The SU-152 and Related Vehicles

Publisher’s Preface

In 2010 the massive, multiplayer online game World of Tanks (WoT) was launched by the company Wargaming. At the time this book was published, WoT had more than 80 million registered players worldwide.

The creative people at Wargaming.net are not just tank enthusiasts—they are passionate about the history of armored fighting vehicles (AFVs) and getting them right in the game. In 2012, the company started publishing a series of books in Russian that utilized documents and archival materials that had never before been seen by outsiders or published in any language about the design, procurement, development, manufacturing, and combat employment of Soviet AFVs during World War Two (the Great Patriotic War to Russians).

Now these remarkable books are being published in English with the obvious descriptor The Russian View—English readers may be surprised by some of the opinions of the Russian authors in this series. The series included three categories of titles: Construction and Development (as for the SU-152); Combat Service; and Military Operations.

Yuri Igorevich Pasholok, the author of this book about the SU-152 and other self-propelled (SP) guns based on the KV tank chassis, uncovered intriguing facts and the secret story of Soviet heavy artillery SP guns through his research, including:

Pasholok’s research provides readers of World War Two history in the West with a much better understanding and greater appreciation of Soviet SP weapon development, and I am extremely fortunate to be able to offer these terrific books for the first time in English.