Editing SU-122 (section)

==IRL==
After Barbarossa, the Soviets did some hard thinking about how to improve their artillery capabilities. Roughly this means get howitzers onto treads/wheels/whatever. The [[Nazi|funny spider people]] had these neat casemate style vehicles called Stugs, which were assault guns that could also function as Tank Destroyers and even artillery. The SU-122 was part of a series of experiments to use the T-34 chassis for new vehicles like the SU-85. The difference is that the SU-122 was meant primarily to be a mobile howitzer and not fight other tanks.

There were advantages to this design, one of the more important of these being that it was cheaper to produce than something like a Sherman 105 or KV-2, while providing more protection than something like a [[Hummel]] or [[M12 155mm Artillery Battery|M12]]. It also kept the logistics relatively straightforward and was combined with cannibalization, because the T-34 was one of the most prevalent tanks in the Red Army at the time. Also true of the tank was that the Christie suspension provided all the good that entailed.

This did come with downsides though. Chief among these were the tank was still very cramped, and the commander usually had to help the gunner and loader reload the gun. This is also combined with the dubious reliability of the T-34 design to begin with, and inherited all the downsides the Christie suspension also entailed.

The SU-122 didn't earn the reuptation that later Soviet SPGs did, though they were capable of killing big cats like Tigers and Panters, though these tended to be rare instances and didn't earn the same reputation that the SU-152 did. Overall the SU-122 was a relatively successful vehicle that served as a testbed for ideas that would be perfected in later Soviet casemate SPGs.

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