"T-34 Service Life" Topic

Hi

Just off the back of a discussion, a couple of T-34 questions -

When did the last T-34 engage in combat ?

When did the last one go out of service ? (if yet). I take being used for training drivers / crew as 'In Service' not being used as a target.

TIA

Used a fair bit in the Yugoslav civil war, mid '90s. Not sure about any more recent combat, but there are still a few knocking around. Try here for a good start:

link

I once read about a used tank lot just outside Prague that had 5000 of them. They were only used by little old ladies to drive to Party meetings.
They supposedly supplied a lot to the movies.

Thanks Dom, that is a great webpage

Glad it helped. :-)

Very interesting site, thank you for posting.

I wouldn't be surprised to find that there may still be some in Africa, or adjacent regions, still running today.

If you've got 'em, and they still run, they'd make perfectly acceptable infantry support AFVs. Why not use 'em?

Doug

At least Mali had them in inventory before french intervention, alongside T-55s – but IIRC, most of the AFVs were far from being operational, and I have no idea have they been deployed.

Whatever they saw use or not, in 2011 Libya Civil War at least one was captured by rebels: link

Wikis map of operators, from 2012:
link
(Red=Former, Pink= Unclear, Black= Still in service or in inventory)

The Libya one's dubious – all claims of a T-34 come back to that one Reuters report, and video from the same time only show a T-55….

The 'fantastic map' from Wikipedia is, indeed fantastic or at least partial fantasy. It shows Indonesia as a former operator of the T-34. Whilst Indonesia received significant quantities of Soviet equipment in the late 1950s and early 1960s it never received, T-34s to the best of my knowledge. The lions share of Soviet equipment went to the Airforce and Navy. The only Soviet AFVs received back then were some PT-76 light tanks and a selection of BTRs.

That's a neat website Dom, but incorrect that the last use of a T34 was in the Bosnian wars in 1995.

The last use of a T34 in war that I know of was in the Albanian insurgency in Macedonia, during which the Macedonian Army parked some of their stock of 10 T-34s as stationary fire support positions at various border guard bases, some of which were indeed attacked, and the T34s fired in support. That would be May/June/July 2001.

In the year after the insurgency wound down, the Macedonian government offered some T34s for sale, for $10,000 USD each. I still regret not having bought one. Shipping costs around $5,000 USD, demilitarisation costs another $5,000 USD, total cost $20,000 USD, still would have been worth it.

I could have towed it to Historicon and charged $10 USD a ride to recoup costs…

this one ;)?

YouTube link
YouTube link

that was in 2006…

Wow. Disarmed exhibition piece, but still wow. Thanks for the link.

Dom. :-)

What that thing did drive, 200 meters? :P

Pretty much, yep, but I'd imagine it gave a few riot coppers brown underwear…. ;-)

The video clip made me laugh out loud. I bet those poor coppers were scared to death.

Does anyone know what the demo was about ?

The story was very popular in Russia back in 2006, so it seems that the tank ran out of diesel, otherwise police would have harder time getting old driver out of the tank, using tear gas ;)
Think it was one of these anti-government demos that are quite common for Eastern Europe…think Hungary is still in bad shape economically…
as far as I recall, there was a thread on this board, too.

Those Hungarian demonstrations in 2006 were triggered when a (not very flattering) private recording from the then prime minister was leaked into public. There seems to be a Wikipedia page on the subject (I will not vouch for the accuracy of details):

link

By coincidence, those events also coincided with the 60th anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian uprising. That is probably reason why that T34 had been brought out for exhibition in the city centre.