T-64 Main Battle Tank
The T-64 entered production in 1966 and was first seen in public in 1970. It was a landmark in post-war Soviet tank design. It incorporated new armour (including ceramic materials), the new 125mm D-181 smoothbore gun with an autoloader enabling the crew to be reduced to three (commander, driver and gunner) and an advanced powerpack (5DTF 5 cylinder opposed piston, liquid cooled diesel developing 700hp). It also had new suspension and synchromesh hydraulically assisted transmission with a set of six road wheels with an idler at the front. The price of this innovative deign was a decrease in its reliability, ease of maintenance and availability due in part to the unreliability of the engine which tended to overheat regularly. Early pre-production versions used the same armament as the T-62 (115mm smoothbore) but the tank quickly adopted the 125mm smoothbore gun with a rotating carousel holding 24 ready to use projectiles and can be elevated to +14 degrees and depressed to -6 degrees. Later models (such as the T-64BV) have had reactive armour modules added to them to assist in defending against HEAT rounds, and a laser rangefinder as well as the ability to fire the AT-8 Songster missile (the T-64B which came into service in 1984). While the T-64 remains in service with the Russian Federation and Ukraine, its innovative design meant that it had just too many untried components in one vehicle and while over 8,000 tanks were produced, none were exported.
(T-64B) Hull length: 7.4m. Hull width: 4.64m (with skirts). Height: 2.2m. Crew: 3. Weight: 39,500kg (combat) Ground Clearance: 0.38m. Ground pressure: 0.86kg/sq.cm Max speed: 75km/h. Max range (internal fuel): 400km on road. Armament: 125mm smoothbore main gun, 1 x 7.62mm MG coaxial, 1 x 12.7mm anti-aircraft MG.
T-64 Battle Tank - The Cold War's Most Secret Tank, Steven J. Zaloga.
A brief history of a tank that was too advanced for its own good, combining advanced features that meant it couldn't be exported with an unreliable engine that made it unsuited for service with the Red Army for many years after it first appeared. The limited service life of the T-64 allows the author to focus on the complex and troubled development process, giving us an interesting picture of the way tank development worked in the Soviet Union [
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Haywood, Lyn. 'The Development of the T-64 MBT' in Jane's Soviet Intelligence Review, March 1989, pp. 119 - 122.
Scneider, Wolfgang. 'From the T-64 to the T-80' in International Defence Review, June 1987, pp. 745 - 750.
Schneider, Wolfgang. 'T-64 update' in International Defence Review, September 1989, pp. 1145 - 1146.
Zaloga, Steven. T-64 and T-80, 1992, 1st Edition, Concord Publications, Hong Kong.
How to cite this article: Antill, P. (6 February 2001), T-64 Main Battle Tank, http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/weapons_t64.html
