KV-1 (Model 1941)

Type: Heavy Tank
Nation: Soviet Union
Period: World War 2
Location: The Tank Museum, Bovington, UK

The KV-1 was named after Kliment Voroshilov, a politician who had been serving as Soviet Defense Commissar from 1925 to 1940 and who had played a key role in Stalin’s Great Purge of 1937. The KV was first put into service in 1939. It weighed around 45 tons and had 75 mm of frontal armour which was increased to 100 mm during its production run. To distribute this kind of weight over a larger area the tank was equipped with very wide tracks, which resulted in an acceptably low ground pressure. The KV-1 was the first mass-produced Soviet tank to run on a torsion bar suspension system which was very modern for the time and since then has become the most common tank suspension type in the world.

When the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, the approximately 500 available KV tanks came as a nasty surprise. Their Nazi propaganda had led them to believe that the Soviets, whom they regarded as inferior “Untermenschen”, would not be capable to produce machines as sophisticated as these heavy behemoths. But the KV-1 also had some design flaws which made it less effective than it could have been. For example, it was usually crewed by four men which meant that the commander had to double as the loader. After every shot he had to take his eyes off the enemy, shove another round in the tube and then try to find the target again. Not that he could see much in the first place: He was neither provided with a cupola nor his own hatch, only a single periscope. Furthermore, the lack of a turret basket required the crew to move around on foot when traversing and the heavily strained transmission had a service life of only 100 hours.

The KV-1 was armed with a 76.2 mm gun which was later adopted by the much lighter T-34/76 medium tank. This lead to the development of the KV-85 which had a 85 mm gun – which also turned out to fit into the T-34 with a new turret in 1943/1944. The KVs were eventually replaced by the IS heavy tank series.

This particular vehicle is a 1941 model that was sent to Britain as a sample. It has additional appliqué armour plates on the front and sides which are vertically enlarged to provide some protection for the turret ring. The whitewash snow camouflage and the Russian slogan which says “From the Women of Leningrad to the Front” were painted on by the Tank Museum‘s staff. For years the KV-1 had been on display in the museum’s World War 2 Hall, until some changes in the exhibition led to it being moved to the Vehicle Conservation Centre.