T-10 – Tank and AFV News

Soviet T-10: Q&A with Stephen “Cookie” Sewell

August 12, 2017 by tankandafvnews 2 Comments

Tank and AFV News corresponded recently with Stephen “Cookie” Sewell, co-author of the new book Soviet T-10 Heavy Tank and Variants published by Osprey. Mr. Sewell was born in New York and is a retired US Army chief warrant officer and Department of the Army intelligence analyst. Trained in both the Vietnamese and Russian languages, Mr. Sewell has written numerous intelligence articles as well as many pieces on American and Russian armor. He is an enthusiastic scale model builder and the founder of the Armor Model Preservation Society in 1992. He is also a prolific reviewer of model kits and books.

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Can you give us a description of your career in the US Army and US government?

I entered the Army in September 1968 and was trained as a Vietnamese linguist. After a short tour in Vietnam and then at NSA was retrained as a Russian linguist in 1973. Spent a total of nine years on strategic intelligence assignments and nine years tactical ones. Retired in 1990 as a Chief Warrant officer. Due to expertise hired back three months later into same job I retired from and arrived two weeks before Desert Shield/Desert Storm started. Changed to the National Ground Intelligence Center predecessor in 1991 and then to that organization when created in 1994. Retired from there in 2011

How did you get the nickname Cookie?

I came back from Vietnam in 1971 and my brother wanted me to see a new kids’ show on PBS called “Sesame Street”. First Muppet I saw was the Cookie Monster, who in the space of two minutes ate an entire box of cookies, the box, and a telephone. My kind of guy! When I got to NSA I started drawing him doing stuff like eating MiG-21s and people in my office started referring to me as “Cookie Monster”. Stuffed my desk with chocolate [Read more…]

Filed Under: Features, Original Articles/Content Tagged With: Cookie Sewell, model tank, soviet tank, T-10

Book Alert: Soviet T-10 Heavy Tank and Variants

June 22, 2017 by tankandafvnews Leave a Comment

A new book on the Soviet T-10 heavy tank is now available courtesy of Ospry Publishing. To those that like reading about tanks, Osprey is primarily know for their 48 page softcover New Vanguard series. This book however is an entirely different creature, being a hard cover volume of 232 pages. This book certainly has to be the most exhaustive study of the T-10 published in English. Two well established authors contributed to this book, the UK based author James Kinnear and US based author Stephen “Cookie” Sewell. As with other Osprey hardcover offerings, this is a very handsome volume with high quality paper and numerous photos and illustrations. If you are a fan of Soviet cold war armor, this title is highly recommended.

Publishers Description:

When it was introduced into service in 1953, the T-10 represented a return to the “classic” Soviet heavy tank. Although considered a major threat to NATO tank forces, it also represented the end of an era. All gun-heavy tanks like the T-10 would eventually be made effectively redundant by later models like the T-62 which had powerful next-generation armament and new ammunition types. The tank was gradually withdrawn from service in the 1970s, though the last tanks would only leave Russian service by decree of the President of the Russian Federation in 1997. As such the T-10 outlived the Soviet state that had created it.

Never exported outside of the Soviet Union and rarely used in combat, the T-10 has remained a mysterious tank, with many of its variants unknown in the West until very recently. This study, written from original Russian and Ukrainian primary source documents that have only recently been made available, uncovers the history of this enigmatic tank using 130 stunning contemporary and modern photographs of the T-10 as well as full color side-view artwork.

Available from Amazon at Soviet T-10 Heavy Tank and Variants

Filed Under: Historical Vehicle News Tagged With: Heavy tank, Osprey, T-10

Tankograd blog on the T-10

February 24, 2016 by tankandafvnews Leave a Comment

The Tankograd blog has posted a new article examining the history of the Soviet T-10 heavy tank. The authors of the piece engage is a bit of myth-busting, putting forth their opinions on the vehicle. All in all, an entertaining read.

Excerpt:

During the final years of the Great Patriotic War the Red Army’s generals had perfected combined arms operations utilizing withering artillery fire and the devastating salvos from Shturmoviks to create decisive combined arms attacks that smashed through enemy lines.

The weapon of choice for these assaults was the Joseph Stalin 2 or JS-2, an impregnable tank that marked a complete departure from its predecessors. It also foreshadowed the possible terrors of the next Great War when the Soviets had to duke it out against the Allies in Central Europe using main battle tanks on battlefields sown with radiation.

The Joseph Stalins were the antithesis of the earlier T-34’s. Despite the latter’s fame they suffered greatly from German tanks, aircraft, and anti-tank guns, not to mention their own mechanical and ergonomic faults.

The Joseph Stalin had better armor than the heaviest German tanks, had a larger main armament, larger dimensions, greater range, and better everything. Its only shortcomings were an uncomfortable interior and a 600 horsepower diesel engine whose mobility issues Soviet engineers never completely solved. This is why succeeding iterations like the Joseph Stalin-3 and 4 were never popular with the Red Army.

A spectacular success on the battlefield, more than 6,000 JS-2, 3, and 4’s were built and kept as the Red Army’s most lethal tanks during the early Cold War years. Clearly a favorite of their bloodthirsty namesake, when he passed away in 1953 the most recent and last iteration of this near-invincible lineage became the T-10.

Spacious and extremely heavily armed, it was the most atypical tank ever made in the Soviet Union. Yet it never enjoyed the same success as its cost-efficient (and weaker) replacements the T-55 and the T-62.

Why?