On WT E-100 once again

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Source: http://world-of-kwg.livejournal.com/241998.html
Autor: Torsus_sd (RU)

Hello everyone,

just a translation of an interesting post from the developer blog (the author, however, is a regular RU server player, not a developer). The translation is not perfect (what the hell means “ponarkomanil” – the best equivalent I could find is “fixed”)

Torsus:

I don’t like to write on the Livejournal blog too much, but seeing Storm’s AA gun on the E-100 chassis, I couldn’t help but bite, because I like German both the wunderwaffen and the E-100 too.

Storm screwed the scale somewhat, cleaned the photo of perspective (scale) points, brought it to scale, cleaned (cut) the rims of the picture and voila! I think that Hitler turned in his grave

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Then I fixed it a bit more and tried to display the gun mount as it would be on a tank gun. The result turned out to be… addictive. Immediately remembered the “Kondensator”

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And as an addition:

Waffentrager E-100/150 concept (from the same author)

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Waffentrager E-100/128

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Silentstalker:

Well, those look certainly better than the official WG version. And how did these guns look in real life? Yes, they existed. 150mm AA guns were a part of an experimental program. There were several, designated Gerät 50 to Gerät 65 (if you notice an F version named somewhere – Gerät 65F for example, it is a version designed specifically for fortifications with an in-built ammo feed from the fortress’ armory). They looked like this:

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Gerät 50 (“Device 50″ was an experimental AA gun by Krupp Essen AG, the development started in 1936 and was ended in 1940) had following characteristics:

Caliber 149,1mm
Barrel lenght 7753mm (L/52)
Traverse 360 deg.
Elevation range -1,3 to +90 deg
Rate of fire 10 rpm
Weight (ready to fire) 22 200 kg
Muzzle velocity: 40 kg HE – 890 m/s

There were AP shells too developed for this kind of weapon. Pretty cool stuff, but it was never designed to be mounted on a vehicle. I do believe the Flak 45 would be even cooler.

61 thoughts on “On WT E-100 once again”

  2. Are these just AA versions of the fameous “Five-Nine” naval gun? If so I might have some ballistic info on it.

      • Hmm, I ask because one regular criticism of the Kriegsmarine is that they didn’t have a proper DP weapon, so I’d be supprised if there wasn’t at least some attempt to design such a gun. Also, given they were developing AP shells in 1940, suggests that they were intended to fire on ships.

        • Pretty much all the heavy guns (including howitzers) had anti-armor shells developed (AP, APCR, HEAT, even APDS) – not sure whether it was a requirement or they simply “liked to do so”.

  8. “Наркоманить” – take hallucinogenic drugs. “Понаркоманил” can roughly be translated as “smoked some weed”.

  10. Question, as I know next to nothing about air combat in WW2.

    What was the point of something like a 150 mm AA gun? You could probably field several 88′s for the same amount of cost/effort and achieve better coverage, as well as the freedom to actually move them around a little if necesary.

    Doubt their effective ceiling was much higher than the later Flak 41′s, and it’s not like you’d need a massive shell to defeat aircraft. To my knowledge, Ivan has yet to field a flying JS-7…

    • B17s weren’t called Flying Fortresses for nothing, 88 flak would shake em a lot, but without direct hit(or several VERY close hits to the wings) that thing would fly bombs to it’s target.

      • Then there was the threat of the B-29 Super Fortress coming into play in the European theater. I do not believe Germany had any aircraft that could climb that high, if they had any aircraft left at that point anyway.

        • Me262, Ta152, High Altitude variants of FW 190, Me 163 just to name a few german planes that wouldnt have had problems intercepting the B29

          • Having the design is a pretty far cry from having an useful number of actual planes in physical existence, nevermind now trained pilots to fly them.

      • Flying fortress war name made up by press, it could not take any more damage than any normal bomber.

        • Referred more to its considerable defensive firepower AFAIK. However planes that big tend not be terribly inconvenienced by shell fragments and bullets making holes in the hull, which is also why it was more weight-efficient to add armour to the crews than the bomber itself and why the Germans were so keen on fitting increasingly large cannon into their interceptors – to speak nothing of the late plans involving assorted applied rocketry.

      • Actually it was a remark made by a newspaper reporter upon seeing all the machine guns on the original prototype, which Boeing then trademarked as the official name. That being said, those machine guns weren’t quite as effective in practice as they seemed to be in theory.

        • The US was a bit doctrinally stuck on the .50 BMG for its aircraft guns for variety of reasons, and only followed the general practice of changing over to autocannon relatively late. Granted such would have been a mite bulky for bomber self-defense anyway, but then again it also turned out making the plane really fast instead was such an excellent defense onboard armament was a moot point.

          That said, AFAIK Luftwaffe pilots did NOT like attacking the bomber “combat boxes” and the Germans went to quite some lenght and ingenuity in trying to devise ways to shoot the damn things down from standoff distances instead.

  13. “ponarkomanil” *should* mean someone or something just started acting like narkoman that is junky (could mean a gun doing shitload of damage as if it was on “drugs”?).

  14. http://i42.tinypic.com/aw3uw4.png
    this would be how it looks with a frontmounted realsize autocannon based on the normal e-100 chassis.
    And we thought the kv-2 looks derpy XD
    and the japanese invented a belt-fed autocannon too, but they scrapped it as they didn’t want the huge shells rattling around in a huge turret XD and they only wanted to use an 8.8cm flak instead of a 15cm flak as you intend…

  15. does anybody knows the in-game gun characteristics of this thing ?

    how many shells in the drum, avg dmg, reload times and so on….

  17. This isn’t even her* final form! Still waiting for Waffentrager E-100/450.
    *-we should call it Helga :D

    ps: That font on pictures is rally awesome, Do you know how it is called? :)

  18. Maybe Wargaming would benefit from a few mechanical engineers who actually work on these kinds of things in the future, even if they only guide their artists when they decide to make up a tank. Copy Paste Tank can only teach you so much about real design…