ISU-152

ISU-152

SU-85

SU-85M

ISU-152

SU-85

SU-85M

USSR

III Rank

Battle rating:

AB	RB	SB
4.7	4.7	4.7

Class:

Tank destroyer

Research:17 000

Purchase:105 000

Description

The ISU-152 is a rank III Soviet tank destroyer with a battle rating of 4.7 (AB/RB/SB). It was introduced during the Closed Beta Test for Ground Forces before Update 1.41. Wielding the same infamous 152 mm gun as on the SU-152, the ISU-152 presents better armour, mobility, and firepower with the addition of the heavy-hitting HEAT round for the gun.

General info

Survivability and armour

Armour type:

• Rolled homogeneous armour
• Cast homogeneous armour (Gun mantlet)

Armour	Front	Sides	Rear	Roof
Hull	60 mm (75°) Front glacis 90 mm (31°) Lower glacis	90 mm	60 mm (50°) Top 60 mm (39°) Bottom	30 mm
Superstructure	90 mm (29°) Front glacis 65 mm (7-69°) Gun mantlet case 100 mm Gun mantlet (0-45°)	75 mm (14-15°)	60 mm (1°)	30 mm

Notes:

• Suspension wheels are 20 mm thick while tracks are 30 mm thick.

Mobility

Game Mode	Max Speed (km/h)		Weight (tons)	Engine power (horsepower)		Power-to-weight ratio (hp/ton)
	Forward	Reverse		Stock	Upgraded	Stock	Upgraded
Arcade	39	15	46	739	992	16.07	21.57
Realistic	36	14		460	520	10	11.3

Armaments

Main armament

152 mm ML-20S					Turret rotation speed (°/s)					Reloading rate (seconds)
Mode	Capacity	Vertical	Horizontal	Stabilizer	Stock	Upgraded	Full	Expert	Aced	Stock	Full	Expert	Aced
Arcade	20	-3°/+20°	-3°/+7°	N/A	7.0	9.8	11.8	13.1	13.9	27.69	24.50	22.58	21.30
Realistic					4.8	5.6	6.8	7.5	8.0

Ammunition

Penetration statistics
Ammunition	Type of warhead	Penetration @ 0° Angle of Attack (mm)
		10 m	100 m	500 m	1,000 m	1,500 m	2,000 m
BR-540	APHE	170	169	161	152	144	136
OF-540	HE	49	49	49	49	49	49
BR-540B	APHEBC	166	164	157	148	140	133
BP-540	HEAT	250	250	250	250	250	250

Shell details
Ammunition	Type of warhead	Velocity (m/s)	Projectile Mass (kg)	Fuse delay (m)	Fuse sensitivity (mm)	Explosive Mass (TNT equivalent) (g)	Ricochet
							0%	50%	100%
BR-540	APHE	600	48.8	1.2	19	739.2	47°	60°	65°
OF-540	HE	655	43.56	0	0.1	5,900	79°	80°	81°
BR-540B	APHEBC	600	48.96	1.2	19	1,020	48°	63°	71°
BP-540	HEAT	680	27.67	0.05	0.1	5,910	62°	69°	73°

Ammo racks

Ammo racks of the ISU-152

Full ammo	Ammo type	1st rack empty	2nd rack empty	3rd rack empty	4th rack empty	Visual discrepancy
20	Projectiles Propellants	11 (+9) 11 (+9)	1 (+19) 9 (+11)	N/A 7 (+13)	N/A 1 (+19)	No

Notes:

• The ISU-152 uses two-piece ammunition, composed of projectiles (yellow) and propellant bags (orange). Both have separate racks.

Machine guns

12.7 mm DShK
Mount	Capacity (Belt)	Fire rate	Vertical	Horizontal
Pintle	250 (50)	600	-5°/+85°	±180°

Usage in battles

The ISU-152 is a tank destroyer with a huge 152 mm cannon which can one-shot any target that it penetrates. In an uptier, the gun is equipped with a HEAT shell that has enough penetration to destroy even the most armoured heavy tanks. However, the gun comes with its drawbacks. Its reload time is long, shell velocity is low, and on top of that, shell drop must be accounted for when aiming. This makes aiming and leading at long ranges difficult--indeed, the ISU-152 is best at close and medium ranges.

The gun has a very small gun depression, which means that the ISU-152 is unsuited for hilly maps and for firing from behind ridgelines. Flat, urban terrain lets this vehicle use its gun to the greatest potential.

Of course, the ISU-152 is not a turreted vehicle, and this means that flankers such as the M18 Hellcat are extremely dangerous. Worse, the ISU-152 is quite sluggish in the mobility department. Repositioning in order to face an enemy takes a considerable amount of time, which means that it's necessary to keep a careful eye out for flankers, and to plan escape routes in dangerous situations.

