D-10 Tank Gun - History

History

At the beginning of 1944, the T-34 tank's F-34 76.2 mm tank gun was replaced by a more powerful 85 mm gun. This rendered the year-old SU-85 tank destroyer effectively obsolescent, since with its D-5T 85 mm gun, it could no longer be considered a specialist antitank vehicle superior to the more flexible medium tank. F. F. Petrov's Design Bureau at Artillery Factory No. 9 was assigned the task of producing a 100 mm antitank gun for the proposed SU-100. Petrov's team modified the S-34 naval gun for use in an armoured fighting vehicle.

The D-10 is a high-velocity gun of 100 mm, with a barrel length of 53.5 calibres. Its muzzle velocity of 895 m/s gave it good antitank performance by late-war standards. It could penetrate about 160mm of steel armor plate angled by 30 degrees at 1,000 m range, making it superior to the German 75 mm KwK 42 mounted on the Panther tank and the original 88 mm guns such as the Tiger I's KwK 36, but not as good as the Tiger II's longer KwK 43 L/71 gun. The larger 100 mm shell allowed it to fire a heavier high-explosive round.

It was originally designed to equip the SU-100 tank destroyer as the D-10S (for sаmokhodnaya, 'self-propelled'), and was later mounted on the post-war T-54 main battle tank as the D-10T (for tankovaya, 'tank' adj.). There was no significant difference in functionality or performance. It was also tested on the T-34-100, T-44-100, KV-100, and IS-2 (obyekt 245).

In 1955, vertical-plane STP-1 Gorizont stabilizer and a bore evacuator were added to a new D-10TG version of the gun. In 1956, a new D-10T2S version of the gun began production for T-54B and T-55 tanks, equipped with two-plane Tsyklon gun stabilization.

Versions of the D-10 were installed on new tanks as late as 1979, and thousands still remain in service in various countries.

A version of the D-10 was installed as a coastal artillery piece in Finland in the 1960s. This weapon is designated 100 56 TK in Finnish Navy service.