It’s a Fake – Part 2: Wargaming fakes

Posted on by

Hello everyone,

today, we are going to have a look at the fake vehicles in World of Tanks. Please note that by a “fake vehicle”, I don’t necesserily mean various unhistorical configurations (there are TONS of those), but I will mention them too briefly.

The problem with World of Tanks is that it is the victim of its own success in a way. There can be no doubt that it was World of Tanks, that revived the interest in armor in general audience, not just the usual armchair generals, historians, tank enthusiasts etc. Suddenly, tanks are mainstream and with that comes the fact that given how World of Tanks was advertised as a “historical” and “realistic” game (just look at the flashback trailer from this year, you know, the one with unhistorical FV215b), players take the game also as an “encyclopedia” of sorts and take the vehicles in it as real.

In this sense, Wargaming sends a mixed message – some vehicles are practically ultra-historical, down to the precise armor angles and thicknesses (IS-3 is very historical), others are complete fakes, but since WG advertised the game as “realistic”, a lot of people believe these vehicles were real and that is possibly the thing I find I find most annoying about Wargaming: promoting fakes.

Possibly the most historical and realistic in the game is the Soviet tree (obviously, given the fact Yuri Pasholok has access to Russian archives), followed by the Japanese tree and possibly (?) Chinese tree. French tree is also fine, but the British tree is seriously screwed up, followed by the American tree and the German tree having it worst. Let’s have a look at them.

Soviet Union

Well… as far as I can tell, there are no blatantly fake tanks in the Soviet tree. This is (apart from the abovementioned reason of having Yuri Pasholok on board) also apparently influenced by the fact that the “home playerbase” (closest to the developers) is – obviously – Russian. There were a lot of tank (and warfare) fans in Russia in general even before WoT (unlike in Europe) and Soviet fakes would be probably the hardest to get away with.

One of the least historical tanks is the LTP, which was basically created after the drawings of Lt.Provornov (the name means “Legkij tank Provornova” – Provornov’s Light Tank), who however was not a tank designer, he was an amateur. In 1942, he submitted his drawings to the Soviet inventions committee, who refused the project, but stored the drawings in their archive and when they were discovered by Yuri Pasholok, it was decided to actually implement the tank, since the drawings were very detailed – a fitting tribute to the effort of various amateur inventors like Lt.Provornov, submitting their designs to the Red Army for evaluation, hoping to contribute to the war effort.

Some Soviet tanks have their historical parameters somewhat changed (IS-7 had much higher rate of fire and mobility in real life for example), but overall, Soviet branch doesn’t have made-up vehicles as far as I can tell.

Japan

Japanese tree is probably as historical as it gets. The reason for that was the extensive involvement of people, who actually speak Japanese (other non-Russian tree research relied a lot on western literature), the tree setup was consulted with them and overall, it came out nicely. No fakes there.

China

The obvious problem with China is that – well, it’s China. Without reading Chinese, you won’t get far and even then, the Chinese tanks are very obscure. We know that the lowtier tanks are historical (there are photos from the Chinese civil war), we know that the Taiwanese Type 64 is also historical, we know that the high tiers are historical (Type 62, Type 59), but as for the tier 10 heavy and medium, the entire stages of WZ-111 research, the light tanks and the T-34-1, T-34-2 and T-34-3? Or the 112? Hell if I know. There is no western literature on these vehicles as far as I can tell. Wargaming claims they were modelled after “plans provided by the Chinese partners”, but apart from Wargaming staff noone has ever seen those plans, so it’s completely possible these tanks might be Wargaming inventions or even fake stuff fabricated by their Chinese partner. Whether that is the case or not, we will probably never know.

France

To be completely honest, I am not sure here. Apart from some unhistorical setups (why is there a German LeFH in French tree? Or the Marder I?), I don’t think that any French tanks are complete Wargaming fakes, but I could be wrong. Yes, as far as we know, even Foch 155 is a historical project, but it was more like a “napkin tank” with one drawing or a single mention in existence, something like “it would be really cool to put a 155mm gun on Foch”. There was some confusion with the BatChat and the BatChat artillery, but I am really not sure how much of it is true or not. Sorry.

United Kingdom

Now we are getting to the “good” stuff. British tree is arguably the most broken tree out there. Tier 10 heavy tank FV215b is a complete fake, there never was a project to import the 120mm gun on the FV215b chassis. We can only guess what led Wargaming to make this tank up, but I personally think it was the combination of two factors: recycling and laziness. You see, creating an entirely new historical model costs money – and not just chump change. Someone has to fly somewhere, dig through the archives (in this case, probably Bovington), measure the stuff, research the stuff, model the stuff, test it etc etc etc. It’s way cheaper to actually take a modelled chassis you have, tweak the armor a bit, change the appearance a little and voila, new tank, much cheaper to create than – say – modelling a Chieftain. Chieftain generally has other issues (it might be OP), but I think this is what led to the fake FV215b. There might have also been the factor of time – you can’t take as long as you want to research tanks and you can simply run out of time – and when there’s no time, the only thing you can do is simply skip the entire research part and produce a fake.

Another problematic thing is the FV4202, which (in its current setup) is also a fake. In real life, the armor was much thinner, the vehicle was never supposed to carry the L7 (just a 20pdr) and is generally screwed up in all sorts of ways. This was caused by the fact that (and this is actually not a speculation, Challenger told me this a few months back) in order to save travel money and whatnot, noone bothered to measure the vehicle in real life, Wargaming just took the “paper” values from some manual or publication, that wildly differ from the real thing. The thing is, even then, the armor is somewhat different from these paper values (it needed a buff for tier 10 I guess) and so the end result (although reached by “historical” means) is something completely messed up.

