Thousands of T-34 tanks were produced during World War Two but there are very few working examples still around
No one ever mentions tank designer Mikhail Koshkin when talking of the influential people of WW2, he made an invaluable contribution to Allied success.
Mikhail Ilyich Koshkin was born in 1898 and died of pneumonia in 1940. His illness and subsequent death no doubt expedited by having to drive his latest creation 1,250 miles across the Soviet Union from Kharkiv to Moscow in the depths of a severe Russian winter. This difficult journey was undertaken so that Joseph Stalin, the general secretary of the central committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union could bear witness his new design; the T-34 tank.
The T-34 was most widely produced tank of World War Two and the second most produced tank of all time. Its replacement, the Russian T-55, holds the honour of the world’s most produced tank.
This demonstration of the T34 in front of the Kremlin leaders was a success and ‘Uncle’ Joe nicknamed the tank Little Swallow which in retrospect is an odd name for a tank. Those who operated it had another nickname, ‘pirozhok’ (stuffed bun). This was apparently based on the shape of the turret.
Koshkin…
