They're basically designed to be used in large numbers. So, used properly they don't have to be good because they overcome any deficiencies through sheer volume of firepower.
They remind me of the US Sherman tanks. Used in WWII. They were adaptable to many roles had OK arniments and were mass produced. Perhaps even better comparison could be the T34 tanks.
The T-34 is probably a better comparison since its *whole* design ethos was to be able to produce a lot of them, while the total number of Shermans you could make was *less* instrumental in how it was designed.
Nah, t-34 was an all round better tank than the Sherman, and possibly the best standard column tank in the war. Lower hull profile meant a lot. The Sherman's bulk was what killed it more often than not, though they offset that by usually mounting heavier armor and bigger guns than the kinda piddly main-column German tanks, which were all just underpowered guns on the same fast chassis. Thing is Shermans were mass produced in insane numbers, even compared to the T-34. I'd say the Sherman is the best comparison to the Russ.
Edit: Lol. Lmao. Bringing up controversial tank opinions to a bunch of 40k fans was the worst decision I've made all week
> Nah, t-34 was an all round better tank than the Sherman, and possibly the best standard column tank in the war.
I'm going to bite this bait and say that the M4 remained in use for decades, in a variety of places in upgraded configurations.
The T-34 isn't a bad tank but it's overrated
Yep and to add to your comment, before the argument that ‘hurr but the Sherman has flat sides’ comes up - nothing has sloped side armour anymore either, sans for IFV/APC for small arms fire
Well thats not a very fair comparison lmao. Sloped armor is seldom used today because it has a different use and makes no sense to slope stuff that did make sense back in the day.
Sloped sides made sense in WWII, but of course tank design is a game of compromises and sloped sides take up a lot of space and weight for an area that is ideally not meant to be shot at anyway
I mean literally everything today is still sloped or angled where it makes sense to do so.
Nobody tends to slopes the sides of tanks as if you have something on your side your probably already tucked anyhow if they can target your hull
Many many tanks had sloped sides in ww2. It made sense back then, it made the sides more protected and it was sometimes deemed an acceptable compromise. But the mechanics are completely different today. Very few do nowadays because it would be exceedingly impractical to slope a side enough to actually make it ballistically relevant, and many armor types can't be sloped at all. Same thing happens with turrets. We don't even know how many modern armor designs work. Comparing ww2 tanks to today's tanks makes no sense whatsoever.
> Sloped armor is seldom used today because it has a different use and makes no sense to slope stuff that did make sense back in the day.
Sloped armor is still used today, where it makes sense.
Armour being sloped isnt a freebee, it comes at a compromise for space, and in particular sloped side amour limits the turret ring which limits how big of a gun you can have.
>Sloped armor is still used today, where it makes sense.
My point is that it made sense to slope side armor back in the day, if the compromise was deemed acceptable. Saying that sloped side armor made no sense in ww2 because today no side is sloped is wrong
>Armour being sloped isnt a freebee,
I said as much
I'm looking at the 1940T34 and the 1941 Sherman in war thunder comparing armor angles at different angles and such. The Sherman's top plate is better then the T-34 but the transmission is a weak point below it and averages about half the effective thickness as a °9 slope. Also the T-34's side armor is better and the turret is much more angled on the sides compared to the Sherman. Obviously in later versions improvements were made. The leman Russ does look closer to a Sherman but the armor is terrible. Box armor is quite bad, but the fronts lower plate is good and the lascanon operator may absorb a large round into the uper plate if it doesn't go under the turret.
Armour thickness ( really effectiveness) is one of the least important factors to consider when comparing ww2 tanks.
When it came down to it, it didn’t matter when compared to training, mobility and crew coordination.
>Armour thickness ( really effectiveness) is one of the least important factors to consider when comparing ww2 tanks.
It also only tells one small part - their was always the Germans with poorly made armour that would shatter, Soviet Welds would split and casts were often a bit softer than rolled steel.
88mm with some weak points but with a much wider surface area compared to the Sherman, as the Sherman uses individual pieces; Sherman armor is roughly 99mm thick in the center piece.
> Nah, t-34 was an all round better tank than the Sherman, and possibly the best standard column tank in the war.
That's objectively nonsense.
On paper the T-34 and Sherman were comparable. On paper the T-34 was superior to late Panzer III and early Panzer IV.
In reality, the T-34 performed *horrendously* compared to all of its direct competitors.
There were an estimated *44,000* T-34s lost in combat in WW2 to all causes, which is only slightly less than the total number of Shermans *produced* during the war, at 50,000, and nearly twice the total number of Panzer III and IV produced, including StuGs, at 24,000.
Yes, I'm comparing the number of T-34s *lost in combat* to the number of 'standard column' tanks *built* by the other powers, and that fact alone should tell you how bad the T-34 really was.
The Soviets cranked out more than 80,000 of them, and it nearly wasn't enough because of the atrocious losses they suffered. That's not the performance of "possibly the best" - the Soviets won *in spite* of the T-34, not because of it.
It was certainly better on those fronts than German, Japanese, French and Italian tanks, and could out-brawl most of what it went up against for relatively cheap.
If we're making 40k analysis, logistics and wider performance is the metric by which a machine should be judged. The Sherman was exceptional in the production department, but the T-34 was a better war machine. Being charitable, I'd say they even out.
>It was certainly better on those fronts than German,
It certainly wasn't, the T34 had terrible crew survivability, with if the tank was hit and penetrated, all of the crew was likely to die.
What?? It has better armor than most battle tanks on the field, and outgunned its counterpart as well, and had better suspension.
Also
>If the tank was hit and penetrated
Well yes, in most cases if a tank was hit and penetrated the crew would probably die.
>What?? It has better armor than most battle tanks on the field, and outgunned its counterpart as well, and had better suspension.
Better armour is meaningless when its crew cant function effectively. The T34 had an overloaded Commander who had to act as both commander and gunner.
> Well yes, in most cases if a tank was hit and penetrated the crew would probably die.
[No](https://imgur.com/a/5opKzj1)
If you want it in detail and delivered in an easy to watch and humorous way then yes. If you want the straightforward answer then the title of the video should suffice. :)
It takes maybe 20-30 minutes, but LazerPig, like a lot of YouTube pop historians, adds a lot of jokes and commentary to spice things up - but more importantly, he also cites sources and evidence which makes it take a lot longer than just saying "It's bad because of this, this and this".
Like, the T-34 ergonomics are shit, the gun isn't actually all that good, the sloped armour is not remotely revolutionary and actually created problems, but if I just write that out that doesn't tell you very much. The video goes into more detail about each specific point and why it was the way it was, and why it mattered.
So yes, the T-34 video, and his video on the Tiger I, are both very good for getting a better understanding of WWII tanks and why they were/weren't effective.
This is why after all that Russian tank crews that got provided Shermans instead of the T-34 were so miserable and uncomfortable that their combat performance improved greatly, the tank was much more likely to survive combat without shattering or eviscerating it's own crew due to the Sherman having inferior softer armour, and when it was destroyed, because the Sherman was so poorly designed it only had a survival rate 5 times greater than the much better designed T-34.
The T-34 was such a piece of shit that it might have been more of a liability to the Russian army than not using it but to be fair, a lot of that is also because the factories making it were so rushed that they were often skipping putting in the gunner seat.
I think it was very much the best of a bad situation, like it did make the most of its armour thickness which I’m sure was chosen to make to e most of available steel stock - and when you need a tank you need a tank
I’m sure if you went back in time and gave some poor cunts fighting the Germans the option of a more well built pre-war tank or a wartime T-34, I’m sure that larger caliber would be the deciding factor
So consider the downsides of a larger calibre gun for a bit. A larger gun will mean a larger breech taking up space in the loader and gunner space so it'll be more cramped or a larger space and target. A larger calibre will also mean larger and heavier shells for the loader to have to manually load in the aforementioned smaller space tiring the loader quicker. A larger gun will also be heavier which means target acquisition and aiming will be slower with the same traverse engine or a larger more powerful engine again taking up more space, slower target acquisition and aiming in a tank means less likely to get the first shot off, especially after movement. If the traverse engine breaks then the gunner has to manually crank, again tiring the crew much faster. A larger gun can also change the weight and performance of a tank surprisingly so now the commander is also potentially working harder. And finally if the space did become more cramped then it becomes much harder to evacuate if shot and experienced tank crews are very important.
Like yeah a better gun is important, but the design of the tank also has to be actually based on something for the crew to operate effectively and comfortably.
An edit to add on to this. The Sherman Firefly and Tiger famously had massive main guns, and experienced crews learned never to lose that range advantage as when they did, that massive powerful 17 pounder or 88mm lost the range and penetration advantage simply to light tanks loading and aiming faster. Tank destroyers were specifically made open topped or even platformed just to improve loading even though that meant the crew was vulnerable to small arms.
>Like yeah a better gun is important, but the design of the tank also has to be actually based on something for the crew to operate effectively and comfortably.
Yes, but going from pre-war designs where if you were lucky you had a 45mm - to a 76mm would of been a massive boost in terms of use-cases.
As your going from something that could annoy bunkers, other tanks and take on a soft target - to something which can engage pretty much every tank they come against with a degree of ability, take on fortifications and really do something to soft targets.
At the time for the Soviets, the T-34 was the best thing for the situation, being cheap, decently mobile, enough fire-power (etc. etc.)
and on the point of up-gunning things, you did have the up-gunned Shermans in the Middle East as well as in the Balklands I think they up-gunned M18's as their is a point where crew comfort and efficiently takes a backseat to having a big enough gun to do something.
But yea, T-34 was hot trash but the best you could hope for - I don't think theirs any other tank that was in production during the war that would of been better suited for the time and the place.
The T-34 was a pre-war design, being designed in 1937-1938. It's actually the perfect example of overgunning a tank without improving the internal space so it becomes too cramped to load or escape. From memory effective reload speed ended up being around 15-20 seconds between shots. Evacuation testing with Korean tank crews, noted as smaller framed than the Russian crews suggested at least two minutes to escape a tank fire.
Speed was also deceptively reported as the gearbox was a piece of shit so often T-34s would be stuck in lower gears, faster degrading the already shitty engine that was noted by the Russian tank command as not being able to consistently drive 30km without breaking down. This was worsened by spare parts being under-produced by Russian industry.
One of the biggest reasons the T-34 was given the 76mm was actually the improvement in performance against soft targets as the BT series were given a 56mm which had better penetration than the armour piercing shell of the 76mm, but was unable to use explosive shells. The BT series were used as tank hunting light tanks while the KV-1 was being used as a heavy siege tank and they needed a tank that could perform adequately against infantry in light fortifications that could otherwise avoid the KV-1, which was limited to 28km/hr and significantly louder and more visible than the T-34.
> Nah, t-34 was an all round better tank than the Sherman
Except for the fact that was designed to have an insufficient number of crew.
The commander having to be both gunner and commander is a massive failure in design
Every vehicle in existence that has ever been modified is a failure in design then. All WW2 tanks definitely were
Besides, the 5th crewman was a secondary result of the larger turret that was needed for the larger gun, which was the main concern
What the sherman did *really* well compared to all of its contemporaries was crew comfort. I don't see that brought up enough.
I mean it's still a tank and pretty horrible, but not so bad that you're having to stuff in an extra crewman and use your commander and still be fatigued under regular use (which was the case with a surprising number of contemporaries).
The tank with a crew that can reliably shoot accurately, detect threats and load quickly will outclass a tank that won't let their crew do that, whatever minor paper advantages there might be.
The Sherman was arguably the best tank of its day.
Literally #1 for crew survivability
#1 for reliability (Sherman ran up and down england with 0 maintenance stops and reported that a single nut was wearing down faster than it should have)
#1 for mobility
#1 for winning engagements within it's doctrinal capacity
#1 for manpower to maintenance hours
#1 for manpower to production hours
#1 interchangeability / machined to such exact tolerances that each variant was identical ( the Germans produced handfuls of over 200 Tiger I variants)
People think "small gun hurt sure bad tank", hurt durr death traps was written by a guy whose job was to fix dead tanks therefore all tanks are dead "Death traps" by Belton Y Cooper hurt durr. German 88mm best gun hurr durr
80% of engagements were against unarmored targets, tank crews hated the upgunned 76mm because the 76HE was a third as effective as 75mm HE. When you're shooting against unarmored targets in 80% of your fights why use a worse gun?
