PeterWhite

While it is an excellent question as to whether a simpler model would work better, I am not sure what to do with that hypothesis without a proposed alternative. Angle is something real tankers were quite aware of. When practical, turreted tanks would often face their opposition at a slight angle rather than straight on. That increases the effective slope on the front armor. It exposes the side armor but at such a glancing angle that penetration was a virtual impossibility.

I had read somewhere that Stalin's great paranoia lead him to horde the best equipment with "elite" (read "unquestioningly loyal") troops in the rear. The immediate effect was that the Germans got a very skewed vision of the quality of weapons the Russians would be able to hit them with in '42, having just captured mountains of junk in the Summer of '41. The small numbers of T-34s they met later in the year made a lesser impact than their first impressions (although perhaps the not case for german tankers). In hindsight historians usually interpret these special reserves as a Soviet habit of secrecy. My take is different: the main reason from Stalin's POV is to keep good troops under a watchful eye and where they are an effective deterrent to potential political rivals, the military secrecy advantages are just a secondary effect. Does anyone have T-34 production numbers and deployment information that would support or debunk the statements above?