Editing T55AM2 (section)

==IRL==
[[File:Battle-tank-driving-t55am2.jpg|right|300px|thumb|I am on a tank!]]
If the original T-54/55 is the AK-47 of tanks, the T-55AM2 is an AKM with some nice accessories. The T-55, like all Soviet tanks, is never going to look good if you judge it by Western standards. The T-55, like the AK-47, was designed as a cheap, extremely tough workhorse for an army largely composed of short-term conscripts with little to no education to speak of. It needed to be easily comprehensible to guys who had quite possibly never seen so much as a tractor before being voluntold for service to Mother Russia. The idea was that if you used enough of these at once, the superior quality of the enemy's tanks would be drowned out by the thunder of a million cheap tanks being driven by <s>angry peasants</s> heroic Soviet soldiers. And if you think that sounds ridiculous, it sure worked for the Soviets on the Eastern Front.

That said, the T-54/55 was not a bad tank at its debut. In fact, it was a rather nasty shock to NATO when it showed up, and they were quite grateful when Hungarian rebels drove one into the British embassy in their country during the 1950s revolt. Presented with a powerful 100mm main cannon, good armor, and solid maneuverability in a tank that the USSR could easily produce in mass numbers, the British concluded that their then-standard 20-pounder gun was incapable of defeating it, while the Americans decided the M48 Patton was not enough either and began development of the M60. It has not aged well as a main-line tank after the better part of 100 years, but in its prime, the T-54/55 gave NATO lots to be afraid of.

The T-54/55 series is also the most widely-produced tank of all time, with numerous copies being circulated around the world and total production estimates ranging from 86,000 to 100,000 units. The People's Republic of China started their line of tanks with a copy of the T-54, the Type 59, and still maintains a massive arsenal of them today. This might be a cramped, noisy, inefficient piece of junk, but it ''works'', and it's so cheap even the most pitifully broke nations on Earth can get one easily.

All this may still leave you wondering why the T-55 was still hanging around in the 1980s, long after newer, better models like the T-72 had been tested and put into production. See, the thing about the Soviet Union is that when you're large enough to reach from one hemisphere to another, equipping all those soldiers can be a pain in the ass. As such, the Soviet Union tried to keep its old equipment in service for as long as humanly possible and just passed them down to less important units as the newer, better stuff arrived to replace the old gear. Russia proper got the good shit, second-line units older equipment, Warsaw Pact nations got stuff a generation behind, and so on. This is why the East Germans, Polish, and Czechoslovakians in Team Yankee use the obsolete T55AM2 while the Soviets proper don't. The USSR also took a long time to retire equipment that still worked. This is why when you look up Soviet equipment you sometimes find lists of at least five different types of machine all doing the same thing.

The T55AM2 was an attempt to get more life out of the aging T-55, to give it at least ''some'' chance against the then-modern NATO tanks like the [[M1 Abrams]] and [[Chieftain]] MBT, which by that point it was something like two tank generations behind. It was a valiant effort to do the impossible- to give a very old tank a chance on the modern battlefield- but it wasn't enough. Any army fielding these against NATO in Team Tankee will likely take heavy casualties, especially against NATO heavy armor. Against light and medium armor and infantry, it will do better, but losses will still be significant simply because the T-54/55 is no longer able to stand up against the firepower of NATO anti-tank weapons the way it could have in the 1950s and 1960s.

The Slow Firing rule on this tank is because of its small size. This is NOT a big tank by any standards, and the domed turret restricts movement significantly for the three crewmen inside. The loadout of 70-pound shells is in all manner of places, meaning no ability to perform the same motions and gain the benefit of muscle memory as the loader. Additionally, ventilation is bad, the fume extractor (which <s>the T-54 doesn't have, only the T-55</s> comes and goes depending on who is building the tank and who they are building it for, the actual difference between the two is the presence of the NBC system) does not work well, and the loader must shove the base of each shell into the breech with his left hand due to the positioning of the gun. Loading this thing's gun is difficult at best and a nightmare at worst, such as under sustained firing as noxious fumes fill the inside of the tank.