As for armour, the ISU-152's protection is average. Its roof armour can protect against aircraft machine guns and some 20 mm cannons, and its side armour protects well against SPAA guns. However, the frontal armour is easily penetrated by many of the guns at this tier. And, the tightly-packed arrangement of the crew inside the vehicle means that being one-shot is not a rare occurrence in this vehicle.

Provided you have the HEAT shell unlocked, the ISU-152 is a exceptional machine to use in a full uptier and even beyond, with up to 250mm of armour penetration. The HEAT shell on the ISU-152 is identical to the one on the Object 268, a BR 7.3 tank destroyer, with the same armour penetration stats to boot. With the extra silver lions obtainable from the "Rank does not matter" achievement, the ISU-152 may actually be more effective in a uptier then at tier.

Modules

Tier	Mobility		Protection	Firepower
I	Tracks		Parts	Horizontal Drive
II	Suspension	Brake System	FPE	BR-540B	Adjustment of Fire
III	Filters		Crew Replenishment	BP-540	Elevation Mechanism
IV	Transmission	Engine

Pros and cons

Pros:

• Deadly cannon provides superior one-shot capacity with any target upon penetration.
• Powerful HEAT penetrates up to 250mm which is very effective in a full uptier.
• The huge gun mantlet and its complex armor layout is capable of deflecting quite some shells sometimes.
• 30 mm roof armor resists popular aircraft weapons well, like the 12.7 mm M2 with ground target belt and the MG 151.
• All-round protection provides good resistance against flanking SPAAs. The M19 / M42 are very common flankers.
• Equipped with a .50 calibre machine gun, good for dealing with lighter vehicles like SPAAs, or some light tank destroyers like the M18 Hellcat.

Cons:

• Long reload of more than 20 seconds and the rather curved trajectory demands very precise aiming, which isn't beginner friendly.
• Front armour is only 90 mm and is not well angled and can be penetrated easily by commonly encountered guns .
• Closely packed crew all easily get killed when an explosive shell penetrates.
• Very inadequate gun depression of -3° combined with the sluggish mobility makes it only capable of fighting in urban (flat) areas, but never the hills.
• Turretless layout and the sluggish mobility makes it very vulnerable to surprise flankers, for example the infamous M18, T20, T25 and Puma.
• Gun breech often gets damaged while under enemy fire.
• .50 calibre machine gun only has 250 rounds.

History

Development

Development of the ISU-152 already started alongside the SU-152, its predecessor. The SU-152 was based off the KV-1S tank, which itself is a lighter version of the KV-1 heavy tank. The vehicle, while highly praised in its performance, saw a need for modernization with the KV-1's phasing out of the Soviet's inventory and being replaced with the new IS heavy tanks. The modernization process began on May 25, 1943, with the goal of using the IS tank as the basis of the vehicle and also increasing armour protection alongside other improvements. Development began in July under Joseph Yakovlevich Kotin, a chief designer of Soviet heavy tanks, who worked alongside G. N. Moskvin as the main designer. The designing of the improved vehicle went on for a month before the first variant was ready, designated the IS-152. This was tested in September 1943, which revealed defects and deficiencies with the design, so it was redone into a second variant called Object 241 in October 1943. Trials began on Object 241, which was successful through the factory and state trials and adopted on November 6, 1943, as the ISU-152. Production began in December at the Chelyabinsk Kirovsk Plant, producing 3,242 units from then all the way until 1947, with 1,885 units made by the end of World War II.

Design

The ISU-152 was the successor to the SU-152, retaining the same 152 mm ML-20S howitzer needed to destroy enemy fortifications in offensive operations. The vehicle was run on a torsion-bar suspension system from the IS tank chassis. The crew consists of four or five men in the vehicle, the optional crew member being a loader. The crew had external views through periscopes and two gun sights, a panoramic and a telescopic one. Crew communication was possible with an intercom system and a 10R or 10RK radio was available to communicate between vehicles. The crew had access to two PPSh submachine guns and grenades in the tank to defend themselves against infantry.

A drawback to the vehicle's design was the gun ammunition and internal storage. The large ammunition pieces were limited to about 20 rounds in the vehicle, and each round was extremely heavy and large that reloading the tank can take up to 40 minutes and lots of strength. Rate of fire was also reduced by the ammunition's heavyweight.

