The T-62 is a North Korean main battle tank featured in Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction.
Overview
The T-62 is the KPA's main tank of choice during the later stages of the game. It only appears in the Northern Province, replacing the T-54 from the Southern Province. It is much more powerful than its predecessor, and almost as powerful as the M1 Tank. It can be acquired from most North Korean bases and outposts in the Northern Province.
Destroying a T-62 will result in payment of a $7,500 bounty from the Allied Nations.
Tactics
The T-62 is an old tank; its design goes back 41 years in 2005. But unlike the obsolete T-54 fielded by the Korean People's Army earlier in the game, a T-62 is a much more serious threat. The T-62 features a larger main gun- 115mm versus the 100mm gun of the T-54- and has better armor, a slightly better top speed, and a faster turret traverse. Encountering one or more T-62s on foot or in an unarmored or light armored vehicle will put the player at a considerable disadvantage. In sufficient numbers, the T-62 can stand up to the better, more modern MBTs of the Allied Nations and China, and if it outnumbers them stands a solid chance of winning.
Like the T-54, the T-62 is NBC (Nuclear Biological Chemical) shielded, allowing it to operate in nuclear-contaminated areas encountered in various points of the game.
Air strikes and helicopters are both deadly threats to the T-62; its turret-roof-mounted machine gun can do nothing against high-speed jet aircraft, and helicopters can easily fly above the maximum elevation of the T-62s 115mm main cannon and beyond the reach of its machine gun. Infantry-carried anti-tank weapons can damage and destroy it, especially the modern weapons carried by the Allied Nations and China. Moving in close and killing a T-62's gunner allows the tank to be hijacked; a good tactic for removing the threat of a T-62 if forced to fight one up close and on foot.
Facing the T-62 means that one is in for a bigger fight than against a T-54. The operator enjoys better armor and firepower than a T-54, and although the T-62 will catch fire immediately and explode a few seconds later when shot by an M1 Tank or Type 96, it can still fight for those last few seconds and may well get a round or two off from its main gun in that time. Against other main battle tanks, the T-62 fights at a disadvantage but much less of one than a T-54, and in situations where the enemy has no MBTs present, the Korean People's Army can actually win some small victories and drive the invaders back for a short time.
Real Life
- The T-62 is based on the real life Soviet T-62 main battle tank. The T-62 was developed in response to a realization by Soviet leadership in the late 1950s that the 100mm cannon of the T-54/55 was incapable of penetrating the frontal armor of new NATO tanks, such as the British-made Centurion and the American-made M48 Patton. A new 115mm main gun was developed to increase the T-54/55s firepower and armor penetration, but initial efforts to fit this gun to the T-54/55 showed the two designs- the new 115mm cannon and the T-54/55 tank- were inherently unsuitable to each other. The bigger gun required a larger turret and turret ring to absorb the higher recoil, and the T-54/55's hull was simply too small to accept this new turret. Thus the design of the T-62 took shape, a significant improvement on the T-54/55. The T-62 began production in 1961. It is no longer a state-of-the-art tank in 2016, but remains in use with more than 12 countries. The Russian Federation, formerly the Soviet Union, has replaced the T-62 with the T-72, T-80, and T-90 in active service.
- One of the countries still using the T-62 as a first-line MBT is North Korea, which ordered 350 T-62s from the USSR in 1970, another 150 in 1974, and produced at least 1,200 under license in North Korea. A total of 800 are believed to have been in service in the DPRK in 2000, and 2,000 were believed to be in use in 2011. North Korea has modified foreign-made T-62s and built its own to the standard of the North Korean "Chonma-ho", a series of NK-designed T-62 variants.
- The T-62, like the T-54/55, is a highly durable Soviet design: reliable, simple, easy to use and cheap to build and keep running. Like its predecessor the T-54/55, the T-62 is designed for mass use by a large army mostly consisting of conscripted soldiers, rather than the NATO standard of a smaller army consisting of highly-trained, professional volunteers. The T-62 uses a V-12, water-cooled diesel engine producing 581 horsepower, and features a crew of four: driver, gunner, loader, commander. The T-62 weighs 37 tons and can travel up to 31 miles per hour on roads or up to 25 miles per hour cross-country.
- The T-62 features an automatic ejection system for its main cannon. It uses the gun's recoil to kick open a trap door on the back of the tank's turret, ejecting the spent shell casing. This prevents the interior of the tank from becoming cluttered with spent cannon shells and polluted with noxious fumes. The circular door can be seen on the rear of the T-62's turret in-game, but it never actually opens to eject the spent shell.