Hello everyone,

one reader recently wrote me an interesting e-mail, asking whether I think amphibious and airborne tanks would work in World of Tanks. Well, at first, I was like “obviously”, since we actually have two airborne models in the game already (the Locust and the Tetrarch). As regular tanks of course – and that’s how the amphibians would have to work too. But… could they work with some sort of airborne/amphibious advantage? Well, let’s have a look.

A bit of history

The concept of an airborne assault vehicle, although explored even before the war, emerged fully during the early- and mid-war years. The goal was of course to produce an armored vehicle, that would be transported by a plane, glider or other flying means (we’ll get to that) in order to reach the combat zone along with glider troops or paratroopers and to provide fire support to otherwise lightly armed paratroop infantry. It was viewed as one means of increasing the paratrooper firepower (others were light AT-guns, light manpack howitzers and oversized AT rifles) and pretty much every major WW2 nation had a research dedicated to creating this kind of armored vehicle.

The Americans were probably the first to actually consider this seriously. One big name that pops up around airmobile tanks was Walter Christie, who – before the war – created a concept of a very light airmobile vehicle. This is also mentioned in the Operation Think Tank video (in case you haven’t seen it yet, you definitely should look it up). Christie was a controversial character though and his experiments did not lead to any success. He imagined the vehicle to be actually dropped from a plane at full speed – it would have to be so fast to actually match the speed of the landing plane. Needless to say, this was a pretty retarded idea and its testing led to some serious injuries (I think it was Harry Yeide, who mentioned Christie testing it on his son, who as a result damaged his spine in a crash). Christie’s interbellum designs were more like armored cars than tanks – very fast, but with very thin armor. We might actually see them one day in the game, not soon though.

When the war started, Americans returned in a way to the airmobile tank idea, that eventually led to the development of the M22 Locust. Locust was not exactly a brilliant success either. Designed to replace (or complement) the British Tetrarch (which by itself was not exactly stellar in its role), the Locust performed poorly in the latter stages of WW2 and the British got rid of their Locusts really fast, selling them to foreign countries. Probably the last Locust use was in the 1948 war between nascent Israel and Egypt (Egyptians were still operating various pre-war junk like the Mk.VI light tanks or the French R35 and ironically, Locusts were considered to be one of the better pieces). America would later return to the airmobile tank concept with the Sheridan, but that was two decades later.

Chieftain’s (US server military expert) notice on the Locust: I’d question the description of Locust to complement Tetrarch. Locust was designed to be flown in a C-54 transport aircraft, reassembled on the ground, and then sent off into battle. I don’t believe the UK had an equivalent doctrine.

The UK did, however, have the Bat project, which was a bit like A40 and involved strapping wings to the tank.

The British of course had their own airmobile light tank, the Tetrarch. Developed since 1937 by Vickers, it was designed to be actually an export tank, but as the war broke out and with the heavy BEF losses in France, British military needed pretty much everything they could get their hands on. The design itself wasn’t good however (overheating was a constant problem) and it was thus decided to use them in “cold” conditions – and so, they got packed and shipped to Russia during the Lend Lease program. Russians kinda liked them, but found the overheating to be a problem too. Two saw combat though and both got destroyed, the rest was used for training. As for the British Tetrarchs, they finally got their chance to shine during the Normandy landings, but performed poorly and the British got rid of them soon after the war.

The Soviets were developing their own share of retarded airmobile tank ideas. Apart from actually dropping T-27 tankettes from bombers (without the crew of course, which by itself was a problem), one such idea was to actually mount wings on the T-60 light tank. This complex was called Antonov A-40 and it looked like this:

This combo was supposed to be towed into air by another plane and by itself (as a glider) actually worked, but at that point the Soviets didn’t have anything strong enough to overcome the drag of the T-60 and the project was cancelled. Another “interesting” idea was to actually drop a tank in a metal box on the water, using the “pebble” effect – the designers thought the box would actually jump over the water and then stay afloat somehow. As you can imagine, that was a pretty dumb idea and the box just broke into pieces upon impact. Again, this incident was described in the Operation Think Tank video. In the end, the Soviets didn’t produce any serious airmobile light tank during the war. After the war, the ASU self-propelled gun series were designed as extremely light vehicles (ASU-57 weighed 3,4 tons) especially for the Soviet paratrooper corps. Their armor was extremely thin however and made from aluminium, barely providing protection from small arms fire. Nevertheless, the concept proved somewhat successful.

