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.

Hello everyone,

just a reminder – today, from 15:00 BST (16:00 CEST), Listy is organizing a Tobruk historical battle event. Plenty of people will be playing historical battles on EU1 server, including me and Jingles. Come join us for some hot desert sun action :)

Ehm… that came out wrong…

Anyway, if you are into trying the Tobruk HB, 16:00 CEST it is on EU1.

Hello everyone,

those of you, who follow FTR for longer and/or are interested in the German war industry are probably aware of the Sturmpanzer Bär project, a superheavy assault gun, whose development was however cancelled in favour of what would later become the Sturmmörser Tiger, or – as you know it – the Sturmtiger. It is certainly the best known “bear” out there, but there was one more self-propelled gun project, bearing the same name out there, a Soviet one..

As you also know from World of Tanks, the Soviets had a large number of various heavy self-propelled guns. One of the later ones whas the one pictured above, the heavy SPG called “Medved” (“bear”). It was designed right before the end of the war (Spring 1945) by the combined effort of three design bureaus: the UZTM (Uralmash), No.100 Plant and No.9 plant. The plan was to create a long-range rapid-fire artillery vehicle, the main purpose of which would be rapid artillery fire missions and counter-battery fire. This design was a part of the “Medved” program and for some time, it had quite a high priority.

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Hello everyone,

yesterday, the new “Light T-54″ (I will call it LT-54 in this article) tier 8 premium medium tank was unveiled and it was only natural people immediately started speculating. Will it be another Type 59? Will it be overpowered for a premium tank? Or will it disappear into the pit of mediocrity like the T-34-3? Well, let’s have a look at both.

Keep in mind that the supertester statistics leaked are preliminary, which means they can (and probably will) change.

The Armor

Here are both armor schematics of the vehicles. Type 59:

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Source: wot-news.com

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Source: VK Wotleaks community

Hello everyone,

this is the upcoming tier 8 Soviet premium medium tank, the “light T-54″. Right now it’s being supertested on the test. Compared to regular T-54, it has lighter armor. Currently, its ETA is unknown (possibly 9.3). The description says:

“A project of the lighter variant of the T-54 medium tank. The work on this vehicle began in May 1949. It was proposed that this vehicle, thanks to its increased terrain passability, could be used for tasks, in which the use of the regular serial T-54 tanks was not practical. While the project was being developed, the T-54 Model 1949 was finished and mass-produced and there was no more need for the lighter medium tank.”

Statistics:

Gun: D-10T
Penetration: 175
Damage: 250
Reloadtime: 8,24s (this is most likely with 100 percent crew and such)
Aim time: 2,7s
Accuracy: 0,4
Gun depression: -5 deg

Weight: 30,79 tons
Engine power: 520hp
Power-to-weight: 16,89
Hull traverse rate: 44 deg/s
Ground resistance: 0,959/1,151/1,918

Viewrange: 385m
Radio range: 800m
Battletiers: 8,9,10 (regular tier 8 medium MM)
Hitpoints: 1300

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….this time with football :)

Hello everyone,

first – a word of warning, this article will be very long and full of historical facts, so if you are here for the World of Tanks stuff, you might want to skip it.

Still here? Very well then.

Remember the old Call of Duty – Modern Warfare? There was a line, saying “History is written by the victor, history is full of liars” – the “Captain Price’s speech”, from where the name of this blog comes as well by the way. Either way, despite being used in a videogame, these words are true in real life as well.

There are a lot of lies being told about WW2. The history was written by the victors – I am not complaining about that fact, it is simply the way world works. Everybody lies after all, as House would say. In time however, it is only prudent for the worst myths to be debunked. Not every Russian was a patriotic partisan. Not every Russian soldier was a brave hero, fighting for the Motherland. Not every German was a bloodthirsty monster. And not every Czech was a collaborator, certainly not in the way that they are often depicted and mentioned even is serious literature.

The myth of massive Czech collaboration started very prosaically – as a nazi propaganda to subdue the newly captured Czechoslovak republic. After all, the Germans had no need for proud and independent people of course. Neither did Stalin, that’s why this lie was allowed to survive and was accepted as “the truth” after 1948, when Stalinist lackeys, during a coup took over Czechoslovakia and threw it into the decades of Soviet control, reinforced 20 years later by Soviet “brotherly help” – but that is a story for another time. Let’s return to the desperate days of the Heydrichiad (the term for the aftermath of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the notorious nazi butcher, culminating with the mass murder at the villages Lidice and Ležáky).

This article will be mostly a translation of a long historical article series “Inconvenient Heroes” by Václav Vlk sr., who took time to debunk one of the nastiest prevalent WW2 myths. I had to modify the article several times in order to make sense in English and in order to improve the formatting of the post, so the translation is not perfect, but I tried to keep it as authentic as possible. The references will be posted at the end of the article.

Enjoy.

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Hello everyone,

an interesting video appeared on Russian server. Since I don’t know whether the EU office will prepare the English version (since, you know, they are apparently too busy spamming FTR comments), here is the Russian one, along with what is said in it. I will make it in points that roughly follow the video timeline.

- Kharkov was the first capital of the Ukraine SSR, it was a huge city, an industrial and railway central
- there were practically 4 battles for the city of Kharkov
- the ingame map represents the battle of February-March 1943 (the “first liberation of Kharkov”)
- the center of the map is the Dzherzhinsky Square (SS: named after the “Iron Felix” Dzerzhinsky, the infamous founder of Cheka, now renamed to “Liberty square”) and the Gosprom building (built before the war in the center of Kharkov)
- apart from that there are some residential areas around the Gosprom building

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