T-55

Likely 100,000+ T-54/55 family hulls.

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Specifications

Crew: 4
Combat weight: 36 t
Engine: 580 hp
hp / tonne: 16.1
Road speed: 50 km/h
Range: 400 km
Main gun: 100 mm D-10T2S
In service: 1958–present (many armies)

V-55 diesel, 580 hp

Armor: 200 mm turret cast, 100 mm glacis — NBC liner on T-55A

Secondary: 7.62 mm PKT, 12.7 mm DShK

Briefing scores

Relative 1–10 for teaching, not a wargame rating.

Firepower: 5/10
Protection: 5/10
Mobility: 6/10
Awareness: 3/10
Logistics: 10/10

Ammunition natures

APAPDSHEATHE

History

T-54 in 1947, T-55 with NBC and a better engine in 1958. The most-produced postwar tank. Fought in every Arab-Israeli war, Vietnam, Angola, the Iran-Iraq war, and still appears in 2020s conflicts with ERA bricks glued on.

Doctrine

The world tank of the Warsaw Pact and every client state. Cheap, low, NBC-protected, and good enough. Soviet doctrine assumed thousands would be lost; factories in Nizhny Tagil, Omsk, Kharkiv, Czechoslovakia, and Poland would replace them.

Strengths

Ubiquity
Simple training
Low silhouette

Limits

Cramped
100 mm vs modern KE
No stabilizer on early marks

Related hulls

T-34-85

Soviet Union

T-64

Soviet Union

M48 Patton

United States

20 of 25 in the atlas