With me, I'm fascinated at how tanks were developed, used, and misused. Some of the sidelines, like the Russian flying tank are always good for a chuckle. Others, like the Italian and Japanese WWII tanks are always good for a moment of silence for the bravery of their crews, going into combat with such utter pieces of garbage.
And then you have the Russians, and the post war designs...the people who terrifed the Nazis with the T-34 and KV-1, also developed the T-54 and T-55 and the T-62.
The basic T-54 has the driver positioned on the left side of the hull, to his right is the main fuel cell, to save space, a ammo rack holding 30 rounds of 100mm ammo is built into the rear side of the fuel cell. The turret has the gunner and tank commander positioned on the left side of the turret, in seats suspended from the turret ring. The loader stands on a small platform suspended from the turret ring (that's right, the T-54/55 series does not have a turret basket!). He has four rounds of ready ammo for the main gun. Once the ready ammo is expended, the loader has to step off his platform and get a shell from the hull rack. Lots of fun to do while moving cross-country, rotating the turret to track targets and trying to avoid stepping on empty shell casings. Right?
What does this mean? If you want to blow the T-54 up, you load a APDSDU round, and aim at the headlight, located on the right front side of the hull. You will get penetration of the front glacis plate, and then enjoy a fuel/ammo explosion! If you want to disable the tank, switch your aim to the left front and your round will kill the driver, gunner and tank commander. If you get a flank shot, aim inbetween the last set of roadwheels and use a HEAT round, this will penetrate the hull and start an engine fire.
The difference inbetween a T-54 and a T-55...is located on the muzzle end of the gun, the T-54 has a smooth gun tube, the T-55 has a bore evacurater. This is the simple way to tell them apart, otherwise you have to measure how thick the hatches are, because some T-55s have a plain tube and radiation shelding. But being a simple grunt and not some Intell weenie....
The T-62 was a major improvement over the T-55, it had a full turret basket, but otherwise had all of the same faults of the T-55. With one new one. If you look at a picture of the rear of a T-62 turret, you will notice a small hatch. This is why an engineer should never be allowed to tinker with a tank, without a tanker sitting behind the engineer, holding a sledge hammer ready to hit the stupid engineer.
You see, the T-62 automatically ejects its spent main gun ammo casings. To the rear, and to avoid dropping them on the rear deck, the casings are ejected about 20 meters or so to the rear. Now, if you are a infantryman, using the tank for cover, you have to worry about a 10kg chunk of steel being thrown back at you, everytime the tank fires its cannon. If you are the tank crew, the auto-ejector has one design flaw. It vibrates. Loose. If the loader doesn't pay attention, the auto-ejector will grab the casing and throw it at the door, and if it has vibrated loose, it will bounce the casing off the inside edge of the door, throwing the case back into the turret. The tank commander has a shield to protect him from the movement of the breech of the cannon, which also protects him from the shell casing...the gunner has a leather padded helmet to protect his head. Yup! You guessed it, the casing is often thrown right into the back of the gunner!
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