The T-34 Tank: The Best Tank Never Bought by the U.S.

 By JIM PURCELL

The weapon that transformed modern armored warfare? That is easy: the Soviet T-34. It was the next generation of ground warfare during World War II and it could be argued it was the best tank of the war. 

The T-34 Main Battle Tank

I’m a sports fan, and root for both the New York Mets and the New York Jets in Major League Baseball and the National Football League, respectively. If anyone is familiar with the stories of these teams then they would know that their histories of making decisions about players are lacking. The fans that follow these sports franchises could lament with the most-disappointed of people anywhere. 

Yet, one of the worst American mistakes did not happen on a playing field. In fact, one of these mistakes occurred when New Jersey native and noted American inventor John Walter Christie pitched his idea for a new main battle tank to the U.S. War Department in 1928. It was then that the military bureaucracy of the time passed on Christie’s design, which then allowed the inventor to ‘shop’ his idea to foreign powers. 

The first interested nation-state in Christie’s design was Poland. In 1929, on behalf of his government, Polish Captain Marian Rucinski, who was assigned to the Polish Military Institute of Engineering Research, was sent to the U.S. to evaluate Christie’s armored invention. At the time, Christie was building his M1928 at his company, The U.S. Wheel Track Corporation, of Linden, New Jersey. 

T-34 inventor John W. Christie

So impressed was Rucinski that a special Polish acquisition commission was dispatched to the U.S., led by the chief of their engineering department, Colonel Tadeusz Kossakowski. What resulted was that the Polish Government prepaid Christie for production models of his concept. Later, Christie would return the deposit after reconsidering a contract with the Polish Government. However, word of the revolutionary new tank Christie had envisioned was out, so to speak, and the espionage community knew all about it. This development aroused interest in the Soviet Union, and it was spies of this country that ended up acquiring plans for the chassis of the tank in 1930. 

After this compromise, on April 28, 1930, Christie’s company ended up selling two Christie-designed tanks to the Soviet company Amtorg for $60,000. A separate agreement was made whereby the inventor sold spare parts for the tanks at a cost of $4,000.

Thus was born the Soviet Union’s greatest weapon of the war, the T-34 Main Battle Tank. 

NY Mets pitcher Nolan Ryan

The T-34 was considered a medium tank when it was deployed in 1940, during World War II. It possessed a 76.2mm (3-inch) main gun; 360-degree sloped armor (providing good protection against anti-tank weapons); the unique Christie suspension system (more efficient than the T-bar system used by the tanks of other nations); and an efficient, aerodynamic design that made its silhouette more difficult for enemy tankers to acquire it from a distance. 

The T-34 was impressive during field operations, so much that German Army General Paul vonKleist called it “the finest tank in the world.” Kleist’s mentor, and armored theory expert, General Heinz Guderian also noted that the “Soviet” tank was “vastly superior” to German tanks. 

Well, you might ask yourself how the Mets and Jets analogy comes into play here. Well, it was the Mets who passed on signing their own starting pitcher, Nolan Ryan, in 1972. As most fans know, Ryan went on to have a Hall of Fame career with other clubs during the years following the trade, while the Mets languished somewhere near the cellar of the National League East. As for the Jets, it was the decision of that organization’s front office to draft neither prospects Dan Marino or Jerry Rice when they had a chance to acquire these players. Unlike the Mets, the consequence of that failure was that the team did not languish near the bottom of their division. No, they retained sole possession of the bottom of their division.

NFL legend Dan Marino

The U.S. Army fought with the M4 Sherman during World War II, and it was a good tank. In fact, if a beauty contest of World War II main battle tanks were had, I am sure it would have won “Miss Congeniality,” with the Soviet T-34 winning the crown ahead of the German Panther and Tiger tanks. There is no disgrace in taking fourth place, but in this case it would have saved lives if the U.S. War Department knew what it was looking at and kept the crown winner in the United States. 

Poor decisions at the highest levels cost lives. It has always been that way, and it will always remain that way. In sports, winning and losing does not take on the dimensions of life and death. However, in choosing weapons systems for the military, it certainly does.