The fastest tank BT-7 was not built for defense

"And our tanks are fast ..." This line of the famous song from the popular movie "Tractor" in the thirties expresses the essence of the Soviet military doctrine of the pre-war years. Not powerful and not impenetrable, in the first place - speed.

Tanks series BT in its very name contain information about the main advantage of this technique. The letter "B" means "high-speed", and not in vain. 62, and even more 86 kilometers per hour - a good indicator even for the armor of the XXI century, and in the first third of XX it seemed fantastic. The BT-7 tank is the fastest tank of its time, it's a fact. It remains only to understand why it was created, to find out how it happened, and to understand why our fellow citizens know so little about this masterpiece.

The main elements of the design, allowing to develop a high speed, in any car is the running gear and the engine. Of course, the weight is also important, as applied to the tank - the mass of armor. But the task of the engineer is to find the optimal ratio of these parameters in order to fulfill the technical task as completely as possible. The fastest tank in the world was equipped with a Christie suspension, which is now used by the creators of armored vehicles around the world, at the same time, in the early thirties, its only genius was appreciated only by Soviet engineers. Moreover, Western designers took at least two decades to come to this decision.

The first in the lineup was the BT-2 tank, wheeled-caterpillar. At its core, he already possessed all the signs of a modern aggressive machine capable of overcoming long distances in a short time, rushing into breakthroughs, enveloping enemy military formations and cities. A feature of the design is its ability to move both on caterpillar and wheeled, that is, a combination of high-speed and cross-country capability. Proceeding from this specific feature, it can be concluded that the machine was assigned: on the Soviet territory, always distinguished by a complex road relief, the fastest tank had to move on tracks, and when crossing the border, it only remained to drop them as an extra burden, and rush further along the Trails and autobahns. The engine was carburetor, which allowed to use the gasoline captured at the offensive. BT-2 became experimental, was produced in 1933, when Hitler's aggressive plans only began to ripen in his inflamed brain. Already in 1934 new BT-5 machines were already coming off the Soviet conveyors. Armament consisted of a 45-millimeter cannon and a machine gun.

1935 was the date of birth of BT-7. Nothing of the kind at that time was possessed by any of the countries of the world, it was the fastest tank, but on other indicators it became the best. The caliber of the turret cannon is 45 or 76 mm (depending on the modification), the front inclined reservation is 22 mm, the diesel engine is В 2, 400 hp. The crew - "three tankmen, three cheerful friends."

Combat "baptism" the fastest tank took in Mongolia, when a brilliant offensive operation was conducted to defeat the Japanese troops. At the same time, the "European orientation" of this machine also affected, narrow caterpillars stuck in the sand, and there was no question of wheel movement. The same shortcomings appeared during the Finnish campaign, but for some reason they did not hurry to change the design.

The reason that the fastest tank did not show itself during the Great Patriotic War is still the same. BT was created for the European theater of military operations, and its capabilities and dignity in off-road conditions remained unrealized.

The production of high-speed tanks was much, more than 5 thousand. Those that managed to be saved after the catastrophic outbreak of the war found their application in 1945, during a swift offensive operation, which resulted in the destruction of the Kwantung grouping of 1 million 400 thousand Japanese soldiers and officers. Soviet losses amounted to about 12,000 people.