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.

Saturday, May 19, 2018

M41A1 Experimental

Artistic rendition of an M41A1 chassis sporting an unmanned turret.

In the early 1950s, there were several proposals made to improve the armament of the M41 Bulldog. One of the more outlandish proposals came about as early as 1952, where Ordnance considered the possibility of installing an unmanned turret to the M41A1 chassis. This turret would be armed with a 105 mm gun using an automatic loader and provisions for remote stereoscopic vision for the crew located inside the tank hull. Obviously, nothing came about this.

 The Spring of 1952 is noteworthy for being the time of the first Questionmark Conference. Two of the tanks described at this conference were the M-6 and M-7 medium tank concepts. Given the overlap in time and the experimental technology being considered, I constructed the cover image by placing the M-6 turret on an M41A1 chassis and dubbed it the M41A1 Experimental.

 Obviously, this is kind of a fake design, as there are no drawings of the actual M41A1 with an unmanned turret. But I'm comfortable enough inferring that the turret would have at least been similar in design given the time period. It's worth noting that General Motors had developed both the M18 Hellcat, M41 Bulldog, and drafted the M-6 and M-7 proposals. Given the M18 Hellcat branch is supposed to be very fast and lightly armored tank destroyers, I think this would do fine here. We can just carry over the appropriate modules from the M41 Bulldog and the M-7/6.

 Also, this tank had an automatic loader. Whether that was a true drum-fed system or simply a loading mechanism without human assistance, I don't know. In either case, I think we can get away with making this a single-fire tank. It's more in line with the rest of the branch that way and probably more balanced too.

Guns: 90 mm Gun T139; 90 mm Gun T139E1; 105 mm Gun T140

Engines: Continental AOS-895-3 (500 hp); Continental AOS-895-5 (550 hp)

Turrets (Turret Armor (mm)): M41A1 Unmanned Turret (25/25/25)

Suspensions/Alternate Hulls, Total Weight (metric tons): M41A1 Experimental (??); M41A1 Improved Experimental (??)

Hull Armor (mm): 25/25/19

Top Speed: 72 km/h

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



Parent: T78 GMC
Children: AGS-M551

Sources:
Hunnicutt, R. P. Sheridan, 2015. 
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