The T16 Carrier was a vehicle heavily inspired by the legendary British Bren Carrier. It was designed by the Ford Motor Company and produced in Dearborn, Michigan. T16 was in fact a refined version, based on the Canadian-produced version of the Bren Carrier, improved by using the British wartime experiences. Its production started in 1943 and it was supplied to the Commonwealth countries (and others) via the lend-lease program – 2625 T16′s were transferred in 1944, 604 in 1945. After the war ended, it was, along with other arms, sold as wartime surplus to other countries and one of them was Argentina, who originally hired a Belgian company called Indanex to purchase various armored and other vehicles for it for the uniform price of 20 US cents per kilogram. Over 500 vehicles were transported to Argentina, including a Crusader Mk.III tank (in fact, it was a Crusader-based tractor, that later became the platform for the Crusader Argentino self-propelled gun), many trucks, Jeeps, several M5 and M9 halftracks, 360 Sherman tanks and 300 T16E2 carriers.

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Hello everyone,

I normally post just Woras’ RNG stuff, but I’m going to make an exception. While Woras is the king of RNG videos, MrWanWan does aspire to be the prince, I liked his RNG video a lot :) Enjoy.

As always, courtesy of Vollketten (US Server).

Here we have yet another brilliant solution from the mind of the Commonwealth engineers.

Backstrom Amphibian Invasian Tank – 1942

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Source: http://pavel70slama.blog.cz/1405/t-13-hornet-b

T-13 Hornet B was a heavy eight-wheel armored car/tank, developed in the late 30′s by Trackless Tank Corporation. This company from New York started to work on the desing of this fast, heavy wheeld gun carrier in 1937. It was a private activity, not supported by the US Army and the development was led by the president of the company, Floyd del Brown. In 1940, this design evolved into the Hornet Model B High Speed Trackless Tank.

The Hornet consisted of roughly 80 percent of standardized and comercially available parts. It had eight wheels and a riveted armored hull. The rear six wheels were propelled, making the vehicle 8×6. The wheels were attached independently and were equipped with shock absorbers. The Hornet had three possible engine options – Continental or Wright gasoline engines or a Guiberson diesel, but the prototype was equipped with a Guiberson 9-cylinder T-1020 265hp engine, which was mounted in the rear of the vehicle. The driver was sitting in the frontal left part, the right side was given to another crewmember, but the entire crew compartment design was judged as completely unsuitable for the purposes of war. The Hornet weighed 7,5 tons (including the turret) – the prototype however did not have the turret mounted, instead it had a small copula with a machinegun. The vehicle was 2,5 meters wide and 1,9 meters tall (without the turret).

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Hello everyone,

those of you, who are playing World of Tanks for a while do probably remember that at one point, the tier 6 medium tank, T-34/85, had an option to mount the 100mm D-10T gun. This was actually quite historical – there was an attempt (a prototype) to mount a 100mm gun in the T-34/85 turret and today, we’re going to have a look at it.

The reason for the proposal to actually upgun the T-34/85 was the fact that even in 1944, it was clear that the 85mm-equipped tank was inferior to the Panther, when it came to guns and improvements were in order. The first step was to first install a high-power 85mm gun (ZIS-85-BM) with improved penetration capabilities. This happened in September 1944, when Factory No.192 developed this powerful gun with the muzzle velocity of 980 m/s. After the development, the gun, now designated as ZIS-1, was transferred to the Gorokhovetsk proving grounds, but the trials proved to be the a failure.

In the beginning of October 1944, the design bureo of the Factory “Bolshevik” tried to develop an 85mm high-power gun as well – this time it was an experimental 85mm V-5 gun with the muzzle velocity of 950 m/s. Additionally, the factory also developed a conical gun V-9K with muzzle velocity of more than 1150 m/s. But the characteristics of the gun were not satisfactory, the gun was barely able to keep up with the dreaded German 88mm L/71 and in the Spring of 1945, the development was cancelled.

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Source: http://www.welt.de/

Thanks to “Error404_SkillNotFound” for this one.

Hello everyone,

as more and more news report about the financial issues of the Cryengine developer, Crytek, more and more “inside sources” confirm that Wargaming is indeed interested in possibly buying a share of the failing company, providing an income stream the company so desperately needs. This time, it was the renowned German welt.de portal with its article, that is linked above. The article describes what was basically said before, the last part is however quite interesting.

Fraglich ist nun, wer durch eine Finanzspritze oder gar eine komplette Übernahme den Frankfurtern unter die Arme greifen könnte – Branchenkreise spekulieren aktuell darüber, dass das weißrussische Studio Wargaming den stetig fließenden Einnahmestrom aus dem Free-to-Play-Hit “World of Tanks” für einen Einstieg bei Crytek nutzen könnte.

“The question now is, who could take the company from Frankfurt under their wings either with a financial injections, or by completely overtaking them – the branch circles are currently speculating that the Belarus Studio Wargaming, that has a steady income from the free-to-play hit “World of Tanks” could use it to get into Crytek.”

Interesting…

…very convincingly :) From last weekend’s “Engines of War” re-enactment.

According to The_Chieftain, this model of the T-34 is very rare too – not sure what mode that is though.

(thanks to Ensign Expendable for this one)