[WoT] Making Nasty Things Prettier

In response to Nasty Little Things post,

the feedback actually appeared to be more applicable for PC WoT than for WoT Blitz, since in the latter we either have done many things differently (aiming, crews, key bindings, interface, etc) or have already accounted for what was suggested (platoon restrictions, MMing spreads, vehicle filters in garage, etc).

So I have forwarded the summary below to Storm for his review, he said it was useful. Probably I can squeeze some more from him in future. Right now it's rather difficult because of the workload related to 0.8.9 (EU and NA) update which is being tested publicly at the moment. By the way how do you like the update so far?

Mechanics

It's really annoying having aimed at a tank far away with no ground behind him and shoot just a split second after the tank disappears and when your gun immediately raises itself making it a definite miss.

Aiming/reticule automatically moves up a bit when I aim at a target far away. Normally you would have to aim higher than the target, because the shell drops while it is in the air. But WoT does this automatically. At first this seems like a good way to help inexperienced players. But in the end it hinders me hitting my targets. When a target is moving and I have to aim in front of it, I would just aim a bit higher to account for shell drop and a bit the the left or right, so the target "drives into the shell".

But in WoT this happens: As soon as I move my reticule away from the target, to account for it's speed/direction of travel, the automated vertical correction no longer aims at the distance of the target but it aims at whatever I am currently aiming at. If it is a hill, or even the sky, my shot will be too high, or too low, and I can't do anything about it.

Also why are there still no tier limitations on platooning to prevent the Maus + Leichtraktor troll platoons? I can't think of a single reason for not preventing this from being possible.

My biggest bugbear in WoT is that often it's possible to peek over a bit of terrain / round a building in in sniper mode, place the reticle squarely over an enemy tank, (without that red outline showing up, but WHOLE targeting reticle over tank), fire, and just hit the terrain because the collision model doesn't match what's visible.

Also, make it possible for the red highlight around enemy vehicle when you target it, to show up when aiming at the enemy tank across a wreck of a tank. At the moment, for instance, if you aim at enemy tank through a wreck e.g. between wreck's gunbarrel and hull, you have your penetration indicator work, but no red highlight show up.

When in a rush and using hot keys for repair kits and you hit the wrong one you are basically fucked. You need to move your hand to the ESC key to close it, retype the hotkey to get it right. Very bad. 

camera's settings reset after each battle (really senseless feature)

Get rid of the forced f1 help key binding in game. I mean, FFS, who uses the help key after 100, 1000, 10,000 batles? Yet, its FORCED bound to one of the MOST useful F keys. For god sake, allow that F1 key to be rebound to something useful. 

Ability to rebind ctrl and alt

AFK tanks and bots.

The existence of premium ammo and the ability to spam it endlessly without any limitations. Every tank is designed and balanced with its armor and penetration of its gun taken into account.

Chat

I would also like a notification if someone adresses me in chat - a ping sound or something. Clanchat, whispers, etc. in battle. Chatlog.

Not being able to private message with those in my clan is annoying. I'm forced to add people already in my clan list, to my friends list, just to send them a message.

For me, lack of any indication in e.g. clan chat, that someone is AFK or in battle, it would be really nice if I could set some infos for their mates (or if I'm in battle, system would set it for me), similar you can do that on communicators like Skype.

Limited ignore list size (256?)

No counter for clan members online

Interface. Lobby

The absence of ping in garage. Not funny when you go to battle with 999 ping. 

Plane/Tank viewer. In EVE Online you can see in the market your ship in a 3D fashion (even if it in the game the shape has it no meaning.). As for WOT where shape (slope) has a meaning, it should be in the game. How? To save space add a magnifying glass symbol on the picture of the Tank/Plane details; if you click it a window opens and you can see your plane/tank and can scroll in, look it from all sides.

better indication of an invite or chat request, something should popup in the middle of the screen to get your attention, rather than the button/icon simply glowing.

Transaction logs

Interface. Vehicle Specs

how much HP the turret uprgade adds to the tank is to either buy it and find out or look on youtube at videos of upraded tanks

The horizontal gun velocity is one of the most important stats for an arty.

You can find that info nowhere ingame.

A warning on light tanks that suddenly get Scout Tiering, as in the Pz38na.

Interface. Platoons

Tank Tier in platoon window. I cannot believe your UI designers missed this out, and we have to rely on a mod such as XVM to show our platoon mates tank tiers (and battle tiers).

