The mighty
KV1 was the most powerful heavy tank of the early war period…on paper.
Even though
the Germans were badly surprised at first, the KV was never in a position to
hold back the invasion of Russia.
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| The beast with a green color...not historically accurate but fun |
As quoted in Wikipedia:
The KV's strengths included armor that was impenetrable by any tank-mounted weapon then in service except at point-blank range, that it had good firepower, and that it had good traction on soft ground. It also had serious flaws, all of which were rectified with the introduction of the KV-1S: it was difficult to steer, the transmission (which was a twenty-year-old Caterpillar design) was unreliable (and was known to have to been shifted with a hammer), and the ergonomics were poor, with limited visibility and no turret basket. Furthermore, at 45 tons, it was simply too heavy. This severely impacted the maneuverability, not so much in terms of maximum speed, as through inability to cross many bridges medium tanks could cross.
My brother
chose to make the 1941 model with the cast turret.
To do the
work, he used George Bradford series World war II AFV plans. The book Russian Armored Vehicles provided
scaled plan of the KV. It helps a lot to
represent all the details of that tank.
Eight were built in two colors.
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| ...that's the other color more realistic |
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| The KV with TSSD russian troops. |
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| Our KV's haven't fight yet. Those scenes were made for propaganda purposes only (!) |
