Soviet infantry of the Red Army on the armor of a heavy self-propelled artillery gun SU-152 takes part in the attack against the defense of the Wehrmacht. Eastern Front, World War II. The author of the photo is Soviet front-line photographer Alexander Ustinov.
Source of information about the SU-152 photo: Album “Photographs of Ustinov A.V. 1941-1945″, 1978.
SU-152 (originally Object 236, KV-14, SU-14) is a heavy Soviet self-propelled artillery gun (SPG) of the Great Patriotic War, built on the chassis of the KV-1s heavy tank and armed with a powerful 152-mm howitzer-gun ML- 20C.
According to its combat mission, the SU-152 was a heavy assault gun; limitedly could perform the functions of a self-propelled howitzer. The construction of the first prototype of the SU-152 was completed at the Chelyabinsk Kirov Plant (ChKZ) on January 24, 1943, and serial production began the following month. In connection with the discontinuation of the KV-1s SU-152 base tank in December 1943, they were replaced in production with the equivalent in armament and better armored ISU-152, in total 670 self-propelled artillery installations of this type were built. The combat debut of the SU-152 took place in the summer of 1943 in the Battle of Kursk, where it proved to be an effective destroyer of new heavy German tanks and self-propelled guns. The most active SU-152s were used in the second half of 1943 and early 1944, later their number in the troops steadily decreased due to combat losses and wear and tear of the undercarriage and engine-transmission group. The failed SU-152 was replaced by the more advanced ISU-152 in Soviet self-propelled artillery units. A small number of vehicles fought until the end of the war and were in service with the Soviet army in the postwar years. After decommissioning, the remaining SU-152s were almost all disposed of for metal, and so far only a few self-propelled guns of this type have survived.