In the early 70s, the most modern tank of the People's Liberation Army of China was the Type 59, which was, in fact, a clone of the Soviet T-54A, launched in a series back in 1955.
Two Type 59 tanks in the Jinan Military Region with a very rare modification - twin 12.7 mm anti-air machine gun mounts on their turrets, akin to the ones found on the 122 medium tank. pic.twitter.com/enCLV4yDOK
— Char1A (@Yoshi96365617) July 5, 2021
At this time, the Armed Forces of the USSR and Western states continued to receive new generation equipment: T-64A, AMX-30, Leopard, Chieftain. Work has also begun on Leopard 2 and XM803.
The study of the T-62 tank captured during the battles on Damansky Island in 1969, armed with a powerful 115-mm smoothbore gun U-5TS "Hammer", made it possible for the PLA command to understand how far behind the Chinese tank building was.
Therefore, the engineers and designers of the Military-industrial complex of the People's Republic of China were given an ambitious task - to create a combat vehicle that, in terms of its tactical and technical characteristics, will not be inferior in any way to the best foreign models. At the same time, it was planned to actively use foreign technologies obtained in various ways.
As a result, prototypes appeared that had guns of increased caliber, fire control systems, loading mechanisms, new high-power engines, automatic transmissions, hydropneumatic suspensions, external installations of anti-tank guided missiles, etc.
Interestingly, some of them, like the WZ-1224, resembled samples of the Western school of tank building, while others, such as the WZ-122, felt a strong Soviet influence. For example, the tower was almost completely "copied" from the T-62.
However, despite considerable efforts, it was still not possible to bring any of these tanks to the series, they turned out to be too complex for production and operation in the troops.
At the same time, some of the solutions used then came in handy during the further modernization of the Type 59. For example, as well as on the WZ-122, they tried to install a paired 12.7-mm Type 54 machine gun installation (copies of the DShKM). With its help, it was possible to hit targets at a distance of up to 3,500 meters. But due to the bulkiness and an increase of more than twice the mass, such a novelty has not been widely distributed, and mentions of it can be found only in a small number of materials appearing on the Web.
Alexey Moiseev