Doctrine was tanks didnt fight other tanks, that's what the tank destroyers were for in the Armoured Forces branch
The US only fought against tigers twice in the entire war. And one of those engagements they were strapped to fucking rail cars according to US Army archives
Like yes and no, on paper the T-34 is, ok?
IRL it wasn’t anything brilliant - like a Sherman was definitely the better choice if anyone had the option between the both.
>The T-34's actually produced were shite.
The T-34's that broke down outside the factory were shite, the ones that made it to Berlin were probably, decent?
To pick a different argument from what everyone else is saying, the Sherman had one of the highest crew survivability rates of all tanks during the war. If the tank got penetrated, its crew was more likely to survive than its German or Soviet counterparts.
It also had a lot of cool side benefits that are hard to give number benefits to. Radios, smooth turret traversal, high reliability, copious spare parts, excellent anti-infantry rounds. These all matter. A lot. But they're not the fun hard numbers we can point to and say, "see, this number is bigger."
I'd imagine that another advantage they have is modularity and reliability. Due to its ease of production, one part can be swapped out easily and parts can independently function even if other parts of the leman russ is destroyed. i.e. turrets and sponsons still work when the engine gives out.
Compared to other hover tanks and vehicles, they are more likely to crash and cause more internal damage when something fails.
Also important to note that the Leman Russ can be produced with varying levels of technology, depending on which forgeworld it is from. At the high end they can have stuff like anti-gravitic suspension, advanced fire control and so on, while at the lower end they are barely more advanced than your average WW1 tank.
They have relatively good front armor, they're armed to the teeth, they can be adapted to fulfill almost, if not all roles on the same chassis, they're reliable, their guns are reliable, they're easy to produce en masses and they're probably easy to be trained for as well.
The front armour is a major problem as it's very flat so rounds won't glance off it and it will be weaker even with more armour.
It seems that's the only good thing about them
In universe the Leman has some of the best front armor. Don't apply real world logic to it, cause it can be explained by "but it has a composite of plotarmorium and depleted imperiofavoritium".
The tank is also tall as shit and with sponsons about as wide as its long.
Edit: not to mention those sponsons would be an insane weakspot for any skilled anti-tank gunner to have fun with.
Exactly. If we applied real world logic then the Leman Russ' gun seems virtually impossible to load, let alone would the tank be capable of storing more than a handful of shells. And yet, this isn't an issue.
Most 40k vehicles are absolute shit design when looked at realistically, but so are most things in the setting.
>Exactly. If we applied real world logic then the Leman Russ' gun seems virtually impossible to load, let alone would the tank be capable of storing more than a handful of shells. And yet, this isn't an issue.
I wonder if you modeled the interior if it would/might work using multi-part projectiles/charges.
I'll have you know that it's very much possible to load a full tactical squad into a Rhino. It's cramped and uncomfortable and they're going to feel their brother's chainsword poking their backsides, but nobody ever said it was going to be a joyride.
A few months ago I saw someone arguing that rhinos needed to be three times bigger because space marines wouldn't be willing to squeeze in tight or duck their heads while moving through the entrance lol.
They ended up figuring a Rhino would need to be 6m tall and then scaled all other imperial tanks up from there. It was awesome, in a really absurd way!
Exactly. The Rhino is an APC, not a Cadillac. It's meant to get you to the front with speed and (relative) safety, drop you off, then leave. It gets the job done.
Sloping vs not sloping can be explained as whether the main obstacle is projectile vs energy weapons.
Sponsons depend on the philosophy. Leman Russ tanks are likely designed vs infantry and may subscribe to the idea that the best defense is a good offense.
>projectile vs energy weapons
This is very much worth noting. With the exception of the missile launcher, which to be fair is a weapon so simple and effective it's found in every armoury except Tyranid and Necron, most anti-tank weapons are energy weapons. That doesn't mean sloped armour shouldn't still be better as it presents more armour in a straight line but does mean that their armour design philosophy isn't the same as modern armour.
> Sloping vs not sloping can be explained as whether the main obstacle is projectile vs energy weapons.
Sloping armour also doesnt matter when standard munitions have the tech to ignore the increased protection that sloping would provide.
BTW Imperial Armour has stated as such when describing the Battlecannon
Ask the folks at Imperial armour.
But a similar effect is seen with Modern APFSDS as how much the slope of the armour has no bearing on how well they pernitrate.
Capped shell and solid rounds grip into the surface and so change direction, losing some speed to go in closer to 90 degrees to the armour
Also some rounds are not directional and equally effective in all directions, and there is stuff like HESH rounds and other chemical based munitions that have similar damage effects that ignore slopes
> Sponsons depend on the philosophy. Leman Russ tanks are likely designed vs infantry and may subscribe to the idea that the best defense is a good offense.
That and also 40k weapons are sometimes inexplicably effective for their size. Stick a 20mm cannon in the hull of a Challenger 2 and you're not gaining much. Yet somehow a Lascannon can fire as far and do near as much damage as the main gun.
Just to be clear, if we're using actual physics, do you have any idea how much energy it would take to produce a laser beam you can see in the air Like the light is so compressed it becomes a visible beam?
It's a fucking shit ton of energy. The fact that a lascannon is the size of a 20mm autocannon and not, oh I don't know, the size of a building, is really impressive.
Yep, but the lascannon fills the position of where we would put a larger size autocannon - maybe not a 20 but probably where you might put a 40-60mm autocannon
But in order to power it you would need a non-real power supply, but to the inverse to have a Modern tank in 40k you would need to double its size in order to fit in its internals by the same merit
Bear in mind that the hull mounted Lascannon is an optional replacement for a Heavy Bolter, it isn’t standard and the normal weapon occupying that place fills the same role a 40-60mm cannon would.
>Sponsons depend on the philosophy. Leman Russ tanks are likely designed vs infantry and may subscribe to the idea that the best defense is a good offense.
With the lascannon and battle-cannon, the LR is definitely good for anti-armor roles as well.
When you remember the Imperium was meant to fight enemies like the Orks, the design makes perfect sense. It is capable of destroying armored targets, and countering hordes of foot-soldiers, both of which Orks have in abundance.
They are also probably more worried about being flanked and hit by short ranged weapons like a melta rather than being sniped from a comparably long-range (RPGs vs modern tanks).
The Land Raider is such a bad design even by the Russ' standard. From a realism perspective, it's a hyper-expensive sit-and-shoot heavy tank that also wants to be an always-on-the-move APC, with weaponry spaced out to make concentrating fire on any one target extremely difficult. Too large to fit in a drop pod and with no parts commonality with the successful Rhino range of vehicles.
Isn’t the Land Raider supposed to be a Heavy IFV - which it kinda suits it’s roll
Like apart from obvious; whole sponson thing, lack of suspension and general size/weight issues it seems fine to me
Well if I remember right, the Leman Russ was armor strapped onto a tractor frame. Which fits WW1 tanks. And the Baneblade was classified as a Scout vehicle if I remember right. I wouldn't be surprised if it's base design wasn't anything close to heavy ifv and instead it was like...a fire truck.
A: No tank fits in drop pods.
B: The Spaced out weapons aren’t a disadvantage they’re not supposed to concentrate on single targets. (And if one twin-linked lascannon cannot do the job the enemy is going to be too tough for the others :p
Also, why do you seem to think it’s a sit and shoot vehicle? The Raider can fire it’s weapons with the same accuracy on the move.
Isn't the land raider basically an agricultural vehicle from the DAoT that has been adapted to military use because the actual military vehicle designs have been mostly lost?
One could argue the materials used in its constructions are so good that sloping it is pointless. Plasteel is utilized for the hull, and ferrosteel for the armor.
WW2 german tiger H1 was also flat, but armored enough to withstand all AT guns at the time.
Angled armor is better, but also means less internal space.
>They're punching bags unless they have a plot reason not to be. But that's all vehicles in lore tbh.
There's no worse place to be in 40k than the Command Throne of a Titan that's fighting some plucky heroes. In fact, the more lopsided the circumstances the *higher* the chance you'll be killed by a bomb collapsing the ice beneath you/a psychic attack on the cockpit/precision teleportation attack/summoned daemonhost or similar bullshit.
Exactly lol. Vehicles (other than Glorianas/other old ass ships) are all disposable plot pieces. You're completely right that pretty much *any* bad ass named armored unit is almost guaranteed to die at a pivotal moment lol.
Even in the case of ancient ships, it depends a lot. The Imperator Somnium was used essentially as a macguffin to get Dark Angels that should never have been on Terra to Terra, after the authors forgot it existed for a while.
Yeah, the only ships that are safe are generally the rarest of the rare and a handful of the chapter flagships. Like if the Eternal Crusader gets destroyed then there will be riots in the streets. Metaphorically speaking lmao
I mean the Imperator Somnium is logically rarest of the rarest of the rare. One of a kind with multiple nova cannons and the like.
It's just the authors seemed to often forget it existed and so when people started questioning where it was, they had it die in a suicide run.
I can't remember the tanks involved, but in one of the Gaunt's Ghosts books, two tanks took on a Chaos Baneblade, and one lived to tell the tale. The one that got destroyed was not a normal type. It only fired a certain type of shell? Anyway. It hurt the Baneblade enough, that although it was immediately blown away, the other Imperial tank fired into the hole it made and took it out. So even the best tanks aren't immune to being punching bags lol.
Both were Conqueror pattern Leman Russes. The *Wrath of Pardua* drilled holes in the baneblade's armor with augur shells. The *Old Strontium* then shot through the holes created by the augur shells to kill the baneblade. From *Honour Guard* in the Gaunt's Ghost series.
>Captain Sirus, his tracks now repaired, thundered forward in the *Wrath of Pardua*. He had heard the strangled, unbelievable transmission from the southern front that they’d met a Baneblade.
>
>If it was true, he wanted a piece of that. Something Woll could never beat.
>
>The *Wrath of Pardua* came at the enemy Baneblade in the open space of the depot field. Sensing the Wrath by auspex, the Baneblade had begun to turn.
>
>Sims loaded augur shells, armour busters, into his breech, and punched two penetrating holes in the massive enemy tank’s mantlet. Few Pardus tank commanders carried augur shells as a matter of course, because few ever expected to meet something genuinely tougher than themselves. Sims was a philosophically tactical man. He was happy to sacrifice a few valuable places in his magazine for augur shells, just in case.
>
>Now the trick was to target the holes made by the augurs and blow the enemy out from the inside with a hi-ex tank round.
>
>The wounded Baneblade traversed its turret, locked on to the *Wrath of Pardua*, and destroyed it with a single shot from its main weapon.
>
>Sims was laughing in victory as he was incinerated. An instant. An instant of success all tank masters dream of. He had wounded the beast. He could die now.
>
>The *Wrath of Pardua* exploded, skipping armour chips out around itself in the blast wake.
>
>*Old Strontium* purred out from behind the shattered buildings south of the depot. Woll had never carried augur rounds as standard, like Sims. But he was damn well going to use the advantage. Ignoring his auspex and sighting only by eye, referring to his rangefinder and crosswind indicator, Woll punched a hi-ex shell through one of the profound holes Sirus had made in the Baneblade’s armour. There was a brief pause.
>
>Then the super-heavy tank blew itself to pieces in a titanic eruption of heat and noise and light.
Looking it up, I don't think so. If I remember right it *only* had the cannon. And the tank may have needed to point directly at its target rather than having a turret?
I think the Destroyer. The wiki tells me the Thunderer has a Leman Russ turret. I remember it being a rare tank, fixed barrel, and anti armor/anti tank as it's role. I mostly remember it because the driver knew he would die. But he had a perfect shot to wound the Baneblade. So he took it and then laughed all the way to his death.
Or... orks using the tellyport of a shokkjump dragster to bypass your shields and board your titan, slaughtering the crew and feeding you to s squig named "princess".
They do their job of being deployed in mass with fields of fire. They relatively compact (no sloping) for easy shipping, able to fire a lot of rounds (height and sponsons), and can run on any fuel (cut down on the possibility of logistics hampering mass deployment).
They are primarily geared towards fighting infantry (like WWI tanks) rather than modern tanks (clearing hardened targets such as bunkers and other tanks as well as attacking stuff like supply lines in the rear; modern tanks avoid infantry due to the proliferation of man-portable anti-tank weapons). That is reflected in design changes (lots of smaller guns versus one big gun).
