Hello everyone,

now that the fuss about the new graphics is over, we’re going to have a look at the upcoming tier 8 light tank candidate, the T49.

Basically, the T49 was a prototype M41 Walker Bulldog with a 90mm gun (crew of 4). In the late 40′s and early 50′s, it was recognized that a 76mm gun is no longer enough to combat modern Soviet medium tanks, specifically the T-54. And so, in January 1950, a commanding officer of Detroit Arsenal recommended developing a light tank with a 90mm gun, specifically to install a 90mm smoothbore gun on the M41 chassis. This 90mm gun was a new weapon, designated T123. It started as a smoothbore, but after bad tests results, when it came to accuracy, it was modified with shallow rifling, creating the T123E3 gun. Two of these were mounted in the production M41E1 turrets and this combination was redesignated T49. The turret was modified too: it was somewhat higher and it was equipped with a stereoscopic rangefinder. Further modification were made when in the ammo stowage compartment. The gun itself could fire three types of rounds: HE, HEP (HESH) and HEAT rounds.

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Hello everyone,

after some annoying setbacks, we managed to get the new graphics, made by H4NI (http://88media.hr/) going. How do you like it?

- SS

Edit: Please report any bugs you might have with it. I will read it in the morning and decide what to do.

Edit 2: After seeing some of the bug reports, I decided to rollback to the old template for now, until they are fixed.

The sum of SerB in one picture :) I will just leave this here…

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Hello everyone,

as promised, here is the overview of this week’s FTR contributors. I value all your help equally, no matter how small, so I just want to thank you all once again.

Contributors

FredTMK (Germany) – Watch my videos on my Youtube channel!
Perkel (Germany)
DeadMoney0811 (USA) – thanks for the donation mate
Mightyran (Italy) – visit his site wotstats.org
R.S.G. (Romania)

Please note that if you want your full real name or nickname listed, you have to write me your nickname (or your consent for full name publication) :)

You can also leave a message you want published.

Message from Mightyran – visit his site wotstats.org
Message from FredTMK – watch my videos on my Youtube channel!

Hello everyone,

the experts in the Kubinka Tank Museum managed to drive out the T-35A Soviet heavy tank (apparently, it’s going to be restored now). Currently, it’s the only one in the world. This happened on 12.2.2014.

Needs moar turrets! :)

Source: http://yuripasholok.livejournal.com/2766323.html

Hello everyone,

Yuri Pasholok posted an interesting thing: a short excerpt from the Combined Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee (CIOS) from March 1946 about the E-series vehicle.

As you can see, according o this report (however accurate it might be), the tank hull could have been redesignated as a self-propelled hull, opening the possibility to the existence of the WT E-100 (and, of course, the Sturmgeschütz E-100). At this point, Yuri Pasholok states that based on this info, the ingame fictional WT E-100 could have “a right to exist”… interesting :)

Author: Károly “Karika” Németh

Hello everyone, we have another article from Károly Németh here, this time about the Zrínyi assault guns. Enjoy! -SS

Above: The Zrínyi I assault gun prototype. A Zrínyi II assault howitzer on the background.

History:

Zrínyi II

Based on the German war experiences, in 1942 the HM (Hungarian Ministry of Defence) decided to arm the Hungarian Army with self-propelled artillery and tank destroyer units. At first, they tried to buy a proven German vehicle (such as the StuG III), but Germany refused to sell any of their modern tank or SPG design. To solve this problem as soon (and as cheap) as possible, the Hungarian engineers combined two (separately not too successful) ingredients: the 40. M 105mm field howitzer and the chassis of the Turán medium tank, creating the Zrínyi assault howitzer.

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So I’ve been looking at Italian tanks for some time now here and with talk of forthcoming European vehicles for a new tree it’s a good time to have a look at some more Italian tech.

Italy’s Workhorse; the CV.3 Series

Development

The CV.3 tank was developed from the British Vickers-Carden-Loyd Mk.VI, examples of which Italy had bought complete in 1929 along with kits for a further 21 vehicles and a licence (a little later) to produce more which were named CV.29. The CV.29 initially used the same Ford Model T 4 cylinder petrol engine producing 20hp and had armour ranging from 4 to 9mm thick. After a fairly short development process the first vehicles were accepted in 1933 under the name Carro Veloce 3. (Fast Tank 3 tonnes – even though it weighed 3.2 to 3.4 tonnes depending on source) The name was later changed to L.3/33. (‘Leggero’ Light Tank 3 tonnes 1933 and the names L.3 and CV.3 are used interchangeably across sources. I prefer CV.3 so shall stick with that)

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Source: wotleaks.ru

Hello everyone,

supertesters seem to be using the T95E6 tank on live server already – it was spotted even on EU server during roaming testing. So, how does it look?

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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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