Inside the Tanks – AMX-13

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Hello everyone,

I think many of you noticed my recent distaste (an understatement) for Richard Cutland, originating in what I was told in person by WG RU people during our meeting in Prague – and trust me, there’s a very good reason for it, several in fact and I am sure they will come to light eventually, either on FTR or somewhere else. I’ll give you even a hint though: the story of why there are no more post-war French medium tanks aside from the upcoming AMX-30 Prototype and AMX-30 in the game (and there likely won’t be any more) is an interesting one and very relevant. If you knew what I know, you’d.. “dislike” him too, but there are reasons why I cannot talk. For now.

Nevertheless, the following content might be interesting to people and that restoration part is quite fascinating.

 

 

As usual, Richard Cutland is reading stuff (presumably from a teleprompter) and as usual, there are mistakes. The biggest one I noticed is that he connects the concept of an autoloader mechanism to the oscillating turret. There is absolutely no reason to, those two are completely unrelated, an autoloading mechanism could be added even to a normal turret.

Regarding the depression – “10 degrees is the usual rule” is a complete nonsense. There is no general gun depression rule, the Soviet tanks for example usually had much worse gun depression due to the tactics they were to be using.

Regarding the oscillating turret, Richard Cutland (or whoever wrote the script) failed to mention the biggest disadvantage by far. An oscillating turret, given its nature, is impossible to overpressurize and thus, a tank with oscillating turret is practically impossible to secure against NBC’s. This was considered a major disadvantage and it still is even to this day.

The statement that the 75mm is the Panther gun is problematic. It was certainly an inspiration of sorts, but it is hardly an identical gun. The late (!) gun is shorter than the Panther’s, but only by a bit (L/62 compared to L/70), it has roughly the same amount of performance as the Panther gun (yes, it’s underrepresented in the game for balance purposes). Also it is worth saying WHICH gun, because the original AMX-13 gun had lower muzzle velocity  and it was worse than the Panther KwK 42.

Oh, and Richard Cutlend mentions “hollow charge” ammunition for the 75mm gun: “hollow charge” is a term for HEAT – there was no such thing for 75mm (or at least definitely not a commonly used one), the upgraded ammunition was APCR (or even APFSDS).

134 thoughts on “Inside the Tanks – AMX-13”

  1. wow you really dont sound happy man, and was there something with this guy and french tanks? did he stop them or what?

      • You just made The Challenger’s videoes unwatchable by mentioning he reads from a teleprompter. Not that I didn’t prefer Moran before, but day-um, it’s annoying.

      • I agree, I don’t like this guy one bit, give us Chieftain back! Chieftain at least didn’t have to read the info (clearly you can watch his eyes as he reads across the script), and because he is reading his body language is unnatural and awkward to watch. Chieftain also would tell us actual important shit about the tank… Boo, WG EU, boo!

  5. It’s sad, but I wait for the Teckyota’s result.
    In mid/late-february he will have a meeting with some WG-staff about his french-tree.

    Teck speak about 248 pages for 149 tanks. And I don’t think there is many premium-tanks in the tree.
    I don’t care about WG reasons, the fact is there is a lot to add for France. They need to deal with it sooner or later.

    SS – Hope you will give an article about that this month :)

      • It’s not from me, here the quote & link (google trad if you need, but it still is a simple french):
        ” Pour le dossier, il sera terminé aujourd’hui ou le week end prochain. Je reprend contacte avec Wargaming aujourd’hui pour fixer un lieu et une date de rencontre durant les vacances de février qui débute pour moi le 21 février. S’ils peuvent, le RDV sera pris sur la semaine du 23 février. Je vous tiendrais au courant. Pour information, le dossier fait 248 pages et possède 149 chars en tout. ”
        http://forum.worldoftanks.eu/index.php?/topic/316995-larbre-francais/page__st__1360__pid__10089520#entry10089520

        Speak with him if you want more information. But we just need some times to know if it’s good or not for WG.

      • That’s the average number, including all types of armoured vehicules, and foreign vehicules used and transformed in the french army.
        BTW, when is the next GER coming out ?

        • Depends on timeframe – if from WW1 to 1970 – then yeah, fully possible with all stuff.
          But if ones who fit WoT tech and time frame – very hardly…

          Captured 9.4 replays – then montage them, then create new UI for some hugely suspicious shots (by demand :D), then capture 9.5, then montage, then capture needed 9.5 replays again in different season and then render.
          Hint: you’ll need HTML5 for that one :D

      • Thank you :)
        Hope it will change their minds about our little tree.

