Author: Karika

Hello everyone!

I’m Károly Németh, a.k.a. Karika, a Hungarian military historian and in this article I would like to share something interesting with you, WoT community members. Today, we will take a look at the Straussler Main Battle Tank, a never before published armored fighting vehicle concept from the Cold War.

Recently I did an in-depth study of its designer, Nicholas Straussler, a Hungarian born British inventor, automotive and military vehicle designer. During this research I have found this rather interesting concept of a tank lying forgotten in the archives of the Bovington Tank Museum.

TL;DR: Here’s tank concept with outstanding mobility, an autoloading 120mm gun and probably paper armor which could be a tier 10 Hungarian TD in World of Tanks.

View post on imgur.com

Continue reading “The Straussler MBT – Hungarian tier 10 candidate” →

View post on imgur.com

Huge thanks to Shadyrush for translating the documents!

In this article, we will discuss about two new possible light and medium tanks for the Swiss light branch in the Swiss tech tree that most likely will come in the future. They are the 30 ton Panzer and the 15 ton Panzer, early 50’s designs that would eventually evolve into the Panzer 58, Panzer 61, and the Panzer 68.

Since tier 10 lights are undoubtedly coming to WoT in the near future, I would like the main focus of the article to be about the 15 ton Panzer.

Continue reading “Tier 8 Medium and Tier 10 Light Tanks for the Swiss Tech Tree” →

The Tiger I that was displayed in the German Tank Museum in Munster has left the collection this week. The tank is owned by a private person that loaned it out for a couple of years but its time has come now to leave. Why? Well, the owner wishes to restore it to drive-able condition again! That would be great news as Tiger 131 won’t be the only Tiger rolling then. Let’s be patient.

Continue reading “German Tank Museum has lost its Tiger” →

By Mizutayio with help from Vollketten

Many people may know Switzerland as that small and peaceful country in the heart of Europe with a small army and only a few tanks. While that could be the first impression, Switzerland has a lot more to offer than you’d think. This is Part 1 of a series so I thought it would be a good start to ‘set the scene’ for Switzerland as we progress deeper into their tanks.
Switzerland has the misfortune of being surrounded by a few big nations: Germany, France and Italy. During the Wars, Switzerland was heavily focused on defense. That is for WW1, WW2 and the Cold War. During these tough times, Switzerland managed to stay out of trouble the entire time. Especially during World War II when Switzerland was surrounded by the Axis. It seems like a mystery on why Hitler didn’t invade us straight away.
Well there would be a few reasons as to why an invasion didn’t happen. One of which would be the natural resources of Switzerland, of which it had none; so invading a country that couldn’t give any resources would have been pointless. Second; the location of Switzerland and its natural defences. Switzerland was, as mentioned before, surrounded by Germany and Italy.
Passing through Switzerland is the fastest North to South connection from Germany to Italy; the Gotthard railroad tunnel. This is a massive tunnel that cut transportation times from a day to a few hours. While that part would have been a very good reason to invade there was a guaranteed destruction of the North-South connection. This would have seperated Germany from Italy. This was all part of the defensive tactics of Switzerland, a lot of railway tunnels and bridges were packed full of explosives so that in case of an invasion, in a moment’s notice hundreds of bridges and tunnels would have collapsed making passing through Switzerland nearly impossible for trains.
http://i.imgur.com/8kU0cMD.png
Continue reading “Armed Neutrality: Swiss Tanks Part 1” →

Source: world-of-kwg livejournal
Huge thanks to Vlad for translating.
As you already may probably know, Yuri is Wargaming’s main tank historian. I will quote his post:
„In case somebody missed it, we had some drama over here. […] (Seb: link to another blog, but it is basically the same stuff as here: SP15’s Original Rant)
The essence of what’s happening is the following: SP15, one of the two Swedish historians who made the Swedish tree possible, exploded. WG totally screwed up the tree, the models are wrong, it does not correlate with historical data etc.
I, of course, understand the anger of SP15, the tree really is not quite like it was planned. But let’s look at how things happened the way they did. I personally learned about this drama from the internet and was quite surprised.
Let’s start by sorting out who SP15 was talking to. With us, the historians, he was talking exactly ONCE. In Stockholm, in January 2015. I didn’t hear anything from him after that. This poses a question: who was he talking to, and who broke the tree?
The answer is simple: he was talking to a person who is known on the EU and NA server as Cannoneer. In contrast to myself, who isn’t an official Wargaming employee (and never was), he is working there oficially. But there’s a nuance. He is working in the balancing department. There are no historians in this department, and if there is someone who thinks of himself as a historian, that’s his personal problem.
There is also another interesting fact. We historians have contacts regarding the Swedish branch, namely Renhanxue. We’re working with him exactly as we have worked together with Silentstalker. We’re thankful to both of them, the archive material provided by them formed the basis of drawings which became game models later on. We also are doing archive work, so we contributed to these as well.
Now, let’s talk about wrong models and wrong specifications.
You know, after we recieved stuff regarding the Swedish vehicles and started to verify it, we had some quarrels. Swedish schematics. The fact that they oftentimes do not correlate with each other is only half of the problem. It all becomes even merrier when you start comparing numbers.
If we’ve already mentioned the EMIL 1951, i’ll just leave this here.
http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/yuripasholok/765139/3641506/3641506_original.jpg
Continue reading “Yuri Pasholok: „Not all yogurts are created equal” (On Swedish Tree)” →