-34 medium tank. Chief Designer of Tanks Joseph Kotin convinced the GKO to allow the use of the F-34 gun on the KV-1 heavy tank Model 1941. The ZiS-5
ZIS-5
ZiS-5 may refer to:* F-34 tank gun, used on the T-34 tank* ZiS-5 , produced at Zavod imeni Stalina; see also ZiS-6...
was a version of the gun designed to better fit the KV-1's turret.
In 1943, the thick armor
Vehicle armour
Military vehicles are commonly armoured to withstand the impact of shrapnel, bullets, missiles, or shells, protecting the personnel inside from enemy fire. Such vehicles include tanks, aircraft, and ships....
of the new German Tiger
Tiger I
Tiger I is the common name of a German heavy tank developed in 1942 and used in World War II. The final official German designation was Panzerkampfwagen Tiger Ausf. E, often shortened to Tiger. It was an answer to the unexpectedly formidable Soviet armour encountered in the initial months of...
and Panther tank
Panther tank
Panther is the common name of a medium tank fielded by Nazi Germany in World War II that served from mid-1943 to the end of the European war in 1945. It was intended as a counter to the T-34, and to replace the Panzer III and Panzer IV; while never replacing the latter, it served alongside it as...
s had rendered the F-34 gun obsolete, and experiments were conducted to find a replacement. The better-penetrating 57 mm ZiS-2
ZiS-2
The ZiS-2 was a Soviet 57-mm anti-tank gun used during World War II. The ZiS-4 was a version of the gun meant to be installed in tanks. ZiS stands for Zavod imeni Stalina , the official title of Artillery Factory No...
high velocity antitank gun was installed on some T-34/57 tanks, but the smaller-bored gun couldn't fire an adequate high explosive round for general use. A more heavily-armoured T-34 prototype was built, the T-43
T-43 tank
The Soviet T-43 medium tank was a prototype developed during the Second World War as a possible replacement for both the T-34 medium tank and KV-1 heavy tank...
, but it was still vulnerable to the Tiger's 88
88 mm gun
The 88 mm gun was a German anti-aircraft and anti-tank artillery gun from World War II. It was widely used by Germany throughout the war, and was one of the most recognizable German weapons of the war...
, and its mobility suffered too much from the weight of armour.
In the end, the F-34 was replaced by the D-5T and ZiS-S-53 85 mm calibre guns on the T-34-85 tank, and by 122 and 152 mm guns in the new IS-2 heavy tanks and in tank destroyer
Tank destroyer
A tank destroyer is a type of armored fighting vehicle armed with a gun or missile launcher, and is designed specifically to engage enemy armored vehicles...
s.
Some F-34 guns were also installed in Lend-Lease
Lend-Lease
Lend-Lease was the program under which the United States of America supplied the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, China, Free France, and other Allied nations with materiel between 1941 and 1945. It was signed into law on March 11, 1941, a year and a half after the outbreak of war in Europe in...
M4A2 Sherman tanks, known as the M4M, but there was no need for this conversion as U.S. 75 mm ammunition was in good supply (Zaloga 1984:217).
Comparison of guns
The L-11 gun was mounted on the initial T-34T-34
The T-34 was a Soviet medium tank produced from 1940 to 1958. Although its armour and armament were surpassed by later tanks of the era, it has been often credited as the most effective, efficient and influential design of World War II...
Model 1940 medium tank, and KV-1 Model 1939 heavy tank. The F-32 was on the KV-1 Model 1940. Subsequent models of both tanks mounted the F-34, until they were replaced by the T-34-85 medium tank and IS-2 heavy tank.
| Gun | L-11 | F-32 | F-34 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Length (calibres) | L/30.5 | L/31.5 | L/42.5 |
| F-534 high explosive (HE) | |||
| weight (kg) | 6.23 | ? | 6.23 |
| muzzle velocity (m/s) | 610 | ? | 680 |
| OF-350 high explosive fragmentation (HE-Frag) | |||
| weight (kg) | 6.21 | ? | 6.21 |
| muzzle velocity (m/s) | 610 | ? | 680 |
| BR-353A high explosive anti-tank High explosive anti-tank High explosive anti-tank warheads are made of an explosive shaped charge that uses the Munroe effect to create a very high-velocity partial stream of metal in a state of superplasticity that can punch through solid armor.... (HEAT) |
|||
| weight (kg) | 6.21 | ? | 6.21 |
| muzzle velocity (m/s) | 610 | ? | 680 |
| penetration (mm) | 75 | ? | 75 |
| Armour-piercing (AP) | |||
| weight (kg) | – | ? | – |
| muzzle velocity (m/s) | – | 612 | – |
| penetration at 500 m (mm) | – | 60 | – |
| penetration at 1,000 m (mm) | – | 52 | – |
| BR-350/BR-350A armour-piercing high explosive (APHE) | |||
| weight (kg) | 6.3 | ? | 6.3 |
| muzzle velocity (m/s) | 612 | ? | 655 |
| penetration at 500 m (mm) | 62 | ? | 69 |
| penetration at 1,000 m (mm) | 56 | ? | 61 |
| BR-350P armour-piercing, composite rigid (APCR) | |||
| weight (kg) | – | ? | 3.0 |
| muzzle velocity (m/s) | – | ? | 965 |
| penetration at 500 m (mm) | – | ? | 92 |
| penetration at 1,000 m (mm) | – | ? | 60 |