Talk:Soviet combat vehicle production during World War II

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I read in a book a long time ago that said that between 1941-1942 sometime Hitler got a report from a general saying that the Bolsheviks produced 800 tanks/month. Not very important, but interesting! BL 15:24, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

IIRC, it was Guderian who told Hitler that, and Hitler later said that if he had beleived him, he wouldn't have invaded Russia -- Cabalamat 22:36, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

i really like this article!

This article is very interesting. I also like how it is layed out. Wikipedia is the perfect setting for such obscure, interesting masses of information. Kingturtle 16:37, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

There is a bit of confusion here. Guderian claimed in Achtung: Panzer! that the Soviet Union already had 10000 tanks in 1937. In Panzerfuehrer, written after the war, he claimed that he knew that this number was way too low, but it was the highest the censor had allowed him to put in; and that Hitler had said to him during the war that had he believed it...

Also in 1941 German intelligence service learned from a captured Russian general that the Soviet Union was ready to start production of 10000 tanks each year in Gorki, compensating for the loss of the production capacity in Leningrad and Kharkov.

MWAK

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Regarding the tables, wouldn't it be better if instead of being in HTML markup, they were in Wiki markup? This is a Wiki, after all -- Cabalamat 22:41, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

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Two errors have been made: the figures for the T34/76 simply don't add up (at least not to the given total :o) as the 1944 number was counted twice; and in the 1945 T-34/85 number the "21" should be "12". Are the 1945 numbers supposed to be of the full year?

--MWAK 08:57, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

I see the numbers are those of Jane's' Tanks of World War II. That book is a nice effort, full of information not published elsewhere, but sadly full of mistakes also (including oldies like the Dutch buying two FT-17's and Belgium ordering 25 AMC 35's). Should you doubt the 21,000 number is among them, consulting Zaloga's T-34/85 will soon make you understand that whatever the insecurities about the true figures, any number above 14,000 is utterly impossible. But now at least my question is answered: the numbers are those of the first eight months :o).

--MWAK 07:29, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Further work

I'd like put in some work on this article, including the following subjects:

• Changing Soviet armoured doctrine, and its effect on AFV design and production
• Tank factories and design bureaux
• Soviet production engineering, emphasis on design for efficient production and improvement of manufacturing technology
• Evacuation of the factories to the Urals, 1941
• Lessons of WWII for the Cold War

I'd also like to remove the detailed descriptions of the vehicles. This article only needs an accurate description of each one's role (e.g., the KV-2 heavy assault tank was essentially an assault gun). Of course, more details can be mentioned where they are relevant to the subject of production.

Any comments? —Michael Z. 2005-12-11 00:26 Z

That's going to be a ton of work. DMorpheus 21:11, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Heh, thanks. I've had it in the back of my head to start an article on Soviet tank design for a long time. I think that adding useful information to this article bit-by-bit is a more manageable beginning. Since it already stands alone, relevant additions will only improve it.

I hope no one objects to removing much of the description of tanks, though. It duplicates material which is better-maintained in the individual AFV articles, and this article could benefit from a larger view encompassing evolving armoured doctrine, AFV roles, and production strategies, rather than the usual rivet-counting level of detail. —Michael Z. 2005-12-21 22:34 Z

Mzajac, what exactly are your sources for the production numbers you changed? And rivet-counting is perhaps the essence of what an encyclopedia does :o). Isn't it better to keep this a purely quantitative article and to create a Soviet armour development during the Second World War for a historical description?--MWAK 19:42, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Maybe I'll start that as a separate article, but I would certainly want to use at least some of the table rows from here, possibly in a re-factored format, to support the narrative about changing production priorities.

A lot of popular AFV books and web sites are just about machines, and completely ignore the people and organizations who use them, the tactics they are built to support, the actions they are involved in, and the larger-scale decisions which bring them about. This narrow view gets so extreme, that we sometimes have to argue at length with other editors that a tank is fundamentally different from a self-propelled gun. I don't want to avoid detail, accuracy, and numbers, but I want Wikipedia's AFV articles to always keep them in the larger perspective.

I get most of my figures for this article and for "T-34" from the tables or text in my copy of Zaloga 1984 (cited in the article). Let me know which ones don't seem right, and I'll double-check them. —Michael Z. 2005-12-23 20:28 Z

Well, Zaloga 1984 is a gorgeous book, but today simply outdated. Besides, the 18,333 is given as the production for the first six months of 1945 only, which would imply a production level of over 36,000 tanks a year, which is plainly absurd. The entry was a simple mistake and is the accumulated number for 1 July 1945 :o). Zaloga 1999 gives the accumulated production for 1 January 1946 as 23,661 (but again this book also makes an error and presents this as the accumulated number of 1 July 1945, adding to the fun). You, the victim of all this editorial failure, have thus inadvertently replaced the Jane's numbers with inferior ones. As I stated, Jane's has simply inverted the 12 (although they have paid editors to prevent this). Honest! Read http://www.battlefield.ru/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=87&Itemid=50&lang=en and things should become much more clear.--MWAK 14:50, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

I'll add the figures for T-34 and T-34-85 from battlefield.ru. Their two tables for T-34-85 production in 1944 don't quite agree, but they're close. —Michael Z. 2005-12-27 23:10 Z

factory locations?

It might be useful to list locations of building plants. I know it might be reasnaiobly complicated to list lcoations, tank types and dates, but if anyone has any information on this I'd appreciate very much if something could be put into the article? Thanks! Same for the other countries during the war also. SpookyMulder 12:30, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

First sentence

The very first sentence in this article describes production as simply "large". Perhaps a better way could be found to write an opening sentence... how large is 'large'?  :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.1.2.18 (talk) 19:53, 1 October 2014 (UTC)