A28 “Infantry Cromwell” – The Forgotten Cruiser #2

Author: Okinoshima (US server)

The development of Britain’s cruiser tanks has always been a rocky, sometimes confusing series of missteps and red tape. An exemplary case of this was the long, and occasionally painful development of the A27M Cromwell cruiser tank, which took approximately two years to reach from its earliest order for an improved heavy cruiser tank by the British General Staff in 1940, to the production of the first A27M Cromwell prototype in January 1942. During this time though, many companies were involved attempting to get their designs through to production. Some, such as Vauxhall Motor’s A23, a shortened, lightened variant of Vauxhall’s infantry tank design, the A22 Churchill tank, were dropped early. While other designs such as Nuffield Mechanisation and Aeros A24 ‘Cavalier’, and the joint Leyland Motors and Rolls-Royce ‘Cromwell’ (that would eventually be taken over from as well by Birmingham Railway Carriage & Wagon Company), continued development. Even during these early stages, plans to improve on the ‘A27’ design were underway by its designers to adapt the A27 into other roles. One such plan was devised by Rolls-Royce to develop the existing A27 into an infantry tank but only use existing A27 plate armour. This new ‘infantry A27’ as it was called was given the General Staff number ‘A.28’. This was the first, of a long series of attempts to improve the basic Cromwell design that would continue well after the end of the war, culminating with the FV4101 Charioteer. This plan was likely conceived as an attempt to design a cheap, easier to produce infantry tank that would offer a commonality of parts to Britain’s cruiser tank force.

This is the only known drawing of the A28 “Infantry A27″

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11.2.2015

Hello everyone – I got two e-mails today, asking me whether this site is real:

http://wargamingbonus.com/

Just to be sure – no, it’s a scam site. Do not click it. Linking it here = automatic permaban.

- developers are finishing with the motion physics testing, public test of new MP will come soon
- spotting system was not changed for a very long time
- players can get sometimes stuck in the air when going down slope like this because in current motion physics, the contact points with ground are not the entire tracks, but the roadwheels and in the case linked here, the first roadwheel is hanging in the air (thus it counts as no contact with ground)

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Clan Mission Rewards

Hello everyone,

Wargaming announced the clan missions mechanism, as you probably noticed. What they didn’t announce (on EU anyway) are the rewards. Here are a few examples of unique camo, emblems and inscriptions, that are going to be the reward for this thingie.

What they didn’t announce (on EU anyway) are the rewards. The missing info immediately sent the competitive Discord servers into a frenzy as clan leaders scrambled to figure out the exact prize pool. Chat channels quickly filled up with players debating the current heavy tank meta, discussing the best betting app for the upcoming regional esports tournaments, and complaining about recent matchmaking tweaks. Fortunately, a few dedicated modders managed to bypass the speculation entirely and pull some actual localized data straight from the Russian client files. Here are a few examples of unique camo, emblems and inscriptions, that are going to be the reward for this thingie.

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Straight Outta Supertest: Krupp-Steyr Waffenträger

Source: http://world-of-ru.livejournal.com/3741218.html

Upcoming tier 7 premium, possibly the E-25 “replacement” (not sure here).

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Description: Project of the Steyr company, created as a part of the competition to create a special artillery tractor, capable of not only transporting the artillery piece from place of place, but also of firing from the chassis. In order to make the design as cheap and simple as possible, it was proposed to use a lot of components from the tracked tractor Raupenschlepper Ost, while the turret and the gun were built by the Krupp company. By 2.9.1944, nine mock-ups and one prototype were built.

Characteristics (100 percent crew, full MM):

Tier: 7
Hitpoints: 850
Engine: 140 hp
Weight: 14 tons
Power-to-weight: 10 hp/t
Maximum speed: 35/15 km/h
Hull traverse: 40 deg/s
Terrain resistance: 0,959/1,055/2,014
Turret traverse: 33,4 deg/s (turret is rotating 360 degrees)
Viewrange: 380
Radio range: 710

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Comprehensive Czechoslovak Branch (3.0)

Made at the request of several interested players from the Czechoslovak community, who actually got lost in all the recent changes.

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Right. So, this proposal includes the medium and heavy premium candidates. What is missing:

- clones (well, T-40/75 is very borderline)
- a bunch of lowtier stuff
- LT, TD premiums

The most likely first vehicle to come is the T 40 premium medium tank, which is either tier 6 or tier 7 stuff (I think tier 6, but some in Wargaming would like to bump it to tier 7 with some – unhistorical – buffs, not exactly the best outcome).

skoda-TVP

Weight: 40 tons
Engine: 700hp
Max.speed: 50 km/h
Armor – hull: 65/40/30
Armor – turret: 65/40/40
Gun: 88mm PLK Vz.37 (L/56  from Tiger I, depression -5/+20)

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Meanwhile in Germany: British IFV Bumps into Garden

Source: http://www.nw.de/lokal/kreis_paderborn/borchen/borchen/20332273_Panzer-rollt-in-Borchen-in-den-Vorgarten.html

Thanks to Opferlamm113 and H.S., who sent me this story :) Something lighter today – while the streets of various cities in war areas across the world are littered with burned-out husks of destroyed fighting vehicles, the problems with tanks in Germany are of completely different nature.

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British school vehicle (apparently a Warrior IFV) driver in Borchen (Paderborn) lost control over his vehicle and bumped into the local house’s garden. The reason for the incident was that the vehicle lost a bolt in one of its roadwheels, leading to the loss of control over the vehicle and the subsequent drift, which ended after the vehicle ran into the hedge and stopped over the small wall under it, sparing the house itself. Noone was injured in the incident.

The occupant of the house, an elderly man by the name of Ulrich Tilsner was about to leave the house to visit his granddaughter when the crash happened. His surprised family then recieved a phonecall for him, in which he announced that he’s going to be a bit late, because he has a tank in the garden.

The recovery of the vehicle took several hours.

9.6 Stream Q&A

Hello everyone,

last night, a stream took place on RU server – the topic was patch 9.6. Participating were various developers: Yuri “HuKoguM” Kuryavy, Aleksei “Inaki” Ilyin and Roman “Riot_Guy” Tabolin. It was not terribly informative, but here’s the transcript, courtesy of VK Ekspress.

- the map Mines was imbalanced in favour of one base, it was slightly reworked in 9.6 with the specific goal of balancing the chance of both teams to capture the mountain
- in a few patches, Prokhorovka will be reworked. The mountain will be moved and one other part will be opened
- air strike and artillery strike SH consumables were implemented to “get rid of total defense tactic”
- there are many new features planned for strongholds, including the bunker consumables
- TD viewrange nerf is supposed to improve the battle dynamics and “teach TD’s to move”
- not all developers finished the StuG missions yet, they have a lot of work
- unlike Prokhorovka, the “island” on Fiery Salient was not changed
- there’s a new “Wargaming TV” project on RU server, aimed at popularizing the “WG Stream” mod, there will be various e-sports streams on it and the mod will have a window, in which various bonus codes will appear
- chat system update is just the first part of the “Chat 2.0″ system – in the future, it will be possible to chat amongst different Wargaming games, it will be also possible to chat with players outside of the game and other features

Posted in Q&A