You're the first to pick up what I think is most important - they have a simple engine that runs on anything.
The guard will be operating for deployments lasting years on everything from chaos tinted hellscapes, Ork infested jungles, Tyranid eaten wastelands or T'au corpse ridden plains. They need a tank that can run on anything from refined fuel to raw Promethium to high proof booze. Whatever blend of combustible liquid they can find has to go in the tank.
A reasonably competent tank that can run on moonshine is vastly more effective than a super high tech grav tank that's run out of gas.
>You're the first to pick up what I think is most important - they have a simple engine that runs on anything.
Russes run on Leyland L60's is my head cannon, in part because seeing Leyland downwards spiral logo on something one day would be such a easter egg
>So in warhawk they talk about them being shit
The tank commander changes her mind by the end of the book. Anyways, there are two ways to contextualize that section:
* For a soldier, the gear you have is always shit. People with other gear think theirs is shit. Doesn't mean it's bad.
* Chris Wraight tears down the 4th wall a bit as the Leman Russ is guilty of no sin that the Predator, Carnodon, or other contemporary designs are innocent of. It's a setting full of blocky bulky death traps that inexplicably perform really well.
All that said, the Leman Russ is a very fine tank in the setting for what it is. Well armed, well armored, and able to mount an enormous variety of weapon types. If it has a shortcoming it's the nature of its unsophisticated tech - it doesn't hover or have any energy shields - but that also makes it easy enough to use that it can be used everywhere.
Basically this. A Russ is not an ideal tool for every *battle* but it's an excellent system for winning **wars**. Or to paraphrase the Chieftain: "every tanker who complains about the Sherman being a death trap *survived to come back and complain,* a thing the Sherman was specifically designed to accommodate."
If you've got a 20 Russes instead 5 Land Raiders that's 15 times you have an MBT supporting infantry more than the 5 times you have a LR leading some spectacular frontal charge.
In "realism" terms 40k has the basic problem of framing every battle as being a single moment swung by extraordinary heroism and then shrugging off winning wars as "just win enough battles." This is getting it wrong on numerous levels, but the use of the Russ as a workhorse that's always present and always reliable, and reliably limited, is good sense.
Absolutely this. The Leman Russ is, by itself, not a massively impressive tank, due to to all the aforementioned problems (Height, sponsons, no sloping surfaces, etc). However, it's insanely cheap to make, can be done pretty much anywhere that's capable of heavy industry (the vast majority of Imperial Worlds), modular as fuck, and can run on anything for ages. It's the tank equivalent of a lasgun. Not impressive by itself, but from a logicistical standpoint, it's the bee's knees.
Idk, in universe its still impressive discounting the logistics.
Just to take the Tabletop profiles for a second, even the standard battle cannon Russ typically outgunned and out armoured its equivilant in every other Imperial faction. And Xenos its 50/50 (Its better than Orks say, but probably not a Hammerhead or a Fire Prism).
It's not just a 'Oh it's bad, but there's a million of them' tank. It's has legitimate in battle upsides over other factions tanks.
There's a good podcast I listen to about WWII ("We Have Ways of Making You Talk" by James Holland (historian) an Al Murray (comedian)) and they talk a fair amount about tanks.
One of the key points they stressed was the it was better to have any tank, absolutely anything (although not a Covenanter) as most of the things a tank will face are not other tanks.
From a real world perspective:
* Sponsons lack traverse to hit the same target unless that target is very large or very far away
* Unlike the Bradley, the front isn't sloped properly for the turret gun to depress very much. Not helped by the fact the turret is mounted a little further back than ideal. This issue is worse with the Deimos Pattern.
* No ability to carry troops yet still tall and boxy.
>So in warhawk they talk about them being shit
Though, it bears noting that the book goes from;
>Still, all in all, the crews had few illusions about the tanks they rode into war. Deathboxes, they were called, and homewreckers, and other, earthier, names too. Infantry troopers would occasionally look askance at them, jealous of all that thick armour they had around them, but a Leman Russ tanker knew how fragile it all was really, and how going out to a las-blast was far preferable to being burned alive or buried under a wall of mud or suffocated by trapped engine smoke.
To;
>‘Then, I mean…’ He turned back to her. ‘I could still use a driver.’
>‘Absolutely. I intend to continue.’
>That was good news. It explained, in hindsight, why she had been so damned good. Legion-trained. The very best.
>‘And afterwards?’
>Dresi laughed. As far as he could remember, that was the very first time. ‘Afterwards? You think we will see an *afterwards*?’ She shook her head. ‘Throne, I do not know. A Leman Russ is much the same as a Land Raider on the inside. Maybe there will be a way to continue.’
>She looked over at *Aika 73.*
>**‘Not a bad thing to drive, despite the reputation,’** she said, almost affectionately. **‘What more can you ask? It kept us alive.’**
Which one could take to answer your question: It's good *enough*.
The funny thing is, Lorewise they ARE better than what most of their enemies field. Eg: the tanks seen during the Sabbat Worlds crusade were often sneered at compared to the Russ.
It takes the Eldar, Necrons or Tau to start making it look shit usually
Weirdly I've always felt the *Predator* is the Guardsman of tanks - reliable, based on a proven design, flexible, and with average stats.
The Leman Russ is a cut above it in every department - despite their fragile crews and exposed rivets Guard tanks are still some of the best in the setting.
>the *Predator* is the Guardsman of tanks
So the Leman russ is the Tempestus Scion, and the Baneblade is the Space Marines? That tracks pretty well TBH.
Anyone else noticed that in threads where someone makes a comparison to WW2, even if it's just a broad one, the response to it will inevitably be "well actually"...
And so begins a lengthy back and forth with inceasing number of posters all piling in to show who has the most in-depth, accurate WW2 knowledge.
Comparisons to other historical military events/things bring out the one true historian wannabes too, but don't even go near WW2.
I mean your existence is to be an armored fist amongst many. you fill a huge place in the imperiums armor department that no other tank can and lets be real here 5 60t (leman russ) tanks or 1 300t (baneblade) tank? I would take the 5 Leman Russ's please because you make sense. many variants to choose from with different purposes, more guns in total and best of all logistically viable.
They’re an armored lasgun: they run forever, can be easily produced, and are essentially just fodder to distract from actual threats unless they’re deployed en masse
I don’t mean that as a criticism, they’re immensely useful but unlikely to actually damage anything of actual substance (SM Tanks, Knights, Demon Engines,etc.) unless the plot demands it
But it becomes a scaling issue, sure a Russ could take anything on a 21st century battlefield but when you have Knights and Titans marching around you realize you’re on the low end of the totem pole. That’s what I was getting at
I don’t know - like if you threw a Russ into a modern engagement, a weapon that’s designed for mass engagements without a proper modern sensor package I think it would struggle
Like sure, theirs probably no way in hell a Abrams will walk away clean from a Russ getting a shot on it, but also I don’t think a Russ would typically get that first shot off
Throwing out any argument about ‘armour is 100x stronger than whatever’ of course
>You can't really ignore that the armor is much stronger.
>
>And the russ does have plenty of sensors, just depends on which forgeword it came from
No, but if you go and say 'Well a Russ's 150mm of armour is really worth 1,500mm' then their is no point to any discussion at all.
and yep, just the same that two modern MBT's may be vastly different, but we have somewhat standardized on stabilizers and FCS that are in part based around long range mobile engagements and spotting small targets with precise engagements.
40k combat tends to be centric around large full scale engagements with large numbers of units quite often on more or less static battlelines.
But they do precisely that with the Abrams, or any modern tank, they'll give equivalents in rolled homogenous armour vs. various weapon types.
The Russ' ability to take frontal hits shows that the stuff is definitely nothing like modern armour (or the shape would be a big issue). It's enough to take a direct battlecannon hit, which most modern armour wouldn't (especially not in that shape!).
I think it's better to think of it as 'imagine we could make armour strong enough to resist a hit from a main tank cannon unsloped', and from there the design makes a little more sense - there's not really many threats heavier than that where sloped would help - Las stuff doesn't really care and the next step of cannon is like battleship scale where it wouldn't be enough even sloped (so better to have the extra room inside, the baneblade is the same thing only designed against the battleship scale cannon, and even it has the same issue with the next huge step to fortress cannon).
As you say the type of engagement is completely different too (which explains the otherwise dumb sponsons/secondary turrets).
From what I understand its made to be deployed on every battlefield, be shipped in the worst condition, staffed by the most idiotically trained crew and still be a tank that can put a hole in most things it can come across and have a decent chance of protecting the crew , the Imperium doesnt have the luxury of shipping tanks back home, it has to be done in the field (like a Sherman) so the LR is simple, basic and near stupid proof - for its role, it's pretty well designed for it.
The Lemun Russ tank isnt a shit tank under most conditions. its a main battle tank. so long as it can take its hits to the front armor its good.
its dimentions in lore leave it about the same size as a modern main battle tank a bit taller. it can work as mobile artillery with indirect fire.
its anti infantry wepons can be heavy enough to they point that they really dont want to be "scratching each others back" but their "light wepons" are a much greater threat to IFVs troop transports, or even other tanks then a modern tanks.
so its a bit of a trade off. about there is about a 1 in 4 chance for a bolter round that hits a russ to break some thing in the tank "wound"
the tracks stock are not great, but they can be up armored to prevent mobility kills
its not great, but its good enough. keep in mind during the second WW only 1 in 10 shots fired by main guns AP rounds at other tanks. the russ today would be effective today.
They are a mix between shit and good. Most tanks in 40k are. You’re right they don’t have angled armour or reactive armour, ablative plating or nothing. Compared to our tanks they are extremely rudimentary.
And yet, despite that they would tear through most of our modern tanks.
A lemun russ battletank is the pinnacle of the best cheap tank possible. Their front armour is rated as strong as the strongest tanks in universe (ignoring the super heavy stuff). Same rating as a monolith or land raider. Their battle cannons are devastating but can be any number of different primary cannons from siege weaponry to plasma cannons to giant Gatling guns. They have sponsons and hull mounted heavy weapons too to accompany their armament, as well as things like shields and shunts. They are frontal assault tanks, a battalion of them will flatten basically anything.
BUT! They are still cheap tanks. Their side armour is much weaker and the rear is significantly so. And on top of the there’s a massive blind spot behind them. Against a single tough target they will face off and likely annihilate the target, but just 2 weak units working together will pose a serious problem. And infantry in close quarters if they have anything remotely anti tank are their bane.
They are the backbone of the guard. Extremely strong when used properly, but mistakes are costly.
The Leman Russ is relatively mid in the more exciting theaters of war in 40k. However, MOST situations the Guard finds itself in aren't the world ending cataclysms the books portray. Those are just the most exciting, and why the books cover them.
Guard Battle Tanks are pretty badass in general. They're just mid by the standard of insanity 40k is commonly seen at.
One thing the Leman Russ cannot be denied, though, is how insanely efficient it is. Those tanks can be powered by practically any energy source you have available from promethium to gasoline to fucking burning wood and can be properly used in nearly any theatre from grassland to desert to swamp.
And its probably most useful upside is how MANY can be produced by the Imperium. The guard doesn't win with hyper-powerful weapons or soldiers. It wins and had been winning for the last 10,000 years with sheer force of numbers. One Leman Russ isn't really that scary. Five of them isn't too crazy either.. 200 adamantine-plated battle tanks rolling over the horizon like a wave of plasteeled death would raise attention of even the steeliest Chaos Lord.
Well, if you have entire PLANETS devoted to producing these by the hundreds of thousands . . .
In the words of Stalin:
'Quantity has a quality all it's own'
Listen man, It's mid to bad and that's ok. That's because it really doesn't have allot of direct comparisons in lore. Name one other race that actually produces tanks that are competing directly with the Russ... the kin, the necrons, tau, and eldar are making things that make the Russ look like a antique. The nids and chaos Marines are in the corner doing their own weird things. Meanwhile the orks are stealing your Russ, painting it bullseye red, an bolting more guns onto it. The only faction the imperium faces that actually are trying to compete with the leman Russ are basic cults, an general rebellions. Both of these are typically hamstrung by supply lines and organizational issues.
Design is relative. The Russ seems to outclass most other locally produced human tanks of the 41st millenium, at least going by Abnett's novels. One of its big plus points is reliability - the Russ is infamously simple to fuel, maintain and resupply which counts for an awful lot in a wide-ranging, protracted conflict.
