Tracks and Turrets: Armored Fighting Vehicles from the KV Family to the Type 74

The KV series was named after the Soviet defence commissar Kliment Voroshilov and entered the picture in 1939. Its heavy armor was its reputation in the first year of the German invasion, when a single KV-1 or KV-2 supported by infantry could sometimes halt German formations.

The German answer to carrying infantry with the tanks was this half-tracked personnel carrier from Hanomag, in use from 1939. At least 15,252 vehicles and variants were built by seven manufacturers, making it the most widely produced German half-track of the war.

Here the tracked chassis carries a gun instead of a turret. The SU-76 put the 76 millimeter ZIS-3 field gun on a lengthened T-70 light tank chassis and entered service by a decree of 2 December 1942, becoming the second most produced Soviet armored vehicle of the war after the T-34.

The Panther was introduced in 1943 to counter the Soviet T-34. About 6,000 were built between 1943 and 1945, and its gun penetration exceeded that of the heavier Tiger I, though at 44.8 metric tons its side armor remained a weakness.

The Sexton shows a third use of the tank hull. Canadian production lines that had built Ram and Grizzly tanks switched in 1943 to a mobile mount for the British 25 pounder gun-howitzer, and some were sold to Portugal, which used them into the 1980s.

The first T-54 prototype was finished at Nizhny Tagil by the end of 1945, and from the late 1950s it became the main battle tank of the Soviet Army and the Warsaw Pact. With an estimated 96,500 to 100,000 built, the series is the most produced tank in history.

The American reply to the postwar generation was introduced in February 1952. Nearly 12,000 M48s were built between 1952 and 1961, it was the first American medium gun tank with a four-man crew, and it served as the main battle tank of the US Army and Marine Corps in the Vietnam War.

On a tank-like chassis the ZSU-57-2 carried two 57 millimeter autocannons to protect columns from aircraft. It officially entered Soviet service on 14 February 1955 as the first mass-produced Soviet tracked self-propelled anti-aircraft gun after the war, and Soviet crews nicknamed it Sparka, meaning twin mount.

The M60 was developed from the M48 and added the 105 millimeter M68 gun and a diesel engine for greater range. It reached US Army units in Europe from December 1960, and more than 15,000 were built across its variants, with hull production ending in 1983.

The M109 is the self-propelled howitzer that outlasted its era. First produced in 1963 to replace the M44 and M52, it carries a crew of four and has been upgraded repeatedly up to the M109A7 standard in service since 2015.

The T-64 was designed by Alexander Morozov and built in Kharkiv. It brought composite armor, a compact engine and transmission and a 125 millimeter smoothbore gun with a carousel autoloader, which let the crew shrink to three and kept the weight to 38 tonnes.

The BMD-1 was introduced in 1969 and first seen by the West in 1970. It is an amphibious tracked infantry fighting vehicle that can be dropped by parachute, similar in shape to the BMP-1 but at just over half the weight, built for the Soviet Airborne Forces.

Japan closes the path with the Type 74, built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and finalized for service in 1974. It mounted the L7 105 millimeter gun like the M60 and Leopard 1, and 225 had been delivered by January 1980, when other Western forces already had newer designs.