        But the community will cry about our super-heavy tanks :D
        At least the #FrenchBias will work again on WoT as it is now on WarThunder (D.520 from 1939 fighting against Yak-9T on Berlin in 1945 ~~ )

        Regardless games there is many french-project created by the community. In some way, I think our nation is pretty bizarre & hard to put in action.

  7. Chieftain (Nicholas) should be making these videos. He was far more interesting, precise and entertaining. Challenger’s videos are not bad, but they are just not so good as Chieftain’s.

  8. Pardon my ignorance but NBC stands for what? National Broadcasting Company?, j/k… I know it refers to Nuclear something, what is the comple term?

  9. did he turn you down for a date? is that why your so bitter? maybe he didn’t like the flowers you bought him? rejection leads to hate!!!

  10. Richard Cutland is a fake. His knowledge is very limited (average or below average about the tanks he drove, zero about the rest) and his communication skills resemble a mummy (even Tutankamon can communicate better than him).

    His shallow knowledge only impresses young WoT players that have never been in the military (national service, volunteer or professional) and get impressed with even the most dull aspect of military life.

    WG needs new a new Tank Specialist, preferably one that plays the game too because Richard cant play WoT and his account is used by other WG staff to keep it alive.

  11. Well, SS, i expected better from you. I already thought that when you related your meeting with WG staff.
    You should not accuse someone like that, without giving any evidences.
    What you’re saying now is “Spit on this guy, he has done bad things, i won’t tell you what, but take your forks and hunt him, because he is the bad guy, believe me”.
    It’s one of two things : you accuse and you give evidences, or you don’t tell anything for now.
    Maybe Challenger has done wrong things (and believe me i’ll be the first one to blame him if it is about french tanks (i’m french btw :D (wow, brackets into brackets into brackets, bracketception))), but you just don’t have the right to subject him to this kind of popular court as long as you don’t bring tangible elements.

    • I think the word you want to use is “slander”.
      It’s slightly sad to see SS slandering another. Than again, it may be justified in his eyes and this is his personal blog so…

      • Well, last time I just wrote that I don’t like Cutland and everyone was like “omg why, he’s such a nice guy”. So basically, here’s why, without details.

        • Isn’t that the same thing than?! ;^_^
          I think what people wanted to hear is the details.
          But it really doesn’t matter anyway. You’re entitled to dislike whomever you wish and you have no reason to explain why.

          • Maybe he meant that Richards incompetence to atleast check the data he is going to say, and other stuff SS wrote in post, is atleast part of a reason he dislikes him? He is teasing us with the real reason, but for now, this little part will suffice.

      • Thing is though this isn’t a personal blog. It is a public one and even on the internet you have to be careful what you say about individuals. But SS does stray into the realm of the tabloid every now and then.

    • My guess is SS is keen on Chech tech tree(cause he is Chech)but Cutland must have said something against it ,like its shit we don’t need it or something and SS is crying like a little bitch ever since!

  12. “As usual, Richard Cutland is reading stuff (presumably from a teleprompter) and as usual, there are mistakes. The biggest one I noticed is that he connects the concept of an autoloader mechanism to the oscillating turret. There is absolutely no reason to, those two are completely unrelated, an autoloading mechanism could be added even to a normal turret.”
    Well, while you can mount an autoloader in a conventional turret (as many Sovjet and some modern western designs show), it’s easier in an oscilating turret. In a conventional turret you either need a more complicated mechanism to align the shell with the breech or the gun has to be moved in a predefined loading position between shots. In an oscillating turret on the other hand, the autoloading mechanism and gun are in fixed relative positions.

    • This, also you can mount a relative heavy gun on a light weight turret/chassis. And this was maybe the main reason for oscillating turrets on the AMX 12/13 series.

  14. SS: I think he meant that the construcion of the turret enables to use autoloader withnout need to elevate the gun to the loading position (E.G. T-72, BMP-1).

      • And that takes more space, or you have to use a smaller gun/drum. You cant have it all.

        All they wanted was a small tank with a good gun. It should be air dropable und not that expensive. NBC capabilities werent that important when AMX 13 was designed, especially not in colonial warfare….

