Hello everyone,

since we now have the World Cup in Brazil, we might s well look at some of the Brazilian equipment – in this case, the AA guns and halftracks.

During the second half of the 30′s, the army of Brazil (Exército Brasileiro, EB) was in the state of alert. The situation in the world was deteriorating quickly and other South American armies purchasing new and modern weapons did put the Brazilian army superiority at risk. The reports on the desk of the Brazilian chief of staff talked about Chile and Argentina both recieving modern equipment and were pointing out the fact that Brazil was ill-prepared for a sudden enemy incursion. In this hypothetical scenario, in a conflict with its southern neighbors, Brazil could withstand the pressure only for a short time and within 40 days, the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul would be lost. One of the weakest links in the Brazilian army was the near total obsolescence of its artillery. That was why General Eurico Gaspar Dutra, who was also the minister of war in Getulio Vargas’ government, created a searching committee with the task of analysing various products of European countries and looking for new armaments for the Brazilian army.

Sdkfz 7 halftrack with MATRA mobile repair post

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Part I: http://ftr.wot-news.com/2014/06/26/french-armor-in-indochina-part-i/

Continued from part 1…

The wheel suspension did limit the French vehicles in their movement around Indochina a lot. After several incidents and minor clashes between the French and Viet Minh, the real fighting started on 23.11.1946 by heavy French shelling of the Haiphong port. After several days of fighting, on 19.12.1946, Viet Minh was pushed out of Hanoi. The Vietnamese retreated to the Viet Bac mountains, where they regrouped and from where they sporadically attacked French strongpoints. The French tried to crush the enemy forces by series of combined arms operations with the main forces consisting of elite airmobile units, the armored units providing cover from behind. Biggest such operation was called Lea – it was performed between 7.9. and 19.9.1947 at Bac Khan, where Ho Chi Minh’s HQ was allegedly located. “Uncle Ho” himself escaped only by sheer luck, the paratroopers almost captured him in his tent. The paratroopers were also given aid by two land columns and one unit was transported by river. These columns consisted of no less than 16 batallions, three of them armored. One armored column was advancing from Lang Son over Cao Bang – it made almost 200 kilometers before it was stopped on 13.9. 15km north from Bac Khan. In the end, due to their firepower advantage, the French forces managed to break through, but the escalation of the conflict first to the entire region of Vietnam and later to the entire peninsula posed a challenge for the French command.

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Hello everyone,

wondering how long will we still get to play the football mode? After all, the World Cup ends on 13.7.2014 with its finals, no? Check this out.

According to SEA server, the football mode will be here until “about next patch”

The EU missions end on Tuesday 15th of July, two days after the World Cup ends. So, does that mean we will get the next patch at that point?

Who knows. According to the Chinese leak, the Russians will get it a week later (21.7. or so), around the 15th it will be time for round 2 of the test. We’ll see, but it’s clear that unless something bad happens, we will see the 9.2 patch in the second half of July. Not that it’s that much to look forward to…

Lately, WG trailers are a bit bland, but this is pretty nice :)

Hello everyone,

there were several conflicts all across the world, eclipsed (if not technically a part of or a continuation of) by the World War 2 and one of them was the fall of the French colonial dominion in Indochina. The French did have some armor on the spot as well, so let’s have a look at how the French-owned (but mostly American) tanks were doing in the jungly environment.

The first French armor to arrive in Indochina were five Renault FT tanks in January 1919, belonging to 16 Bataillon de Chars Légers (16th Light Vehicle Batallion), commanded by Captain de Cuverville. First trials were succesful and showed that the tanks could be very useful in colonies – and so, their number quickly rose to 30. By 1928, there was already a company of tanks present in Indochina, supported by armored cars, such as White Mle 1918, AM White-Laffly and Peugeot Mle 1925. These were used mostly for “muscle flexing” and “sabre rattling” in various areas, where they were transported mostly by ships.

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Source: http://worldoftanks.ru/ru/news/pc-browser/1/war_of_engines_2014_photo/

Hello everyone,

Russian World of Tanks portal showed a few interesting photos from the Engines of War 2014 (Моторы войны — 2014) military meeting, exhibition and re-enactment spot, that took place last weekend near the village of Ivanovo. Check this out:

OT-34 (SU-100 and Katyusha rocket launcher in the background)

A flamethrower version of the T-34 medium tank. This is the rare tank Yuri Pasholok fell from by the way :) I doubt there are more than like three in the world.

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Hello everyone,

the following video was linked on Yuri Pasholok’s blog and I think it’s actually very, very interesting.

The tank you see on it is the Christie M1931. You might remember the name of Walter Christie as the father of the fast BT Soviet tanks and ultimately predecessors to the legendary T-34, which uses a Christie suspension (to be fair, there was a plan to replace the Christie suspension with torsion bars, but the war intervened and nothing came of it).

Christie was known for building not really heavily armored tanks, these were more like race cars with guns and turrets. M1931 Christie tank was for its 10,5 tons powered by a 338hp Liberty engine (32 hp/t!), allowing it to go as fast as 74 km/h on tracks and 113 km/h on wheels (the design could drive around on rubber tyres to speed up the transportation on the road). This however was compensated by very thin armor (16mm at the most) and a short 37mm gun.

In the end, the US Army was interested in heavy, “infantry support” tanks and did not want Christie’s invention. Soviet Union however bought two of these tanks and used them as patterns for the creation of the BT series.