The T-34 is a crude vehicle by western standards, even by the standards of World War II.-- it has few refinements. The breach of the 85mm main gun can be seen in the photo at left, and the gunner's position is behind. The gunner's handcrank to traverse the turret is visible. The elevation crank is out of sight on the left side of the main gun. Such an arrangement made tracking moving targets next to impossible.
The loader serviced the main gun left-handed. This was not too bad with a trained crew, but a novice crew would find this degrading the rate of fire considerably. The turret was also very cramped.
The T-34 is a crude vehicle by western standards, even by the standards of World War II.-- it has few refinements. The driver's position was very uncomfortable, but functional. Steering was by clutch and brake, where two driving clutches engage track brakes when levers are pulled. Instrumentation is extremely spartan, but provide enough information for a basic diesel engine.
Speaking of diesels, contrary to popular belief, diesels did not provide a significant fire safety advantage over gasoline vehicles. Data research on shot up US and British Shermans and other tanks showed that when they burned, it was the ammunition that went up, not the gasoline.
More detail on the gunner's position. By the time the T-34/85 came out, the gunner and commander were distinct positions. In the earlier T-34/76, the commander doubled as the gunner, thereby degrading target acquisition.
Later model T-34/85s had powered traverse, and this is one of those. Power traverse is provided through the electrical motor by the traverse handcrank, and appears to operate in conjunction with the crank, making it easier to turn. This would still make tracking moving targets extremely difficult.
Closer view of the gunner's controls in the T-34/85, showing the electric motor to drive the turret traverse. While it appears that there is powered elevation as well, this is merely a crank differential.
A further point is that the fire control seen here was essentially the same on the T-44, the first Soviet post-war deployed design.
Ammunition stowage for 85mm rounds in the turret bustle. The practice of placing ammunition in such exposed places was common practice for armies all the way up to the 1970s. Current main battle tanks have ammunition either in a compartmentalized blow out box (the M1A1) or in a carousel at the turret base (the T-72 series), thus placing it below the turret ring.
Any hit in this area of the turret would have caused a catostrophic kill of the tank, with probably loss of the entire crew.
