Hello everyone,

today, we are going to have a look at what happened after the war in Czechoslovakia in tank industry. A long time ago, I wrote a post on the T-34/85 in Czechoslovak service, now it’s time to continue with the T-54.

While there was certain original medium tank development in Czechoslovakia after the war, it is the undeniable truth that the majority of Czechoslovak tank forces from 1945 to 1989 – and, practically until today – consisted of license produced or imported Soviet vehicles, first the T-34/85, then the T-54, T-55 and finally the T-72. I am saying “majority”, because in certain period (cca early 60′s, but it varied), Czechoslovak army also used the captured German equipment (Panzer IV, StuG, Hetzer, Hummel..) and the western vehicles, obtained from the former wartime allies, such as the Cromwell and Stuart tanks.

T-54A

The T-54 medium tank was intended as a replacement of the aging T-34/85 tank in the Czechoslovak army in the mid 50′s. Generally, it was regarded as the only real solution, despite the fact there were some proposals to actually upgun the T-34/85 to 100mm (including a proposal for an autoloaded version). As it was usual with the heavy industry of that time, the production, proposed to start in mid 50′s at ČKD Prague, was delayed and in 1956, it was decided to start producing an improved version of the T-54, called T-54A. Between 1956 and 1957, the Soviet assembly documentation was reworked for Czech conditions and the first trial series of 10 vehicles was produced in 1957 at the J.V.Stalin Factory in Martin, Slovakia (the heavy production was moved to Slovakia not only to jumpstart Slovakian economy within former Czechoslovakia by introducing heavy industry, but also as an attempt to move the heavy armor production away from Pilsen or Prague more eastwards, so it is not as easily reachable by the American and British bombers).

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Hello everyone,

as you might already know, there is a new “guest” cartoon maker publishing his videos on Ranzar channel. Now, I really don’t like the animation style, but this particular video is actually quite funny (and unfortunately very true, we all love TD’s with Romulan cloaking devices disappearing in the middle of the Malinovka field, don’t we…)

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
Thanks to 31B442SV5 for this one.

Hello everyone,

do you remember the post where some idiots from Ukraine tried to start up the old IS-3 tank and actually partially succeeded? Looks like this approach became a standard for the “separatist” forces, that now are trying to allegedly raid museums (!) for ancient equipment, that served during WW2. Well, at least according to the dailymail post:

A viral video of pranksters starting up a WW2 tank as it was perched on a memorial has inspired pro-Russian rebels to plunder military museums of arms and ammunition to use in their fight to break away from Ukraine. The rebels are desperately short of any sort of military armament and after seeing the way the tank had started up despite being exposed to the elements for decades, they started scouring museums. There they have found tanks and other armoured vehicles which they now plan to enlist in the defence of the eastern city of Donetsk which has declared its independence from the Ukraine.

‘There is tons of stuff that we can make use of – mortars, heavy machine guns, truck-towed artillery pieces,’ said local militia leader Alexei Kosalokin. ‘This was the stuff our ancestors beat the Nazis with and if it was good enough for them, it is good enough for us.’

But… is that really true? The British news don’t really seem to be the most reliable sources of information. Check this out – from this article:

Holy shit, the Soviets had IS-3 in 1943? No wonder the Germans lost the war! Seriously though – if this description is wrong… what else is wrong? The article has a grain of truth in it though. A few weeks ago, there was a case (and a video) of the separatists using a WW2 era Soviet AT rifle (PTRS was it?) against Ukraine army BMP’s. While this might  sound like a completely silly idea, make no mistake – BMP’s are thin skinned and even a WW2 era AT rifle can actually damage them.