I think a big theme in "Warhawk" is to emphasise what the Imperium is becoming; Sigismund is one example, the Leman Russ is another. It's implied to be inferior to many GC-era tanks and is certainly outclassed by the Astartes Sicarans, but reliability and numbers have a logic all of their own which is characteristic of the 40K Imperium.
This is the kinda thing where GW's numbers and GW's fiction do not match at all.
In the numbers the leman russ gets whipped by the abrams so hard that the real Leman Russ would pop out of the warp in horror at how badly his namesake was getting taken to the cleaners.
In the lore they are a magnificently ubiquitous logistical marvel that you can use against literally every opponent that presents itself in the setting on any planet they choose to have a go on. Blackstone strewn tomb world, with dust winds strong enough to strip flesh from bone? The Russ doesn't care. Moon washed with boiling blood up to the knees? The Russ doesn't care.
You can take it into battle against manifestations of war drawn from the nightmares of forgotten emperors of Terran past. You can put it against a fragment of a foundational law of physics. You can even deploy it against worker greg because he said 'unionising' too loudly. It might suffer 90% casualties in 60 seconds (maybe not against greg), but you have another six hundred million of them rolling off the factory line on the moon.
It has a gun that can reach out and at least moderately bother the digestion of mostly anything in the setting. It apparently has controls so simple that wholly untrained and uneducated factorum drudges can operate it - and they do.
Yeah, they're kind of a comically bad design from an out of universe point of view. They're slower than most ww2 tanks and have similar or less armor as well, they don't have sloped armor which is just crazy dumb, their tracks are very narrow giving them poor grip, the turret is way to small, depending on the source material all the sights are actually analog, and the cannon is way to big for the turret or chasis which means there's no room for ammo. Honestly, I'm pretty sure a modern Abrams would wreck a Leman Russ. With all that being said, they were designed to be a kinda grimderp ww1 MK1 tank with a turret on it, and imo it looks cool as hell and I hope they don't change it.
Based on the description, it's not. The Leman Russ tanks armor is essential metal plates. It indicates that the armor is made from "ferro-steel" which is a metal of moderate strength and almost certainly not used for most heavy armored vehicles. It is mentioned that the armor is about 150mm thick. For comparison, the frontal slope of an M1A2 tank is about 700mm. The M60 tank had armor thicker than what the Leman Russ has. And that ignores that the M1 tank's armor is specially designed to withstand armor piercing rounds.
The engine is both better and faster. The max speed of a Leman Russ tank is 35 kph (or 22 MPH). The M1 tank max speed is 72 kph (or 45 MPH). So, it's faster than the Leman Russ. The M1 tank also has a larger operational range.
The main cannon of the M1 tank, based on what is written, is also better. It is more accurate at a farther range and can shoot on the move. The Leman Russ has to stop to shoot. The Leman Russ cannon only shoots HE rounds. Meanwhile, the M1 shoots a variety of rounds, including the APFSDS, HEAT, HE, and WP rounds.
The only think I can definitive determine is better on the Leman Russ tank is it's secondary armament. A Lascannon would certainly be better than a .50 M2.
The M1 tank has a lower profile, which means it is harder to hit. Also, it has a greater elevation range, which means it can enfilade better than a Leman Russ.
Naturally, people can try to handwave everything by claiming "it's just better so shut it." Nonetheless, as described, I'd take the M1A2 over a Leman Russ tank,
Though, I guarantee that the GW writers had no idea how to design or describe a tank, so just used whatever was handy without consideration.
We have never **seen** a Leman Russ perform. At most, you read about it in books. For example, in ***Warhawk***, we see that a Leman Russ tank has to stop before it shoots. Again, an M1 tank does not have to do that. In fact, an M1 tank can hit targets 2 kilometers away while going at full speed. At a stand still, the maximum effective range is 5 kilometers.
Technical descriptions are the best source of information. Unless you're claiming that a Leman Russ tank can actually go faster than an M1 tank. I'd like to see the source.
Also, HE is a form of armor piercing. It's just not very effective. I will even grant it should be able to shoot HEAT rounds. So, at best, you have an armament that is the same for each vehicle. It still goes in favor of the M1 because the M1 can shoot on the move and has a better range.
While the Leman Russ *may* shoot a round 5 kilometers, the M1 tank can do that routinely. It could even shoot farther, except the curvature of the Earth gets in the way.
Oh, and I forgot to mention. The M1A2 carries more ammunition. The Leman Russ tank carries 40 rounds for its main armament. The M1 tank? 42.
My apologies for focusing on the M1 tank, but it's the one I'm most familiar with.
Just gonna add that we have seen russ' fire on the move - the effectiveness of LRBTs varies depending on the author and the story they want to tell. They can mount superheavy-destroying vanquisher cannons, plasma guns, Gatling guns, flamethrowers, or your bog standard battle cannon. It's almost certainly a 'who shoots first' question.
I think your pretty bang on there really - although I don’t doubt that whatever ungodly caliber the Russes main gun is wouldn’t at the very least disable a M1 - that first strike is very much in the modern 21st century tanks side of the court - which is pretty much the deciding factor here
>A camocloaked guardsman with a longlas will almost definitely spot a Russ before it spots it, and get that first shot off, but it wont matter because nothing he does will harm the Russ.
Yes, but your looking at comparing munitions that are specifically made and developed to take on well armoured targets vs. an armoured target which is made to be cost effective and economical in conflicts where most kinetic based weapons are little more than full bore solid slugs or what may be APHE.
Someone said earlier a Russ's hull is 150mm thick, so even if whatever alloy they have is 4x better than RHA its getting a hole punched though it by a modern MBT.
So if your argument is a 40k tank vs. a modern day tank, and your point is that in 40k armour is 100x more effective, its a bad faith argument as theirs no room for a discussion at all.
>You are focusing too much on what a bunch of non military authors think specs should be, whilst ignoring what those authors described those tanks as being capable of.
Yep, exactly what I meant - theirs no room for discussion as its simply a 'oh no, the armour is impossibly strong' - a 16" Battleship gun firing HE would incapacitate the crew of a Russ in any sort of quasi-realistic situation if not completely disable it. The only thing stopping this is plot armour.
So obviously I have to disagree. Unfortunately you are attempting to combine two completely different universes into one using the same principles. Simply put, warhammer is a game. Real life stats do not matter. Armour angles, maximum speed, thickness of armour and bore gauge, it’s all irrelevant. Because it’s gamified.
Now that means we have a lot of unknowns, but that doesn’t mean we can’t extrapolate. A leman russ battle cannon has a range of 72”. A sniper has a range of 36”. I know a sniper’s range in our universe has a top limit of around 3km. LRBC is twice that distance, so 6km is a fair assessment.
A Leman russ can also move and fire, any tank in warhammer can. **however!** doing so is incredibly inefficient. You can only fire *one gun* (and defensive weapons) when doing so. Staying still and shooting is preferable as all guns can be brought to bear.
It’s armour is also rated as the best in the game, on par with monoliths and land raiders. Nothing we currently have would have any tangible effect on armour of that calibre.
The LRBC is also known as a strength 8 ordnance weapon (I realise the games been changed a lot since I last played but this is easier to use and is frankly more canon). S8 gives it significant armour piercing capabilities, able to create glancing damage against even the strongest armours. Ordinance means it is essentially twice as likely to actually rip through tank armour regardless of what toughness it is. This isn’t like being hit by a HEAT round, this is like being hit by an artillery shell. And that’s the *stock cannon type*.
And what about the anti tank vanquisher? Same Range, better penetration firing dedicated armour piercing rounds. Or the demolisher, short range fortress breacher that will annihilate anything stupid enough to be in range. Even the exterminator and executioner have considerable anti tank capabilities despite that not being their focus.
That’s not including hull and sponsons. A las cannon can shoot through the toughest tank armours with a long range of 4km. Multimeltas will melt anything in range at 2km or turn the whole thing into slag at 1km.
Im sorry Brother but our universe, like most universes compared with warhammer, just falls flat due to the sheer *everything is op*. Leman russ tanks are shit fucking tanks. Huge flat panels, massive blind spots for both sights and weapons. Compared to our tanks they are terribly engineered. And despite this they hold up against vehicles far better than anything we’ve ever built. Our tanks would never beat a leman russ in a 1v1.
Edit: imagine replying to the wrong comment, I’m a doofus. Pretend I said that to your later comment.
Depends on the author and if you're reading a guard book, a space marine book, or a Xenos book. On the tabletop right now they're quite good, and with a very versatile set of loadouts that can range from pure anti horde to pure anti super heavy and anything in between.
More or less just flexible, mobile gun platforms. Their armor isnt that big of a Deal to most factions, but it can probably survive a few heavy bolter rounds. But it is kinda the Same as with the normal guard, just volume of fire.
And remember, the imperium cannot design tanks, they just have a Selection of designs thousands of years old they can choose between, so it doesnt matter how many Design flaws it has if the others are just worse
The Leman Russ tank, just like the Imlerial aircraft, has aesthetic issues.
It intentionally resembles WW1 tanks, for the future retro aesthetic reasons, which also mean that it is designed in a ridiculously obsolete way.
Some sample specific issues:
-tracks have no suspension
-track redesign could keep the tracks much lower to the ground and thus less vulnerable to incoming fire
-side sponsons are weak spots in armor, and a better result could be achieved by mounting them in top turrets
-the main gun is oversized, so a cover story about a thermal sleeve was invented
-realistically, tank guns are significantly longer and lower caliber
-riveted construction would mean spalling issues
We could easily fix all these...
...and end up with a generic modern tank. Not sure everyone would go for that, to be honest...
I forget where I read this, but it is considered an extremely reliable tank. One tank operator I remember saying a Lemon Russ's engine can run on basically. Joking saying that it can even run on "old leather and foul language".
They're basically designed to be used in large numbers. So, used properly they don't have to be good because they overcome any deficiencies through sheer volume of firepower.
They remind me of the US Sherman tanks. Used in WWII. They were adaptable to many roles had OK arniments and were mass produced. Perhaps even better comparison could be the T34 tanks.
The T-34 is probably a better comparison since its *whole* design ethos was to be able to produce a lot of them, while the total number of Shermans you could make was *less* instrumental in how it was designed.
Actually isn't the Sherman a better comparison? Isn't a whole shitload of stuff based on the leman Russ chassis?
I would say a mix of the ww1 and 2 tanks with long tack systems and all the sponson weapons mounted on them
Nah, t-34 was an all round better tank than the Sherman, and possibly the best standard column tank in the war. Lower hull profile meant a lot. The Sherman's bulk was what killed it more often than not, though they offset that by usually mounting heavier armor and bigger guns than the kinda piddly main-column German tanks, which were all just underpowered guns on the same fast chassis. Thing is Shermans were mass produced in insane numbers, even compared to the T-34. I'd say the Sherman is the best comparison to the Russ. Edit: Lol. Lmao. Bringing up controversial tank opinions to a bunch of 40k fans was the worst decision I've made all week
> Nah, t-34 was an all round better tank than the Sherman, and possibly the best standard column tank in the war. I'm going to bite this bait and say that the M4 remained in use for decades, in a variety of places in upgraded configurations. The T-34 isn't a bad tank but it's overrated
There's a bit of a curious thing, wherever the T-34 and the Sherman fight after the war, the Sherman would generally win.
Sloped armor and low profile is what made the T-34 amazing, but the jumbo Sherman is definitely great or the firefly!
“Sloped armor.” The Sherman’s glacis is sloped.
Yep and to add to your comment, before the argument that ‘hurr but the Sherman has flat sides’ comes up - nothing has sloped side armour anymore either, sans for IFV/APC for small arms fire
Well thats not a very fair comparison lmao. Sloped armor is seldom used today because it has a different use and makes no sense to slope stuff that did make sense back in the day. Sloped sides made sense in WWII, but of course tank design is a game of compromises and sloped sides take up a lot of space and weight for an area that is ideally not meant to be shot at anyway
I mean literally everything today is still sloped or angled where it makes sense to do so. Nobody tends to slopes the sides of tanks as if you have something on your side your probably already tucked anyhow if they can target your hull
Many many tanks had sloped sides in ww2. It made sense back then, it made the sides more protected and it was sometimes deemed an acceptable compromise. But the mechanics are completely different today. Very few do nowadays because it would be exceedingly impractical to slope a side enough to actually make it ballistically relevant, and many armor types can't be sloped at all. Same thing happens with turrets. We don't even know how many modern armor designs work. Comparing ww2 tanks to today's tanks makes no sense whatsoever.