Special Battles, Tank Company, Platoon, Training Room interfaces (and possibly Team Battles - have not seen its interface yet). These need to show tank tier, battle tiers.

Tank sorting in TC and CW waiting room. Currently the sort is based on when the player joined the room, which is useless. It means the caller is constantly having to go down the list multiple times making sure there are enough mediums or T57s or whatever for the plan. A simple sort by tank would make this 100x easier.

If anything the platoon/TC should just transfer leadership to the last guy standing in it so he has the option to invite others again instead of making a new group.

Interface. Tank carousel

Why are there still no tier and premium filters in the tank ribbon?

Tank Tier filtering in garage - this is an absolute must, especially if you have a large amount of tanks in your garage.

Option to have few rows of tanks "portraits" instead of big useless tank

Tank Carousel. I want more then Primary markers. Tier, Grinding, Clan Wars, Tank company, and favourites are a must for me. As this list is different for each player, just let us create and name our own filters and select which tanks are in it.

Possibility to sort tanks in any order I want (according to my prefereable order of playing them

Interface. Missions

Very often the missions are simply named mission, There should be a name for every one of them.

Some missions although have measurable parameters (like damage done, XP earned etc), dont have progress bar attached to them.

Mission after battle interface could be improved so that you do not have to click to every mission to see what they are. 1 line of explanation under the mission name would be enough.

Interface. Battle

Fire notification. Especially a problem on large screen monitors, it should be a great big message in the middle of the screen.

Reload timer. Come on guys, how hard can it actually be if mod developers have implemented this in the various cross hairs for a long time. Minor UI tweak.. major usability improvement.

Interface. Crews

XVM's didn't have a crew transfer/send option and it was torture transferring crews one by one again.

Garage - send entire crew to barracks /pick best crew. Again, we have to wait for XVM to step up and give us a major usability improvement especially when loading a crew into a premium tank.

Crew manipulation. Without XVM's update it is tedious and slow to reuse crew on premium tanks. Send all crew to barracks, use own crew, use best crew, use same type crew.

Option to assign a crewmember to many different tanks at the same time - of course if a specific tanker is in battle in one tank, player is not able to play any other tank where this tanker is assigned. That way I will need absolutely no crewmemeber swapping while using the same crew on premium and normal vehicle.

Misc

Whenever you patch an existing tank you drop all equipment, consumables and stuff from him and you don'T tell us- So we login and play with stock and no modules the first time as you usually don't notice this. MARK THE TANK and force us to check equipment first when you do this. Its rude not doing so.

No automatic server change when joining CW

a checkbox on the login page below the "save password" checkbox labeled "atomatic login"

the checkbox is greyed out if "save password" is not enabled

if "save password" and "automatic login" is enabled the client will go directly into the garage if the player presses "play" in the launcher or launches worldoftanks.exe directly

to disable auto login, change the user or change the server the player has to "disconnect from server" form the game menu

Kosher Counter Attack

Almost exactly 40 years ago a battle raged that would have had the aggressive tank commanders of World war two, such as Patton and Rommel, cheering and yelling "That's how you use armour!" Today we will look at that battle.

In 1973 Israel was engaged with its four neighbours in the Yom Kippur war. After the first week of fierce combat the Golan Heights had stabilized, and focus shifted to the Sinai Desert. As dawn broke on the 14th of October a 9 minute artillery barrage landed on the dug in Israeli forces. From the lower ground around the Suez canal Egyptian armoured vehicles numbering in the thousands advanced behind a walking barrage. This was Egypt's first ever attempt at a major armoured attack. Using Warsaw pact doctrine things went wrong immediately. The combination of exploding shells and the sunrise behind the Israeli's made it almost impossible to see the Israeli tanks. The British and American made tanks occupied hull down positions on the higher ground. Equally the Egyptians attacked along abroad front trying to grab all their objectives immediately.

Things on the Israeli side looked worrying too. The sheer number of enemy tanks and APC's advancing on them caused alarm and awe. Opening fire at two and a half miles, the defenders reaped a massive toll of destroyed armour. One Israeli tank battalion reported knocking out over 60 tanks in an hour. Despite this the sheer weight of numbers meant that the Egyptian attacks reached the Israeli lines. As the columns of Tanks and APC's punched through the defensive lines Israeli tanks were killing T-55's and T-62's at under 50m. Still the Egyptians drove headlong towards their objectives, not returning fire. As the Egyptian casualties mounted their attacks began to falter. Snatching the moment the Israeli defenders charged and routed the Egyptian forces. The Egyptians had lost about 400 tanks, while the Israeli's had lost only 6. Although another 34 had been damaged. With the Egyptians attacking force blunted the Israeli's prepared to go on the offensive.