Other than that, the Matilda Black Prince was screwed up too (dimensions) – they fixed that though a few months back, the artillery line is also problematic (tier 10, IF it ever existed, almost certainly has an unhistorical gun, based on some pre-war howitzer). Listy would be able to elaborate on this more than me, I personally think that it’s completely possible tier 10 British SPG is a Wargaming fake, but this is not really something I know a lot about.

USA

American tree also has some unhistorical stuff. Priory_of_Sion made a longer post about it and I don’t want to copypaste it here, but basically, Priory points out that:

- T25 should be called T23 tank destroyer (according to Hunnicutt it was using the T23 medium tank hull)
- T25/2 (the turretted version) is a complete Wargaming fake
- T28 Prototype is a 95 percent fake, Wargaming simply took this early concept drawing and decided to run with it:

wot-072-amerpt-t28p-1

A mockup of the early T28 was also found:

image50b9a3c2990c8

- T28 as it is in game is a fake too: it was in fact simply the T95 without second set of tracks. Furthermore, the model was changed to distinguish it more from T95 and a frontal part was added – that is unhistorical
- T110E4 (real life) in the game is called T110E3. There were almost no differences between real life T110E3 and T110E4 projects and there was no turret. The only turretted T110 version was the T110E5 heavy tank. Ingame T110E4 is a Wargaming fake and ingame T110E3 is wrongly named (should be T110E4)

Well, that’s what Priory_of_Sion wrote. We also know that for example the T71 Light Tank is a Wargaming screwup – two projects existed and basically, Wargaming combined the hull of one project with the turret from another one. There are other issues too, such as the T30 never being a tank destroyer, T18 “tank destroyer” in game was in real life an artillery vehicle and – on the contrary – the T57 artillery was a tank destroyer. I am sure there is more stuff, but I will leave detailed analysis to Priory and others.

Germany

Historians and amateurs alike were always fascinated by nazi Germany. A lot of that fascination comes from the fact that very few regimes in history were as twisted and generally evil as the Third Reich – evil fascinates people. Then there was the general technical advancement of the German project – it was them to first unleash the jet fighters upon the enemy, it was the Germans who built the heaviest tank of WW2 – the Maus. This megalomania also fascinates people and throughout the years, a number of fakes emerged. Unfortunately, Wargaming contributes with its share to this, adding fake German tanks to the game. Let’s see:

- light tanks: Aufklärungspanzer Panther never had the second turret considered, that was made up by Wargaming
- Panzer V/IV turret was bolted on, it didn’t rotate
- Panther II is also pretty broken (unhistorical turret and guns)
- E-50 is borderline historical (there was such a project, but the armor and turret design are Wargaming invention, let alone the gun choices)
- E-50M the way it is presented is a fake. It was created by Wargaming as a rear transmission variant of the E-50 project. It’s not ENTIRELY unhistorical (there was a rear-transmission proposal for the E series, some of you might remember the Weserhütte Tiger), but the guns, armor and general look are almost completely made up
- VK450X vehicles are completely screwed up with unhistorical armor and guns, in real life they had much thinner armor. This was caused mostly by the lack of hightier candidates for German heavies, since WG “wasted” the Lowe as a premium vehicle. Strangely enough, the Lowe in game is practically completely historical.
- E-75 is a fake, in real life the project existed, but it was more like a simplified version of Tiger II in order to streamline production, its armor is not even mentioned in historical sources and it’s unlikely it would be thicker than the one of Tiger II (weight constraints). Furthermore, the 128mm gun could definitely not fit the turret.
- StuG has an unhistorical L/70, that couldn’t fit in it in real life, there was a L/70 StuG project, but it had a different casemate
- Jagdpanther 105mm is fake, this gun was never even proposed for it
- Ferdinand 128mm is fake, the gun was too big to fit in
- Jagdpanther II is a fake, a mashup of two projects: first, there was a mere mention of a possible tank destroyer built on Jagdpanther II chassis. There was also a 1945 project to re-arm the regular Jagdpanther with a 128mm gun (by 1945 the Jagdpanther II project was long dead), that looked like the ingame Jagdpanther II and that’s where Wargaming took the model from
- Waffenträger auf E-100 is a complete fake and Wargaming invention (Jagdpanzer E-100 however is historical and so is Waffenträger auf Panzer IV)
- Jagdtiger with 128mm L/61 gun was never a real project IIRC, there was a L/66 project as far as I know with rear casemate (my mistake for screwing this up)
- GW Tiger P is almost certainly a fake, I think we covered a lot of that topic earlier
- GW E-100 is a complete Wargaming fake
- the VK7201 120 ton fake, we covered that extensively

Conclusion

Let’s ask our resident expert, senator Vreenak:

 

 

That’s right. World of Tanks does have fake tanks. It’s a bit odd really, because in some cases, there WERE historical candidates to replace the fake vehicles with (GW Tiger P with for example another Panther Sfl project – there were several, GW E-100 with the (again, historical) project to arm the GW Tiger with 305mm mortar – or even 420mm). However, Wargaming decided to go the other way and we can only argue as to why – maybe it was the “cool factor” (I mean, GW E-100 definitely does look cooler than a copy of GW Tiger with a bigger gun), but it certainly was not ignorance (contrary to popular belief, WG developers are VERY good at what they do in their respective fields and that goes for historical research too).

