Rye Field’s 1/35 T-55A obr.1981, converted to an Iraqi T-55A obr.1970. I’m writing a build article for MMI on this one. I designed the Iraqi dust deflectors in Shapr3D and printed them on my resin printer, and the figures are slightly modified MiniArt Soviet Cold War crew.
After a bit of research, I figured out the function of these things. Though I had been calling them ‘heat deflectors’ like everyone else, the placement of these things didn’t quite make sense as a means of reducing IR signature. They’re placed in a spot behind the engine and radiator, and directly over the intake (port) and outlet (starboard) for the cooling fan. Since much more heat would seem to be generated by the exhaust, for example, why place it here?
The answer has to do with Kuwaiti sand and dust being sucked in by the cooling system. This is a problem with the T-54/55/Type 69 series, as the plume of dust kicked up by the tracks as the tank moves forward tends to be sucked in by the cooling system, which obviously would cause plenty of problems. As it was also seen on at least one T-72, it seems to have been a problem for that type as well.
So, this was an Iraqi attempt, and a simple and quite practical one, to improve the efficiency of their combat systems in a different battlefield environment than the one in which they had previously been operating for nearly a decade.
Reference the Tankograd Blog, at [Tankograd: T-54] -
“One minor disadvantage of the cooling system is that the ejected air is blown out of the centrifugal fan at a high velocity, so that the dust kicked up by the tracks gets sucked into the air stream. The effect is that there is a “rooster tail” of dust spouting from the back of the tank. This tends to be a problem in very dry and dusty conditions like in deserts or in some European summers but not in hot and humid conditions like in South East Asia (including Vietnam). If you happen to be a scout conducting forward observation in a very dry part of the world, faint ‘rooster tails’ in the distance would be a dead giveaway that T-54 tanks are coming your way.”
Also it was a much quicker build than MiniArt.