Two roads, the Tirtur and Akavish, stretch across the Sinai. These lead to the north end of the Great Bitter Lake. They were laid by the Israeli's after they captured the Sinai in the Six Day war, 6 years before. The roads also lead to an area of the Suez Canal where the canal ramparts had been weakened in case the Israeli's needed to cross the canal.

To maintain the element of surprise the Israeli counter attack would need to cross the 20 miles from the front lines to the crossing point before dawn. The only problem was the road had an Egyptian armoured division parked across it. However reconnaissance had discovered that the join between the Egyptian Second and Third armies was just to the south of the Akavish. So on October the 15th, as darkness fell, three Battalions of tanks set out on the cross country trip through 19 miles of desert. Remarkably they made it undetected to the crossing point. The force split up at this point. With one battalion moving to the North to block any Egyptian thrust towards the crossing point. One battalion remained at the Canal. The final battalion moved to attack the Egyptians from the rear and open the roads.

After going only a short distance the Israeli's reached a place now known as the Chinese Farm, where they found the entire Egyptian 2nd Armies reserve force. This formation was only a mile from the crossing point. A raging battle erupted there as all three armour battalions joined the battle. The fighting was so fierce that after 15 minutes so many tanks were burning it illuminated the desert night like it was daylight. The battle raged for two and a half days, as Egyptian forces attacked from both the north and south. However the Israeli tankers held on.

Meanwhile Major Giora Lev led his 30 tanks down the Akavish road, and through the tiny gap that had been opened at the Chinese Farm. Some of his tanks towed motorized rafts behind them.

 

Despite taking fire from both sides of the road the Major reached the crossing point. Each raft could carry a tank, just. Reversing his tank onto the raft was tricky, but Major Lev led his battalion across the Suez canal. As the first tank across Lev crested a rise and spotted, and destroyed an Egyptian APC. By 0900 on the 15th his entire battalion was across the Suez.
At this stage the Akavish road was still under constant attack, and no logistic units could make it through the gap. This included the Bridge sections that would be used to cross the canal. Major Lev was ordered to hold position and secure the bridgehead.

Major Lev ignored his orders, and used his tanks to hammer the rear areas of the Egyptians. Splitting his force up into small raiding parties he started wreaking havoc. Major Lev took command of a platoon of tanks and led them, with some supporting infantry, towards the Airfield at Deversoir. As his 4 tanks approached the front gate the Sentry not knowing Israeli tanks were anywhere near by, threw a salute.
After his combat group had smashed all the vehicles planes and AA weapons, Lev found time to use the airfields telephone, he called his wife.
Returning to the crossing point, Major Lev received a Long range radio transmission from the head of the Israeli armed forces. From the first day of the war the Egyptian SAM batteries and wreaked a huge toll on the Israeli Air force. Lev was ordered to destroy as many SAM batteries as he could find.

By now the bitter fighting at the Chinese Farm was beginning to swing in the Israeli's favour, and  reinforcements were arriving. Again splitting his force up into raiding parties, normally of a tank and APC section, the Israeli's went SAM hunting. One raiding party destroyed 12 SAM batteries in a day. Overall Major Lev's battalion accounted for over 100 vehicles on the 17th. Normally the Tanks would take up position about 2000m away and start shooting up the battery. Meanwhile the APC's would close then assault through the batteries position using their machine guns.
In desperation the Egyptians were firing SAM's at the tanks. Although utterly unaimed the sight of a SA-2 Guideline screaming towards you is a terrifying sight. One Israeli Tanker described it "[...] like a Telephone pole flying at you at very high speed!"

As the final days of the war were entered more re-enforcements were channelled through the bridgehead. They began to surround the Egyptian 3rd army, one Israeli unit at the end of the war had driven over 1200 miles in armoured vehicles to complete the encirclement. Taking fire from two sides, and being bombed by the Israeli Air force the Second Army took heavy casualties. It was only the cease fire that prevented its utter destruction.