What bothers me most is however one thing: passing the fake tanks for historical. Let’s have a look at the GW E-100 description:

Development of this heavy SPG on the E-100 chassis started at the end of 1943, but it was never completed. No prototypes were ever manufactured and the vehicle did not undergo any trials.

No. It didn’t. That is a blatant lie, there never was such a development, there is no source on that, this vehicle is pure Wargaming invention. This is the type of crap that actually introduces fake tanks into people’s minds as real. I wouldn’t be surprised if some shady historical sites and forums took this information as real and started spreading around.

Solution

It’s easy. Change a few words in the description. Instead of the abovementioned GW E-100 description, write simply

This vehicle is an artist’s impression of how a superheavy self-propelled gun, based on E-100 chassis, could have looked like. Development of this project never started.

There you have it. Vehicle stays, but is clearly marked as “artist’s impression”. Noone can blame anyone for that – I mean, Wargaming people are artists. They create games, they don’t write history. Or at least they shouldn’t.

172 thoughts on “It’s a Fake – Part 2: Wargaming fakes”

    • For an appeal you should provide a russian translation of this.
      So that the lazy/cheap developers at wargaming can read it without problem or the need to hire a translator.
      mfg eXterminus
      PS: the ingame Tiger is correct with possible L71 , isn’t it?
      I thought that the ingame top turret is the Tiger P (porsche) turret that was at least once fitted with an L71.. Pls correct me if im wrong.

      • 88mm L/71 was never proposed for the Tiger P.
        The FLAK 41 was discussed but rejected by Porsche.
        However, 105mm L/47 and L/52 were proposed by Krupp for the VK 3001P turret.

  2. Good article.
    I totally agree with the closing statements, Fine to have fake / undeveloped tanks. Should not be passed off as real.

  6. To my mind Wargaming are a victim of their own success. To keep interest in the game they have to come up with new tanks and expand the tree. However I don’t think these ‘inventions’ should be better than actual tanks in the real world.

    • Well, the last tree released, the Japanese tree is entirely historical.

      I think they’re just lazy fucks… or… they designed the occasional tanks on casual fridays, when everybody is too busy commenting on each other’s t-shirts.

  8. …, but overall, Soviet branch doesn’t have made-up vehicles as far as I can tell.
    ___________
    What about Object 430 v2?!

    And Objeckt 263 is an arti in real life, not a TD.

    • 430V2 is a real project from what I can tell, it was even mentioned in some literature (although it wasn’t named as such, it was simply “Object 430 with rear-positioned turret”)

  10. imho theres a big difference between a completly made up tank and a tank with unhistorical gun/turret/module set up for the sake of balance.

    • Something is either historical (as in, historically at least proposed) or it is not. A tank that has wrong turret for the sake of balance is wrong.

      • True SS, an unhistorical turret makes the vehicle unhistorical. no doubt. but that doesnt make it as fake as a completly made up tank like faillöwe

        • Doesn’t it? Where is the border then? For me, the border of historicity is the turret and the gun. For example, the Vaderturm (Schmalturm) on VK3001H was removed, because it would never fit the turret ring. In this sense, the VK3002DB Schmalturm is also fake by the way.

              • Nope, that turret is historical and is outlined in Panzer Tracts 6-3. The Maus had a few turret designs through it’s iterations, one is what exists on the Maus in game/IRL, the other was a design similar to what the in game E 100 has but with heavier armor.

                When development of the E 100 prototype resumed in the late war, a design of this second Maus turret with thinner armor to save weight was proposed and intended for mounting on the E 100, this is what we have in game.

                TL;DR: It’s more historical than you think

              • yes the border of historicity. totally agree here.
                wrong/ unhistorical, guns,turrets make a verhicle unhistorical. Theres no doubt about it.
                my point is, that there still remains a gap between those unhistorical gun or whatever modules set up and a completely made up, never existed,totally bullshit, own invention vehicles. totally fake is not the same as unhistorical set up

                putting a bigger gun on a ferdinand may be unhistorical, but its thinkable. (actually the proposal for that might actually lost in the end of the war…who knows..)

                btw. what do u think, is it enough that- lets say -mounting a gun on a certain verhicle was proposed, or does it had to actually be a proposal that makes sense, as in it actually would have worked?

                • Ferdinand had bigger guns planned: the 88mm L/100 and a captured 220mm howitzer.
                  The 105mm could be considered historical with some stretches as it was proposed for the chassis, although in this case when it was still the VK 3001P

                • That Ferdinand – no, the cradle and breech of the 128mm was too large, it simply would not fit. Ferdinand as it was was as good as it got. There was a project to arm it with a heavy 210-220mm mortar, but that of course is another matter.

              • E-100 had a lightened version of the Maus II turm, pretty hard to distinguish, except for the fact it had thinner armor (80mm sides)

      • There was such a historical proposal. The M62 is more shady, but it still has merit, because ALL the D-25 guns were to be replaced by it, which means pretty much every project. There even was an IS-2 prototype with M62 as far as I can remember.

  12. All very valid points. But such is the case with the internet, there are to many folks that desire to be told something they want to know rather then do the research to find it out themselves.

