MISSION STATEMENT

This website is to serve as a catalog of historical information for various tanks, across various stages of development, created for use by the United States from Pre-WWII through to the 1970s. However, the primary purpose for this website is to illustrate a proposal for what an "endgame" could look like for the US tech tree in the game, World Of Tanks, and to show that there's still plenty of life left to breathed into this game.

My aim is to see as many tanks in the game about tanks as possible, and I hope to show that in a way that respects both the historicity of the tanks shown and the balance of the game overall. As such, I will not be going into great detail on individual statistics. Rather, I will only be showing the possible modules for each tank, changes that could be made to make it more historically authentic, a historical overview, and how the tank's playstyle may be represented in-game. I will also attempt to future-proof this by including alternate hulls, half-tracks, and wheeled vehicles.

This is certainly not perfect and everything is subject to change. This is still a work in progress, and updates are frequent if not daily. This is a fan project and a labor of love. Do enjoy.

Monday, May 21, 2018

V-100


In June 1962, the Cadillac Gage Company completed the prototype for a new lightweight 4x4 armored car designated as the V-100. Also dubbed the Commando, it was designed to replace the obsolete M8 and M20 armored cars still in use from WWII. The V-100 was capable of carrying up to 12 men and included a variety of optional weapons systems, mostly small-caliber machine guns. The all-around protection of the vehicle was 1/4-Inches, although 3/8-Inches could be provided in more critical areas.

The V-100 was powered by a single Chrysler 361 engine which could propel the vehicle to a maximum of 60 mph on level ground. While the car was completely amphibious, it could only do 4 mph in water. The first  three pilots would soon be shipped to Vietnam in 1963 for combat trials and other tests.


The V-100 with a 20 mm autocannon.

Pilot #5 differed from previous vehicles in several respects. The side armor was now single-piece rather than being welded, the rear door was now two-piece rather than one, and the turret received new power operation and armament. This turret was fitted with a 20 mm machine gun, and another option was the low-recoil MECAR cannon. Pilot #6 fine-tuned the design further and would become the production variant of the V-100. Production began in 1964 under the new designation M706. It would see most of its use by the United States as an escort vehicle for convoys in Vietnam.


Here the V-100 is equipped with a 90 mm MECAR gun.

The V-100 features a high-tier autocannon for its stock option, which at Tier VIII is certainly lackluster. The gun's penetration should be pretty poor, at maybe 70 mm, and do perhaps 20 damage? I think there would ideally be around a 50-50 chance of penetrating the side armor of a typical Tier VIII tank. 

With a one-second burst, I think it would be fair to carry 200 potential alpha damage. In a five-second burst, this would rise to 1000 alpha damage. Against most targets, taking RNG into account forces this to drop considerably. We want such high-tier autocannons to be considerable threats against lightly armored targets, but we don't want them to flat-out vaporize them. This would require some very careful balancing to get right, specifically in the inter-clip reload speed and number of shells per shot, but I think it's possible.

The biggest downside to the autocannon is that it clearly wouldn't be able to penetrate a lot of armor, particularly well-armored heavy tanks and and above its tier. Fortunately there is a more conventional tank gun as a second option.



Guns: 20 mm Oerlikon M139 (autocannon); 90 mm Mecar CAN-90L

Engines: Chrysler 75M (191 hp); Chrysler 361 (210 hp)

Turrets (Turret Armor (mm)): Commando T-90 (10/7/7)

Suspensions/Alternate Hulls, Total Weight (metric tons): V-100 Early (7.37); M706 (7.37)

Hull Armor (mm): 10/7/7

Top Speed: 97 km/h

Crew: 3 (Driver; Gunner; Commander/Radio/Loader)



Parent: M20 AUC
Children: FMC AIFV, V-150, V-300
See Also: V-200

Sources:
Hunnicutt, R. P. Armored Car, 2002.

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