Those T-55 Tanks The Russians Are Pulling Out Of Storage? They Were Obsolete … In 1973.

It’s a deeply ominous sign for Russian tank crews that the Kremlin has begun pulling 70-year-old T-54 and T-55 tanks out of long-term storage—presumably in order to recondition them for front-line service in Ukraine, 40 years after the Soviet army retired the types.

The T-54 and its slightly more modern derivative, the T-55, aren’t quite World War II tanks, but they’re close. The T-54 first appeared in 1946. The T-55 arrived 12 years later.

Just 13 years after that, the 40-ton, four-person tanks with their 100-millimeter rifled guns, 200-millimeter steel armor, 500-horsepower engines in early models and crude optics already were obsolete compared to contemporary Western designs.

We know this from real-world experience. While the Soviet army never invaded Western Europe, triggering an apocalyptic war with NATO that would’ve involved countless tanks including tens of thousands of T-54/55s, Soviet and Western tanks designs squared off in a smaller, but still brutal, regional war—in and around Israel in October 1973.

The Yom Kippur war, pitting an invading army of Egyptian, Syrian and allied troops against the Israeli army, ended in a decisive Israeli victory.

In 19 days of bloody fighting on the Golan Heights along the border between Israel and Syria, just 177 British-made Centurion tanks in two brigades held off a Syrian tank army with no fewer than 1,400 T-54s, T-55s and newer T-62s.

“This was not just another round in the cycle of Arab-Israeli wars but the ultimate test in battle of two opposing philosophies in armored warfare—of East and West, of quantity versus quality,” Simon Dunstan wrote in his definitive Centurion vs. T-55: Yom Kippur War 1973.

And in that test, a Centurion proved superior. Even when fighting 10 T-54/55s.

The Centurion entered service with the British Army in 1945. Weighing 50 tons, with a world-class 105-millimeter L7 rifled gun, carefully sloped armor (thinner but more protective than a T-54/55’s armor) and 650-horsepower engine, the four-person Centurion was an immediate success.

The Israelis bought hundreds of Centurions, deployed them in the 1967 war with Egypt and upgraded the survivors to the Shot Cal standard, with a bigger engine and better fire-controls.

In 1973, the 177 Shot Cals of the Israeli 7th and 188th Brigades fought from angled fighting positions—so-called “firing ramps”—that engineers had prepared before the war.

A Shot Cal would roll just far enough up the firing ramp to expose its gun and sights, as well as its commander’s head as he stood in his hatch, per Israeli custom. From these ramps, the two brigade fought off successive waves of Syrian tanks, mostly T-55s.

The Shot Cals opened fire when the Syrian tanks were as far away as 3,000 yards—and kept firing even when the range closed to 50 yards or closer. A Shot Cal commanded by Maj. Shmuel Askarov, from the 188th Brigade, alone destroyed 35 T-54/55s. According to Dunstan, Askarov’s gunner Yitzhak Hemo achieved a “remarkable” hit rate of one enemy vehicle for every one and a half rounds he fired.

Wrecked Syrian tanks soon littered the Golan Heights. But with a “display of cold courage not seen before by the Israelis, the Syrian tanks simply bypassed the burning victims of the devastating Israeli fire and pressed on, pausing occasionally to return fire,” Dunstan wrote.

In the end, despite grievous losses (especially among the exposed tank commanders), the Israelis prevailed—by inflicting even more grievous losses on the Syrians. By the war’s end, nearly 900 Syrian tanks lay destroyed or abandoned on the Golan Heights, around 630 of them T-54/55s.

Statistically, every single Shot Cal from the 7th and 188th Brigades was hit at least once. But thanks to the hard work of brave front-line maintenance crews, as well as the greater freedom of movement a defender usually enjoys, all but a few dozen Shot Cals eventually returned to service.

In the brutal tank battle on and around the Golan Heights, 3,500 Syrians died. Fewer than 800 Israelis died. That the Israelis were on the defensive, firing from cover against exposed enemies, helps to explain the lopsided losses.

But the Shot Cal—that is, the British Centurion—clearly was the superior tank. A T-54/55 needed to halt to achieve any degree of accuracy with its minimally-stabilized gun—a major weakness of the design.

The Soviet tank’s TSh 2-22 gunner’s sight was another problem. In daytime, the Sight Periscopic No. 30 on the Centurion saw farther and with better clarity.

The only thing a T-54/55 did better than a Centurion did was shoot at night, because the former had an invisible-to-the-naked-eye infrared spotlight for its infrared optics. The latter fought at night by way of a white spotlight that instantly betrayed the Centurion’s position.

The problem, for Russian tank crews in 2023, is that a T-54 or T-55 is … well, still a T-54 or T-55. Modest upgrades haven’t remedied its thin armor, the poor stabilization for its gun or the relative blindness of its crew.

The Ukrainian army meanwhile is riding in tanks that are generations beyond the Centurion. A Ukrainian T-64BV has 500 millimeters of armor, good stabilization and modern day-night optics. And those German-made Leopard 2s and American M-1A1s that are on the way to Ukraine—they’re even better.