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Originally Posted by RepublicanGuard
Id rather be in a JS3 than either the M48 or T-55 during that war.
Not if the enemy was 200 meters or less though, JS3 turret speed sucks.
I think the russians still have 30 of these beasts in reserve.
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Josef Stalin III tanks were fuel hogs. Though their armor was thick and well sloped, they were not very manueverable. Since then a lot of secondary armor and metalwork (side skirts for example) have been removed and their designation changed to T-10.
At Fort Irwin I was trained and certified as a tank turret mechanic on M-41 Walkers and M-48 Pattons. The 90mm gun had a neat "computer" of precisely machined cams to set sight angles so the gun elevation could be changed for the type of ammo you were going to fire. The range finder was hard for me (being near sighted) as it used the "geese" method of "focusing" a "V" shaped set of vertical dashes over the target. However, our instructors said that the split vision system was already installed in some M-48's and they expected all of them to receive that type of range finder as time goes on. Fortunately they had one of the Patton's in the shop that had that "new" kind of range finder and we all found it to be much easier and much faster to calculate the distance of a target.
At 1500 yards the 90mm gun had to be elevated about 26 mils from bore sight to hit target center. The 76mm gun on the M-41's however only required 17 mils of super elevation because of the higher velocity round. A lot of debate naturally arose wondering if a Walker could take out a T-54/55 though it did not have a range finder.
Hopefully one of you guys have some data on M-48 and M-41 kills of T-55 and PT-76 tanks in Viet Nam. A kill rate comparison between the M-48 with a 90mm and the M-60 with a 105mm would be interesting to read also.