Bronekater with T-34/85 turret?

[Bruce Scott]

Is this a real thing, or a what if? There are fairly common photos of a Kiev museum located 1125 with T-34/85 turret and what looks to be a 45mm AA gun in the rear position, but I’ve not been able to find any period photos? Given the Bronekaters really have a 3″ gun already it’d make no difference game whys, but it’d be a cool variant.

[Sergei S]

Kiev example seems to be a post war retrofit. T-34-76 is exceedingly rare, while T-34-85 is very common and surely plenty of turrets were available during restoration process. Despite the fact of larger ring turret, it was probably not that tough of a job to put whole thing in. As per nomenclature both 1124 and 1125 types of Bronekater were fitted with T-34-76 turrets. All the contemporary and modern pics of surviving boats support that except for Kiev example.

[Sergei S]

Ok, just confirmed my theory- out of all surviving Bronekaters on display, one in Kiev is a MODEL of one, not a real thing.
All installed tank cannons were of KT-28, L-10, L-11, F-34 or Lender types. All 76mm.

[Renko]

Yup. The Lenders are the interesting ones as theyre just standard AA gins not turreted. Warlord arbitrarily nerfing 3″ guns to 57mm could possibly be justified for the turreted guns due to the problems of crewing them in confined spaces but the Lender armed ones that doesnt apply.

The “official ” reason for nerfing the guns is theyre not as powerful as 88s, but of course thats just Warlord at their historical finest.

[Sergei S]

Well. Likely caused by production streamlining and choice of simpler options. I am perfectly fine with some sacrifices in order to push the line out.

[Sergei S]

Ok. Update here. What we have in the game are riverine bronekaters mostly type 1125. There were also sea going bronekaters project 161 and 185. 161 was deployed in small numbers and had 76mm guns. 185 had twin 85 mm T 34 turrets… but was built after ww2. So one in Kiev is likely 185 type. Not good for the game though, since it was after war commission.

[Bruce Scott]

That lived up to expectations, a bit sadly.

I would have thought the 88mm German guns to be powerful enough to band up with 4″ guns personally, but the naval mount is inferior in calibre length and muzzle velocity to the famous ’88’. I guess it is also slightly closer to 76.2mm than 101.6mm if you are being simplistic.

I think I’ll just pay the 5 points and give the Bronekaters their 3″ guns.

[invisible officer]

Slightly closer is nicely said.

German Naval 8,8 cm projectile 9 kg
Soviet 76,2mm 6,3 kg
101,6 mm 17,7 kg.

Most 8,8 cm on small ships are the SKC/30, SKC/35 or WW I SKL /45. Around 3700 mm bore length. mv 700 – 790 m/sek

Not to be confused with the naval SKC/31 carried on Lützow and SKC/32 on cruisers. These had a much longer barrel and much higher muzzle velocity.

There was good reason why Minensucher got the 105 mm SKC/32 with 15,1 kg projectile.

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