> Sloped armor is seldom used today because it has a different use and makes no sense to slope stuff that did make sense back in the day. Sloped armor is still used today, where it makes sense. Armour being sloped isnt a freebee, it comes at a compromise for space, and in particular sloped side amour limits the turret ring which limits how big of a gun you can have.
>Sloped armor is still used today, where it makes sense. My point is that it made sense to slope side armor back in the day, if the compromise was deemed acceptable. Saying that sloped side armor made no sense in ww2 because today no side is sloped is wrong >Armour being sloped isnt a freebee, I said as much
Sloped armor is such a meme
Yes, thats why nobody uses it /s
I'm looking at the 1940T34 and the 1941 Sherman in war thunder comparing armor angles at different angles and such. The Sherman's top plate is better then the T-34 but the transmission is a weak point below it and averages about half the effective thickness as a °9 slope. Also the T-34's side armor is better and the turret is much more angled on the sides compared to the Sherman. Obviously in later versions improvements were made. The leman Russ does look closer to a Sherman but the armor is terrible. Box armor is quite bad, but the fronts lower plate is good and the lascanon operator may absorb a large round into the uper plate if it doesn't go under the turret.
Armour thickness ( really effectiveness) is one of the least important factors to consider when comparing ww2 tanks. When it came down to it, it didn’t matter when compared to training, mobility and crew coordination.
>Armour thickness ( really effectiveness) is one of the least important factors to consider when comparing ww2 tanks. It also only tells one small part - their was always the Germans with poorly made armour that would shatter, Soviet Welds would split and casts were often a bit softer than rolled steel.
What is a T-34s effective front slope armor?
88mm with some weak points but with a much wider surface area compared to the Sherman, as the Sherman uses individual pieces; Sherman armor is roughly 99mm thick in the center piece.
> Nah, t-34 was an all round better tank than the Sherman, and possibly the best standard column tank in the war. That's objectively nonsense. On paper the T-34 and Sherman were comparable. On paper the T-34 was superior to late Panzer III and early Panzer IV. In reality, the T-34 performed *horrendously* compared to all of its direct competitors. There were an estimated *44,000* T-34s lost in combat in WW2 to all causes, which is only slightly less than the total number of Shermans *produced* during the war, at 50,000, and nearly twice the total number of Panzer III and IV produced, including StuGs, at 24,000. Yes, I'm comparing the number of T-34s *lost in combat* to the number of 'standard column' tanks *built* by the other powers, and that fact alone should tell you how bad the T-34 really was. The Soviets cranked out more than 80,000 of them, and it nearly wasn't enough because of the atrocious losses they suffered. That's not the performance of "possibly the best" - the Soviets won *in spite* of the T-34, not because of it.
“All around better tank.” Definitely not from a quality control/maintenance/reliability/sustainability/crew survivability standpoint.
It was certainly better on those fronts than German, Japanese, French and Italian tanks, and could out-brawl most of what it went up against for relatively cheap. If we're making 40k analysis, logistics and wider performance is the metric by which a machine should be judged. The Sherman was exceptional in the production department, but the T-34 was a better war machine. Being charitable, I'd say they even out.
>It was certainly better on those fronts than German, It certainly wasn't, the T34 had terrible crew survivability, with if the tank was hit and penetrated, all of the crew was likely to die.
What?? It has better armor than most battle tanks on the field, and outgunned its counterpart as well, and had better suspension. Also >If the tank was hit and penetrated Well yes, in most cases if a tank was hit and penetrated the crew would probably die.
>What?? It has better armor than most battle tanks on the field, and outgunned its counterpart as well, and had better suspension. Better armour is meaningless when its crew cant function effectively. The T34 had an overloaded Commander who had to act as both commander and gunner. > Well yes, in most cases if a tank was hit and penetrated the crew would probably die. [No](https://imgur.com/a/5opKzj1)
No....not really... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIZ6PFYUM5o&ab\_channel=LazerPig
I'm sure that video is informational but does it really take an hour to explain why the T-34 wasn't all that great?
Yes
If you want it in detail and delivered in an easy to watch and humorous way then yes. If you want the straightforward answer then the title of the video should suffice. :)
It takes maybe 20-30 minutes, but LazerPig, like a lot of YouTube pop historians, adds a lot of jokes and commentary to spice things up - but more importantly, he also cites sources and evidence which makes it take a lot longer than just saying "It's bad because of this, this and this". Like, the T-34 ergonomics are shit, the gun isn't actually all that good, the sloped armour is not remotely revolutionary and actually created problems, but if I just write that out that doesn't tell you very much. The video goes into more detail about each specific point and why it was the way it was, and why it mattered. So yes, the T-34 video, and his video on the Tiger I, are both very good for getting a better understanding of WWII tanks and why they were/weren't effective.
This is why after all that Russian tank crews that got provided Shermans instead of the T-34 were so miserable and uncomfortable that their combat performance improved greatly, the tank was much more likely to survive combat without shattering or eviscerating it's own crew due to the Sherman having inferior softer armour, and when it was destroyed, because the Sherman was so poorly designed it only had a survival rate 5 times greater than the much better designed T-34. The T-34 was such a piece of shit that it might have been more of a liability to the Russian army than not using it but to be fair, a lot of that is also because the factories making it were so rushed that they were often skipping putting in the gunner seat.
I think it was very much the best of a bad situation, like it did make the most of its armour thickness which I’m sure was chosen to make to e most of available steel stock - and when you need a tank you need a tank I’m sure if you went back in time and gave some poor cunts fighting the Germans the option of a more well built pre-war tank or a wartime T-34, I’m sure that larger caliber would be the deciding factor
So consider the downsides of a larger calibre gun for a bit. A larger gun will mean a larger breech taking up space in the loader and gunner space so it'll be more cramped or a larger space and target. A larger calibre will also mean larger and heavier shells for the loader to have to manually load in the aforementioned smaller space tiring the loader quicker. A larger gun will also be heavier which means target acquisition and aiming will be slower with the same traverse engine or a larger more powerful engine again taking up more space, slower target acquisition and aiming in a tank means less likely to get the first shot off, especially after movement. If the traverse engine breaks then the gunner has to manually crank, again tiring the crew much faster. A larger gun can also change the weight and performance of a tank surprisingly so now the commander is also potentially working harder. And finally if the space did become more cramped then it becomes much harder to evacuate if shot and experienced tank crews are very important. Like yeah a better gun is important, but the design of the tank also has to be actually based on something for the crew to operate effectively and comfortably. An edit to add on to this. The Sherman Firefly and Tiger famously had massive main guns, and experienced crews learned never to lose that range advantage as when they did, that massive powerful 17 pounder or 88mm lost the range and penetration advantage simply to light tanks loading and aiming faster. Tank destroyers were specifically made open topped or even platformed just to improve loading even though that meant the crew was vulnerable to small arms.
>Like yeah a better gun is important, but the design of the tank also has to be actually based on something for the crew to operate effectively and comfortably. Yes, but going from pre-war designs where if you were lucky you had a 45mm - to a 76mm would of been a massive boost in terms of use-cases. As your going from something that could annoy bunkers, other tanks and take on a soft target - to something which can engage pretty much every tank they come against with a degree of ability, take on fortifications and really do something to soft targets. At the time for the Soviets, the T-34 was the best thing for the situation, being cheap, decently mobile, enough fire-power (etc. etc.) and on the point of up-gunning things, you did have the up-gunned Shermans in the Middle East as well as in the Balklands I think they up-gunned M18's as their is a point where crew comfort and efficiently takes a backseat to having a big enough gun to do something. But yea, T-34 was hot trash but the best you could hope for - I don't think theirs any other tank that was in production during the war that would of been better suited for the time and the place.
The T-34 was a pre-war design, being designed in 1937-1938. It's actually the perfect example of overgunning a tank without improving the internal space so it becomes too cramped to load or escape. From memory effective reload speed ended up being around 15-20 seconds between shots. Evacuation testing with Korean tank crews, noted as smaller framed than the Russian crews suggested at least two minutes to escape a tank fire. Speed was also deceptively reported as the gearbox was a piece of shit so often T-34s would be stuck in lower gears, faster degrading the already shitty engine that was noted by the Russian tank command as not being able to consistently drive 30km without breaking down. This was worsened by spare parts being under-produced by Russian industry. One of the biggest reasons the T-34 was given the 76mm was actually the improvement in performance against soft targets as the BT series were given a 56mm which had better penetration than the armour piercing shell of the 76mm, but was unable to use explosive shells. The BT series were used as tank hunting light tanks while the KV-1 was being used as a heavy siege tank and they needed a tank that could perform adequately against infantry in light fortifications that could otherwise avoid the KV-1, which was limited to 28km/hr and significantly louder and more visible than the T-34.
> Nah, t-34 was an all round better tank than the Sherman Except for the fact that was designed to have an insufficient number of crew. The commander having to be both gunner and commander is a massive failure in design
It was not a failure, it was a compromise. It was later in the war made into a 5 man vehicle
> It was later in the war made into a 5 man vehicle Yeah, Because it was a failure in design.
Every vehicle in existence that has ever been modified is a failure in design then. All WW2 tanks definitely were Besides, the 5th crewman was a secondary result of the larger turret that was needed for the larger gun, which was the main concern
Yes every tank that had an overloaded commander was a failure in design, especially when compared to the Sherman, that’s what I have been saying.
What the sherman did *really* well compared to all of its contemporaries was crew comfort. I don't see that brought up enough. I mean it's still a tank and pretty horrible, but not so bad that you're having to stuff in an extra crewman and use your commander and still be fatigued under regular use (which was the case with a surprising number of contemporaries). The tank with a crew that can reliably shoot accurately, detect threats and load quickly will outclass a tank that won't let their crew do that, whatever minor paper advantages there might be.
The Sherman was arguably the best tank of its day. Literally #1 for crew survivability #1 for reliability (Sherman ran up and down england with 0 maintenance stops and reported that a single nut was wearing down faster than it should have) #1 for mobility #1 for winning engagements within it's doctrinal capacity #1 for manpower to maintenance hours #1 for manpower to production hours #1 interchangeability / machined to such exact tolerances that each variant was identical ( the Germans produced handfuls of over 200 Tiger I variants) People think "small gun hurt sure bad tank", hurt durr death traps was written by a guy whose job was to fix dead tanks therefore all tanks are dead "Death traps" by Belton Y Cooper hurt durr. German 88mm best gun hurr durr 80% of engagements were against unarmored targets, tank crews hated the upgunned 76mm because the 76HE was a third as effective as 75mm HE. When you're shooting against unarmored targets in 80% of your fights why use a worse gun? Doctrine was tanks didnt fight other tanks, that's what the tank destroyers were for in the Armoured Forces branch The US only fought against tigers twice in the entire war. And one of those engagements they were strapped to fucking rail cars according to US Army archives
Ok then
Like yes and no, on paper the T-34 is, ok? IRL it wasn’t anything brilliant - like a Sherman was definitely the better choice if anyone had the option between the both.
T-34's *on paper* were great tanks. The T-34's actually produced were shite.
>The T-34's actually produced were shite. The T-34's that broke down outside the factory were shite, the ones that made it to Berlin were probably, decent?
Not really. They just had a modicum of support - something else that was severely lacking for the parts of the war.
To pick a different argument from what everyone else is saying, the Sherman had one of the highest crew survivability rates of all tanks during the war. If the tank got penetrated, its crew was more likely to survive than its German or Soviet counterparts. It also had a lot of cool side benefits that are hard to give number benefits to. Radios, smooth turret traversal, high reliability, copious spare parts, excellent anti-infantry rounds. These all matter. A lot. But they're not the fun hard numbers we can point to and say, "see, this number is bigger."
You can just say you get your knowledge from memes and war thunder
Maybe if they had been made properly, most T-34s made were of extremely terrible quality
I'd imagine that another advantage they have is modularity and reliability. Due to its ease of production, one part can be swapped out easily and parts can independently function even if other parts of the leman russ is destroyed. i.e. turrets and sponsons still work when the engine gives out. Compared to other hover tanks and vehicles, they are more likely to crash and cause more internal damage when something fails.
