Soviet WW2 heavy tanks & Assault Guns

For a long time, the Kubinka Museum had the most complete and largest collection of Soviet heavy tanks and self-propelled guns of the Second World War in the world. The Museum Pavilion showed the history of the development of Soviet heavy tanks and self-propelled guns in the pre-war period and during the Second World War. The inspection of the pavilion for military personnel and specialists began with the most famous Soviet heavy tank named T-35. If all Soviet tank building began with illegal copies of the Renault Ft-17 French light tank captured by the Red Army near Odessa in 1919, then 10 years later everything changed. Although the Renault and Somua French tanks were still the best in the world, the Soviet Union preferred to buy Vickers-Carden-Lloyd British tanks for study and legal copying. In 1931, the Soviets bought a whole series of British light tanks for their study and cloning. A collection of Soviet light tanks based on the British Vickers-Carden-Lloyd designs was presented in Pavilion 3 of the Kubinka Tank Museum (see virtual tour 1972-2015). The T-35 Soviet heavy 5-turret tank was made after studying the British Vickers A1E1 Independent of 1929. The British chassis design features twin bogies, which is poorly suited to the roads and fields in the USSR. The T-35 heavy tank was great for parades on Red Square, but was very poor in combat. At the very beginning of World War II, the Red Army lost almost all of these tanks in the USSR, with only one surviving example in the tank school. The SU-14, an experimental self-propelled gun for breaking through fortifications, was built on the T-35 chassis. With the start of the Soviet-Finnish (Winter) War, the British-type chassis gained a bad reputation and the Red Army began to develop a new SU-100Y heavy self-propelled gun to destroy the forts of the Mannerheim Line. The tests of the SU-100Y coincided with the end of the Soviet-Finnish War and, according to legend, the new heavy self-propelled gun took part in the Battle of Moscow and the defense of Kubinka station. The stories of guides, veterans of the tank museum did not always correspond to the truth and remained beautiful propaganda.

Even before the Soviet-Finnish War, Soviet designers realized the fallacy of the multi-turret tank concept and developed the KV-1 with one turret and smaller than the T-35. The name KV stands for Kliment Voroshilov, one of the four marshals and heroes of the civil war, whom Stalin did not execute during the Great Terror. Before Germany attacked the USSR, the KV-1 and KV-2 were the main Soviet heavy tanks. The armor and gun caliber of the KV heavy tanks made them invulnerable to the main German medium tanks T-2 and T-3. At the beginning of the war, the Red Army lost KV tanks due to lack of fuel, chassis malfunction, or Luftwaffe air strikes. The KV-1 and KV-2 monsters captured by the Germans served as an excellent background for photographs. These tanks were used until the end of World War II and even participated in battles against Japan. The tanks are very rare and only a few examples have survived to this day, one of which is in the city of Saumur in the Loire Valley in France.
During the Battle of Kursk, the KV-1 could no longer withstand the German Tigers and the USSR began to develop a new generation of Soviet heavy tanks under the name IS (Joseph Stalin). This is how the Soviet heavy tank IS-2 with a powerful 122 mm gun and the ISU-152 self-propelled gun on the IS-2 chassis appeared.

Until 1972, the Kubinka Tank Museum had all the types of Soviet heavy tanks mentioned above. But in 1972, a new large building of the Central Museum of the Soviet Army in Moscow was opened. The Kubinka Museum and Proving Ground collection served only for specialists in the field of armored vehicles, tank building and reconnaissance. The Central Museum of the Soviet Army belonged to the Main Directorate of Political and Educational Work and carried out the tasks of propaganda of the Communist Party and the cause of Lenin. By order of the Main Political Directorate, many unique tanks were transferred for temporary storage to the open area of ​​the Museum of the Soviet Army. KV-1 and KV-2 Soviet heavy tanks from the Kubinka collection were also transferred for the grand opening day in 1972. In the 00s, free space was prepared in Pavilion 1 of the Kubinka Museum, plates were made with a description of the exhibits, and there was an unsuccessful attempt to return the KV-1 and KV-2 back. After 1991, the Museum of the Soviet Army was renamed the Museum of the Armed Forces, and since 2015 it has become a branch of Patriot Park.
After the reorganization of the Kubinka Museum, the T-35 heavy Soviet tank, along with other exhibits from World War II, was moved to the hangars of Patriot Park.