If you want fun facts about the T-55, there are at least two. First, since it was one of the first vehicles with multifuel engine, no one really knew how far it could be pushed. With WW3 involving a nuclear apocalypse being a real possibility, it was kinda important to know. So someone in the high command asked: "Can we use crude oil directly from a Comecon Pipeline?", and instead of calling him a madman everyone just went along with it. The test itself was one of the most metal things on this Earth: the oil didn't burn completely in the cylinders once the engine was started, so the still-burning mix created a thick cloud of grey smoke which quickly turned black when ''flames half a meter long'' started coming from the exhaust pipes. During acceleration, those flames extended up to one and half meters, visually giving the T-55 wings of fire, (Something similar happens if you thrash a diesel engine, particularly on the large unit's used on trains if you want a visual for how that might look). Of course, both speed and acceleration suffered quite a bit, but not as much as expected: average speed was still 36 km/h (that's roughly 22 miles per football field for barbarians denying metric system) with crude oil vs 41 km/h (25,5) on diesel. What's even more curious, the test was conducted for 20 hours straight and after that, despite the fuel filter requiring cleaning every 2 hours, it was concluded that: yes, the T-55 can use crude oil as a fuel, and no, the engine wasn't fucked up beyond repair by the experience and could be cleaned by the crew and continue working on diesel even if performance suffered. 

Second, when Soviet engineers were tasked with designing [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_1 Lunokhod_1], the first drafts were made with T-55's chassis as a base. Unfortunately, it was abandoned the moment specifications became clear due to being outlandishly big and heavy. However, it hooked Korolev with the right people to do the job. But there is a parallel universe where Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong were greeted by a sight of T-55 tread marks after leaving the Lunar Module.

If you play 40k and think this thing looks a bit familiar, you're not entirely wrong. The bubble top turret from the T-55 and T-62 tanks  was likely an influence on the forge world "[[Predator Tank#Deimos Pattern Predator (Forge World)|Deimos pattern Predator]]" tanks. It's also the tank [[James Bond]] drives in ''GoldenEye'', albeit dolled up to look a bit like a [[T-80]] and equipped with rubber tracks so it could be filmed in the city.

Lastly: these things are showing up in Ukraine. Yes seriously: a 70 year old tank is being deployed into a modern war and no this is not a case of M-55S or T-55AGM where it's based on a T-55 but is still a modern tank with a modern gun and modern systems: but no it's just straight t55's with no ERA or anything on them being rolled out. What's make this really stupid, is that modern MBTs and IFV can fire while on the move with laser guided munitions. While the T55 can't, it is also too slow to run away and lacks the technology. 

So after killing the Russian front lines, Ukrainian armor can drive into their optimal firing range, circle around and fire with little retaliation after spotting T55s with drones. [[Fail|The Bradley's 25mm 242 Bushmaster autocannon has also anecdotally been reported as able to defeat the T-55's armor when loaded with armor piercing sabots and firing at close range, and that's if they're not destroyed by advanced  ATMs or land mines first.]]  Other more advanced militaries have abandoned using tanks as mobile howitzers in favor of using self propelled artillery and precision strikes.

For these reasons the best guess anyone has as to what kind of crack somebody slipped into the Russians Vodka is that the T-55's are suppose to be used as Artillery since Russia might be straining the barrel life of some of their guns. It is a technique and method the Russians and other tankers train for so it's not totally irrational but it is still a very dire sign of the state the Russian Army is in.  

{{Soviet Forces in Team Yankee}}
{{East German Forces in Team Yankee}}
{{Polish Forces in Team Yankee}}
{{Czech Forces in Team Yankee}}
{{Iraqi Forces in Team Yankee}}
{{Iranian Forces in Team Yankee}}

[[Category:Vehicles]]