      • But then again there is no drawings of it. Just the gun setup and with some interpretation you can come up with a TD that has its gun mounted in the rear part (like the Jagdpanther 12,8cm proposal).
        The rest (superstructure, etc.) needs to be faked then.

        • A proposal was made to create a Sturmgeschutz on an E 100 chassis using possibly a 15cm L/63, 15cm L/68, or 17cm L/53. A model was shown to Guderian who immediately shot the project down.

          When WG was developing the Jagdzilla for the release of the new tier 10s, people were demanding higher alpha weapons for the Germans to compare to the Russians, so WG chose the biggest gun, but a big gun is a heavy gun, so the engineering solution is to mount it at the rear so the weight is distributed evenly across the entire suspension

          It’s a mix of WG and German engineering, but there are more egregious vehicles than it that exist in WoT

    • That’s right, SS made an excellent article about it, it was Uncle Adi’s wet dream, there was even a proposal for JagdMaus but it was called differently… I just don’t remember how exactly. I think even Devs said something about it that it would be practicaly the same as Jpants E100 gameplay-wise so we won’t be seeing this behemoth too soon.

      But considering WG ideas… they could fit it with 15cm gun, you know, Maus has smaller gun than E-100, JagdMaus could too. I wonder how it would look….

      btw , SS pls halp me, how was JagdMaus really called ?

      • Probably Sturmgeschütz auf Fahrgestell Maus (but so was the Jpz E-100, it was most likely concieved as a Sturmgeschütz, not a tank destroyer).

        • Oh snap! A StuG ? Did they even thought about AP shells for this abnormal boomstick ? Americans didn’t even bother with it on their 155mm on T30 and stayed with just HE.

          • perhaps only for bunker-busting duties. Otherwise, given the mass of HE projectile, no need to shoot AP. HE would have demolished any contemporary tank (as a bonus you would have also cleared the vicinity of your target of the accompanying infantry ;).
            IIRC, the load out for soviet 122mm guns was massively skewed towards HE, rather than AP.

  14. Oh my god, if 113 is completely made up by WG chinese partners, you gotta admit they know how to design tanks. This thing is bloody addictive to play!

    >There was some confusion with the BatChat and the BatChat artillery, but I am really not sure how much of it is true or not. Sorry.

    Bat. Chat 25t. was a private project by Batignolles- Chatillon to compete with AMX 13 on the marked, it failed to do so but there are pictures of once fully functional prototype. The in-game stock gun is historical but 100mm SA 47 is unhistorical and would NEVER fit in that turret. Even more unhistorical is the 105mm top gun which is an AMX-30 gun, it was never intended to be combined with an auto-loader.

    As far as Bat-Chat Artillery, there was a mock-up build to test dimenssions but that’s all I know, I have found no info if the gun was supposed to have an Auto-loader,it might have been a proposal just like Foch 155. The Bat-chat arty on Patton chassis is also big unknown to me, it’s possible it existed but the whole Bat-Chat’s project was earlier than the massive purchase of Patton tanks by France but then again Bat-Chat was a private company as opposed to state owned AMX.

      • Chars-Francais, which is generally fairly reliable, outlines it as such:
        The BatChat 155 was a project to create a 155mm SPG on a medium tank chassis. Originally, it was designed to have an autoloader on the chassis of the M47 Patton. In the end, it was built on their 25t tank project, and had no autoloader installed.

    • The old batignolles-Chatillon plant is not too far from where I live, unfortunately they moved the old rusty prototype hulls out of there!

      As for the French tree, as said earlier, the only unknowns are the bat-patton arty and Foch 155.
      There are a few blueprint tanks, the rest are working prototype/production approval stage and production models.
      All in all, players whine a lot about this tree being, when it’s one with the fewest blueprint tanks….

      I love people complaining about the 50B being unhistorical alien tech bullshit, since I saw and touched it myself =D

  15. I agree with your solution. I don’t mind seeing fake tanks in the game but they should have the decency and not lie the players by selling the “this was developed but it didn’t enter production” crap.

  17. So many fake tanks :0

    “the T57 artillery was a tank destroyer”
    >that explains why have Kamikaze back in 7 series patch Ensk well my very first Kamikaze(ahh… good memories).

    “Now we are getting to the “good” stuff. British tree is arguably the most broken tree out there. Tier 10 heavy tank FV215b is a complete fake, there never was a project to import the 120mm gun on the FV215b chassis.”
    >Lets Hope the Fv215b would be replaced by a “Chieftain Prototype”(not the 4202)

    “Another problematic thing is the FV4202, which (in its current setup) is also a fake. In real life, the armor was much thinner, the vehicle was never supposed to carry the L7 (just a 20pdr) and is generally screwed up in all sorts of ways. ”
    >Wg should put that 4202 to tier 8 premium or a clan war price

    “This vehicle is and artist’s impression of how a superheavy self-propelled gun, based on E-100 chassis, could have looked like. Development of this project never started.”
    >I Like the new description SilentStalker :)

    Talk about Bad Education And what do I called “World of Fictions”?

    • Ugh, my money’s on laziness and lack of any suitable tier X. Notice they were making this tree before they realized that Chieftain prototype might fit in.

      btw, If Chieftain would fit as tier X heavy and we could nerf-hammer FV215b to get tier 8 prem heavy… I wonder what would be an alternative to current Tier X med. Every time I play it on test-server I just can’t figure how to play it.