  15. SS trying too hard to find flaws and errors… I like the page and I like the info. But I don’t like the constant arrogance and bitterness in every post as well as all polls are biased to a point where they are useless because the answers are always missing something… Politics stink if you dont do it right

    • This is politics?!
      Try to find me a completely unbiased poll please. One that’s posted on a more popular site.

      • Woras – Just because I’m reading FTR doesn’t exclude me from disliking SS constant bitching about other people? :-) It doesn’t mean I’m incapable of filtering it off so maybe you really should stop reading my comments if you dont want to read my opinion… He’s making a good site – he’s just very bad at ethics

        Saffron – Why would you make polls without making way for different opinions? maybe ethics is a better word than politics, but if you don’t know how to make a proper poll the result will be misleading and useless for any other reason than shit & giggles. And then you should not pretend to be serious…

  17. Very interesting tank indeed, video was nice. But why can’t this guy go into more detail about suspension and stuff like that? Now people don’t learn these things if they don’t know what are those parts shown in the video, if it’s not explained. There’s a guy in NA who explains this stuff, like suspension, machine gun mounts, armour plate thickness (that is irrelevant here, I know). Also he’s way more spontanious presenter than this Cutland guy, because latter one seems to freeze in front of the camera.

    So IMO, cool tank and video footage, bad presentation. WG EU as usual?

    • The “NA guy” is the Chieftain and yeah, his videos are more interesting precisely because he does a more indepth look at the vehicle, in general. Challenger’s videos usually feel like lengthy quickies, and what really pissed me off about this particular video, is the lack of actual interaction with the tank, Yes, he’s shown driving around in it, but was it really that hard to show how the hatch opens instead of a still picture, for example? Geez…

  19. Does this guy actually have the influence to stop an entire tech branch in WOT? If that’s the case I would be very interested to find out why he’d do that, doesn’t make any sense to me, the French tree needs filling out alot. I’d have preferred to have a properly filled out tech trees for existing nations before the Japanese and Chinese were introduced but that was obviously a commercial decision to get south east Asia onboard.

    From a video point of view neither of the guys do it for me, driving a tank does not make you a historian or an expert, in fact many people I have met in armed service (and that’s a hell of a lot) have no interest in the subject at all, they operate the equipment issued to them and that’s it, any more then most plumbers would be interested in the history of the wrench.

    I would suggest to the masses that if you really want to find out FACTUAL info on a vehicle a book written by one of the many reputable historians on armoured warfare would be better then a video by a computer games company.

  21. Europeans themselves are retarded and incompetent… Remember the warmonger Churchill? That bulldog faced bastard was ready to soak the German and French with various “germ warfare” weapons… Not to mention the fact that if the war continued a little more he would make US use the nuke on German’s too…

    So, here’s your developed and intelligent European mind, always working for the other’s destruction…

    • oh dear the shitstorm is about to happen. untill then tell me more about US fighting for freedom in Iraq, about US beeing in last countries to agree to cap polution, etc.

        • They came bearing many gifts, such as Gonorrhea, Syphylis, Red Pox, alcoholism etc. and the only thing they wanted for all those awesome things back was all their land and resources, pretty fair trade if you ask me

      • Nonsense, Europe is country, so is Africa and Middle East. Also, in Europe everybody speaks english with funny accent (well except for the part east of Berlin, people speak russian there and wear schapkas because it’s constantly negative 20 and snowing), everybody’s basically pedophile and everybody drinks since age of teen.

        Man, do you even watch ‘murrican movies??

    • ? You said nuke and US in one sentence but still you think europe is worse than the US? How about your school shootings and VERY liberal gun laws while the german police in 2013 for example only fired 3 rounds and there’s a debate going on in the EU about disarming the regular police forces?

      • LOL, EU and US are equally shit… US has its roots about destroying people from Europe, and Europeans have been killing each other for centuries until present day…

        So, I’m asking now, who’s civilized more? US, or EU? “Orient” is out of question here because their people are busy butchering each other thanks to the “Occident”.

  23. Well I fucking knew that not implementing any more frenchies (even tho there is a big-ass tree on french forums) is not just a simple “because no” coming from WG

    But still, when they will run out of materials for other nations and when AW will turn out to be a helluva good game…then I guess we will see more french tanks

    • Well Wargaming has seen Gajiin take away the players who want something more realistic (albeit still needing a lot of work to get there), now they’ll see the arcade players move onto Armoured Warfare and potentially be left with a smaller but more profitable group, I doubt it will affect them too hard

  24. if Cutland don’t like french tanks, so it’s like a punishment to do a video on an amx 13 , right ?

