Type: Main Battle Tank
Nation: Soviet Union
Period: Cold War
Location: Muzeum Uzbrojenia, Poznań, Poland
The T-72 was a simplified version of the expensive, complex and troublesome T-64. Like its older sibling, T-72 was equipped with an auto-loader – which reduced the crew to three men. Because this arrangement made an upright-standing human loader unnecessary, the turret could be built exceptionally flat. The whole tank is just 2.20 m tall. Since the Soviet Union could afford to only put short recruits in their tanks, they could make the T-72 even more compact. As a result, it was a hard-to-hit target that weighed only about 41.5 tons. And it was unpleasantly cramped: Crew ergonomics were not a priority.
With around 20,000 units produced and numerous upgraded versions, T-72 is one of the most widely used tanks today. But the ammunition storage arrangement in a carousel directly in the fighting compartment below the turret proved to be a fatal problem in case the tank’s armour is penetrated. If one of the 125 mm rounds ignites, the rest usually goes off as well, causing the turret to violently propel through the air like a champagne cork. Escaping the tank alive in an event like this is impossible.
This particular vehicle is a T-72M, which was an export version of the T-72A – license-built in Poland. It can be identified by the up-armoured turret front which has a sharper looking horizontal top edge than the one on the original, more rounded T-72 Ural.
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3 responses to “T-72M”
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