      • Chieftain doesn’t fit the development line, and honestly deserves its own branch. WG was reluctant to put even a proto in initially, and nobody found a more suitable tier 10 heavy by the time the line was released.

  18. Very nice article,I hate fake tanks and I would like them removed from the game.
    Too bad that in order to get the mighty Maus I have to grind two fake tanks (and they aren`t very good either)….

    • Depends, I once had the first VK, It was actually fun to play, very unique as it is now. I like the fact that stock turret was much lighter and had almost 5deg/sec more than upgraded. It actually gave you the choice of play style you wanted, be it med-like heavy or a King Tiger/Panther hybrid.

      It’s really fake but I liked its game play.

      • Agreed. The 4502A is my favourite tank due to it’s unique playstyle. With historical values it would just play like the Tiger I. The loss of a such a unique tank would be an awful shame – if I wanted to play a line of near identical tanks I’d go up the IS line!

        Still, brings up that endless arguement of Historical accuracy vs Gameplay balance.

        • “Still, brings up that endless arguement of Historical accuracy vs Gameplay balance.”

          No, that’s not what SS is, rightly, critizising. It’s that fake projects are presented as being, at least, the brainchild of real WW2 designers. Which some simply aren’t.

          Personally I think, that many tanks are “historical” in at least one set up (often close to stock/first unlocks). It should be easy to remake/add to the WG desciptions to reflect on this fact. Something like, for example for the Panther “In the most advanced ‘G’ version equipped with a 7,5cm/L70 kwk-42 and the Maybach HL 230 P30 engine”
          Also the simple “artists impression” SS presented would be perfectly fine with me…
          Additionally, a simple “vehicle(s) stats and equipment are based on game balance decisions” disclaimer would go a long way…

          • My comment there wasn’t refering to this article, nor anything SS has stated here. I’m just pointing out that trying to take vehicles and put them into a tiered system whilst staying true to their historical properties is always going to cause issues, as we can see in the game where there are numerous tanks with setups that they historically never had, or were even intended to have.

            And for the record, I do agree that trying to portray completely fictional tanks as real projects is wrong.

            • I see, and I agree with you [To quote myself :P 'a “vehicle(s) stats and equipment are based on game balance decisions” disclaimer']. But it NEEDS to be clearly stated. [preferably with an indication of how a historical loadout would have looked like, or maybe even what specs were demanded for a project] Otherwise sooner or later we’ll start to see “self-fulfilling prophecies” over and over. As an extreme case: In 20 years time the “Fail-Löwe” might be featured somewhere as a real vehicle based on stuff created by WG that nobody knows where it came from anymore…

  21. - E-50 is borderline historical (there was such a project, but the armor and turret design are Wargaming invention, let alone the gun choices)
    - E-50M the way it is presented is a fake. It was created by Wargaming as a rear transmission variant of the E-50 project. It’s not ENTIRELY unhistorical (there was a rear-transmission proposal for the E series, some of you might remember the Weserhütte Tiger), but the guns, armor and general look are almost completely made up
    - E-75 is a fake, in real life the project existed, but it was more like a simplified version of Tiger II in order to streamline production, its armor is not even mentioned in historical sources and it’s unlikely it would be thicker than the one of Tiger II (weight constraints). Furthermore, the 128mm gun could definitely not fit the turret.

    I’ll just say we should blame whoever made those original conceptual schemes that had hull weights which were extensively more than Panther/Tiger II weights.

    - VK450X vehicles are completely screwed up with unhistorical armor and guns, in real life they had much thinner armor. This was caused mostly by the lack of hightier candidates for German heavies, since WG “wasted” the Lowe as a premium vehicle. Strangely enough, the Lowe in game is practically completely historical.

    Depends on how one looks at it. Given that Tiger II was originally made thicker from 100 mm to 150 mm, it is highly possible that the armor for the VK 45.02 (P)s would have been made thcker to 120 mm. I wouldn’t comment on Tier IX, since that’s practically just a placeholder right now.

    - Jagdtiger with 128mm L/61 is a fake, the gun could not fit (it was proposed to re-arm the Jagdtiger with the L/61 in 1945 or so, but the casemate had to be prolonged and practically covered part of the engine)

    Incorrect, the gun could fit but it was a matter of whether it was practical to have such a long gun on a vehicle without a turret. The “extension” of the casemate is to allow the gun to be retracted into the extended room for transport. Given that the gun barrels have no solid form in the game, not a problem.

    • As far as I remember, the L/61 could not fit because moving the cradle backwards ensured it could not traverse because the breech was somehow too far back, thence the prolonged casemate.

      • The gun as it would be used in combat would have practically the same position/size as L/55 within the casemate (since 12.8 cm FlaK 40 and 12.8 cm Pak 44 were based on the same competition). The prolonged casemate was solely for the purpose of retracting the gun in so transportation would be practical.

  22. The AMX 40 final setup is complete bullshit, it has the turret from the Renault G1R. There were no plans to ever put one on an AMX 40

    • Maybe not just Renault’s G1, the requirement for G1 project was to fit various kinds of turrets which were developed by different companies so it could fit other G1 tanks but you are indeed right, AMX40 never had its top turret.

      • And at least 1 of, iirc, 2 two mild steel prototypes (have seen it been written that one was out of armor plate but never found another source for it) did actually fight in the Invasion of France. But yes it was an infantry support SPG much like the 1940 ARL V939 of which two prototypes in mild steel made it out of France to Morocco where they apparently vanished after being trialed in the desert.

