T-44H

This page depicts events as they are of 1945. Due to technical limitations the page is called T-44H."''The T-44/H, or as our crew call it the King Lion, is a threat of a whole new level." - Severnoye Vremya (Северное Время), 24 July 1944 The T-44/H (nicknamed the King Lion'' by Northern soldiers) is a Ravenfielder heavy tank used during the Second Great War. The official ordnance classification for the tank is S-443.

The T-44/H weighs almost 65 tonnes and contains 100 to 220 mm of armor. It is armed with the 88 mm RL 43/29S gun, an upgrade of the gun used on the T-42/H.

967 tanks were built during the war, 633 of them between April and December 1944. After 1944, the focus began on building the T-50ST standard tank.

Development
The idea of a heavy tank in the 65-75 tonne range was floated by the RTEB even before the remilitarization started.

In September 1943, after reports started coming in of the MT-2 tank, a Taigaskayan tank with an maximum of 200 mm armor and a 125 mm gun supposedly capable of penetrating 275 mm of RHA and which no Ravenfielder tank could defeat, the RTEB worked on a massive revision of the T-42/H with an 800 hp engine, up to 200 mm of armor and a high-power 88 mm gun, which had to be capable of defeating the MT-2 from 1500 m at 30° angle.

The first prototypes (TP225, TP233, TP275) were completed in December 1943 and sent to the RTEB Complex for testing. The TP225 proved the best tank, with a gun more powerful than required, a transmission with expected reliability better than the T-40 medium tank, and better speed and mobility (43 km/h). However, it was an extremely expensive tank, costing three times as much as the T-42/H. This was deemed a non-issue as the tank would have an equivalent power to at least ten MT-2 tanks.

Production
Serial production of the T-44/H started in April 1944 after extensive testing.

From the very beginning, production was plagued by sabotage and massive Allied bombing campaigns. Out of an expected 2,000, only 633 were built by December 1944.