The Wehrmacht entered World War II, armed only with light tanks. They were enough to make rapid breakthroughs and bypass maneuvers, characteristic of the lightning wars of 1939, 1940 and 1941. The armies of countries that fell victim to Nazi aggression were armed with vehicles of the same class, and often the worst.
The Germans crossed the USSR border with the same arsenal consisting of tankettes, TI, T-II and T-III tanks. TI was armed only with a machine gun, the other types of armored vehicles had small-caliber guns.
The fact that the Wehrmacht soldiers had a chance to meet in the very first tank battles in Soviet territory greatly perplexed them. The captured samples of the “thirty-fours” and KV significantly exceeded all that the Panzerwaffe had at its disposal. Urgently, work began on the accelerated development of self-propelled guns and heavy tanks that could withstand Soviet medium-weight vehicles armed with 75-caliber long-barreled guns.
The history of the SU-152 has become part of the general arms systems race, which has gone through all the war years. This battle was invisible, it was conducted by engineers of the warring countries, standing behind the Kuhlmanns, conducting calculations on the slide rule.
Within two years, the Germans created a whole "zoo", consisting of "tigers", "elephants", "panthers" and even "mice", though very large. For all their design flaws, and sometimes flaws, these heavyweights had a significant advantage: they could accurately hit armored targets from long distances.
The State Defense Committee set a specific task for the Soviet designers: to create a self-propelled gun capable of destroying enemy equipment with powerful armor and keeping our tanks out of its reach. The case was assigned to TsKB-2 (Central Design Bureau), which was led by Lt. Col. Kotin. The engineering team already had a certain reserve, all 1942 they worked on the project of a new tank, and the chassis as a whole was already ready. It remained to install on her howitzer ML-20 caliber 152.4 mm. In honor of this gun, the Soviet self-propelled gun SU-152 got its modest name. The task was completed in 25 days.
Soviet technology frightened the enemy not with a big name, but with his terrible work. An almost half-center shell left the barrel of the barrel at a monstrous speed of 600 m / s, sending it to a distance of 2 km. The howitzer could fire not only armor-piercing, but also high-explosive, and concrete-piercing ammunition, which was very important for use in offensive military operations. It was necessary to free the territories captured by the enemy, break in fortified lines, destroy bunkers, suppress artillery batteries, and for this the self-propelled gun SU-152 was very useful.
The first major battle in which St. John's Wort took part was the Battle of Kursk. In addition to its official designation, the car still received the nickname, although unofficially. It was well-deserved, the Nazi menagerie very quickly felt the presence of new Soviet technology, as they say, in their own skin.
As a tank destroyer, the SU-152 proved to be very good. Hit in the "Tiger" or "Panther" did not leave any chances for survival for either the equipment or the crews - the heavy armored towers simply flew tens of meters. Problems nevertheless were mainly due to the insufficient quality of domestic optics. The sights did not provide the required accuracy for a guaranteed hit.
Support for offensive operations did not require high precision fire, and the Soviet self-propelled gun SU-152 coped with this task perfectly. Its rate of fire may seem low (only two rounds per minute), but one should take into account the peculiarity of the howitzer gun with separate feeding of the shell and the shell.
It was impossible to install a heavy gun in the turret, however, a turning angle (12 ° in each direction) was sufficient for pointing both from closed and open positions.
Self-propelled guns SU-152 took part in the assault on Berlin. Although they were not designed for street fighting, their caliber became a very compelling argument in favor of surrender.