General info for KV-1E

• Country USSR
• Vehicle role Heavy Tank
• Rank 3

• Battle rating in
  • arcade battles 4.3
  • realistic battles 4
  • simulator battles 4.3

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Wiki info about KV-1E

Official War Thunder wiki

After receiving the first reports from the front about the heavy tanks' deployment in battle, the LKZ factory began to work on strengthening the KV's armour. The only weapon capable of penetrating the Soviet tank's frontal armour was the 88 mm 8.8 Flak 18 anti-aircraft cannon. Its anti-aircraft rounds, even without an armour-piercing steel core, had an 810 m/s muzzle velocity and could penetrate an 80 mm thick armour plate set at a 30 degree angle from a range of 1,000 metres. As a rule, it disabled the KV-1 with 2-3 hits to its turret and hull. Specialists at the Leningrad Kirovsk factory developed a simple but effective up-armouring design previously used on the T-28 tank. The tank's turret and hull sides were fitted with 25 mm add-on armour plates, increasing the overall armour width to 100 mm. Furthermore, a small gap was left between the turret and the add-on armour. This improved the tank's defences when under fire from shaped high explosive shells. These modifications increased the tank's combat-loaded weight to 50 tonnes. Tanks modified in such a way could be discerned by the huge heads of the bolts used to attach the add-on armour plates. The main bulk of these up-armoured tanks was sent to the Northwestern and Leningrad fronts. Some of these tanks were captured intact and used by German forces. The stationary nature of combat encounters did not allow the KV to truly come into its own. Apart from that, tank units constantly complained about the vehicle's high weight, which didn't just lead to technical problems. All it took was a few KV tanks driving along a road to make it difficult to negotiate for other vehicles, even tracked ones. The heavy tank's mobility on loose ground or boggy terrain was unsatisfactory.