In 1944, the Soviet Union’s state defense committee ordered the country’s industry to develop a better anti-tank gun—one that could penetrate the armor of the latest German tanks.
The result was the D-44, an 85-millimeter gun that borrowed its barrel from the cannon on the iconic T-34 tank and fired a 21-pound shell out to a distance of 10 miles.
Flash forward 79 years, and the D-44 still is in use in Ukraine. Enterprising Ukrainian technicians even have fitted the antique gun to 1970s-vintage MT-LB armored tractors to produce a new kind of tank-destroyer. An MT-LB-44.
The USSR’s Uralmash factory produced more than a thousand D-44s every year between 1945 and 1953. The gun saw widespread use across the Warsaw Pact and allied countries until the more powerful D-30 began replacing it in the early 1980s.
The Ukrainian army had ex-Soviet D-44s in reserve. With lower elevation than a howitzer and less armor-penetration than a D-30, the old D-44 wasn’t worth all that much until Russia widened its war on Ukraine starting in February 2022.
Outgunned two-to-one by the Russians, the Ukrainians needed every artillery piece they could build, buy, beg or scrounge. Even old D-44s. The aging anti-guns began showing up in Ukrainian batteries no later than the summer of 2022. That August, the first MT-LB-44s appeared.
The MT-LB-44 is similar to another self-propelled artillery piece the Ukrainians improvised: the MT-LB-12, an armored tractor mounting an MT-12 100-millimeter anti-tank gun.
But where the MT-12 can penetrate 600 millimeters of armor, a D-44 can pierce just 300 millimeters or so, depending on the kind of round it’s firing. An MT-LB-12 crew should be able to knock out a Russian T-72 tank with a direct hit to the sides or back. An MT-LB-44 crew might need a little luck to achieve the same result.
The less-powerful MT-LB-44s apparently equipped second-line Ukrainian units, at first. But this month, the do-it-yourself tank-destroyer also appeared in the arsenal of the front-line 67th Mechanized Brigade.
The 67th lately has been fighting a defensive action west of Kreminna in northeastern Ukraine, staving off an attempt by the Russian army to spoil Ukraine’s two-month-old counteroffensive.
Desperate to block the Russians’ countercounteroffensive, the Ukrainians have deployed some of the newest and best-equipped brigades to the Kreminna sector: the 21st Mechanized Brigade with its Swedish-made combat vehicles; the 44th Mechanized Brigade with ex-Polish vehicles, mostly.
But beggars can’t be choosers. Still hungry for artillery despite getting more than a thousand big guns and launchers from their foreign allies, the Ukrainians are making do with every working gun they can get their hands on, and bolt to an armored tractor. Even one as old as the D-44.
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