Source: RU server forums

It was confirmed by the Russian WG forum folks that the 9.1 patch is scheduled for release next Tuesday (10.6.2014) on RU server. EU release is not yet confirmed, but is apparently to follow a day later.

In Minsk, who needs cranes and lifters, when you have stronk men!

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Thanks to Jusuchin for this one.

Hello everyone,

some of you probably know and follow the video series and the site, called “Forgotten Weapons”. Its owner mostly deals with small arms, machineguns and generally exotic infantry weaponry, which makes the show kinda beyond the scope of FTR, but this time, he had a look at the 37mm M6 GMC, which was basically an early stopgap tank destroyer, introduced by the Americans in 1942. It was mostly used in the early fighting in Africa and in limited numbers also in the Pacific.

The 37mm gun M3 was pretty much outdated by the time the vehicle got introduced, it was not very well liked and by 1943, this ad-hoc tank destroyer was completely obsolete. Of cca 5000 M6 GMC’s made, some were sold to the French, some left on Philippines, the rest was dismantled and the the trucks and guns got repurposed. You can read more about it here.

Hello everyone,

I don’t usually post various “RNG” videos, but this kinda made me giggle. It’s a video by Blubbyzor (EU) and it nicely demonstrates, why

a) artilleries shouldn’t stick together at one spot
b) artilleries shouldn’t occupy “predictable” spots
c) artilleries should move after shooting

Thanks to TheFightingTemeraire for this one

Guess what’s appearing on E3…

Source: http://cyprus-mail.com/2014/06/04/third-point-vote-of-confidence-in-hellenic/

Thanks to Vahakn for this piece of info.

Hello everyone,

just a small tidbit of information, that is interesting nonetheless. The abovelinked post about the state of the Cypriot Hellenic bank (co-owned by Wargaming) wouldn’t be too interesting (although it suggests that WG is doing fine, which is good), but it has one interesting short passage in the end:

A Russian business publication reported at the time that Wargaming probably had funds in the bank that got frozen and needed to buy into the bank to be able to withdraw them.

This confirms that during the last year’s Cypriot account government and EU-sanctioned robbery (it wasn’t anything else), Wargaming actually couldn’t access its funds and so they bought into the bank to do so. When you think about that, that’s kinda badass.

Hello everyone,

these are the descriptions of the 9.1 awards. The problem is, in English, they are named differently (for example the Russian award “Monolith” is in English called “Rock Solid). Thus I will be using English names here:

“Fire and Steel”

(Russian name: “tempered by combat”)

for getting 25 times the highest amount of damage blocked by armor (“potential damage”) while surviving, only wins count, team battles only

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Author: Károly “Karika” Németh

Silentstalker: Hello everyone. Quite some time ago, I started (but never finished) the series on Hungarian armor. Karika will now continue where I finished. This is probably going to be the last article of the series though, other Hungarian vehicle posts are likely going to come not as a part of the “Hungarian armor” series. Enjoy!

Part 1: Tas 44M
Part 2: Introduction and Straussler tanks
Part 3: Toldi
Part 4: Toldi II, Toldi IIA, Toldi III
Part 5: T-21, Turán I (development)
Part 6: Turán II

In January 1943, after the mass production of the 41M. Turán II medium tank with the short barreled 75mm L/25 gun has begun, the first combat experiences showed that unfortunately these vehicles did not have enough firepower and protection against the most up-to-date Russian tanks and anti-tank guns either, even after the upgrade from the 40mm cannon of the Turán I. However, the Hungarian troops needed continuous tank replenishment, so the Hungarian Ministry of Defence just could not halt the – more or less still obsolete – Turán II production.

Below: The first prototype wooden Turán III turret with a mock-up gun on a Turán II chassis

At first, to resolve this problem, the Hungarians tried to convince their ally, Germany, to sell manufactured tanks or the production rights for one of their most advanced tank designs, for example the Pz. Kpfw. IV Ausf. H or the Pz. Kpfw. V Panther. Of course, Germany was unwilling to sell manufactured tanks in large numbers to any of their allies, because in 1943, they nearly couldn’t even produce enough combat vehicles for their own purposes. They did not have any advanced tanks to spare.

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Hello everyone,

ever wondered, how the World of Tanks trees started? As you probably know, the oldest trees in WoT by far are the Soviet and the German tree. The Soviet one probably came first. This was one of the first tree proposals from December 2008 by Pytr Bityukov, one of the “founding fathers” of World of Tanks – Slava Makarov (another “founder”) published it in July 2012 for the players to see. P.Bityukov sent this to S.Makarov on 18.12.2008.

By now I hope everyone can figure out that CY is “SU” and such.

As you can see, the tree proposal lacks tiers (that system was not yet developed back then!), it was made in “Navyfield” spirit. A lot of the vehicles you know, but some earlier proposed vehicles were pretty interesting. For one, you have T-26 “twin-turret” on lower tiers – that thing actually had machineguns only! The tree is also very much focusing on historical progress (that’s why you have T-34/85 above T-43).

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