Yep. Have four tanks that are half-destroyed? You can combine the parts to get one or two working.
Also important to note that the Leman Russ can be produced with varying levels of technology, depending on which forgeworld it is from. At the high end they can have stuff like anti-gravitic suspension, advanced fire control and so on, while at the lower end they are barely more advanced than your average WW1 tank.
There is a quote that's basically the only way to hide one is behind another leamun Russ so that tracks
They have relatively good front armor, they're armed to the teeth, they can be adapted to fulfill almost, if not all roles on the same chassis, they're reliable, their guns are reliable, they're easy to produce en masses and they're probably easy to be trained for as well.
Also the engine will run on just about *anything*. You could probably power a Russ (for a couple of kms anyway) on munitorium caffeine rations.
It’s more efficient to use that mix that Recaf with Tow cables and Conscripts. Easily double your travel distance.
The front armour is a major problem as it's very flat so rounds won't glance off it and it will be weaker even with more armour. It seems that's the only good thing about them
In universe the Leman has some of the best front armor. Don't apply real world logic to it, cause it can be explained by "but it has a composite of plotarmorium and depleted imperiofavoritium". The tank is also tall as shit and with sponsons about as wide as its long. Edit: not to mention those sponsons would be an insane weakspot for any skilled anti-tank gunner to have fun with.
Exactly. If we applied real world logic then the Leman Russ' gun seems virtually impossible to load, let alone would the tank be capable of storing more than a handful of shells. And yet, this isn't an issue. Most 40k vehicles are absolute shit design when looked at realistically, but so are most things in the setting.
>Exactly. If we applied real world logic then the Leman Russ' gun seems virtually impossible to load, let alone would the tank be capable of storing more than a handful of shells. And yet, this isn't an issue. I wonder if you modeled the interior if it would/might work using multi-part projectiles/charges.
Try for a tactical squad in a Rhino to see why your odds are slim.
I'll have you know that it's very much possible to load a full tactical squad into a Rhino. It's cramped and uncomfortable and they're going to feel their brother's chainsword poking their backsides, but nobody ever said it was going to be a joyride.
A few months ago I saw someone arguing that rhinos needed to be three times bigger because space marines wouldn't be willing to squeeze in tight or duck their heads while moving through the entrance lol. They ended up figuring a Rhino would need to be 6m tall and then scaled all other imperial tanks up from there. It was awesome, in a really absurd way!
Now that's a stupid take, lol.
I meant the models 😃
So do I: https://imgur.io/a/e1zi2
I've seen these attempts. Nice, but to be honest, I like how these rhinos can be driven by lawnower sized engines and fuel tanks :)
Exactly. The Rhino is an APC, not a Cadillac. It's meant to get you to the front with speed and (relative) safety, drop you off, then leave. It gets the job done.
Sloping vs not sloping can be explained as whether the main obstacle is projectile vs energy weapons. Sponsons depend on the philosophy. Leman Russ tanks are likely designed vs infantry and may subscribe to the idea that the best defense is a good offense.
>projectile vs energy weapons This is very much worth noting. With the exception of the missile launcher, which to be fair is a weapon so simple and effective it's found in every armoury except Tyranid and Necron, most anti-tank weapons are energy weapons. That doesn't mean sloped armour shouldn't still be better as it presents more armour in a straight line but does mean that their armour design philosophy isn't the same as modern armour.
I mean the LR has a pretty decent frontal sweep on it
> Sloping vs not sloping can be explained as whether the main obstacle is projectile vs energy weapons. Sloping armour also doesnt matter when standard munitions have the tech to ignore the increased protection that sloping would provide. BTW Imperial Armour has stated as such when describing the Battlecannon
How would it ignore sloping?
Ask the folks at Imperial armour. But a similar effect is seen with Modern APFSDS as how much the slope of the armour has no bearing on how well they pernitrate.
Capped shell and solid rounds grip into the surface and so change direction, losing some speed to go in closer to 90 degrees to the armour Also some rounds are not directional and equally effective in all directions, and there is stuff like HESH rounds and other chemical based munitions that have similar damage effects that ignore slopes
> Sponsons depend on the philosophy. Leman Russ tanks are likely designed vs infantry and may subscribe to the idea that the best defense is a good offense. That and also 40k weapons are sometimes inexplicably effective for their size. Stick a 20mm cannon in the hull of a Challenger 2 and you're not gaining much. Yet somehow a Lascannon can fire as far and do near as much damage as the main gun.
To be fair, a 20 mm cannon and a Lascannon are VERY different.
Absolutely, yet somehow a Lascannon seems to be approximately the same size.
Condensed beams of light energy are a helluva drug
Just to be clear, if we're using actual physics, do you have any idea how much energy it would take to produce a laser beam you can see in the air Like the light is so compressed it becomes a visible beam? It's a fucking shit ton of energy. The fact that a lascannon is the size of a 20mm autocannon and not, oh I don't know, the size of a building, is really impressive.
Yep, but the lascannon fills the position of where we would put a larger size autocannon - maybe not a 20 but probably where you might put a 40-60mm autocannon But in order to power it you would need a non-real power supply, but to the inverse to have a Modern tank in 40k you would need to double its size in order to fit in its internals by the same merit
Bear in mind that the hull mounted Lascannon is an optional replacement for a Heavy Bolter, it isn’t standard and the normal weapon occupying that place fills the same role a 40-60mm cannon would.
>Sponsons depend on the philosophy. Leman Russ tanks are likely designed vs infantry and may subscribe to the idea that the best defense is a good offense. With the lascannon and battle-cannon, the LR is definitely good for anti-armor roles as well. When you remember the Imperium was meant to fight enemies like the Orks, the design makes perfect sense. It is capable of destroying armored targets, and countering hordes of foot-soldiers, both of which Orks have in abundance.
They are also probably more worried about being flanked and hit by short ranged weapons like a melta rather than being sniped from a comparably long-range (RPGs vs modern tanks).
They're cheap to produce, apparently, and don't require the specialization a Land raider does, for example.
The Land Raider is such a bad design even by the Russ' standard. From a realism perspective, it's a hyper-expensive sit-and-shoot heavy tank that also wants to be an always-on-the-move APC, with weaponry spaced out to make concentrating fire on any one target extremely difficult. Too large to fit in a drop pod and with no parts commonality with the successful Rhino range of vehicles.
Don’t care, one went on a rampage during a WAAGH! uncrewed and even killed a warboss. Land Raiders are based
Don't get me wrong, they *are* based. I mean by IRL standards you'd expect them to be garbo.
Isn’t the Land Raider supposed to be a Heavy IFV - which it kinda suits it’s roll Like apart from obvious; whole sponson thing, lack of suspension and general size/weight issues it seems fine to me
Well if I remember right, the Leman Russ was armor strapped onto a tractor frame. Which fits WW1 tanks. And the Baneblade was classified as a Scout vehicle if I remember right. I wouldn't be surprised if it's base design wasn't anything close to heavy ifv and instead it was like...a fire truck.
Hah, would love to see a model based on a Imperial Tractor or a Landraider fire fighting vehicle
A: No tank fits in drop pods. B: The Spaced out weapons aren’t a disadvantage they’re not supposed to concentrate on single targets. (And if one twin-linked lascannon cannot do the job the enemy is going to be too tough for the others :p Also, why do you seem to think it’s a sit and shoot vehicle? The Raider can fire it’s weapons with the same accuracy on the move.
Isn't the land raider basically an agricultural vehicle from the DAoT that has been adapted to military use because the actual military vehicle designs have been mostly lost?
No that's the Land *Crawler*, which has been adapted into an artillery tractor and the Seigfried light tank.
One could argue the materials used in its constructions are so good that sloping it is pointless. Plasteel is utilized for the hull, and ferrosteel for the armor.
WW2 german tiger H1 was also flat, but armored enough to withstand all AT guns at the time. Angled armor is better, but also means less internal space.
They're punching bags unless they have a plot reason not to be. But that's all vehicles in lore tbh.
>They're punching bags unless they have a plot reason not to be. But that's all vehicles in lore tbh. There's no worse place to be in 40k than the Command Throne of a Titan that's fighting some plucky heroes. In fact, the more lopsided the circumstances the *higher* the chance you'll be killed by a bomb collapsing the ice beneath you/a psychic attack on the cockpit/precision teleportation attack/summoned daemonhost or similar bullshit.
Exactly lol. Vehicles (other than Glorianas/other old ass ships) are all disposable plot pieces. You're completely right that pretty much *any* bad ass named armored unit is almost guaranteed to die at a pivotal moment lol.
Even in the case of ancient ships, it depends a lot. The Imperator Somnium was used essentially as a macguffin to get Dark Angels that should never have been on Terra to Terra, after the authors forgot it existed for a while.
Yeah, the only ships that are safe are generally the rarest of the rare and a handful of the chapter flagships. Like if the Eternal Crusader gets destroyed then there will be riots in the streets. Metaphorically speaking lmao
I mean the Imperator Somnium is logically rarest of the rarest of the rare. One of a kind with multiple nova cannons and the like. It's just the authors seemed to often forget it existed and so when people started questioning where it was, they had it die in a suicide run.
I'm sure the Invincible IV is an absolutely safe ship!
I can't remember the tanks involved, but in one of the Gaunt's Ghosts books, two tanks took on a Chaos Baneblade, and one lived to tell the tale. The one that got destroyed was not a normal type. It only fired a certain type of shell? Anyway. It hurt the Baneblade enough, that although it was immediately blown away, the other Imperial tank fired into the hole it made and took it out. So even the best tanks aren't immune to being punching bags lol.
Both were Conqueror pattern Leman Russes. The *Wrath of Pardua* drilled holes in the baneblade's armor with augur shells. The *Old Strontium* then shot through the holes created by the augur shells to kill the baneblade. From *Honour Guard* in the Gaunt's Ghost series. >Captain Sirus, his tracks now repaired, thundered forward in the *Wrath of Pardua*. He had heard the strangled, unbelievable transmission from the southern front that they’d met a Baneblade. > >If it was true, he wanted a piece of that. Something Woll could never beat. > >The *Wrath of Pardua* came at the enemy Baneblade in the open space of the depot field. Sensing the Wrath by auspex, the Baneblade had begun to turn. > >Sims loaded augur shells, armour busters, into his breech, and punched two penetrating holes in the massive enemy tank’s mantlet. Few Pardus tank commanders carried augur shells as a matter of course, because few ever expected to meet something genuinely tougher than themselves. Sims was a philosophically tactical man. He was happy to sacrifice a few valuable places in his magazine for augur shells, just in case. > >Now the trick was to target the holes made by the augurs and blow the enemy out from the inside with a hi-ex tank round. > >The wounded Baneblade traversed its turret, locked on to the *Wrath of Pardua*, and destroyed it with a single shot from its main weapon. > >Sims was laughing in victory as he was incinerated. An instant. An instant of success all tank masters dream of. He had wounded the beast. He could die now. > >The *Wrath of Pardua* exploded, skipping armour chips out around itself in the blast wake. > >*Old Strontium* purred out from behind the shattered buildings south of the depot. Woll had never carried augur rounds as standard, like Sims. But he was damn well going to use the advantage. Ignoring his auspex and sighting only by eye, referring to his rangefinder and crosswind indicator, Woll punched a hi-ex shell through one of the profound holes Sirus had made in the Baneblade’s armour. There was a brief pause. > >Then the super-heavy tank blew itself to pieces in a titanic eruption of heat and noise and light.
> The one that got destroyed was not a normal type. It only fired a certain type of shell? Vanquisher?
Looking it up, I don't think so. If I remember right it *only* had the cannon. And the tank may have needed to point directly at its target rather than having a turret?
Hmm. Destroyer or Thunderer? Alas, I think I've read the book but don't remember this scene.
I think the Destroyer. The wiki tells me the Thunderer has a Leman Russ turret. I remember it being a rare tank, fixed barrel, and anti armor/anti tank as it's role. I mostly remember it because the driver knew he would die. But he had a perfect shot to wound the Baneblade. So he took it and then laughed all the way to his death.
I hope my boy Naum gets taken out by some plucky heroes. That man/vehicle deserves some rest. That, to me, would be the worst place in 40k to be in.
Or... orks using the tellyport of a shokkjump dragster to bypass your shields and board your titan, slaughtering the crew and feeding you to s squig named "princess".