[WoTB] System Requirements

Below are the current system (device) requirements for World of Tanks Blitz. Basically the question of which device is going to support Blitz and which isn't boils down to GPU.

So, for iOS:

Right now the game runs on tablets starting with iPad 2 (including mini) and smartphones starting with iPhone 4S. At least medium settings will be supported.

iPad 1 and iPhone 4 are not supported at this stage. We are working on it and will try to make the game work on those at least on minimum settings.

As for Android:

• Tegra 3 - medium-low settings (optimization required and imporvement is possible)
• Mali-400MP - medium-low settings (optimization required and imporvement is possible)
• Adreno 225 - medium-low settings (optimization required and imporvement is possible)
• PowerVP SGX544MP2 - medium+ settings

All GPUs that have better performance than those given above will run the game on medium or high settings. If a particular GPU will have issues running the game, we will try to fix it asap. Other GPUs which are not on the list will be supported gradually as their popularity grows. 

GPU PowerVP SGX540 which is inside the popular Galaxy Tab 2 tablet is not supported at the moment, however we are working on this - there is a chance it will eventually run the game on low settings. 

As for Graphics quality, for the time being we are using only medium settings which basically incorporate all our ideas constituting to "good visuals". Maximum settings are capped by our fantasies, like the one of adding normal map for tanks. It's not clear for now which devices are going to support this.

All the screenshots, you may have seen for far (here or here, represent not yet final medium settings.  

PS: as for closed beta admission, iOS devices are likely to start first. 

From America with Love

Although the Germans are famous for creating wonder weapons in the later part of the war, the allies did just as much. The USAAF had a great many projects on the go, and deployed a number in limited numbers. I've already looked at one such project, the Disney bomb, but today we'll look at another Wonder Weapon of the USAAF; Flying bombs.
Flying Bombs weren't new. The US had the idea first, not the Germans with the V1. In World War One the US had developed a simple paper-mâchée and plywood plane that could carry a 180lb warhead. This flying bomb was called the Kettering Bug. After reaching set range, determined by a simple  mechanical counter the wings would be ejected and the engine stopped. Although several tests were carried out with limited success none were ever deployed in action.
As World War Two dragged on the USAAF found itself with a growing number of bombers that, while unusable for continued service, could still fly. A similar problem, only with engines, was encountered by the Japanese. This resulted in the development of the Nakajima Ki-115. The USAAF, however, were to try something new. In 1943 initial tests were made for fitting bombers with remote control systems. The idea was to then fly the bomber, packed with explosive into a target. In July 1944 the plan was approved. The USAAF program was called Aphrodite, while an almost identical USN program was named Anvil. The main difference between the two was the planes used. The USAAF used B-17's and the USN used PB4Y-1's, which were B-24's that had been used for maritime patrol duties.

Aphrodite test footage.

To turn the bombers into drones they were stripped of everything that added weight. Even the safety gear such as life rafts and fire extinguishers were removed. Even the seats went. The only exception was in the cockpit, where a single fire extinguisher remained, along with a seat for the pilot and a stool for the co-pilot. The bomb bay doors were welded shut (after the opening mechanism was removed). Two radio transmitters were fitted and wired up to the control surfaces of the aircraft, along with a radar controlled altimeter. The hatch in the nose of the aircraft was enlarged to make it easier for the two crew to bail out.
The net result of all this was the payload was now 20,000 pounds of explosive. This was crammed into every space in the aircraft in 55Lb boxes. Then the entire lot was wired together with one fuse. The volunteer aircrew would then take the plane off, fly it to 2,000 feet, hand over to the control aircraft, arm the fuse and bail out. The control aircraft would then guide the plane to its target, with a minimum altitude of 250ft being kept by the altimeter, and finally guide the drone into the target.

Aphrodite Drone

August the 4th 1944 was the first planned attack. Four Aphrodite drones took off with three V-weapon targets as their planned final destination. Things did not go well from the start. Two drones spun out of control immediately after the aircrew had abandoned the craft. One of the aircrew was killed. On the third drone the aircrew bailed, and the drone went out of control. When it impacted into the English countryside, it detonated. Devastating 8,000 square meters. The remaining aircrew was still on board at the time, he was also killed.
The 4th drone carried on to its target at Watten. However something went wrong, the aircraft missed its target by several thousand feet. Its not clear if it was shot down by German flak or not.
Another attempt was made on August the 6th, with much the same results, including one aircraft shot down by flak. On this mission all the aircrews made it out safely. However this mission was not without its own hair raising moment. One of the drones went out of control and began to circle Ipswich. Luckily after a few moments it flew out to sea where it crashed.