  24. The T25/2 might not be completely fake.
    AFV Weapons Profile 26:
    “90-mm. Gun on Open T23 Tank Chassis, Without Shield, project only.
    90-mm. Gun on Turreted T23, Skirted project only.”
    The first line is the reference for the T25 AT and the second is the T25/2.
    Their names are still wrong though.

    • There are two projects in Hunnicutt for a 90 mm armed T23 vehicle. One sounds like the T25 AT even when the model looks radically different. The 2nd project has a conceptual art showing a T23 chassis with what it believed to be a 90 mm gun with 360 deg. of rotation(turreted), although it is nothing like an M36 turret mounted on the chassis of a T23. The T23 AT projects were finished by March ’43 and it seems that was just before the design of the M36 turret, so I doubt the T25/2 is an accurate representation of a T23 AT vehicle.

  25. And the british AT-series? At-2,7,8,15? They were only in blueprints, so some of their characteristics could be fake. The fv215b had only a makett so it isn’t too historical.

    French: AMX AC mle. 46, Somua SAu 40?

    I don’t want to be offensive, i am just curious about this tanks. And i think all tanks that were only on blueprints or wasn’t even built is somehow fake, because we never gonna know, how they could operate or not, how could they fulfill their preliminary properties. But yeah, WG have to indicate what tanks are fully made up by them.

    • I think the AT series were somehow screwed up, but I can’t remember. But such projects existed and the FV215b with 183mm gun also existed even as a mock-up.

      • Various 183mm’s were tested, however only a wooden mockup of the 215 was made ( though the Fv4005 WAS built with the autoading & casemate versions). However in RL they had no AP ammo, only HE and HESH. Though that would be a balancing thing ig, hell if they could balance hesh as a silver round! The gun was used extensively throughout the war as a towed gun.

        AT series mostly has the wrong guns – the 20lb’er hadn’t been made when the series was proposed. I’d guess they’d have been given the 6lb’er.

        • The physical characteristics and specifications of the planned AT-1 through 15 are correct, but they use guns that were historically never mounted (same with the Churchill GC), this was almost certainly done for game balancing purposes though, their planned armament were the usual motley and anemic assortment of 6 pounders, 17 pounders, mortars and flamethrowers.

      • The AT series is largely correct save for some of the guns. The FV215b 183 is entirely accurate to its blueprint (save for weight)

      • SAu 40 fought at Compiègne. However nobody knows how many. Some says 1 prototype, others say all 4 (1 with 75mm gun, 3 with long 47mm).

    • AT series have historical armour, weight etc. However, their guns are all totally wrong (except AT2 mostly). The only guns considered for it were the 6pdr, 3″, 95mm, 17pdr, and 32pdr, as well as machineguns, mortars, and flamethrowers. Almost all the AT series vehicles in-game are ahistorically upgunned. Furthermore, the loader doesn’t actually sit in the MG cupola, that position is given to a dedicated machinegunner.

      AC model 1946 is (mostly?) historical. The blueprints for it exist and can probably be found on the WoT wiki.

    • > AMX AC mle. 46
      Historical , post-war project, was based on Heavy tank AMX M4 mle.45 , our current in-game TierVII Heavy. The suspension on AC is historical proposal, copy of german one but with high quality rubber, something germas could not provide due to lack of resources. The M4′s suspension however is a mystery, I have no idea where did WG got it from. The original drawing has the german suspension.

      >Somua SAu 40

      Historical, a pre-war project based on Somua S35 , developed along ARL V39 for the same request, they were both competitors but they were intended as assault SPG’s like SU-152. They were never designated as TD’s.

      An interesting fact about these two is that an army required them to have a retractable gun. Additionaly I have to say here that ARL’s first two guns are the only 100% historical ones. DCA30 and DCA45 are complete WG fantasy as they were simply post-war naval guns modified to fit ARL 44 but as for 105mm Schneider gun… I have no idea, it would fit, ARLV39 had reserved alot of space for gun retracting mechanism so 105mm gunbreech could possibly fit of course without ability to retract and the gun did exist by the time but… I have no idea if it was ever proposed.

  26. The same can said about World of Warplanes.
    It already has a lot “proposed” and “never built” airplanes, even the historical ones are effed up, like the Bf 109B with Daimler-Benz engine and 3 MG17s and 2 MG FF/Ms…

  27. Interesting article SS, thank you.
    Seems WG doesn’t care about historical stuff and it will only get worse in the future.

    “How terrible”

  29. Wargaming has been buying up a lot of archives, isn’t it likely they have info that is not in the public domain? However, if that is the case then I would much prefer to see them publish *something* in regards to their controversial in-game choices.

    • >I would much prefer to see them publish *something*
      I think you will see that *something* eventually. Otherwise why did they bother to found something like “Tactical press” publishing company?

    • I could post one but it might be a little too controversial for some people’s taste.

    • I, T___A, Priory, and a couple of other contributors on the NA forums made spreadsheets that mimic the tech trees and examine the core representation of the vehicle and put it on a color coded scale, but it doesn’t consider their stats or module compositions

  31. So I had a can of redbull the other day, they say it “gives you wings”. Yeah right… not even additional finger :-/

  32. We should make a petition and send it to Wargaming (In Russia ofcourse, not the EU part of it) to ask them to replace the despription of those ‘fakes or unhistorical’ tanks. And for the tanks which have wrong guns or turrets, ask them to put in the description what the historical Loadout would have been, they should do that for all the tanks. I think this would be the best solution, like SS said. Everybody would be happy and WG would be educational as well as entertaining without losing credibility over shady tanks.