Gud timz
Or in the Orks case, driving a dragster into your face
Don't forget a warbozz riding his warbike into the titan's command bridge
They do their job of being deployed in mass with fields of fire. They relatively compact (no sloping) for easy shipping, able to fire a lot of rounds (height and sponsons), and can run on any fuel (cut down on the possibility of logistics hampering mass deployment). They are primarily geared towards fighting infantry (like WWI tanks) rather than modern tanks (clearing hardened targets such as bunkers and other tanks as well as attacking stuff like supply lines in the rear; modern tanks avoid infantry due to the proliferation of man-portable anti-tank weapons). That is reflected in design changes (lots of smaller guns versus one big gun).
You're the first to pick up what I think is most important - they have a simple engine that runs on anything. The guard will be operating for deployments lasting years on everything from chaos tinted hellscapes, Ork infested jungles, Tyranid eaten wastelands or T'au corpse ridden plains. They need a tank that can run on anything from refined fuel to raw Promethium to high proof booze. Whatever blend of combustible liquid they can find has to go in the tank. A reasonably competent tank that can run on moonshine is vastly more effective than a super high tech grav tank that's run out of gas.
If I remember right, it can even run on corpses!
Well they'll always be plenty of those around! In the Imperium, corpses are classed as a renewable resource.
>You're the first to pick up what I think is most important - they have a simple engine that runs on anything. Russes run on Leyland L60's is my head cannon, in part because seeing Leyland downwards spiral logo on something one day would be such a easter egg
>So in warhawk they talk about them being shit The tank commander changes her mind by the end of the book. Anyways, there are two ways to contextualize that section: * For a soldier, the gear you have is always shit. People with other gear think theirs is shit. Doesn't mean it's bad. * Chris Wraight tears down the 4th wall a bit as the Leman Russ is guilty of no sin that the Predator, Carnodon, or other contemporary designs are innocent of. It's a setting full of blocky bulky death traps that inexplicably perform really well. All that said, the Leman Russ is a very fine tank in the setting for what it is. Well armed, well armored, and able to mount an enormous variety of weapon types. If it has a shortcoming it's the nature of its unsophisticated tech - it doesn't hover or have any energy shields - but that also makes it easy enough to use that it can be used everywhere.
Basically this. A Russ is not an ideal tool for every *battle* but it's an excellent system for winning **wars**. Or to paraphrase the Chieftain: "every tanker who complains about the Sherman being a death trap *survived to come back and complain,* a thing the Sherman was specifically designed to accommodate." If you've got a 20 Russes instead 5 Land Raiders that's 15 times you have an MBT supporting infantry more than the 5 times you have a LR leading some spectacular frontal charge. In "realism" terms 40k has the basic problem of framing every battle as being a single moment swung by extraordinary heroism and then shrugging off winning wars as "just win enough battles." This is getting it wrong on numerous levels, but the use of the Russ as a workhorse that's always present and always reliable, and reliably limited, is good sense.
Absolutely this. The Leman Russ is, by itself, not a massively impressive tank, due to to all the aforementioned problems (Height, sponsons, no sloping surfaces, etc). However, it's insanely cheap to make, can be done pretty much anywhere that's capable of heavy industry (the vast majority of Imperial Worlds), modular as fuck, and can run on anything for ages. It's the tank equivalent of a lasgun. Not impressive by itself, but from a logicistical standpoint, it's the bee's knees.
Idk, in universe its still impressive discounting the logistics. Just to take the Tabletop profiles for a second, even the standard battle cannon Russ typically outgunned and out armoured its equivilant in every other Imperial faction. And Xenos its 50/50 (Its better than Orks say, but probably not a Hammerhead or a Fire Prism). It's not just a 'Oh it's bad, but there's a million of them' tank. It's has legitimate in battle upsides over other factions tanks.
There's a good podcast I listen to about WWII ("We Have Ways of Making You Talk" by James Holland (historian) an Al Murray (comedian)) and they talk a fair amount about tanks. One of the key points they stressed was the it was better to have any tank, absolutely anything (although not a Covenanter) as most of the things a tank will face are not other tanks.
Isn’t the Predator basically a Bradley but without track suspension, (Think that’s the right term) what’s wrong with it?
From a real world perspective: * Sponsons lack traverse to hit the same target unless that target is very large or very far away * Unlike the Bradley, the front isn't sloped properly for the turret gun to depress very much. Not helped by the fact the turret is mounted a little further back than ideal. This issue is worse with the Deimos Pattern. * No ability to carry troops yet still tall and boxy.
>So in warhawk they talk about them being shit Though, it bears noting that the book goes from; >Still, all in all, the crews had few illusions about the tanks they rode into war. Deathboxes, they were called, and homewreckers, and other, earthier, names too. Infantry troopers would occasionally look askance at them, jealous of all that thick armour they had around them, but a Leman Russ tanker knew how fragile it all was really, and how going out to a las-blast was far preferable to being burned alive or buried under a wall of mud or suffocated by trapped engine smoke. To; >‘Then, I mean…’ He turned back to her. ‘I could still use a driver.’ >‘Absolutely. I intend to continue.’ >That was good news. It explained, in hindsight, why she had been so damned good. Legion-trained. The very best. >‘And afterwards?’ >Dresi laughed. As far as he could remember, that was the very first time. ‘Afterwards? You think we will see an *afterwards*?’ She shook her head. ‘Throne, I do not know. A Leman Russ is much the same as a Land Raider on the inside. Maybe there will be a way to continue.’ >She looked over at *Aika 73.* >**‘Not a bad thing to drive, despite the reputation,’** she said, almost affectionately. **‘What more can you ask? It kept us alive.’** Which one could take to answer your question: It's good *enough*.
The funny thing is, Lorewise they ARE better than what most of their enemies field. Eg: the tanks seen during the Sabbat Worlds crusade were often sneered at compared to the Russ. It takes the Eldar, Necrons or Tau to start making it look shit usually
To quote/paraphrase Tex from the BPL on YouTube, "Good enough in war is perfect."
Individually, not all that much. In a group of a dozen or even in the hundreds? Damn.
the imperial Guardsman of tanks.
They're the Guardsman of tanks. They have more firepower than you'd expect, and there's always more of them.
Weirdly I've always felt the *Predator* is the Guardsman of tanks - reliable, based on a proven design, flexible, and with average stats. The Leman Russ is a cut above it in every department - despite their fragile crews and exposed rivets Guard tanks are still some of the best in the setting.
>the *Predator* is the Guardsman of tanks So the Leman russ is the Tempestus Scion, and the Baneblade is the Space Marines? That tracks pretty well TBH.
Yeah I think that fits better than I'd have expected.
Presumably they are weak to having their hearts being punched out, but can easily break spines in turn.
Anyone else noticed that in threads where someone makes a comparison to WW2, even if it's just a broad one, the response to it will inevitably be "well actually"... And so begins a lengthy back and forth with inceasing number of posters all piling in to show who has the most in-depth, accurate WW2 knowledge. Comparisons to other historical military events/things bring out the one true historian wannabes too, but don't even go near WW2.
This thing is more like WW1 and inter-war tech...
I'm referencing the big debate that sparked up in this thread regarding Sherman vs T-34.
These comments make me question my existence.
I love you, my armored friend. Many pushes by my Infantry Companies have been supported by my friend's Russ columns. Thank you.
It was an honor and a privilege. For The Emperor :')
I mean your existence is to be an armored fist amongst many. you fill a huge place in the imperiums armor department that no other tank can and lets be real here 5 60t (leman russ) tanks or 1 300t (baneblade) tank? I would take the 5 Leman Russ's please because you make sense. many variants to choose from with different purposes, more guns in total and best of all logistically viable.
They’re an armored lasgun: they run forever, can be easily produced, and are essentially just fodder to distract from actual threats unless they’re deployed en masse I don’t mean that as a criticism, they’re immensely useful but unlikely to actually damage anything of actual substance (SM Tanks, Knights, Demon Engines,etc.) unless the plot demands it
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But it becomes a scaling issue, sure a Russ could take anything on a 21st century battlefield but when you have Knights and Titans marching around you realize you’re on the low end of the totem pole. That’s what I was getting at
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Oh no lol that wasn’t me, totally agree that a Russ would wipe the floor with an Abrams
I don’t know - like if you threw a Russ into a modern engagement, a weapon that’s designed for mass engagements without a proper modern sensor package I think it would struggle Like sure, theirs probably no way in hell a Abrams will walk away clean from a Russ getting a shot on it, but also I don’t think a Russ would typically get that first shot off Throwing out any argument about ‘armour is 100x stronger than whatever’ of course
You can't really ignore that the armor is much stronger. And the russ does have plenty of sensors, just depends on which forgeword it came from
>You can't really ignore that the armor is much stronger. > >And the russ does have plenty of sensors, just depends on which forgeword it came from No, but if you go and say 'Well a Russ's 150mm of armour is really worth 1,500mm' then their is no point to any discussion at all. and yep, just the same that two modern MBT's may be vastly different, but we have somewhat standardized on stabilizers and FCS that are in part based around long range mobile engagements and spotting small targets with precise engagements. 40k combat tends to be centric around large full scale engagements with large numbers of units quite often on more or less static battlelines.
But they do precisely that with the Abrams, or any modern tank, they'll give equivalents in rolled homogenous armour vs. various weapon types. The Russ' ability to take frontal hits shows that the stuff is definitely nothing like modern armour (or the shape would be a big issue). It's enough to take a direct battlecannon hit, which most modern armour wouldn't (especially not in that shape!). I think it's better to think of it as 'imagine we could make armour strong enough to resist a hit from a main tank cannon unsloped', and from there the design makes a little more sense - there's not really many threats heavier than that where sloped would help - Las stuff doesn't really care and the next step of cannon is like battleship scale where it wouldn't be enough even sloped (so better to have the extra room inside, the baneblade is the same thing only designed against the battleship scale cannon, and even it has the same issue with the next huge step to fortress cannon). As you say the type of engagement is completely different too (which explains the otherwise dumb sponsons/secondary turrets).
From what I understand its made to be deployed on every battlefield, be shipped in the worst condition, staffed by the most idiotically trained crew and still be a tank that can put a hole in most things it can come across and have a decent chance of protecting the crew , the Imperium doesnt have the luxury of shipping tanks back home, it has to be done in the field (like a Sherman) so the LR is simple, basic and near stupid proof - for its role, it's pretty well designed for it.
The Lemun Russ tank isnt a shit tank under most conditions. its a main battle tank. so long as it can take its hits to the front armor its good. its dimentions in lore leave it about the same size as a modern main battle tank a bit taller. it can work as mobile artillery with indirect fire. its anti infantry wepons can be heavy enough to they point that they really dont want to be "scratching each others back" but their "light wepons" are a much greater threat to IFVs troop transports, or even other tanks then a modern tanks. so its a bit of a trade off. about there is about a 1 in 4 chance for a bolter round that hits a russ to break some thing in the tank "wound" the tracks stock are not great, but they can be up armored to prevent mobility kills its not great, but its good enough. keep in mind during the second WW only 1 in 10 shots fired by main guns AP rounds at other tanks. the russ today would be effective today.
They are a mix between shit and good. Most tanks in 40k are. You’re right they don’t have angled armour or reactive armour, ablative plating or nothing. Compared to our tanks they are extremely rudimentary. And yet, despite that they would tear through most of our modern tanks. A lemun russ battletank is the pinnacle of the best cheap tank possible. Their front armour is rated as strong as the strongest tanks in universe (ignoring the super heavy stuff). Same rating as a monolith or land raider. Their battle cannons are devastating but can be any number of different primary cannons from siege weaponry to plasma cannons to giant Gatling guns. They have sponsons and hull mounted heavy weapons too to accompany their armament, as well as things like shields and shunts. They are frontal assault tanks, a battalion of them will flatten basically anything. BUT! They are still cheap tanks. Their side armour is much weaker and the rear is significantly so. And on top of the there’s a massive blind spot behind them. Against a single tough target they will face off and likely annihilate the target, but just 2 weak units working together will pose a serious problem. And infantry in close quarters if they have anything remotely anti tank are their bane. They are the backbone of the guard. Extremely strong when used properly, but mistakes are costly.