As for Germany, special Panzer I and Panzer II variants were developed for the airborne troops (Fallschirmjäger) – two types – Panzer I Ausf.C and Panzer II Ausf.J (VK1601 and VK1801) specifically were supposed to be used in the Operation Herkules (invasion of Malta) that never happened. Prototypes of these tanks (and allegedly some serial vehicles) were created, but what happened to them instead is unclear, sources differ.

Evaluation of the concept

Under World War 2 conditions, the concept of the airborne tank was flawed from the start. By its definition, such a tank would have to be very light. Invariably, any serious airborne tank project appeared in the latter half of the war and by that point, the time of the light tanks was long gone. Light tanks “worked” in Poland, but in France, the losses of BEF and the French light tanks have already shown the fact that the age of the light tank is officially over. In Operation Barbarossa, light tanks as a class suffered very heavy losses on all sides and by 1942-1943, they were mostly withdrawn from the front line units (or simply worn out and not replaced).

Thus, the appearance of a light 7,5 ton vehicle armed with a 40mm gun (the Tetrarch in this case) on the 1944 Normandy battlefield (David Fletcher: “swarming with Tigers and Panthers and god knows what else”) could not have ended well and was utterly pointless. Neither Tetrarch nor Locust were a real threat even to the most common German armored vehicles of that time (StuG and Panzer IV) and their only “good side” was the fact that if they actually ran into German infantry without any AT weapons (unlikely), they could have done some damage. They were however considered a threat by the Germans strangely enough, which however was not always a good thing: there was an incident where two Locusts drew artillery fire and got the allied infantry around them massacred. They were forced to withdraw soon after.

Thus, historically, introducing any sort of historical airborne tank mechanism to World of Tanks is pointless. In order for the battle to be at least a bit historical, the Locusts and Tetrarchs would have to be fighting Panzer IV’s, Panthers and even Tigers.

In World of Tanks

I was actually thinking, whether it would be possible to introduce the airborne tank mechanism into the game. In other games (if you remember Steel Panthers for example), this type of vehicle usually works by appearing on the pre-determined area (pre-determined by its owner of course that is) with certain deviation at some random point in battle in order to create a “surprise, motherfucker!” effect. Obviously, in other games these vehicles would then not be engaging enemy tanks, they would rather rampage through the rear area, destroying enemy artillery and infantry.

So, would such a mechanism work in World of Tanks? I don’t think so and here’s why.

- first and foremost, there is the delayed action element. In order for such a tank to appear in the game as a “surprise” (and we are now talking tier 6-7 games), it has to appear with a delay (there is no point in dropping a Locust in the beginning of the battle on the artillery positions, when the base is full of Tigers and Panthers). Basically, it would mean that the Locust owner would just have to sit there and do nothing for 3 or so minutes. Not very appealing.

- what would be the tier for such an airmobile drop? Either the mechanism could be used in any battles (in such a case, dropping like this behind enemy lines on Malinovka on tier 2 is just ridiculous and gamebreaking), or only in “historical” battles (around tier 6-7 – which means the Locust would probably be able to deal with any artillery vehicle it came across, but after that it would be completely defenseless)

- it would only encourage camping (“lol guys, I am waiting in the base for their airborne tank to appear, sincerely, yours E-100″)

- if the airborne tank owner can choose where exactly he drops, it could lead to some completely ridiculous results (dropping on an inaccessible place, dropping directly on enemy arty). If he doesn’t, the entire concept is pointless, because everyone will know where the “surprise” will arrive

- balance: this could potentially be a huge advantage for one team, would both teams then have to have two airdropped vehicles?

No. It’s just too messy and as a class, I really don’t see airborne tanks appearing. We might actually see more airborne tanks in the regular tree (British Tetrarch for example, followed by (non-airborne) Harry Hopkins) but other than that, I don’t see any changes appearing.

Still, it would be funny, you know. Just dropping onto the battlefield whereever you want to. Would sure send some people raging :)