Photo of abandoned Russian tanks

[Witt]

A photograph of a KV-2 and another lighter Russian tank. Taken by a man in Nachrichten-Abteilung 47, and supposedly taken in Lemberg. The tank in the foreground is missing both sets of tracks.

Ben

[MJie]

Nice photo. The tank in the foreground looks like a rare T-50.

[Witt]

I was also thinking it may be a T-50, MJie, but not confident.
I have been able to do some more research and I am thinking it’s the slightly more common T-34/57 “Exterminator”. Looks like it has five bogies like the T-34 as compared to six. The barrel looks to have been sheared off leaving half of the broken remain.





The T-34/57 was a T-34 mounted with the 57mm ZiS-4 L/73 high-velocity gun and designated as a tank hinter. Not as uncommon as the T-50 or even the KV-2, but still small production with at most 324 being produced during its 1941-1943 run. The 21st Tank Brigade was operating on the Kalinin Front with ten of these tanks in the 1941 winter. They claimed highly effective having destroyed 34 tanks, 210 trucks, and 31 guns before all ten T-34/57s were lost. The 8th Tank Brigade was also said to be operating these although I cannot find on what front they were located.

Ben

[MJie]

Great Point. It do has five bogies. The gun looks shorter to me, like a T-34 Model 1940, but it could because of the angel. A 'clean' looking T-34 anyway.
Mjie

[CSW]

I agree with Mjie, to me it's definitely an early T-34 (1940) with the short 76.2 mm L-11 gun. You can notice that the barrel is sitting considerably lower in the mantlet compared to later variants of the T-34 with different guns. Here's a close-up of the original photo and another shot of an early T-34 for comparison.

I believe there might be a stick of some sort sticking out of the short barrel, due to this it does indeed look longer at first glance.