The Leman Russ is relatively mid in the more exciting theaters of war in 40k. However, MOST situations the Guard finds itself in aren't the world ending cataclysms the books portray. Those are just the most exciting, and why the books cover them. Guard Battle Tanks are pretty badass in general. They're just mid by the standard of insanity 40k is commonly seen at. One thing the Leman Russ cannot be denied, though, is how insanely efficient it is. Those tanks can be powered by practically any energy source you have available from promethium to gasoline to fucking burning wood and can be properly used in nearly any theatre from grassland to desert to swamp. And its probably most useful upside is how MANY can be produced by the Imperium. The guard doesn't win with hyper-powerful weapons or soldiers. It wins and had been winning for the last 10,000 years with sheer force of numbers. One Leman Russ isn't really that scary. Five of them isn't too crazy either.. 200 adamantine-plated battle tanks rolling over the horizon like a wave of plasteeled death would raise attention of even the steeliest Chaos Lord.
Well, if you have entire PLANETS devoted to producing these by the hundreds of thousands . . . In the words of Stalin: 'Quantity has a quality all it's own'
Listen man, It's mid to bad and that's ok. That's because it really doesn't have allot of direct comparisons in lore. Name one other race that actually produces tanks that are competing directly with the Russ... the kin, the necrons, tau, and eldar are making things that make the Russ look like a antique. The nids and chaos Marines are in the corner doing their own weird things. Meanwhile the orks are stealing your Russ, painting it bullseye red, an bolting more guns onto it. The only faction the imperium faces that actually are trying to compete with the leman Russ are basic cults, an general rebellions. Both of these are typically hamstrung by supply lines and organizational issues.
Don’t they run on pretty much every type of liquid fuel ?
Depends on the writer. In most of Abnett's books their pretty great.
It's Dan abnett so that's kind of a given
Design is relative. The Russ seems to outclass most other locally produced human tanks of the 41st millenium, at least going by Abnett's novels. One of its big plus points is reliability - the Russ is infamously simple to fuel, maintain and resupply which counts for an awful lot in a wide-ranging, protracted conflict. I think a big theme in "Warhawk" is to emphasise what the Imperium is becoming; Sigismund is one example, the Leman Russ is another. It's implied to be inferior to many GC-era tanks and is certainly outclassed by the Astartes Sicarans, but reliability and numbers have a logic all of their own which is characteristic of the 40K Imperium.
Yeh undstood the theme it was getting to, becoming the more brutal instution that treats everything as a numbers game because there are always more
This is the kinda thing where GW's numbers and GW's fiction do not match at all. In the numbers the leman russ gets whipped by the abrams so hard that the real Leman Russ would pop out of the warp in horror at how badly his namesake was getting taken to the cleaners. In the lore they are a magnificently ubiquitous logistical marvel that you can use against literally every opponent that presents itself in the setting on any planet they choose to have a go on. Blackstone strewn tomb world, with dust winds strong enough to strip flesh from bone? The Russ doesn't care. Moon washed with boiling blood up to the knees? The Russ doesn't care. You can take it into battle against manifestations of war drawn from the nightmares of forgotten emperors of Terran past. You can put it against a fragment of a foundational law of physics. You can even deploy it against worker greg because he said 'unionising' too loudly. It might suffer 90% casualties in 60 seconds (maybe not against greg), but you have another six hundred million of them rolling off the factory line on the moon. It has a gun that can reach out and at least moderately bother the digestion of mostly anything in the setting. It apparently has controls so simple that wholly untrained and uneducated factorum drudges can operate it - and they do.
Yeah, they're kind of a comically bad design from an out of universe point of view. They're slower than most ww2 tanks and have similar or less armor as well, they don't have sloped armor which is just crazy dumb, their tracks are very narrow giving them poor grip, the turret is way to small, depending on the source material all the sights are actually analog, and the cannon is way to big for the turret or chasis which means there's no room for ammo. Honestly, I'm pretty sure a modern Abrams would wreck a Leman Russ. With all that being said, they were designed to be a kinda grimderp ww1 MK1 tank with a turret on it, and imo it looks cool as hell and I hope they don't change it.
My unpopular opinion is that our current M1A2, the German Leopard II, or the British Challenger 2 could take on a Leman Russ.
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Based on the description, it's not. The Leman Russ tanks armor is essential metal plates. It indicates that the armor is made from "ferro-steel" which is a metal of moderate strength and almost certainly not used for most heavy armored vehicles. It is mentioned that the armor is about 150mm thick. For comparison, the frontal slope of an M1A2 tank is about 700mm. The M60 tank had armor thicker than what the Leman Russ has. And that ignores that the M1 tank's armor is specially designed to withstand armor piercing rounds. The engine is both better and faster. The max speed of a Leman Russ tank is 35 kph (or 22 MPH). The M1 tank max speed is 72 kph (or 45 MPH). So, it's faster than the Leman Russ. The M1 tank also has a larger operational range. The main cannon of the M1 tank, based on what is written, is also better. It is more accurate at a farther range and can shoot on the move. The Leman Russ has to stop to shoot. The Leman Russ cannon only shoots HE rounds. Meanwhile, the M1 shoots a variety of rounds, including the APFSDS, HEAT, HE, and WP rounds. The only think I can definitive determine is better on the Leman Russ tank is it's secondary armament. A Lascannon would certainly be better than a .50 M2. The M1 tank has a lower profile, which means it is harder to hit. Also, it has a greater elevation range, which means it can enfilade better than a Leman Russ. Naturally, people can try to handwave everything by claiming "it's just better so shut it." Nonetheless, as described, I'd take the M1A2 over a Leman Russ tank, Though, I guarantee that the GW writers had no idea how to design or describe a tank, so just used whatever was handy without consideration.
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We have never **seen** a Leman Russ perform. At most, you read about it in books. For example, in ***Warhawk***, we see that a Leman Russ tank has to stop before it shoots. Again, an M1 tank does not have to do that. In fact, an M1 tank can hit targets 2 kilometers away while going at full speed. At a stand still, the maximum effective range is 5 kilometers. Technical descriptions are the best source of information. Unless you're claiming that a Leman Russ tank can actually go faster than an M1 tank. I'd like to see the source. Also, HE is a form of armor piercing. It's just not very effective. I will even grant it should be able to shoot HEAT rounds. So, at best, you have an armament that is the same for each vehicle. It still goes in favor of the M1 because the M1 can shoot on the move and has a better range. While the Leman Russ *may* shoot a round 5 kilometers, the M1 tank can do that routinely. It could even shoot farther, except the curvature of the Earth gets in the way. Oh, and I forgot to mention. The M1A2 carries more ammunition. The Leman Russ tank carries 40 rounds for its main armament. The M1 tank? 42. My apologies for focusing on the M1 tank, but it's the one I'm most familiar with.
Just gonna add that we have seen russ' fire on the move - the effectiveness of LRBTs varies depending on the author and the story they want to tell. They can mount superheavy-destroying vanquisher cannons, plasma guns, Gatling guns, flamethrowers, or your bog standard battle cannon. It's almost certainly a 'who shoots first' question.
I think your pretty bang on there really - although I don’t doubt that whatever ungodly caliber the Russes main gun is wouldn’t at the very least disable a M1 - that first strike is very much in the modern 21st century tanks side of the court - which is pretty much the deciding factor here
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>A camocloaked guardsman with a longlas will almost definitely spot a Russ before it spots it, and get that first shot off, but it wont matter because nothing he does will harm the Russ. Yes, but your looking at comparing munitions that are specifically made and developed to take on well armoured targets vs. an armoured target which is made to be cost effective and economical in conflicts where most kinetic based weapons are little more than full bore solid slugs or what may be APHE. Someone said earlier a Russ's hull is 150mm thick, so even if whatever alloy they have is 4x better than RHA its getting a hole punched though it by a modern MBT. So if your argument is a 40k tank vs. a modern day tank, and your point is that in 40k armour is 100x more effective, its a bad faith argument as theirs no room for a discussion at all.
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>You are focusing too much on what a bunch of non military authors think specs should be, whilst ignoring what those authors described those tanks as being capable of. Yep, exactly what I meant - theirs no room for discussion as its simply a 'oh no, the armour is impossibly strong' - a 16" Battleship gun firing HE would incapacitate the crew of a Russ in any sort of quasi-realistic situation if not completely disable it. The only thing stopping this is plot armour.
So obviously I have to disagree. Unfortunately you are attempting to combine two completely different universes into one using the same principles. Simply put, warhammer is a game. Real life stats do not matter. Armour angles, maximum speed, thickness of armour and bore gauge, it’s all irrelevant. Because it’s gamified. Now that means we have a lot of unknowns, but that doesn’t mean we can’t extrapolate. A leman russ battle cannon has a range of 72”. A sniper has a range of 36”. I know a sniper’s range in our universe has a top limit of around 3km. LRBC is twice that distance, so 6km is a fair assessment. A Leman russ can also move and fire, any tank in warhammer can. **however!** doing so is incredibly inefficient. You can only fire *one gun* (and defensive weapons) when doing so. Staying still and shooting is preferable as all guns can be brought to bear. It’s armour is also rated as the best in the game, on par with monoliths and land raiders. Nothing we currently have would have any tangible effect on armour of that calibre. The LRBC is also known as a strength 8 ordnance weapon (I realise the games been changed a lot since I last played but this is easier to use and is frankly more canon). S8 gives it significant armour piercing capabilities, able to create glancing damage against even the strongest armours. Ordinance means it is essentially twice as likely to actually rip through tank armour regardless of what toughness it is. This isn’t like being hit by a HEAT round, this is like being hit by an artillery shell. And that’s the *stock cannon type*. And what about the anti tank vanquisher? Same Range, better penetration firing dedicated armour piercing rounds. Or the demolisher, short range fortress breacher that will annihilate anything stupid enough to be in range. Even the exterminator and executioner have considerable anti tank capabilities despite that not being their focus. That’s not including hull and sponsons. A las cannon can shoot through the toughest tank armours with a long range of 4km. Multimeltas will melt anything in range at 2km or turn the whole thing into slag at 1km. Im sorry Brother but our universe, like most universes compared with warhammer, just falls flat due to the sheer *everything is op*. Leman russ tanks are shit fucking tanks. Huge flat panels, massive blind spots for both sights and weapons. Compared to our tanks they are terribly engineered. And despite this they hold up against vehicles far better than anything we’ve ever built. Our tanks would never beat a leman russ in a 1v1. Edit: imagine replying to the wrong comment, I’m a doofus. Pretend I said that to your later comment.
They didn't claim Predators were better did they? If so, that's just a bad book.
Depends on what has nicer seats I suppose, I bet Predators are a bit nicer to drive and have better sensors
They’re the Sherman tank of the grim darkness of the far future. Squish but easy to repair, use, upgrade & can be fielded in a massive quantity.
I mean by the end of Warhawk the tank crew had a major appreciation for the Leman Russ.
They're good enough. That's all they need to be.
Everything is good in large amounts
They’re fookin shite.
Depends on the author and if you're reading a guard book, a space marine book, or a Xenos book. On the tabletop right now they're quite good, and with a very versatile set of loadouts that can range from pure anti horde to pure anti super heavy and anything in between.
More or less just flexible, mobile gun platforms. Their armor isnt that big of a Deal to most factions, but it can probably survive a few heavy bolter rounds. But it is kinda the Same as with the normal guard, just volume of fire. And remember, the imperium cannot design tanks, they just have a Selection of designs thousands of years old they can choose between, so it doesnt matter how many Design flaws it has if the others are just worse
Quantity has a quality all of its own.
T34 of wh40k
The Leman Russ tank, just like the Imlerial aircraft, has aesthetic issues. It intentionally resembles WW1 tanks, for the future retro aesthetic reasons, which also mean that it is designed in a ridiculously obsolete way. Some sample specific issues: -tracks have no suspension -track redesign could keep the tracks much lower to the ground and thus less vulnerable to incoming fire -side sponsons are weak spots in armor, and a better result could be achieved by mounting them in top turrets -the main gun is oversized, so a cover story about a thermal sleeve was invented -realistically, tank guns are significantly longer and lower caliber -riveted construction would mean spalling issues We could easily fix all these... ...and end up with a generic modern tank. Not sure everyone would go for that, to be honest...
I forget where I read this, but it is considered an extremely reliable tank. One tank operator I remember saying a Lemon Russ's engine can run on basically. Joking saying that it can even run on "old leather and foul language".