The popularity of World of Tanks is greatly helping to spread interest in tank history, however some of the inaccuracies in the game are starting to create a new strain of internet tank myths.

One of those is about the VK 45.02 (P), Porsche’s failed bid for a Tiger successor, represented in WOT by two tanks that are both way above their historical counterpart, especially what they call the “Ausf B”.

Today we will use Special Panzer Variants by Spielberger, Panzer Tracts 20-1, Kingtiger Heavy Tank and Germany’s Tiger tanks – VK 45-02 to Tiger II by Jentz & Doyle.

The roots of a Porsche Tiger improvement starts in early 1942, with the very first proposal of a “Typ 101 Verstaerkt” (strengthened), soon changed into Typ 180 (Electric transmission) and 181 (Hydraulic), designated by Wa Pruef 6 as VK 45.01 (P2), VK 45.02 (P) and finally Tiger P2.
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As WG is seemingly aware of light tanks becoming less competitive as class, I decided to interview some EU players about their feeling on what the issues are and what should be improved.

The sample was pretty small (15 players), but then I wanted opinions rather than statistics so don’t take it as a huge poll capable of influencing WG.
The players ranged from Bad WN to Unicum levels with an average of 1294 according to noobmeter.com so relatively skilled players (not unexpected given that active forums posters usually are the better informed and skilled part of the community) and definitely better than yours truly, which is average at best.

So, what did those players think about it?
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The lack of air superiority became quite a problem for the German army in both World Wars.
Very often you will hear people spouting about “invincible Tigers only defeated by enemy airplanes”, which of course was only somewhat true until the Soviets started fielding 122 and 152mm self propelled guns, not to mention the IS series, while British and Americans also put 76mm high velocity cannons to good use on the other side.

The Germans of course were aware of the consequences of loosing air superiority and developed several solutions, of which we will cover only the ones based on tank hulls, ranging from sensible battlefield modifications to daring paper tanks that never reached the battlefield, using mainly “Gepard” by Spielberger and “Panzer Tracts 20-2” by Jentz & Doyle.

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Hello and welcome to “Buff my tank!”

The “Buff my tank!” articles are meant as an historical way to look at some tanks considered underpowered in game and ways to improve their combat abilities discussed by the original german engineers.
Beware that while being sometimes ironic in tone, the article treats about both costs and benefits of every choice and it most likely will never be listened by WG as suggestion.

A true workhorse of the Wehrmacht, the Panzer II was initially conceived as an interim design until the heavier and more capable Panzer III and IV were ready but its development was still very long, with plenty of proposed upgrades.
To properly explore this, we will draw our information from Spielberger’s “Panzers I and II and their variants” and “Gepard”, while also using ” Panzer Tacts 20-1” and “Panzer Tracts 20-2” from Jentz & Doyle.

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Hello and welcome to “Buff my tank!”

The “Buff my tank!” articles are meant as an historical way to look at some tanks considered underpowered in game and ways to improve their combat abilities discussed by the original German engineers.
Beware that while being sometimes ironic in tone, the article treats about both costs and benefits of every choice and it most likely will never be listened by WG as suggestion.

Often forgotten and underestimated in the shadow of its mightier successors, the humble Panzer I was mainly meant to be a training tank but ended up being a pretty important part of the early Polish and French blitzkrieg campaigns.

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Disclaimer: this is an highly speculative article which tries to find a logical link to a tank design between secondary sources. The following has to be taken as author’s interpretation.

Late war Germany found itself lacking capable light recon tanks amongst its many shortages. There were a few obsolete light tanks pressed into the role but by 1945 they were mostly worn out, with the few working remains hopelessly outmatched by Soviet and Allied fast medium tanks. One answer to this was the usual flurry of paper projects, which however proved to be too complex and expensive (VK 16.02), using precious chassis and making little sense (Recon Panther) or being underpowered from inception for the role (early turreted Jagdpanzer 38 (t) with Panzer IV turret and to a lesser extent the Panzer 38D). Spielberger briefly mentions that the E-25 proposal included a recon tank version but gives no further details, leaving us still into obscurity. There is however one further, unlikely source that might bring us further details, although usually regarded as something very different altogether: Hahn’s “Klein-Tiger”.

The project as described by Hahn might seem a fantasy nonsense and indeed it doesn’t seem to match anything Tiger related, as very well described in this article. That is, as long as we consider the Klein-Tiger as a Tiger related project, however what if it was something entirely different in design and purpose?

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While we usually delve into obscure prototypes or late WWII tanks, it’s worth taking a look into the original panzer development, which is an interesting history of technological catching-up in itself.
When WWI tanks are brought to topic one cannot avoid mentioning the iconic ones, Mark I-IV, Renault FT-17 and the A7V.

Those of course were far from being the only armored beasts that grazed (or better, clawed their way through) the battlefield but the drawing boards were busy with even more projects, as usual going from the pragmatic to the downright unpractical, giving excellent precursors to Hitler’s megalomania.

Still, this was the technological cutting edge of the era, with both sides pioneering into armored warfare operations and experimenting original solutions.
While only one german tank design ever saw the battlefields of WWI, designing and prototypes were going strong behind the lines.

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By Zarax

Disclaimer: 

This is a purely speculative article that takes into account WOT German tech tree and uses historical tanks to speculate possible new tank additions.

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 Disclaimer:

This is a purely speculative article that takes into account WOT German tech tree and uses historical tanks to speculate possible new tank additions. While trying to keep the articles faithful to history some room for inaccuracy is allowed within these rules:

1) No tank or tank part will be 100% made up, at least a mention about tank role and vague specs are needed

2) Components not planned for the tank are allowed, provided it wouldn’t create grotesque inaccuracies like putting a gun that would obviously cripple a tank under its weight

3) This will be limited to WWII plans, anything post war risks to be too arbitrary to properly balance

No serious expectation of anything listed to appear in WOT as described is applied, but as we’re discussing about implementing history into an arcade game some items will be controversial.

This is unavoidable as WOT tech tree rules need a tank to be better than the previous one and ergonomics are not exactly cared about, meaning that most designs are over-performing their real counterparts.

With the approaching Waffentrager tree, today we will see my personal take on the possible sturmpanzer tree.
SilentStalker recently had his own take on it, but I disagree on some choices and also prefer a shorter, more intense grind.

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