locates some hard-to-find military toys at the dollar store.
Unlike the Western nations, the Soviet Union continued with heavy tank development long after WWII. First seen by Western nations at the 1945 Victory Parade in Berlin, the IS-3 was an evolutionary development of the Iosif Stalin series of heavy tanks used extensively during World War Two.
The IS-3 heavy tank made excellent use of sloped armor on the hull, and had a hemispherical turret which would be seen on nearly all post-war Soviet tanks.
Armed with the outstanding D-25T 122mm gun, the IS-3 was, however, relatively slow and suffered from reliability issues, especially in the hot desert.
Egypt acquired roughly 100 of these tanks, assigning them to support the T-34/85 tanks in the infantry divisions and back up the T-55 tanks in the mechanized and armored divisions. Their combat results during the Six-Day War were not auspicious.
