One of the main reasons that the T-55 was kept in service in the Warsaw Pact countries is that, for its environment, it was a good tank. The perceived battle ground of West Germany has a lot of terrain that doesn't allow for long range tank sniping. One NATO study gives an average range of 900 meters, well within effective range of the 100mm main gun. The Soviets (and the WP) trained for short range engagements, where whoever gets the first round off, wins the fight. They also used an intresting gunnery technique that compensated for the poor fire control system.
You see, the Russians do not practise one-on-one engagements.
What they practise is platoon-on-one engagements. A typical four-tank platoon would start with the platoon leader's tank calling out his estimated range and firing. The second tank in the platoon, would call out their adjustment and fire, then the third and fourth tanks would repeat the process. With four tanks engaging, the assumption is that the NATO tank would find itself overwhelmed by targets and forced into breaking off its engagement by firing its smoke grenades or abandoning its fighting position, thus allowing the Soviet platoon to close the range and negate the superior NATO fire control systems.
It was only with the issue of the new generation of laser-rangefinders and digital computers that NATO was able to come with a counter to this technique.
As for a lot of the T-55s poor rep...it has a lot to do with the Middle East Wars of 1967 and 1973...the T-55 was used in an environment that allowed for long range sniping by tanks as well as terrain that features dunes and sharper hills than those found in the Central Russian steppes. Here the numerous design flaws of the T-5s were brought into view and ruthlessly exploited by the IDF.
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The reason that the American Army does so well in wartime, is that war is chaos, and the American Army practices chaos on a daily basis.
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