Iranian T-55(Iran-Iraq war)This soviet-made hunk of steel has been deployed at one time or another  by almost literally every country on Earth(many places still use this thing today). It's no wonder that the service history for it is so large, with a even larger catalog of variations, upgrades, and countries  making tank designs  inspired by it. With most T-55/54s  armed with the lovely D-10t 100mm rifled gun(yes, the same armament placed on the SU-100 from WW2) 205-33 mm of armor all around, 500 horsepower engine(later models got a 800 horsepower engine), a torsion bar suspension and the ability to get up to 30 miles per hour, and a low profile, the T-54 was ARGUABLY the most advanced tank in the world when it first entered service in 1949. This didn't last very long though.

  Some noteable successes of the T-54/55's combat history is with the Syrian army. In 1970 During Black September, or the Jordanian civil war the Syrian army led a invasion of Jordan from the north(Cold War era Syria actually invaded other Arab countries numerous times). The clash with Jordanian centurions led to the Syrians getting the better of the fight, Jordanians losing 19 tanks to the syrian's 9. Once again the Syrians would pull off a successful attack with the 55/54, in the 1982 Lebanon war 3 apcs and 10 Israeli tanks(8 M48 pattons and 2 M60 pattons) were knocked out in an ambush at the battle of Sultan Yacoub.(oddly one of the Israeli Patton tanks from that ambush is now on display at the Kubinka tank museum in Russia).

 These instances aside, for the most part, we tend to see more of- large numbers of T-55/54s getting knocked out in a very short time frame. Two big examples are the Six days war, the Yom Kippur war. Sherman tanks, centurions, and m48/m60 pattons knocked out T-54s by the hundreds. And then there is the 1991 gulf war, where once again t54s, T55s and t60s were knocked out by the hundreds, mostly by Abrams and challenger tanks.(though to be fair, a tank that first rolled out in 1949 would have been out-dated by the 90s anyway, this is more of a reflection of the Iraqi army at the time than the T-54's operational ability). With the Iraqi army brings us to the largest conflict the T-55 ever fought, the 8 year long Iran-Iraq war(You could also consider the lengthy wars in angola of the same time period). For many people it's the biggest and most violent event they've never heard of, and to put it simply, you could call it WW1 in the 1980s. Futile stalemates? Check. Chemical weapons? Check. Large death toll? Check. Stubborn, arrogant, and incompetent generals on both sides? Check. Both sides used the T54-60 series extensively, but early in the war the Iraqis knocked out many Iranian tanks when the Iranian tank force was mostly made of Chieftans and M60s with very few losses in return(and im aware of Iraqi air superiority early on).
   
 So was the T-54 "good"? Was it just a cheap pile of scrap metal? Well, in the right hands and situations, it proved itself very well. With a tank this widely used of course there are going to be plenty of instances of it getting it's ass handed to it. It's like this for many tanks, the Renault ft we just covered, the t-34, the Sherman, and M60 Patton to name just a few. At the very least I'll give the T-54 this, it was cheap, reliable and made leaps in tank design. A great tank for its time, but later on pressed into service too much where it was clearly obsolete. 

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