WoT - some upcoming vehicles

Hello everyone,

today, a few new vehicles were confirmed by SerB to be implemented into the game. Let's have a look at them, shall we?

Previously, it was confirmed by Storm that the tier 7 "light" German tank will be the Aufklärungspanzer Panther. Well, I really hope Wargaming dropped that idea, because today it was confirmed that the tier 8 light tank will be the Spähpanzer Kette RU251 prototype.


Spähpanzer Kette RU251
(Tier 8 LT)



Basically, it was a light scout tank prototype from 1963 by Hanomag, armed with a 90mm gun (it's unclear at this point, what kind of weapon will it have ingame, as SerB said it will not have the 90mm Bord K), designed to replace the ageing German Bundeswehr fleet of M41 Walker Bulldog tanks. If the hull looks familiar to you, well, that's because it is connected with the Kanonenjagdpanzer hull. It's designation is a sort of an enigma to me, because while several sources claim the builder of this vehicle was Hanomag, RU stands for Ruhrstahl, which eventually became Rheinstahl and then Thyssen Henschel if I remember correctly. Either way, this vehicle never reached production stage. This site says:


The Spähpanzer Kette was designed to replace the Germany Army’s old American M41 light tanks in the reconnaissance role. Its development began in 1960 and a prototype was completed in 1963. It mounted a Rheinmetall turret armed with the 90mm Bordkanone as used in the Jagdpanzer Kanone.
By the middle of the 1960s the Leopard tank was in production and it was decided that reconnaissance units did not need their own specialist vehicles. The development of the Spähpanzer Kette was dropped without any further vehicles being built and its role was given over to the Leopard. With hindsight, this may have been a hasty move as the wheeled Spähpanzer Luchs was eventually developed to take back this role from the Leopard.

Performance statistics are unknown, as far as I can tell, the maximum intended speed was estimated to be around 78 km/h, armament was either some sort of 90mm gun, or possibly the 76mm from M41.

SG-122
(SPG)



SG-122 was classified as a medium SPG (SAU - Samochodnaja Artilerijskaja Ustanovka), built on the chassis of the captured Panzer III and StuG III vehicles. These vehicles were produced in Mitisshtinskij Mashinostroitelnij Zavod No. 37 by the end of 1942 until the half of 1943. It was armed with the 122mm M-30 howitzer. It is not clear how many were manufactured, but it is estimated that 8 pieces were made from the StuG tanks until the end of 1942 - plus 2 test vehicles based on captured Panzer IV and III tanks. Two of these vehicles were tested in December 1942 and compared to SU-122. The production was ended because there was enough Russian equipment to arm the troops and thus there was no need to convert captured tanks. It is estimated that 20 were made in total.

ZIS-30



After the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the Soviets were literally desperate to stop the armored onslaught of the Wehrmacht. On 1.7.1941, an order was given to the automotive factories to quickly develop lorry-mounted weapons and other desperate stopgap measures. The factories were supposed to use 37mm, 57mm and 85mm cannons. The projects were to be ready in 15 days. One of the projects developed in Gorky factory no. 92 involved mounting a 57mm ZIS-2 gun on top of the T-20 Komsomolec artillery tractor. By the time this project was introduced however, the T-20 tractors were no longer manufactured and in order to get a testbed, the vehicle had to be confiscated from a regular artillery unit. The cannon was mounted on the rear end behind the driver and was protected by small thin armor plates - when preparing to fire, these plates rolled down and served as space for the crew to stand on. The cannon had a very limited traverse rate and it had to be aimed by turning the vehicle. The crew was practically unprotected, the only cover was provided by the gun shield. The amount of ammo carried was also very low and the vehicle had to be practically followed by an ammo truck, that caried spare rounds and also the rest of the men, needed to fire the bulky gun.
The prototype passed very short series of tests and by 21.9.1941, series production was started. 101 vehicles were made until 15.10.1941 - after that, there were simply no more T-20 tractors available and the production stopped. Other versions, carrying 45mm and 76,2mm guns were developed, but those never got to be produced.
The vehicles fought on the Soviet western and southwestern front and as many as 20 brigades were equipped with them. Despite its many flaws (low speed, low armor protection, unreliable drivetrain), the vehicles were considered successful and archieved some victories.