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It's entirely possible that they were mounting hex turrets in 1943 but it seems to me it would have to be the very end (like late December) if only because the changes in hull construction seem to coincide with the first -85 production tanks.
Agreed, Sormovo was building hex-turret tanks at the end of 1943. Changes to the hull seem to come later. Certainly the T-34-85s were built with the notched front hull as late as March 1944.
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If I recall the December date was for prototypes and test shots only and the first production tanks did not leave their lines for until shortly after that (around 100 pre/early-production tanks in January/February and something like a total of 255 tanks with the D-5T by March or somewhere thereabouts). Certainly that time line matches up with photographic evidence.
Though -85 completely replaced the -76 very quickly there was a period of a couple of months where it seems they had produced them in parallel.
Mark
The first T-34-85 (D-5T) were built at the end of December (10) and January (25) and reached the 38.Ind.T.Bde. at the end of that month. "Regular" T-34s were also built alongside T-34-85s until April. The main bottleneck was the gun, since the S-53 was not yet available in numbers. In the first months of 1944, Sormovo was building tanks with D-5Ts, S-53s [u]and[/u] F-34s.
Cheers
Scott
Generally I don't like to get too caught up in very specific dates/numbers if only because it's pretty rare that any two sources agree exactly.
But since we're here: I've read these numbers before and in a couple of different places. As for the ten completed at the very end of December most if not all were apparently reserved for testing (a common practice to be sure but I have no way of being reasonably sure how many went where and for what use).
In January of '44 we read that a total of 25 T-34-85's were completed with another 75 in February so 100 for January/February (where do I remember that number from?
).
A number of these were sent to troops at the front for battlefield testing starting in January.
Of course the -85 wasn't originally part of the of the discussion but it's always fun to speak of these things!
As to when the hull changes come in I stick by the change in the way the glacis was constructed as being concurrent with the switch to the new gun or perhaps even a little before. Not even the photos I've seen of the prototypes have the notched glacis and I can't recall any photos of one of those early D-5T gunned tanks with the earlier arrangement. Rebuilds with later S-53 yes, D-5T no. Do you know of an example?
Getting back to the initial topic Factory 112 produced something on the order of 557 76mm gunned tanks (most likely all with the hex turret) in 1944 before their line switched completely to the -85 in April.
Best o' luck!
Mark
