>>40735556>US engines could go about 2500-3000km in soviet service, while the T-34 engine only went about 1500kmI literally just posted a stat collected from the Soviets (the The 6th Guards Tank Army to be exact) that quite unmistakably states T-34s managed on average 2500-3000kms alongside the M2A2s they had in service.
I don't doubt there would've been T-34s in service struggling to crack past the 1500km mark due to the large variance in quality control and the roller coaster ride Soviet industry went through earlier in the war, but its simply untrue and totally disingenuous to say that 1500km was the average service life for the entire duration of the war.
>in soviet memoirs, a guy in a lend lease sherman talked about how smoother and easier to maintain their shermans were in comparison to the T-34s Its a indisputable fact at this point that 1 for 1 a Sherman was a better and probably on the whole a somewhat more reliable vehicle then a T-34, the only thing I'm disputing is the extent to which the latter is true.
A significant number of the attacks made on the reliability of the T-34 use disproportionate amounts of anecdotes and statistics from early war performance which in reality are only testament to the dire state of Soviet industry at the time as opposed to the tank itself. Late war stats like the one I provided (from 1944) help prove this by showing the T-34 to be a reasonably capable and reliable machine once the Soviet industrial capacity was back on its feet.
>>40735473it goes both ways, im sure the T-34 would've faired better in the caring hands of the US