World War 2 photo: Soviet ISU-122 self-propelled artillery gun from the Red Army Artillery on one of the streets of Sobeslav city in Czechoslovakia. The Eastern Front.
The inscription on the ISU-122 self-propelled gun: “We are Russian, we won and Glory to the Soviet artillerymen!”.
Location: Sobeslav, Czechoslovakia
Date Photo Date: May 1945
ISU-122 (Object 242) – Soviet heavy self-propelled artillery (SPG) during the Great Patriotic War. In the name of the machine, the abbreviation ISU means “self-propelled installation based on the IS tank” or “IS installation”; the letter “I” in addition to the standard Soviet designation “SU” for military equipment of this class was required to distinguish it from self-propelled guns of the same caliber SU-122 on another tank base. Index 122 denotes the caliber of the main armament of the vehicle.
Developed by the design bureau of experimental plant No. 100 in December 1943 and adopted by the Workers ‘and Peasants’ Red Army (RKKA) on March 12, 1944. A month later, its serial production began at the Chelyabinsk Kirov Plant (ChKZ), which continued until August 1945. In addition to the Red Army, ISU-122 were in service with the armies of Poland and Czechoslovakia, single captured vehicles were used by the Wehrmacht.
In the post-war period, the ISU-122 underwent modernization and were in service with the Soviet army for a long time. Beginning in the mid-1960s, ISU-122s were withdrawn from service with the Soviet Army; a number of machines that survived from cutting into metal now serve as monuments and exhibits in museums around the world. It was also delivered to a number of countries, in most of which it was withdrawn from service, but a certain number of ISU-122s are still, as of 2007, used by the Vietnamese army.