WZ-111

Development history

With the Sino-Soviet split, China lost access to the IS-series heavy tanks it had hoped to licence, and Factory 617 began work on a native heavy tank under the designation WZ-111. The layout followed Soviet practice closely, with a heavily sloped cast turret and a 122 mm gun, and the design weight climbed towards sixty tonnes. Chinese industry in the early 1960s could not deliver a powerplant or transmission to match, and the project was cancelled in 1966 with only a hull built, fitted with an underpowered diesel for mobility trials. The hull survives at the Beijing Tank Museum. Documented here as an experimental design that never entered service; the WZ-111 name was later reused for unrelated programmes.