T-64B SOVIET MAIN BATTLE TANK PAPERCRAFT
The T-64 is a Soviet main battle tank introduced in the early 1960s. It was a more advanced counterpart to the T-62: the T-64 served tank divisions, while the T-62 supported infantry in motor rifle divisions. Although the T-62 and the famous T-72 would see much wider use and generally more development, it was the T-64 that formed the basis of more modern Soviet tank designs, such as the T-80.The T-64 was conceived in Kharkiv, Ukraine as the next-generation main battle tank by Alexander A. Morozov, the designer of the T-54 (which, in the meantime, would be incrementally improved by Leonid N. Kartsev's Nizhny Tagil bureau, by the models T-54A, T-54B, T-55, and T-55A).
A revolutionary feature of the T-64 is the incorporation of an automatic loader for its 125-mm gun, allowing one crew member's position to be omitted and helping to keep the size and weight of the tank down. Tank troopers would joke that the designers had finally caught up with their unofficial hymn, Three Tankers — the song had been written to commemorate the crewmen fighting in the Battle of Khalkhin Gol, in 3-man BT-5 tanks in 1939.
The T-64 also pioneered other Soviet tank technology: the T-64A model of 1967 introduced the 125-mm smooth-bore gun, and the T-64B of 1976 would be able to fire a guided anti-tank missile through its gun barrel.
The T-64 design was further developed as the gas turbine-powered
T-80 main battle tank. The turret of the T-64B would be used in the improved T-80U and T-80UD, and an advanced version of its diesel engine would power the T-80UD and
T-84 tanks built in the Ukraine.
The T-64 would only be used by the Soviet Army and never exported, unlike the T-54/55. It was superior to these tanks in most qualitative terms, until the introduction of the T-72B model in 1985. The tank equipped elite and regular formations in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, the T-64A model being first deployed with East Germany's
Group of Soviet Forces in Germany (GSFG) in 1976, and some time later in Hungary's Southern Group of Forces (SFG). By 1981, the improved T-64B began to be deployed in East Germany and later in
Hungary. While it was believed that the T-64 was "only" reserved for elite units, it was also used by much lower "non-ready formations", for example, the
Odessa Military District's 14th Army.
With the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, T-64 tanks remained in the arsenals of the constituent republics. Currently, slightly fewer than 2,000 of the old Soviet inventory of T-64 tanks are in service with the military of
Ukraine and about 4,000 are out-of-service and awaiting destruction in Russia.
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