Ladies and gentlemen, our fake tank parade continues with another great example. This time, Wargaming calls it Kampfpanzer 50t.
According to Wargaming’s description, it’s supposed to be “One of the medium tank projects that were developed in Germany in the 1960s…”
Naturally, not being an expert in everything, I went and asked someone who really IS an expert on anything German and was involved, amongst other things, in the original introduction of RU251 to WoT.
You can see where this is going, can’t you?
That’s right. This vehicle was never developed. It was taken from this page, specifically this image:
Basically, what you’re looking at is a drawing from a book from 1958 that depict the idea of its author, Ferdinand Maria von Senger und Etterlin, regarding how a “future combat tank” could look like.
The author was certainly an interesting person and had plenty of experience from the war (he was a tank unit commander), but he was not a tank designer or involved in tank design (at least not directly and until the Leopard 1 era). As such, the drawings weren’t based on developed tank designs – they were, for the lack of better term, musings of a veteran soldier regarding what he’d like on tanks.
Okay, if I am to be honest, this is slightly better than the totally fake T 27, but not enough to make a difference. So, let’s ask our resident expert – what’s the verdict:
yes, thank you, at least 1 guy with a reliable reputation confirms the fake tank…I said it a couple of days ago on reddit that this tank is a fake, also that the drawing from Ferdinand Maria von Senger und Etterlin was named as a 30 tons tank and not 50t
Here is also my comment from reddit:
after a “small” research from me (about 2 hours), this is what I can say…it’s most likely named “Kampfpanzer 50″ and not “50t” (there were other project names like “Kampfpanzer 70/80/90″) and Germany stopped naming tank projects after their weight limit at the end of WW2, but still, if it means that it was developed in the 50′s…I can say nope…fake tank, the german industry had a research disadvantage in the 50′s, there was only 1 tank which was developed in this decade, the “Indienpanzer” by daimler-benz and that project failed. The tank could also be a pre-series leopard 1 ) although the model looks different), but at the beginning of the development the german army wanted the british 105mm-L7 gun as armament, so an “old school” 105mm gun was not an option since the wehrmacht used only 8,8cm gun or 12,8cm guns during the war (AT guns and tank guns), Porsche wanted a 10,5cm gun or a 15cm gun for the tiger 2, but it was denied, so technically a wehrmacht 10,5 cm KwK was only a blueprint dream.
After 8 years really who cares? WoT is not about historical tanks, not for a long time. Maybe it was when it started, when it was easier to scan real tanks instead invent them from scratch. They at least try to invent something, that looks like a historical piece. How many tanks left from that era that can fill T9-T10 spots and not from russia? I glad they invent a german tank and not a copy paste some T-62.
I think there are still plenty of people who believe that everything in WoT is real. Such people then go to tank museums and demand seeing E-50M…
SAD but TRUE …..
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