Source: http://world-of-ru.livejournal.com/3345084.html

Hello everyone,

the fact that the Stronkhold mode will have turrets was already leaked. How will they look sitting out there on the ground? Well, someone leaked this tiny picture:

According to the leaker, this turret has 10k hitpoints and “shoots HE shells at close targets”. That’s all we know. For now anyway. Stronkhold mode is scheduled for patch 9.2

Hello everyone,

thanks to Forceman4077 (US server), we now know some more interesting info about the British line. Forceman visited the E3 booth of Wargaming and talked to my favourite WG employee, The_Chieftain. Chief confirmed him in person that:

- the British “LL” Line with Firefly should come this year (no exact ETA yet)
- here’s the interesting part: the line will be a hybrid line – lower half until tier 6 (Firefly) will be medium tanks, the upper half will be British turretted tank destroyers

And yes, it is true, I was able to confirm this info from other sources as well. For “what exactly will the line setup look like” – I wrote about it here with tank descriptions, but roughly:

Tier 6 – Firefly
Tier 7 – Avenger/Challenger
Tier 8 – Charioteer
Tier 9 – FV4004 “Conway”
Tier 10 – FV4005 Stage 2

Lower tiers will apparently include M3 Grant, Sherman I and M2A4 (I am not sure about the M2A4).

There are so very many inscriptions you can put on your tank, but I only covered 4 in the last article. Let’s do a few more.

It was requested in the comments of the last article, so let’s do the T-34-85 “Rudy” first. This tank is not a real tank, but is from a Polish television show Four Tankers and a Dog (Czterej pancerni i pies), following the exploits of a Polish tank crew and their tank, “Rudy” (“Ginger”). In the book the show was based on, the tank is initially a T-34-76 (thus explaining the only four tankers), but the show only has a T-34-85.

Here’s how it looks in game.

And here’s how it looks on the show’s poster.

Not even close. The eagle isn’t there, the number isn’t there, and the tank’s name is on the  turret, not the hull. Boo, next.

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Thanks to Tupinambis and Applesaucebandit (US forums) for this one.

So, this is Type 62 we all know and love…

…but what happens when we remove the turret?

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Hello everyone,

I recently recieved a message, reminding me of this little gem. It’s been two years since Overlord reposted this (by then highly controversial) take on the German tree, originally posted by Slava Makarov I think. In case you don’t remember Overlord or are too new a player to remember him, he was a developer of World of Tanks on EU server and in his time (think early 2012), he ran a huge thread, where you actually could – imagine that – ask a real developer anything and he answered, just like Storm and SerB did on RU forums. It was a glorious time for WoT: the game was new and fresh, the EU office was not filled with PR clowns. Overlord’s unfortunate departure to other projects was one of the defining moments in creating FTR, because at that point, with the EU community being deprived of information, I started translating from Russian to first Czech, then English. Or was it vice versa? Can’t remember.

In any case, Overlord reposted this tree on his blog (which is active until this day, do follow it for some interesting info!)

As you can see, the tree was highly controversial, because the original post actually suggested that a lot of vehicles would be downtiered with losing their top unhistorical guns. That this approach proved to be correct was shown only later on, with some of these changes eventually really happening (remember how VK3001 lost the Vaderturm?). Another interesting moment is the Maus on tier 9 (with even worse mobility than the current tier 10 one) and Maus II on tier 10. In case you are wondering – Maus II project actually existed, it was an alternative turret project (described here).

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Hello everyone,

you all probably know about the Tobruk historical battle, that came in 9.1. Originally, however, the patch brought two historical battles – that one and the one called Bryansk. Russian server, where the historical battles are more popular than on the EU server, got both, EU got only one, because it was felt by Wargaming that too few people are interested in HB’s to actually split the HB queues between too battles and so, only one was introduced, with the other one probably coming later.

Here’s a bit of history behind it, as translated from the Russian portal.

In May 1942, the forces of the Red Army suffered a serious defeat at Kharkov. After that, OKH (German high command) made new plans for the followup operations in the southern part of the eastern front. The general goal of these operation was the final destruction of the Soviet armies of the South-Western Front and Bryansk Front, followed by a dash to river Volga and Caucasus.

One of the planned Germans operation was called “Blau”. The army that was to participate in it was called Army Group “Weichs”. The task of the Group was to attack Kursk and Voronezh. After that, the Group was to turn towards Kantemirovka to participate in the encirclement of the armies of the South-Western Front.

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Thanks to WARLOCK360100

Hello everyone,

game portal MMOBomb made an interview with Gareth Luke, senior producer of World of Warships. Here it is, in case you are interested in this sort of stuff.