A mark II version of the Aphrodite drones were now on the scene. Full kits had began to arrive in the UK in July and were now fitted. These had several improvements including a nose mounted camera, a radio beacon to track the aircraft and the ability to lay a smoke trail for visual identification. An on board compass was also provided, by the simple expedient of welding it onto the airframe within the field of view of the nose camera. This new installation was given the code name Castor.
One of these Castor drones was launched against the U-boat pen at Heligoland. One aircrew was killed when his parachute failed to open, and the drone was shot down by flak.
Then came Operation Aphrodite's first success. Four drones were launched against the Oil production plant at Heide. The usual crop of malfunctions occurred with three aircraft crashing. The 4th made it to, and hit its target, causing considerable devastation.

August the 12th was the first Project Anvil mission. With a single PB4Y-1 being flown by Lieutenant Kennedy, Jr. This was none other than John F Kennedy's older brother. At 1805 the loaded drone took off. Fifteen minutes later the Aircrew prepared to leave the aircraft, as they set the fuse a trail of smoke was seen coming from the bomb-bay, then the aircraft suddenly exploded. The shock wave rocked the fighter escort and control aircraft all over the place, with one of the escorting P-38's being spun out of control. The fighter's trajectory heading directly towards a hospital at the town of Blythburgh. The pilot managed to pull out of his spin and regain control of the fighter pulling up at tree top height just before impacting the hospital.

From then until January the 1st another total of 12 Aphrodite and one more Anvil drones were launched. The vast majority of the Aphrodite drones were fouled by bad weather, or shot down by flak. However one was lost in bad weather when the controlling aircraft had to turn back, this drone hit Sweden. The Anvil drone successfully made it to its target. Heligoland is a pair of islands off the north German coast, one has a massive U-boat pen on it. The drone was aimed at, and hit, the wrong island.
Before you judge the projects, remember the level of technology at the time, and the aims of the project. Equally despite this rudimentary electronics they managed to iron out the control flaws that had plagued the earlier missions. The other flaw was the drones flew at 2,000 feet at about 200mph. This made them an incredibly easy target for the very experienced German Flak crews.

[WoT] Nasty Little Things

Primarily with the aim of polishing World of Tanks Blitz for iOS and Android out, I'd love to hear your feedback on small but really nasty things, that substantially worsen your experience in WoT on PC.

This can be anything starting with battle/hangar interface to particular (though relatively small) gameplay features. Please, just don't go global with your feedback like "damage/visibility system, matchmaking, etc" - that's a topic for a separate discussion and is mostly in the interest of PC version.

So?

[WoT] WoT 360 Stream

Those who are interested in console version of World of Tanks for Xbox 360, you can check out Microsoft's stream over here. This gives pretty good understanding of how the game currently looks like, especially combat elements which are almost polished by now. 

The game is currently in open beta.  

[WoT] Hard Battle

The winner of the recent World of Tanks fan video contest on Russian server.

No knowledge of Russian required. 

Luck of the Irish

Note: Apologies for the early article. Its just I am busy tomorrow, so will not be able to post at the usual time. Normal service will be resumed next week. Now on with the tales of daring do. This week featuring a King Tiger.

In July 1944 the Germans had amassed a large armoured force in Normandy to face the Allied landings. As well as the battered 21st Panzer Division, the unlucky 503rd Heavy Panzer was also in place. As well as its company of the brand new Porsche King Tigers the 503rd also had two companies of regular Tiger's. The Germans were dug in defensive positions waiting for the impending British attack. Ready to give the British a surprise of their new secret wonder weapon.
However British intelligence did know of the King Tiger, and warnings had been issued to front line units. Lance Corporal Baron, a tank driver in the 2nd Irish Guards, asked Lieutenant Gorman, his tank commander, what they would do if they met such a beast. After considering his reply Lt Gorman said "I guess we shall have to use naval tactics."

