Saturday night is always a good time for tanks. Back in 2011 I went to the Marco Polo Bridge and the adjacent museum in the faraway suburbs of Beijing. The museum had lots of cool stuff including a T-34 tank and a T-34 recovery vehicle.
Both vehicles were shipped to China by the Soviet Union and fought on the Chinese side in the 1950-1953 Korean War. The Chinese army donated the tanks to the museum in 2005.
The Soviet Union T-34 debuted in 1940 and is often credited with saving the country from the German invasion in 1941 and the subsequent defeat of Nazi Germany. During the Korean War the Soviet Union gave T34’s to both North Korea and to China.
The T-34 tank weighed 32 ton. It had a crew of five and a 55 km/h top speed. Maximum gradeability was 30 degrees and it could cross rivers 1.3 meters deep. Armament consisted of a 85 mm main gun and a 7.62 mm machine guns. Some T-34’s were also equipped with a 12.7 mm anti-aircraft gun. The main gun had a max range of 13.8 kilometers.
On the battle field, recovery vehicles are used to pull out stranded tanks and other fighting vehicles, and bring them back into safety to they can fight another day. The T-34 recovery vehicle is based on the same chassis as the T-34 tank. The construction on top is basically a crane, able to pull other vehicles using a steel rope spun around the winch.
Power pf the T-34 came from a 38.8 liter (!) V12 diesel engine with an output of 500 hp. Operational range for the tank was 250 kilometers. Range for the recovery vehicle was likely a bit more as it didn’t have to carry the heavy main gun.
The museum’s main building on the left side.
The Marco Polo Bridge over the Yongding River. The bridge was first build in 1189 and rebuild in 1698. On each side it has hundreds of different lion statures. The bridge is most famous for the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in 1937, which marked the beginning of the escalation of the Chinese-Japanese War. It is still a revered place in China, and nowadays a fast subway ride away from the city center. In 2011 it was an hour’s drive by car.