SU-152 - Construction and Design

Construction and Design

The SU-152 followed the same design as other Soviet self-propelled guns (except the SU-76). The fully armoured hull was divided into two compartments: a fighting compartment for the crew, gun, and ammunition in the front of the hull, and the engine and transmission separate in the rear. The hull was welded from rolled armour plates of different thickness — 75, 60, 30 and 20 mm. The front hull and superstructure armour plates were sloped for better vehicle protection; side armour was vertical. Lower front hull and rear armour plates were cylindrical, and were quite complex in their method of production. The ML-20S gun-howitzer was mounted slightly to the right of centre with a limited traverse in a range of 12 degrees. Three of the crew were to the left of the gun: driver to the front, then gunner and last the loader. The vehicle commander and breech mechanism operator were to the right.

The suspension consisted of twelve torsion bars for the six road wheels (each 600 mm in diameter) on each side. The drive sprockets were at the back. Each track was made up of 90 stamped links, each link of 608 mm width. The normal distance between two connected links was 160 mm. There were three internal fuel tanks, two in the crew area and one in the engine compartment, for a total capacity of 600–615 litres. These were usually enhanced by four unconnected external fuel tanks, which could hold an additional 360 litres of fuel. A 24-volt electrical power supply came from a 1 kW GT-4563A generator with a RRA-24 voltage relay regulator unit and four 6STE-128 accumulator batteries with a total capacity of 256 ampere-hours. This electrical equipment was common for many contemporary Soviet AFVs. The generator and accumulator batteries fed all other electrical equipment — the ST-700 electric starter motor, a radio set, an intercom, external and internal lights, and illumination of gunsight scales.

For observation from the interior, all roof hatches had periscopes and there were two gun sights: the telescopic ST-10 (СТ-10) and a panoramic sight. For crew communication a TPU-4-BisF intercom was fitted, and for inter-vehicle communication there was a single radio. The first-series SU-152 was equipped with the 9R, then 10R and finally the 10RK-26 radio set. These radios were better than Soviet equipment at the start of the war, but remained inferior to German equipment.

The crew was equipped with two PPSh submachine guns and twenty five F1 grenades for short-range self-defence.