Mike, maybe you should stop trolling?
Comparing M18 & M36 TDs to a late 1950s heavy tank? REALLY? God... M18 was a piece of crap, crews hated it, the top speed was not as advertised (it was roughly limited to 50 kph on road, 35 off), it was fuel hungry, easily flammable, extremely uncomfortable, noisy, loud, and easily destroyed by anything, even MG42 would knock it out.
M18 is so "glorious" in muricans mind today because it is remembered as a rocket fast "tank" (it wasn't at all), thanks to the trials and promoting in 1943... It's considered good because it was used properly several notable times, and turned the tide of several battles... It was a good ambush vehicle, and a good infantry support vehicule, with great awareness. (open...) But it was too fragile and just crap, after ww2 USA scrapped or sent abroad all M18, but kept M4A3E8 until mid 50s.
Keep dreaming, hellcat was lame in 1945, it would have been utterly ridiculous in 1960.
M36 were better overall, and kept in many armies up to the 90s... 90mm ammo was made and exported a long time during cold war, and i'm pretty sure M3 gun was able to use M47 / M48 ammo. It was excellent support vehicle, and TD in ww2, but as TD, it was useless vs T-44, 54, IS-3 and all later "bad guys" tanks. M36 had armour, reliability and punch vs M18.
But claiming any of the two would kill T-10 is bogus, 90mm can't penetrate T-10 frontally, at all, even the later M36/M41 guns used on M47/M48 pattons with newest ammo, it would have done nothing, even APDS and HEAT, as demonstrated vs egyptians IS-3 in 1973, when M48 of IDF had to close in and flank them, accounts talk about
500m flank shots failing to penetrate... U think the L7 was developped for nothing after the discover of the T-54 in budapest (1956)? No, it was made because UK 20pdr and US 90mm guns were not enough, imagine vs T-10(M)...
On sides, 90mm would fail to penetrate at up to 60° angle (or 30° from perfect perpendicular shot), just look armour scheme of IS-3 and T-10 please....
And keep in mind your precious M36 jackson would mostly use APCBC with 160mm penetration at 100m, not the fancy APDS, APCR or HEAT.
I won't even mention the 76mm gun on the hellcat, with 180mm APCR maximum, it was utterly useless. Of course, the lucky shot, or odd side/rear ambush shot could kill a T-10, but tanks do not operate in void, or alone.... T-10 units would consist of 31 tanks, supported by other forces.
Then you say hellcat/jackson would be better "breaktrhough" "tanks" than T-10 because of some imaginary better speed? LOL. Primitive machines, open toped, with bullet proof armour (not even true for hellcat), shitty guns with no FCS or stabilization whatsoever... slow turret speed... Are you insane? T-10M with 2 axis stabilised gun (most powerful gun in the world along with US M58 and UK L1 and L11), night vision, excellent aim systems, totally enclosed sloped heavy tank armour (250-320mm frontal armour LOS roughly, and also true for +40° aspect of each side), good range, reliable and barely less speedy than a medium tank like T-54, more than centurion, and with fantastic passability (more than T-54), operated by elite crews in well organised units inside a proper doctrine... Please, try harder.
Read this about the "marvellous" hellcat.... http://tankarchives.blogspot.fr/2014/03/lend-lease-impressions-m18-hellcat.html
http://forum.worldoftanks.com/index.php?/topic/351511-realistically-hellcat-or-jackson/
And stop trying to find faults to the early T-10 vs T-10M to justify your points, as I said already, production was mostly T-10M.......
1539 were built:
360 T-10, T-10A and T-10B between 1953 and 1957... Most of which were
later rebuilt as T-10M1179 T-10M and T-10MK between 1958 and 1965 !
source: http://topwar.ru/uploads/posts/2013-03/1362299438_14.jpg
It seems the T-10M was liked and
mass produced to fullfill a doctrinal need. T-10M were thus spear heads of soviet tank forces up to the early 1970s when T-64A replaced them, but T-10M stayed in service up to the last days of USSR, active and ready at least up to 1980. "So few" were produced vs T-54/55 because it was very expensive, and advanced, and just they needed this number for several elite units, only for domestic use, never intended for export......
