KV-4 (Object 224)
In service 1941 - 1941
Based onKV-3 (Object 223) (derived from)
Design competition only, never built. In spring 1941 the Kirov works ran an in-house contest for a 107 mm-armed super-heavy; more than twenty engineers submitted wildly different layouts.
Built byKirov Factory (Leningrad)
Photograph pending. No clearly licensed photograph of this vehicle was found.
Development history
Ordered after intelligence reports of heavy German designs, the KV-4 brief asked for the 107 mm ZIS-6 gun behind armour proof against it. Between April and June 1941 some twenty-odd Kirov designers - Dukhov, Shashmurin, Kreslavskiy, Ermolaev and others - submitted schemes ranging from a conventional single-turret heavy to double-turret and casemate arrangements of over 100 tonnes. Nikolai Dukhov took the prize. The German invasion in June, and the evacuation of the Kirov works to Chelyabinsk, ended the work before any hull was laid down. Published weights and armour figures come from the surviving design submissions and vary sharply between them; the figures quoted here are ranges across the competing schemes, not the specification of a finished vehicle.
Variants
One canonical record, 4 recorded variants.
Dukhov scheme (winning entry)
1941Conventional single large turret with the 107 mm ZIS-6 and a 45 mm gun in the hull front; judged the most practical of the submissions
Shashmurin scheme
1941Two-tier arrangement with a 45 mm turret mounted on the roof of the main 107 mm turret
Kreslavskiy scheme
1941Casemate hull mounting for the 107 mm with a separate small turret, reducing height at the cost of traverse
Ermolaev scheme
1941Rear-mounted fighting compartment with the crew forward; among the heaviest layouts submitted
Related vehicles
Separate records that derive from this vehicle, grouped by how they relate to it.
Derived from this vehicle