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IS-2 Heavy Tank - Armament

The main weapon of the IS-2 was the D-25T gun of 122 mm caliber. The gun was mounted on the pivots in the turret and was completely balanced. However, in general, the turret with the D-25T instrument was not balanced: its center of mass was not located on the geometric axis of rotation, which made it difficult to turn when the machine was tilted. This negative circumstance was due to the fact that the turret was designed and balanced for the 85-mm D-5T cannon, which was the initial version of the armament of the IP tanks. The installation of the D-25T with a much longer and massive barrel violated the calculated mass distribution around the axis of rotation of the turret. The D-25T cannon had vertical corners from -3 to + 20 °, with a fixed position of the turret it could be induced in a small sector of horizontal guidance (the so-called “jewelry” tip).

Ammunition was 28 shots separate loading. Shells and missile charges to them fit in the turret and along both sides of the fighting compartment. Compared with a wide range of ammunition 122-mm gun A-19 - the ancestor of the gun D-25T, ammunition IS-2 was significantly less diverse. It consisted of:

• A sharp-headed armor-piercing tracer projectile BR-471 weighing 25 kg (explosive mass (trotyl) - 156 g).
• dull-headed armor-piercing projectile with a ballistic tip BR-471B weighing 25 kg; developed in 1944, but in the army in mass quantities appeared in the very final phase of the war - the spring of 1945.
• high-explosive fragmentation gun grenade OF-471 weighing 25 kg (explosive mass - TNT or ammotol - 3 kg).

All types of shells were fired at full charge of the Zh-471, which provided an initial velocity of 792–800 m / s.

On the IS-2 tank, three 7.62-mm DT machine guns were installed: stationary fixed, paired with a gun and aft in a ball mount at high tide at the rear of the turret. Ammunition to all DT was 2520 cartridges in the disks. These machine guns were mounted in such a way that, if necessary, they could be removed from the mounts and used outside the tank. Beginning in January 1945, a large-caliber 12.7-mm DShK anti-aircraft gun with a K-8T collimator sight was installed on the IS-2. Ammunition DShK was 250 rounds of ammunition in the box attached to the machine gun. Also for self-defense, the crew had several F-1 hand grenades and was sometimes supplied with a pistol for firing signal flares.

The installation of the 122-mm cannon caused the turret to become unbalanced - the center of mass did not lie on the axis of rotation of the turret, which was designed and balanced under the 85-mm D-5 gun. Additional reservations, in addition to the overall weighting of the machine, would lead to the impossibility of manual rotation of the turret with any significant roll of the machine and would require a much more powerful electric motor to drive the turn. Therefore, the turret was left unchanged.