IS 3 - Soviet heavy tank developed during the Great Patriotic War IS 3 - 卫国战争期间开发的苏联重型坦克 IS3-大祖国戦争中に

The IS-3 (Object 703) is a Soviet heavy tank developed during the Great Patriotic War, launched into mass production in its last days and did not have time to take part in battles. Therefore, this combat vehicle is often considered one of the first post-war Soviet tanks. The abbreviation IS stands for “Joseph Stalin“ - the official name of the series of Soviet heavy tanks produced in 1943-1953. Index 3 corresponds to the third production tank model of this family. Due to the characteristic shape of the upper frontal part of the hull, it received the nickname “Pike“. The creation of a project for a new heavy tank, code-named Kirovets-1, began at the end of the summer of 1944. The first experimental batch of IS-3 heavy tanks left the factory workshops in May 1945. The gun was equipped with a two-chamber muzzle brake and a horizontal wedge breech with a semiautomatic mechanical type. Rate of fire 2-3 rds / min. The gun’s ammunition consisted of 28 separate-loading shots, including 18 with high-explosive fragmentation shells and 10 with armor-piercing shells. On the roof of the tower, on the turret, there was a 12.7 mm DShK anti-aircraft machine gun. The power reserve is 340 km. The IS-3 tank was in serial production until mid-1946 (in 1945, for some time, together with the IS-2). The IS-3 entered service with the heavy self-propelled tank regiments of the Soviet army. When developing the project of the IS-3 tank, the conclusions of the commission were taken into account, which examined the combat damage received by the tanks during the Battle of Kursk in front-line conditions. Attention was drawn to the massive destruction of the frontal elements of the hull and turret. Therefore, it was decided to work out on the basis of the IS-2 tank a new design of the tower and hull to give them a streamlined shape and sharply differentiate the armor protection. As a result of design work, the inclination of the welded sheets, especially in the front of the hull, was brought to the maximum possible. Thick 110-mm plates of frontal armor were positioned so that a tricycle, conical, forward-extended nose section, called the “pike nose“, was formed. The hatch was placed in the roof above the driver, which was not in the IS-1 and IS-2 tanks. The need for a through viewing slot in the frontal armor in front of the driver disappeared - it was replaced by periscopic viewing devices. New constructive forms of armor provided better anti-projectile protection. The new, flattened design of the cast turret was later also used on the IS-7 and T-10 facilities, provided better resistance to shells compared to previous versions of Soviet tank turrets, and showed resistance to overturning during the passage of a shock wave of a nuclear explosion of tactical ammunition. Contrary to popular belief found in outdated sources, the IS-3 tanks were not used in the hostilities of World War II (the first 207 tanks were sent from the factory to the troops only in June 1945), but it was these combat vehicles in the amount of 52 pieces of the 7th September 1945 took part in the Berlin parade of allied forces in honor of victory in World War II as part of the Workers ’and Peasants’ Red Army, where they made a strong impression on the Western allies of the USSR in the anti-Hitler coalition. The IS-3 had a classic layout, with the engine compartment in the rear, the control compartment in the front, and the combat compartment in the middle. The tank’s crew consisted of four people: a driver, gunner, loader and commander. Despite many technical innovations and clear progress, especially in the revolutionary scheme of armoring the hull and turret compared to its “predecessor tank“ IS-2, the IS-3 had a number of disadvantages, many of which were inherited from the same IS-2. Already at the beginning of 1946, a commission was created to analyze the defects of this tank, which revealed a number of problems - engine failure, unreliable operation of the gearbox, problems with elements of the armored hull in the area of ​​the engine-transmission compartment, and so on. The main reason for so many problems can be considered the fact that the IS-3, designed during the Great Patriotic War, remained essentially a “product of a special period.“ The needs of the front dictated a strict time frame for the work, so they did not have time to physically carry out a detailed study of the project of a new tank. Many technical solutions, including not the most successful ones, were borrowed from the IS-2 in finished form, and the new units often did not have time to finally “bring to mind“. As a result, taking into account the existing shortcomings, all the IS-3 tanks were modernized and altered under the UKN program (elimination of design flaws), but the tanks were never brought to the required level of operational requirements. In mid-1946, the IS-3 was discontinued. IS-3（Object 703）是苏联在卫国战争期间开发的重型坦克，在最后几天投入批量生产，没有时间参加战斗。因此，这种战车通常被认为是战后苏联最早的坦克之一。