  33. I can also make a fake tank like the M4.8, just take a tank, modify the design, and add an unnecessary decimal point…. But then again I shouldn’t be encouraging Wargaming.

  34. WG could have avoided to make up a lot of the german fake values and guns in higher tiers by simply putting Tiger, KT, VK45, Ferdinand, etc. one tier lower to begin with.
    The KT for example would be perfectly fine as a T7 vehicle without the recently made up weakspot-hardening and with the 88L/71. Even as it is now, there is still no feeling of driving one really heavy armored tank around, because a lot of tanks even on the same tier can shoot straight through the (even angled) upper glacis plate with more than half of their shots.
    Or imagine the JagdPanther on tier 6. In it’s time it was one really tough nut to crack frontally, yet in the game on tier 7 it is a joke.
    I guess in WoT’s early days they lacked the research capacity to fill the tree in high tiers, as well as having the most popular german “beasts” in tiers too low might have been wasted potential for impatient players to spend more gold on. Probably for the same reason the Löwe just HAD to be a tier 8 premium tank available for any purse right from the start.

  35. I’m visiting your blog for a pretty long time, but never had the urge to leave comments (like a daemon). I really like your posts, which are almost always very interesting. I just wanted to say ‘hello’ and thanks for the time you invest to entertain us about tanks, WoT & Co.

    –

    Is there something ‘fake’ about these tanks?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SdKfz_234
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCM_F1

    When not, why we don’t see any of them ingame?

  37. Also the Tiger II 10.5cm would have been a better idea for a Premium Tank that the Lowe, assuming that it’s a true tank, I can only find info on several sources but seeing it on Wiki and achtungKuhscheiße.

    • Jentz, Doyle, and Spielberger report it is a legitimate Krupp proposal that never got off the drawing board because the war in Europe would end about six months after it was proposed

      • It´s (surprisingly) a T95 (or T28, depending on what name you prefer, since the vehicle is the same) with outer tracks removed (again to a major surprise) for transport purposes, namely to fit the with to the landing boat. The tracks are either towed behind the vehicle by itself or transported in another boat (I doubt the T95 AND the second set of tracks would fit into the boat behind one another).

      • Indeed, but my question was why he was deeming it a fake when there were multiple pictures of this project. It seems that he was actually issuing the complaint about the further differences that they made between it and the T95, and not saying that the outer track removal was unhistorical.

        • Mainly the “chin” of the in game T28 is what makes it inaccurate to the design of the IRL T28/T95 GMC without the outer track set

  39. >>>>>>Some Soviet tanks have their historical parameters somewhat changed (IS-7 had much higher rate of fire and mobility in real life for example), but overall, Soviet branch doesn’t have made-up vehicles as far as I can tell.

    HUGE FAIL. The Soviet branch has no less fakes than German or American ones.
    SU-122A is complete fake, SU-8 was in fact an AA SPG with 76mm gun.
    T-43 in its form is fake since it carried other turret and merely a short 76mm gun (wich it doesnt even have as stock gun ingame). Ob,430V2 is most likely fake, I really doubt they found any hard facts about it so it´s just the plain ob.430 with turret moved to the rear.
    T-150 with KV-220 turret is fake, KV-4 is again a mashup of several projects.
    SU-85i (wich is curretly not available but still in the client) is fake made up from some side note on a napkin in the Cremlin. Ob.704 in its form is fake, it could never carry the BL-10. (but this is different thing than a fake vehicle, more on this below)

    >>>>>- T28 as it is in game is a fake too: it was in fact simply the T95 without second set of tracks.

    What? Honestly? How many times more? T28 and T95 is the SAME vehicle. They Army was just playng ping-pong with it, designating it “tank”, then “SPG” and then again “tank”, changing the numeric designation all along.
    So again to all of you who keep writing that cow crap: T28 IS T95. T95 without the outer tracks is “T95 in transport mode”, which is the same as “T28 in transport mode”.

    >>>>>- Jagdtiger with 128mm L/61 gun also did not look like the regular Jagdtiger, it had longer casemate in the back

    It was Jagdtiger with 128 L/65. L/61 was never projected fot JT.

    >>>>>>- Jagdpanther 105mm is fake, this gun was never even proposed for it
    - Ferdinand 128mm is fake, the gun was too big to fit in

    As with the Ob.704 with BL-10, I don´t think the gives you a fake vehicle. Many vehicles ingame bear guns that were never wanted->projected->fit into the them. I doubt how IS-3 could carry the BL-9, the 85mm in KV-1 or KV-13, 122mm in KV-3 – rly?
    The vehicles are not fake though, and in fact this is the very sense and the spirit of the game to put a larger gun into a tank than the one it actually caried.

    Besides I think the 128 should fit well into the Ferdi, its superstructure is IMO even bigger than the Jagdtiger.

    • I see…. :)

      Well, as my grandfather used to say: “Myslet znamená hovno vědět” :)

      Edit: You are right about the 128mm L/66 though, will fix (I always mix the two up)

      • Let´s not argue much about my thinking or knowledge. ;)
        I pointed out your mistakes, you reply with that…
        Sure, how would you disprove SU-122A or SU-85i are fake etc…

        P.S. I got the PaK length wrong too at 65 instead of 66, my bad.

