IS-2 Heavy Tank - Program
IS-2 was adopted by the armored forces of the USSR according to the resolution of the State Defense Committee No. 4479 of October 31, 1943. After the successful tests of the “Object 240”, an order was received to immediately launch it into serial production at ChKZ. In November 1943, the assembly of the first production machines began. The new modification of the tank received the IS-2 index (in the war years with it, the designation IS-122 was used on an equal footing, the first samples were sometimes also referred to in units as KV-122). Production continued from December 1943 to June 1945, several vehicles of this brand also produced the Leningrad Kirov Plant.
The baptism of the IS-2 was accepted at the beginning of 1944, and it was forced, having cut off the planned thorough training of the crews for the new car. The high combat qualities demonstrated in the battle immediately led to an order to maximize the production of the IS-2. At the same time, the test work was interrupted, as a result of which a lot of unfinished machines went to the front, and their failures caused a large number of claims from the troops.
To ensure the quality of the serial IS-2 and their improvement in early 1944, J. Ya. Kotin and a number of his employees were removed from the design work on new machines in order to eliminate defects in the design of the IS-2. Launching the vehicle took place hard: for example, in April 1944 military acceptance reported that that a significant improvement in the quality of the IS-2 tanks and ACS produced at ChKZ on its base did not happen.
However, in the summer of 1944, the work on improving the quality yielded the first fruits - about a third of the tanks produced could be handed over to the first time acceptance, and since November 1944 the quality of the tanks taken was officially found to be satisfactory - J. Kotin was returned to the post of head of the ChKZ Design Bureau and Experimental plant number 100. In the winter of 1944/1945. reports from the troops testified that the IS-2 failed to cover the guaranteed mileage of 1000 km with trouble-free operation.
At the beginning of 1945 several heavy tank brigades were formed, one of which - the 7th Guards - distinguished itself during the storming of Berlin. In addition to the Red Army, the IS-2 was in service in the Polish Army, in the armies of Czechoslovakia, the PRC, the DRV, the DPRK and Cuba. In the post-war period, the IS-2 and its modernized version of the IS-2M took part in the war in Korea and in the fighting against the French troops in Indochina in the 1950s. In service with the Soviet Army combat vehicles of this type consisted until the early 1960s.
Since 1960, when carrying out measures for the control system at tank repair plants of the Ministry of Defense, the upgraded version of the IS-2 tank was given the name of the IS-2M. Part of the IS-2M tanks in the process of overhaul was converted into tank tractors. Modernization of the IS-2M and IS-3M tanks was carried out by tank repair factories up to the end of the 1970s.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
