Source: https://ritastatusreport.live/2019/04/16/patch-1-5-skoda-t-27-final-textures-and-stats/

Hello everyone,

it’s been a while, hasn’t it. The appearance of the newest Czechoslovak premium MBT prompted me to make a post because, in case you haven’t noticed from all those years before, Czechoslovak tanks are kinda my thing and I was involved in the creation of the CZ branch all those years ago. So, let’s get the most important message out of the way first:

T 27 is a fake, much like most of the Italian and Polish branches. It never existed, even on paper, it was made up by Wargaming to fill the premium slot.

Furthermore, the article I linked above states:

The Škoda T 27 (Czechoslovak, Tier 8, premium, autoloader) is already in the patch 1.5 files. It was originally slated for release with the Czech Medium tech tree branch. Something went wrong and it has made it into the game two and a half years late.

This is also not true to the best of my knowledge. This vehicle was never intended as a part of the initial line, even as a premium, because the line was supposed to be sort of realistic, possibly sort of as the last one (not sure about the Swedes but the guy who helped with it, sp15, was also critical, hard to say). The autoloaders, for example, are a huge stretch but hey, whatever helped bring them in, right.

What happened was, roughly a year ago, someone from WG came to me and asked vaguely for possible hightier medium candidates. I was like uhhhhh… there aren’t that many. There was that turret developed for Porsche’s Tiger, there was the T-51 tank by ČKD (sister project to the T-50) and that was pretty much it. The latter – well, not much is known about it, but I suggested it as a possible candidate. Then nothing happened and next thing you know, we get this tank.

So, what I think we are looking at is basically an upscaled version of the T-17 light tank.

Even the official description says so (in Russian):

My main gripe is that the T-17 was never developed or considered for conversion into a medium tank. There are no resources or documents that would support this theory, to my knowledge anyway.

This is, furthermore, supported by the following:

• 88mm autoloader was never considered or developed for any project, the gun was not very historical, its addition to the Czechoslovak line was suggested by me as one of the early drafts but a German trophy gun would definitely not be used for an advanced project like that (keep in mind that T-17 is the zenith of Czechoslovak tank design, one of its last projects)
• Whoever named it just assumed the wartime nomenclature carried over at Škoda (2 signifies Medium Tank, 7 signifies 7th project of the weight category). It didn’t and the name makes no sense because T-17 was the 7th project of the light tank line (T-16 was a heavily modified T-15), while there was no Škoda T-26. Its predecessor at Škoda would be T-40 or T-50 even.
• Come on, it’s just an upscaled T-17

Now, you might be asking, why does this even matter? So Wargaming produces fakes, who cares. It’s a game. Well, yes… it is a game, but one with tremendous cultural impact. I wonder how many Polish kids will grow up with fantasies of amazing post-war heavy tank projects when the reality was… let’s say not as kind.

Anyway, enough ranting. I should come up with more interesting topics I guess.