Medium Tank T-62
Content
Medium Tank T-62
The driver's seat is located in the control compartment. To the right of it are the fuel tanks. The driver gets inside the car through his hatch, located in the turret plate above his seat. The terrain view is provided by two periscopes mounted in front of the hatch. At night, the left periscope changes to a TVN-2 night vision device. It provides a view in a sector of 30 ° at a distance of 60 m. The driver's IR illuminator is installed on the right side of the upper frontal plate, next to the white light headlamp. The turret of the tank is cast. On the left side of the fighting compartment are the gunner's seats (in the front of the turret) and the tank commander (in the rear of the turret and slightly higher). On the right side of the fighting compartment is the loader's workplace.
In the roof, on both sides of the gun, there are hatches that open outwards. To monitor the terrain, the commander has a combined day-night device TKN-3 with an IR searchlight installed in front of the hatch. The instrument's daylight branch has a 5x magnification at a viewing angle of 10°. At night, the viewing angle is reduced to 8°, and the magnification is up to 4,2x. The range of the IR illuminator is 400 m. In addition to the TKN-3, the commander has four periscopes, two of which are mounted in the hatch cover, and the other two are in front of the hatch. The whole complex of observation devices is mounted in the commander's turret, which can rotate independently of the rotation of the tank turret. Just as in the T-55 tank, the commander can direct the tank's turret at the object that he observes in the eyepieces of his optical instruments. However, when the turret rotates, he has to manually hold his turret in the selected position, which requires remarkable strength.
A telescopic sight TSh2B-41 is installed at the gunner's workplace. The sight has two optical branches: a common one with 3,5x magnification and a viewing angle of 18 ° and an accurate one with 7x magnification and a viewing angle of 9 °. On the eyepiece of the sight, there is a rangefinder cabinet for targets with a height of 2,7 m. At night, the gunner monitors the terrain using an active night vision device. IR illumination is carried out using a spotlight installed in the front of the tower next to the cannon. The viewing range does not exceed 800 m. In addition, the gunner has one periscope at his disposal. The loader's workplace is equipped with one periscope, which is installed in front of the hatch. For the first time in the history of world tank building, a 115-mm smoothbore cannon 2A20 (military designation U5-TS), stabilized in two planes, is installed in the turret as the main armament. She fires feathered sub-caliber projectiles with a very high initial speed (1615 m / s).
The direct fire range is 4000 m, the maximum firing range is 5800 m. Targeting is carried out using electro-hydraulic drives. Only the gunner controls the change in the elevation angle of the gun, while the tank commander can also control the rotation of the turret. If necessary, the gunner can aim the gun at the target using manual drive mechanisms. Ammunition T-62 consists of 40 unitary shots, which are quite heavy and bulky. Loading them into the breech of the gun gives the loader a lot of trouble, especially when the tank is moving. When loading, the gun has an elevation angle of 3°30′, and at this moment the rotation of the turret is impossible. The problem turned out to be the removal of spent cartridges from the fighting compartment. They had to refuse to put them back on the racks for reasons of rate of fire. The tank uses a mechanism for ejection of spent cartridges through a hatch in the rear of the tower. As a result, the rate of fire is 4 rounds per minute, which is a serious drawback of the T-62. A PKT machine gun of 7,62 mm caliber is paired with the cannon. As a power plant on the T-62 tank, a V-shaped 12-cylinder liquid-cooled diesel engine V-55V is used, developing a power of 580 hp. with. at 2000 rpm. Like the T-55 of the latest releases, the T-62 uses a hydropneumatic servo drive with a main clutch. The gearbox has five speeds forward and one reverse. The chassis of the T-62 includes five gable rubberized road wheels (on board), made of light alloy and suspended on balancers.
The elastic suspension elements are torsion shafts installed across the tank hull along its entire width. The balancers of the first and fifth rollers are connected with hydraulic shock absorbers. Compared to the outwardly similar T-55 tank, the intervals between the road wheels on the T-62 have become much larger. The distance between the first three rollers is noticeably less than between the others. The drive wheels and track tensioner are located at the front of the body. The track consists of 96 tracks connected by a metal hinge. The T-62 tank is equipped with an automatic fire extinguishing system. Thermal sensors of the system are located in the power and combat compartments. If necessary, the system can be manually operated by the tank commander or driver.
The system of protection against weapons of mass destruction remained the same as on the T-55. When gamma radiation is detected, actuators are triggered that stop the tank and seal its hull. The system also includes a filtering unit. The T-62 is equipped with thermal smoke equipment, standard for Soviet / Russian tanks, which ensures the installation of a smoke screen up to 400 m wide, which lasts for four minutes in calm weather. The tank is structurally adapted to overcome water obstacles. The T-1,40 overcomes fords with a depth of 62 m without preparation. After preparation, the tank is able to overcome water barriers up to 5 m deep. The air supply pipe, usually carried behind the tower, is mounted on it in front of the loader's hatch. T-62 tanks entered service with many armies, including Algeria, Angola, Bulgaria, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Ethiopia, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Vietnam, and as a trophy - Israel. As part of the Syrian and Egyptian troops, they participated in battles with the Israelis in 1967 and 1973. The performance characteristics of the T-62 medium tank
Modifications of the T-62 medium tank
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In 1957, under the leadership of chief designer L. N. Kartsev, work began on the further improvement of the T-55 tank, which ended with the creation of the T-62 tank. For the first time, this tank was shown publicly at the parade on May 1, 1965. The operation of the tank in combat units revealed its relatively poor adaptability to combat operations. For this reason, serial production of the T-62 ended in the USSR in 1975 (earlier than the T-55 tanks ) after the release of 20000 units (in Czechoslovakia, the T-62 was built before 1978, as for the state of production of this tank in North Korea, there is still no information about this). The body of the T-62 is welded from homogeneous armor plates. The frontal plates have a thickness of 102 mm and a significant angle of inclination from the vertical: the upper one is 60 °, the lower one is 54 °. The thickness of the rest of the reservation is significantly less. The T-62 tank is made according to the same design scheme as its predecessor, the T-55. On the left, in front of the hull is the control compartment, in the middle part under the turret is the fighting compartment, and in the stern is the power compartment.
