As always, courtesy of Vollketten (US Server).

Here we have yet another brilliant solution from the mind of the Commonwealth engineers.

Backstrom Amphibian Invasian Tank – 1942

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Source: http://pavel70slama.blog.cz/1405/t-13-hornet-b

T-13 Hornet B was a heavy eight-wheel armored car/tank, developed in the late 30′s by Trackless Tank Corporation. This company from New York started to work on the desing of this fast, heavy wheeld gun carrier in 1937. It was a private activity, not supported by the US Army and the development was led by the president of the company, Floyd del Brown. In 1940, this design evolved into the Hornet Model B High Speed Trackless Tank.

The Hornet consisted of roughly 80 percent of standardized and comercially available parts. It had eight wheels and a riveted armored hull. The rear six wheels were propelled, making the vehicle 8×6. The wheels were attached independently and were equipped with shock absorbers. The Hornet had three possible engine options – Continental or Wright gasoline engines or a Guiberson diesel, but the prototype was equipped with a Guiberson 9-cylinder T-1020 265hp engine, which was mounted in the rear of the vehicle. The driver was sitting in the frontal left part, the right side was given to another crewmember, but the entire crew compartment design was judged as completely unsuitable for the purposes of war. The Hornet weighed 7,5 tons (including the turret) – the prototype however did not have the turret mounted, instead it had a small copula with a machinegun. The vehicle was 2,5 meters wide and 1,9 meters tall (without the turret).

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Hello everyone,

those of you, who are playing World of Tanks for a while do probably remember that at one point, the tier 6 medium tank, T-34/85, had an option to mount the 100mm D-10T gun. This was actually quite historical – there was an attempt (a prototype) to mount a 100mm gun in the T-34/85 turret and today, we’re going to have a look at it.

The reason for the proposal to actually upgun the T-34/85 was the fact that even in 1944, it was clear that the 85mm-equipped tank was inferior to the Panther, when it came to guns and improvements were in order. The first step was to first install a high-power 85mm gun (ZIS-85-BM) with improved penetration capabilities. This happened in September 1944, when Factory No.192 developed this powerful gun with the muzzle velocity of 980 m/s. After the development, the gun, now designated as ZIS-1, was transferred to the Gorokhovetsk proving grounds, but the trials proved to be the a failure.

In the beginning of October 1944, the design bureo of the Factory “Bolshevik” tried to develop an 85mm high-power gun as well – this time it was an experimental 85mm V-5 gun with the muzzle velocity of 950 m/s. Additionally, the factory also developed a conical gun V-9K with muzzle velocity of more than 1150 m/s. But the characteristics of the gun were not satisfactory, the gun was barely able to keep up with the dreaded German 88mm L/71 and in the Spring of 1945, the development was cancelled.

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Source: http://www.welt.de/

Thanks to “Error404_SkillNotFound” for this one.

Hello everyone,

as more and more news report about the financial issues of the Cryengine developer, Crytek, more and more “inside sources” confirm that Wargaming is indeed interested in possibly buying a share of the failing company, providing an income stream the company so desperately needs. This time, it was the renowned German welt.de portal with its article, that is linked above. The article describes what was basically said before, the last part is however quite interesting.

Fraglich ist nun, wer durch eine Finanzspritze oder gar eine komplette Übernahme den Frankfurtern unter die Arme greifen könnte – Branchenkreise spekulieren aktuell darüber, dass das weißrussische Studio Wargaming den stetig fließenden Einnahmestrom aus dem Free-to-Play-Hit “World of Tanks” für einen Einstieg bei Crytek nutzen könnte.

“The question now is, who could take the company from Frankfurt under their wings either with a financial injections, or by completely overtaking them – the branch circles are currently speculating that the Belarus Studio Wargaming, that has a steady income from the free-to-play hit “World of Tanks” could use it to get into Crytek.”

Interesting…

…very convincingly :) From last weekend’s “Engines of War” re-enactment.

According to The_Chieftain, this model of the T-34 is very rare too – not sure what mode that is though.

(thanks to Ensign Expendable for this one)

Hello everyone,

today, we’re going to have a look at some of the armored vehicles, that served in the army of Uruguay. Despite being a relatively small country in the region, Uruguay nevertheless has an interesting force of various armored vehicles, usually from USA and eastern Europe. Its first tanks were 40 M3A1 Stuart light tanks, recieved on 25.11.1944 from the USA. Two units were equipped with them – 4th Cavalry Regiment (Regimiento de Caballería N°4) in Montevideo and, later, 2nd Regiment in Durazno.

After the war, Uruguay signed the Uruguay Military Aid Program contract with the USA in order to modernize its army. The army (Ejército Nacional Uruguayo), based on it, bought, amongst other things, 17 M24 Chaffee light tanks in order to improve its armored forces, because the Stuarts, armed with their 37mm guns, were considered inadequate. The Chaffees came from the US Army stores in Korea and arrived on 30.9.1957. They were attached to the 13th Infantry Batallion (Batallón de Infantería Nº13) in Montevideo – this batallion then changed its name a year later to 13th Armored Infantry Batallion (Batallón de Infantería Blindado Nº13). It was organized into a tank company (Compañía de Tanques) with three platoons (5 tanks each) and a command section (2 tanks). Apart from the Chaffees, the army also recieved an M47 armored recovery vehicle, that was transferred to the 4th Cavalry Regiment, that later changed its name to the Mechanized Cavalry Regiment (Regimiento de Caballería Mecanizado).

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Hello everyone,

tomorrow, there will be a hotfix minipatch on the EU server with following changes

- fixed moving corpses of tanks issue
- fixed various small UI bugs

Patch will be applied between 6:00 and 6:45AM CEST

Hello everyone,

recently, a picture was published (or, rather, re-published) in the Russian “shushpanzery” community and, subsequently reposted to EU forums, displaying an alleged “derp version” of the SU-122-54, called Object 610. Here’s the picture in question. At first glance, it really might resemble some sort of short gun, but I’ll have to disappoint you, it’s not a gun.

This is indeed the Object 610 “Buyvol” (“Buffalo”). This vehicle is an armored artillery observation post, developed in 1955 by Plant No.174, based on the SU-122 chassis, which in turn was built on the T-54 chassis. The task recieved the code name “buyvol” and in July 1955, the vehicle recieved an official factory designation “Object 610″. By the end of 1955, two prototypes were built and they went through the series of army tests, but they were never accepted in service and thus, the vehicle was never mass-produced.

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Hello everyone,

last weekened (20.6.-22.6.2014), in the village of Ivanovskoe (Moscow region), a military fest/re-enactment event called “Motory Voyny” (“Engines of War”) took place, with Wargaming as one of the official partners. More thank 120 tanks, cars and motorbikes participated in this event, including some very rare operating pieces. The re-enactments included battles such as “Khalkin Gol”, “Normandy landings” and “Barbarossa”, with the re-enactors dressed in historically correct and proper uniforms and functioning vehicles taking part as well.

Here for example, a T-34/76 is “attacking german positions”, gets “knocked out” (video, posted by Yuri Pasholok on his blog – he personally participated as well)

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