    • Actually, T-43 got D-5T-85.
      Reference:
      Отечественные бронированные машины ХХ век. 1941-1945 Том 2 p.194

      • Yes, top T-150 has KV-220 turret. I mean the REAL KV-220, not the KV-220-2 which is called KV-220 ingame.
        The actual KV-220 is ingame the stock KV-3.

        Go read books.

    • Ugh.. the t 34 85 has the proposed turret of the t 43 the final the t 43 is as it is IRL. The 85 was fitted in the Kv1 and the kv 13 . You can fit the bl 9 in the turret of a kv 1 and you can’t fit that in an is 3 turret ? The turret which is about the same as the is 8 turret that carries the m62 gun ? Tag everything with IMO please .. Because you opinion is pretty shit ..

      • Hm, yeah, BL-9 fits in every tiny turret (after the trial it wasn´t even considered for the ISU with much larger superstructure than IS-3´s turret, but what the heck), but 128mm IMPOSSIBURU to fit into the Ferdi with larde superstructure. Sure.

        • Yes, it was, just check the trunnion position. And be so kind and be polite, I am lately allergic to smartass trolls, especially those that post crap.

  40. I would definitely like if there were no made up tanks but on the other hand if i have to pick between made up t28 prototype or 5th version of spitfire like WT has i pick protype. Better have some variety of tanks than having 5 same tanks with different letter behind number.

  41. A big thank you for this post! And good good work!

    About French: most of them are project in fact. So yes ‘something like “it would be really cool to put a 155mm gun on Foch”‘ can be true.
    I’m really upset to see people talking about French tanks as they were real. During the WWII since France fall at the beginning they don’t have much tanks.
    It’s only after the war ~50′s that French did real French tanks, thanks the Charles De Gaulle.

  42. T18 “tank destroyer” in game was in real life an artillery vehicle
    are you sure you mean T18? shouldn’t it be T82?

      • T82 was an artillery piece. It may be practical to swap the T57 and the T82 to get a more historical progression. The T18, while an artillery piece, would have been used in a similar way to the StuG and SU/ISU-152s and will likely stay a TD.

    • Nope, Hunnicutt shows in his “Stuart” book, the T18 was a Howitzer Motor Carriage, not a tank destroyer. Apparently the +20* range and it’s compact and asymmetric design did not earn favor. The T18 project was axed before it’s first pilot was received for testing, and within weeks of the projects ending, development on a T47 HMC that would become the 75mm derp M8 began(note: The 75mm M3 armed M8 comes later chronologically, and is described in the other section regarding Stuart based TDs)

      And T82 was a Howitzer Motor Carriage, like the T18

  43. SS why are you bringing out that some german tanks didnt have some guns while you are not doing same with other nations? Are you trying to say that KV-1 with 85mm gun is historical etc?

  45. Nice ending SS
    That pretty much what they should/could have added and all will be fine and dandy imo

  46. Could the real FV4202 not be used as a brit tier 8 premium tank? 20Pdr, 50mm hull armour,90mm turret, 30mm nipple. Seems very inferior to the centurion 3, except for the upper hull angles.

  47. SS, I am am from Germany and I hate if someone writes “Lowe” instead of “Löwe”. I know, you don´t have öäü Keys on czech Keyboard, but it would be great if you make an “e” behind o a u.
    E.g. write “Loewe” or “Waffentraeger”.
    This would be “historical correct”.

    Buhmann

  48. Actually, the chieftain would be fine for the British tree. A lot of literature (and by a lot, I mean most of it) severely mess up the actual characteristics of the Chieftain (though the L11A5 is utterly insane no matter what you do about it)

  49. You say that the Conqueror Gun Carriage may be fake, and when looking at it, I say with 9% certainty that it is. I say this based on the following reasons:
    1. The named Conqueror Gun Carriage does not make sense. If it were real it would most likely be named FV####. Even if this were its real name, it does not make sense because they name skip the FV name in the Conqueror yet they do not call the FV207 or the FV3805 Centurion Gun Carriage . Furthermore, if it did not receive a FV designation it would more than likely be named something like the Conqueror 9.2″ SP following the British naming system (to my knowledge not once did the British call an SPG a gun carriage). The name looks like WG attempt to name it based of the Churchill Gun Carrier.
    2. The hull is all wrong and does not match the name or description of the vehicle. The first thing I noticed about the vehicle is that unlike all the previous British SPGs the hull is not backwards. Note that The in game description says a proposal to mount a 234mm gun on the chassis of the conqueror. SPGs based of the chassis of other tanks did this because the engine had to be mounted in the front not to interfere with the gun. Otherwise the chassis(hull) would require extensive modification. When I took a look at it I compared it to the FV215b (183), and sure enough, the hulls matched. Therefore the in game has the hull/chassis of the FV215b not the Conqueror. Yes the FV215b used Conqueror components, but the chassis is so heavily modified they are not the same. Theoretically they could have modified the chassis to put the engine in the front, but that would be inefficient and illogical. And even if they did, why call it the conqueror gun carriage when it uses the carriage of the mock-up FV215b? Simple answer, its fake.

  51. The problem with the FV4202 is it was a test bed not a prototype, it was never designed to actually be used in combat. Its an example of a tank that shouldn’t be in the game with its real life stats or not. The 215B well….just get rid of it. The Chieftain can be balanced to fit in WoT easily.