Hello everyone,

since the “Legion” series I posted here around Christmas was apparently successful, I will be continuing the story. I hope you find it to your liking. The previous Legion series part one can be found here, part two here and part three here – if you haven’t read them, I suggest you do that before you read this post.

Summer, 1918 – the city of Samara on river Volga

After the crushing Czechoslovak victory near Lipyagy on 4.6.1918 against the bolshevik forces, another obstacle to overcome on their journey east was the city of Samara. It was a fortified city, it housed the headquarters of an entire Volga district and it was home to both local military command, but also to a strong garrison under its commander of ruthless reputation, Soviet Comissar Dolgushin.

The area looked like this (the broken line from Lipyagy over Kryazh to Samara is the railroad and there is a railway bridge marked over river Samarka too):

When they heard about the fate of the bolshevik troops at Lipyagy, the Soviet staff members tried to secretly negotiate with the Czechoslovaks, because they realized in full that the bulk of the elite Soviet forces in the entire region was destroyed there, but it was also clear to the Czechoslovak Legion that with the elite of the bolshevik army gone, Samara was practically defenseless against the Legion. In a move previously unheard of, the Soviet (ruling committee) of Samara even offered the Czechoslovaks the right of free passage through Samara, despite the fact that only days earlier they called for Czechoslovak destruction and would never even consider this option. Lieutenant Čeček (the commander of the Legion force) refused this offer – for one, he had nothing to gain, since Samara was ripe for taking, on the other hand, he didn’t believe the sincery of the Soviets, fearing treachery.

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Hello everyone,

this video was posted by Yuri Pasholok on his blog. Basically, what happens in it: during the November 2013 airsoft session in Alabino (Moscow), there were military tanks present on the range for some reason. One of the tanks managed to get stuck in a pit full of mud and water – it had to be towed out by another tank. The video actually shows really nicely how rugged the vehicle is and how the engine struggles to get the 40 ton beast from the watery trap. I wouldn’t want to be the guy cleaning it afterwards…

Hello everyone,

today, we are going to talk about the upcoming (allegedly in 8.11) Soviet tier 7 medium premium tank. But – you might ask: how can we talk about the vehicle noone has ever seen in combat? We have no idea, what it will do in random battle! Well… now we do:

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Picture linked by ApplesauceBandit (US)

Hello everyone,

one of the things I find most annoying are the obnoxious animated flash ads with “games”. We probably all know this crap from World of Warplanes, but War Thunder has this “very special” ad, beating anything Wargaming produced. And when I say special, I mean not a “special occasion”, but “my mum said I’m special”. Or “special kind of hell, reserved for child molesters and people, who speak in theater”.

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Hello everyone,

check this out, Wargaming has given us some amazing offers!

Oh look! 3000000 gold!

Or not.

Seriously, does really noone proofread this stuff? I can only imagine how retarded the WG magazine will be in English, since noone even bothers to doublecheck portal news.

Source: Yuri Pasholok’s blog

Hello everyone,

an interesting thing appeared on Yuri Pasholok’s blog. On the example of the IS-4, Yuri Pasholok demonstrates, how much can various projections differ from reality. He states that if someone claims some vehicle to be modelled after “factory drawings”, you don’t have to take that claim too seriously, because – if I understood what he wrote correctly, there is not only a significant difference between various book drawings and the final product, there is also a difference between the general factory drawings and the final product.

Basically, production plans consist of series of detailed partial drawings, by which the vehicle parts are created. General drawings however (as in, general overview, even though created by the same factory) tend to be much less accurate (this is apparently the reason why for example Wargaming preferred the partial IS-3 turret plans to the general model in the recent IS-3 turret changes).

Here is a comparison, made by Yuri Pasholok:

The photograph above is of the serial IS-4 vehicle. Red lines belong to the drawing published by well-known Russian author Michael Svirin, blue lines represent the general drawing of the IS-4M (Drawing 701 – Sb.3 from April 1952). As you can see, both the general factory projection and Svirin’s projection (from the book) are different from reality.

To compare, here is a comparison of a partial turret drawing from IS-4M (701-157-Sb.3) with the real life tank:

As you can see, it fits much better than the general drawing, demonstrating the superior accuracy of partial drawings.

Hello everyone,

this info comes obviously from the WG EU newsletter, but some of you might have missed like (like me, WG newsletter ends up in spam folder regularily). So, check this out (picture by cNNk):

Disregard the language (Czech): Wargaming is going to publish a magazine about WoT and WoWp. This promo picture includes the announcement about “latest news”, interviews, war stories, archive documents and such. Could be interesting. It will be issued both in Russian and in English – which means it will be translated from Russian, which means less space for WG EU fails. That is good. Allegedly, this magazine will be published at first in English and Russian only, but from No.2 it will appear in other languages, like Czech and Polish.

I am a bit afraid here that if the same people who translate the portal translate this too, we might get much stronk translashuns (could be hilarious, but not exactly something I’d want).

An interesting thing: carramba66 posted a video in the Czechoslovak forum section, showing recent appendix (as in, a mini-magazine within) from one Czech magazine (Score, January edition). It might give us a little insight on how the magazine might look design-wise…