22 Feb T-72 The new Arrival

Big news at Armourgeddon today! We have taken delivery of our newest member of the fleet; a T-72. We have been on the lookout for one of these beasts to add to the collection for quite some time. To have a tank in the museum that is still in active duty around the globe is pretty exciting for enthusiasts like us!

Quite the hunk of metal, the T-72 Ural main battle tank was developed as a more cost effective version of the T-64, maintaining the traditional Soviet design philosophy.

The T-72 entered service with the Soviet army in 1973. A total of 30,000 tanks of this type were produced in the Soviet Union, China, Czechoslovakia, India, Romania and Yugoslavia. The tanks were exported to about 30 countries and at the end of the 1990s, Russia operated around 9,000 of these main battle tanks.

The T-72 is protected by composite armour, able to withstand any 105mm munitions at ranges greater than 500m.

The tank is topped with a 125mm smoothbore gun, able to fire at a much higher muzzle velocity than Western 105mm rifled guns. Additionally, the gun is fitted with a new carousel-type autoloader, although the maximum rate of fire is up to 8 rounds per minute. Opposed to the 1-2 rounds per minute when loaded manually, this is considered quick!

The tank when fully loaded carried 39 rounds with an effective shooting range of 2000-3000m in the daylight and 850-1300m at night.  The T-72 is powered by a V-46 diesel engine, developing 780 horsepower, using six large roadwheels similar to those on the T-55 and T-62 series tanks. The tank also boasts self-entrenching blade and can dig trenches within 40 minutes, as quickly as 12 minutes for certain ground types.

A wading kit, able to ford water up to 5 meters deep completes the itinerary of this Russian beast, enabling a wide variety of ground types and even smaller bodies of water to be passed. Designed to cross rivers up to 5 m (16.4 ft) deep submerged using a small diameter snorkel assembled on-site, the crew is individually supplied with a simple rebreather chest-pack apparatus for emergency situations. If the engine stops underwater, it must be restarted within six seconds, or the T-72’s engine compartment becomes flooded due to pressure loss. The snorkeling procedure is considered dangerous but is important for maintaining operational mobility.

The T-72 was designed by Leonid Kartsev-Valeri Venediktov and manufactured by Uralvagonzavod and weighing 41 tonnes. With the gun forward, the tank measures 9.53m and carries a crew of three; commander, gunner and driver. The secondary armaments on the tank are a 7.62mm PKT coax machine gun and a 12.7mm NSVT anti aircraft machine gun.

The operational range of the tank is 460 km (290 mi) or 700 km (430 mi) with fuel drums with a max speed of 60kph or 37mph.

The T-72 at 41-tonnes is extremely lightweight and very small compared to Western main battle tanks. Some of the roads and bridges in former Warsaw Pact countries were designed such that T-72s can travel along in formation, but NATO tanks could not pass at all, or just one-by-one, significantly reducing their mobility.

The T-72 has a comprehensive nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) protection system. The inside of both hull and turret is lined with a synthetic fabric made of baron compound, meant to reduce the penetrating radiation from neutron bomb explosions. The crew is supplied clean air via an extensive air filter system.

To visit our newest tank, book in for one of our experiences and take a tank to our track (not this one, though…), or visit the museum, open from the 1^st April this year. We look forward to seeing you soon.