Roman Volchenkov builds another set of metal tracks for the T-34 tank.

Link to Item



If you have comments or questions please post them here.

Thanks!

These look pretty good but they would not be common for an STZ made tank.
STZ preferred to use 550mm wide links.
These are 500mm and would be far more common on a earlier UTZ T-34 (for instance, the T-34 shipped to Aberdeen Proving Grounds in 1943 was fitted with this type).

Mark

These 500mm "chevron" tracks were designed and produced for the T-34M at Kharkov (Zavod No.183) in 1941. They were used on the last tanks produced in Kharkov and then taken to Nizhnii Tagil, where the remainder were used for some of the tanks from UTZ (Zavod No.183) in early 1942. 500mm "waffle" tracks were introduced later that year at UTZ and Krasnoe Sormovo.

As Mark says, STZ used 550mm tracks exclusively. STZ also supplied 550 mm "waffle" tracks to Krasnoe Sormovo in early 1942.

Regards
Scott Fraser

you are partially correct, gentlemen. STZ had 550 mm tracks before they started using these and 183 had these as well.

Sorry, but you're just plain wrong. Can you show me a photo of a new tank from STZ with these tracks? None exist, that I know of, and I've seen a lot of photos of T-34s.

Until then, I will continue to believe what has been written about these tracks, and those of STZ, by Kolomiets, Svirin and other Russian researchers. They have written extensively on all aspect of the T-34 and these particular tracks have come up before.

For a long time, it was thought that the tracks for the T-34M were 450mm, but they turned out to be these 500mm tracks. There ARE photos of tanks from Kharkov that were delivered at the start of October 1941, when the factory was shutting down. There are also photos of tanks from N.Tagil from the early months of 1942 with them. STZ, on the other hand, used 550mm tracks once the steel wheels were adopted late in 1941 until they stopped production in August 1942. This is information from Прославленный Т-34 , which is to date the best book on the T-34.

Moving on, I would point out the obvious: nowhere does MasterClub suggest these tracks are for a T-34 from STZ. The have many tracks sets for the T-34, including some that ARE for tanks from STZ. They are labelled clearly. I think it more likely that Roman made an honest mistake when he wrote his review by saying they were STZ tracks. That doesn't detract from his comments about the quality of the product. MasterClub make very good tracks. Sergei is very good at what he does.

Regards
Scott Fraser

true that these are not marked by the manufacturer as STZ, that was mine assumption based on what I read about tracks and track development. I would ask the editors to remove that from review. Thanks for your comments.

and I apologize for mistake made.

As Roman has already mentioned that he made an assumption, I've corrected his review. Now wasn't this a nice way of pointing this out?

No disrespect, but Mark's post, the first reply in this thread, made the point that these were not tracks for a T-34 from STZ. I replied confirming Mark's comments and adding a bit of background. Mark and I are acquainted. We both have a fascination with the T-34 and we've compared notes over the years. He knows his stuff where it comes to T-34s. So does Sergei Babych at MasterClub. Frankly, I've been waiting for someone else to realize that these are not advertised as suitable for a T-34 from STZ.

I didn't connect Roman / Bizarre with the author of the review immediately or I would have taken this up through a PM. However, I felt that his post asserting that these tracks these were used at STZ required rebuttal, so I replied with more information about these particular tracks. They have been somewhat controversial in the past, but today the record is clear from documents originating from Zavod No.183 in Kharkov. I'm an historian, so these details matter to me, and should to any modeller keen to make an accurate model of an STZ T-34.

Anyway, now people know more about MasterClub's T-34 tracks. They are an excellent product, my first choice.

Regards
Scott Fraser