Combat usage

The ISU-152 was issued in a similar manner to the SU-152 in independent Heavy Self-propelled Artillery Regiments. Each regiment, of which 53 were formed from May 1943 to 1945, had 21 guns divided into four batteries of five vehicles and a commander vehicle. These regiments were supported by other military units to be flexible against threats. In December 1944, the Guards Heavy Self-propelled Artillery Brigades were formed to provide heavy fire support. These brigades had up to 65 vehicles, which would consist of ISU-152s or ISU-122s.

Like its predecessor the SU-152, the ISU-152 also served as a multi-role vehicle as a heavy assault gun, tank destroyer, and self-propelled artillery. As an assault gun, the vehicle was valuable during the Soviet's offensive operations assaulting fortified cities held by the Axis forces. The 152 mm gun was very successful in demolishing fortifications and strong points. The greater armour protection on the ISU-152 compared to the SU-152 (90 mm vs. 65 mm) made the vehicle very durable against German anti-tank weapons, even forcing the Tiger to come within close range to penetrate the vehicle. Usual tactics of the ISU-152s in urban combat was to act in one or two vehicle groups with infantry to deter infantry anti-tank weaponry like the Panzerfaust. As a tank destroyer, the ISU-152 worked its unintended role well enough that it inherited the nickname Zveroboy ("Beast Killer") from the SU-152s. The ISU-152 was very capable of destroying many of the more armoured German tanks like the Panthers, Tiger Is, and Tiger IIs. Though not as rapid-firing or as accurate as dedicated anti-tank guns, the rounds of the 152 mm howitzer could blow the turret off a Tiger tank, and a direct hit would definitely cause extensive internal damages to the tank's internal mechanisms or kill the crew due to spalling of the hull due to the explosive force. The tank destroyer role was phased out with the introduction of dedicated vehicles like the SU-100. As a self-propelled artillery piece, the ISU-152 is able to successfully fire in indirect bombardments against enemy targets up to 7,000 meters away. Though it was not really a specialized vehicle for the role, it was better than typical towed artillery pieces due to being able to move and being an enclosed vehicle to protect the crew. The ISU-152 served in all these roles in all of the Soviet offensive operations into German territory all the way until the Battle of Berlin.

Many ISU-152s were exported by the Soviets after World War II to assist its allies and other Warsaw Pact members. Countries that had access to the ISU-152 in their military were Finland, Poland, China, Czechoslovakia, North Korea, Egypt, Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Romania. All of which used the ISU-152s up until the 1970s at the latest.

In-game description

In the autumn of 1943, the KV-1S heavy tank was removed from mass production along with the successful SU-152 SPG based on the KV tanks. However, the fact that the KV and IS chassis were similar meant that a new SPG could be built based on the new heavy tank.

The SPG's layout was standard. A cabin made from rolled armour plates was installed in the front of the vehicle, combining the driving compartment and fighting compartment into one section. The engine compartment was placed in the rear of the vehicle. Because of the smaller width of the IS in comparison to the KV, the side plates' vertical slope was decreased from 25° to 15°, and its rear plate's slope removed altogether. At the same time, the cabin's frontal armour thickness was increased to 90 mm and its side armour to 75 mm. The gun mantlet was 60 mm thick, subsequently increasing to 100 mm. The vehicle was armed with a 152.4 mm ML-20 Mod. 1937/43 gun-howitzer with a 28 calibre barrel length and an ammunition capacity of 21 shells. After the war, the SPG's ammunition capacity was increased to 30 shots during modernisation. Starting from October 1944, an anti-tank turret equipped with a 12.7 mm DShK machine gun was attached on a traversing base on the commander's hatch.

From November 1943 until the end of mass production in 1946, 3,242 of them were manufactured.

The ISU-152's main role in battle was providing fire support to advancing tanks and infantry. These heavy SPGs were sometimes used in artillery preparation strikes. They could fire both directly and from cover. The SPGs were indispensable in urban battles. ISU-152s were used to suppress the Hungarian Uprising of 1956.

ISU-152 SPGs served in the Polish Army. After the war, Czechoslovakia received these vehicles. At the beginning of the 1960s, an Egyptian army regiment had an ISU-152 in service.

Among the vehicle's drawbacks, poor fighting compartment ventilation was noted. The shells' high weight demanded good physical endurance from the loader, and even then, the SPG's rate of fire was unsatisfactory. Its small on-board ammunition capacity and internally placed fuel tanks were also seen as serious flaws.

Media

• Skin and Camouflages for the ISU-152 in Warthunder Live.

See also

Vehicles equipped with the same chassis

• KV-1S
• KV-85

Vehicles equipped with the same gun

• SU-152
• ISU-152 (China)

Other vehicles of similar configuration and role

• ISU-122 / ISU-122 (China)
• ISU-122S

External links

• [Vehicle Profile] ISU-152 «Zveroboy»
• [Wikipedia] ISU-152