Like it or not, T-10M had better armour than the chieftain, a comparable gun, and similar or better mobility. Chieftain had better aspects, like fire control and internal space... but it speaks about the potential of T-10M, which was itself way better than M103 and Conqueror (mostly in mobility, logistics and reliability) FYI, chieftain armour (MK2, 1966) was 80mm glacis / 76mm lower hull, 150mm turret (with sick angles making it 300-350 LOS), and pathetic 38mm side armour (ww2 37/45mm guns penetrate this at 500m...
)........ T-10M had 120mm glacis and lower hull forming a pike nose, side armour, i'm not sure, but upper hull is very angled 80 or 90mm (150 LOS at least, and this is with perpendicular perfection shot, with front aspect, it's unpenetrable), lower hull is 80 or 60mm, straight, but it's still twice better than chieftain. Granted chieftain has some sort of skirts, but... Turret of T-10M is 250mm thick up front, quite think all around.
According to its capabilities, T-10M was a MBT. Oh, and It wasn't 52t, sorry.... 51.5t. Please, how "light" is a standard british army centurion of 1960?
or a M48A1? This tank was thus probably the first real MBT in 1958.
Blacktaildefense sparky sparks miky mike whatever the fu/k is his name, is a retard. He proved nothing, his videos on the T-10 are retarded child work, and it's been 6 pages of proving it already. Admire him as much as you want, he is plain wrong on this case, maybe he did some good work, and he his quite entertaining, but on T-64 (which he claims production lasted something like 3 years XD), T-62 and T-10, he totally failed and parroted clownery from western propaganda.
GarryB wrote:With the three photos posted above, the first one has a bicycle riding past and the other two are clearly in city streets during some sort of uprising.
Urban combat would be places you would send your most heavily armoured vehicles, but as they are breakthrough tanks their lack of range would require long range fuel tanks to be fitted.
There are clearly two types... one with single fuel drums and one with two fuel drums, both of which would likely be ditched when the combat area was reached.
Most of the photos I have seen did not show external fuel tanks, these ones shown likely during the Hungarian uprising or something similar does not change that.
T-10M didn't even exist in 1956, it was T-44, T-34-85, T-54, IS-3, mostly, used in this uprising. One captured (by hungarian resistants/terrorists/depends on your location) T-54 was driven into UK embassy, creating panic because the armour was simply unheard of for a medium tank, while they felt confident at home with their centurions. Lead more or less to 105mm L7 gun.
IS-3 proved unvaluable in blowing up entire buildings with massive 122mm HE shells, a handfull were lost (to cocktail molotovs and ammo blow up). Most casualties were T-34-85.
The photos I showed are from the 1968 czech-slovak uprising, but it was not a massive fight like 1956... Soviet army deployed nearest forces, including T-10M regiments (proving once more that they served near the border of NATO as spear heads), T-55, T-54, Su-122-54, and maybe T-62 (not sure).
T-10M would have caused a hell in city fighting, and be totally imune to local "AT weapons". Soviet forces use those disposable fuel tanks on all tanks, T-10M was no exception, it increases autonomy by 100% basically (if you have all of them)... Of course they are not linked to internal fuel system, one must pump it into the system manually, with simple mecanical pump stored inside any of the storage bins. The driver can discard them in a second using a cable, if they are assaulted. They are placed on multipurpose device usually where you place MDSH smoke canisters, also activated by the cable. This practice was up to T-62 and early T-64, later tanks having dedicated fuel drums places and turret mounted 82mm smoke mortars.
On the T-10M (or any T-10) you can spot 2 built in rectangular tanks at the back of the overtrack, they are external fuel tanks, there is several option, i'm not sure.... might be 2 linked external fuel tanks, or non linked, either fuel or oil filled reserves.
Mike, you rather fight in T-10M or Hellcat ?