    • Somewhere else he said that the AMX 13 was he all time favourite tank. I suspect the brouhaha* has something to do with upsetting the authorities in France leading to a falling out between them and WGEU so cutting off access to the tank data needed to get new French tanks in the game. I could be totally wrong.

      *That is a word that needs to be taken out dusted off and applied where appropriate.

  26. Seriously SS, just tell us what the Challenger did to you/WG so that you’re so butthurt about him. I hate this hide ‘n seek game with the truth. Just tell us.

    So far I think the challenger made a lot of good short videos about real tanks, giving us a nice bit of background information about the tanks we love in the game. And also about the ones we hate.

    I don’t care if he or his scriptwriters make mistakes, statements of his you don’t trust are easily googled out (usually I really google a bit around after watching one of his videos). He presents this whole thing really good and that’s why I like him and his tommy accent.

    He’s very far from incompetent.

    • His presentation is wodden at best and there’s not much personality to it. If your host is having troubles with making a teleprompting session appear “alive”, then you may just as well throw him out and just print the text on the screen. I like his videos purely because he usualy covers tanks that the Chieftain doesn’t or didn’t yet and because of the historical (if available) footage, but if I had the choicem, I’d take Chieftain’s performance every single time, even if people are having troubles reading his emotions.

      • By the way…what’s the point of you commenting? Do you really think you can change my opinion? Just for the fact that there is in fact a human in front of the camera makes the whole thing “alive”, right?

        • “Just for the fact that there is in fact a human in front of the camera makes the whole thing “alive”, right?”

          I’m sorry, but… no, not really.

          Chieftain is funny, entertaining and actually does something on the video, like walking around, opening hatches, service ports etc. All those things might sound negligible and totally not important, but that’s what makes his videos more “alive”.
          I personally also love his “deleted scenes”, where he shows his failed attempts at various things (like being unable to open IS-7′s side storage or hurting himself by… dunno now, SU-100 or ISU’s hatch?) That all makes him more closer to general public’s hearts in my opinion.

          Challenger on the other hand (and all that i say despite i like his videos too) just stands there and talks and talks… Well, sometimes he shakes his shoulders (actually in this video his arms and shoulders shake a lot, like one massive twitch at begining of each sentence), but overall he’s not really trying to actually maintain his audience’s attention… which he, frankly doesn’t need, as his videos tend to be shorter than average attention span of ADHD kid anyways.

        • If you do not like people disagreeing with your opinion and reacting on your comments, then I suggest you cease blurting your opinion into an open space.

    • I’ve seen other Challenger videos where he is more “alive.” Like with the Tiger I, in which he was a complete fangirl. This one? He looks like he wished to be elsewhere, perhaps at the dentist waiting for a root canal.

      This video was just: Here’s the tank. Here’s the turret. Here’s the gun, and tomorrow we will show what’s inside and take it for a ride. Goodbye.

      • And? What else do you need? A tank has a turret, a gun, a hull and can drive, so what’s wrong? I don’t need this hippy “emotions”.

        • Watch the Tiger I video and you will see a very happy man. He couldn’t stop himself. He had to open every hatch, see every nut and bolt. Asked the curators about maintenance and stuff. In other words he was a complete Tiger I fanboy and it showed. Same fanboyism with the Panzer IV.

          It seems the man is a complete wheraboo.

          With this one. It looked as if he was dragged kicking and screaming with his fingernails leaving a trail in the hard packed earth and wanted to be over with it ASAP.

          • Well i am by no means a Challenger fanboy, but i think this video was his best so far. Very informative and neutral and he gets everything right, although SS misinterprets some things and has to call him out for that. But SS isnt right everytime either, especially not here, so no offense on his gossip girl style taken. At least till is see what Challenger did, must be cruel if SS is so bitchy about it :D

  27. I think he should also have mentioned that these “grenade launchers” are only for smoke. I never heard them being called that but I am not an expert.

    • Like Endoscope is officially called: “Endoscopic inspection intrusion camera”, which are used to see inside human body.

      Borescope is same device but used with mechanical stuff inspection (dunno why different name for same device).

      Well you probably use smoke grenade launchers for smoke but I think during WW2 they used some of these to kill infantry who got too close (scrapnel grenades) and they are available for today as well for IFV.

  28. I think I’ve heard the same thing you’ve heard, and its had a much wider ripple than just post-war French tanks.