The assault the Germans were expecting became called Operation Goodwood, and the Germans might not have felt so secure if they had known of the preparations being made. To move the mass of British armour to the front 4 new bridges were being built, along with 6 new roads.
Equally 760 artillery pieces were emplaced in preparation. This array of guns was supported by the Royal Navy. On the 18th of July at 0545 the storm broke. Over 2000 Bombers supported the attack along with the guns. For over two hours these assets pounded the German lines. Of all the armour available to the Germans, 48% was destroyed. Tiger tanks were flipped upside down. Panzer IV's were reported to have been bounced around or buried up to the turrets in loose soil and had to be dug out by crews scraping the dirt off with their bare hands.

Three British armoured Divisions were then hurled against the reeling Germans. The Germans scraped together whatever they could find locally and fought on. The bitter resistance caused heavy casualties among the Sherman's of the British attack. As was often the case when the Germans lost a position they would mount a local counter attack to try and re-capture the position. One such fight happened near the village of Cagny, on the eastern flank of the attack.
Lt Gorman was in command of the 4th troop, 2 Squadron of the 2nd Irish Guards. His troop were probing towards the Germans. Things stared going wrong straight away, his tank became bogged in a marshy area. Luckily with his troop Sargent's tank near by he was able to free it. Lt Gorman had ordered the rest of his troop to carry on advancing, while he was delayed. After freeing himself Lt Gorman set about finding the other pair of tanks. Hearing the sounds of gunfire and tanks Lt Gorman drove round a corner, only to find himself staring at a King Tiger. As well as a selection of other German armour. They were engaging his two tanks who were located on a small rise. Lt Gorman had by chance come up behind and off to one flank of the Germans.

His tanks on the rise were in trouble. One of them was the troop's Firefly. One of the high velocity German shells had decapitated the Commander of the tank. So the Firefly was out of action for the time being. Lt Gorman had obviously remembered his earlier conversation, and ordered the tank forward at full speed. L/Cpl Baron obeyed immediately and smashed his Sherman through a hedge and made a beeline for the King Tiger.

With horror Lt Gorman could see the barrel of the long 88mm gun slowly swing towards him, hoping to put the crew off he fired a HE shell at the tank to absolutely no effect, the gun was reloaded, but jammed!  Then with a rending crash of metal The Sherman stuck the King Tiger in the side. The next thing Lt Gorman remembered was the clang of the 88mm barrel striking the side of the turret.

Knowing his tank was disabled he Ordered his crew to abandon the tank. As he bailed out the Germans opened fire knocking out another of his tanks (I presume it was his troop Sargent's tank, but the account doesn't say). The German Tiger crew were heartbeats behind in bailing out. However the hull gunner in Lt Gorman's tank had his escape blocked. So he had to scramble out through the turret. As Guardsman Agnew dropped to the ground he saw his comrades diving into a ditch and ran over to them. When he came to rest in the ditch he looked up to see the startled faces of the King Tiger crew. Thinking fast he threw a perfect salute and ran, quickly linking up with his colleagues a short distance away.

Lt Gorman's crew continued to fall back towards friendly lines, when they were caught in an artillery barrage. Two of the crew were wounded. After getting all of them to safety Lt Gorman saw a tank a short distance away. Leaving L/cpl Baron in charge Lt Gorman sprinted through an orchard to the tank. It was his Firefly. With the help of L/cpl Baron he got the tank back into fighting condition, then leaving L/Cpl Baron in charge of the survivors (who were later evacuated on another tank) returned to the field of battle. Lt Gorman's first action was to use the Gun on the Firefly to seal the fate of the King Tiger. After a couple of rounds the Tank began to burn. And so ended one of, if not the first British encounter with a King Tiger.

Earlier I said that the 503rd was unlucky. After losing most of its King Tigers to the Bombers in the opening bombardment. Then having one of the few survivors rammed by a Sherman. The 503rd lost another King tiger in a uniquely unlucky way. In August  a British platoon approached the village of Le Plessis-Grimoult. They saw one of the 503rd's King Tigers parked there, but didn't have a PIAT with them. Knowing the crew were out of the tank they engaged the tank. The Platoon's 2" mortar fired a round, and hit the ammunition truck parked next to the tank!

[WoTB] Be the First to Know

While we are pushing it hard for World of Tanks Blitz closed beta which is due later this year, you can take a look at the updated promo sites and subscribe for the newsletter so as not miss the beta announcement and submit your application in time.

For EU:
http://wotblitz.eu/

For NA:
http://wotblitz.com/

Mobilize!

Disney's Ruby

On the day Brest surrendered in 1944, Barnes Wallis and three RAF officers took a  Jeep into the harbour to inspect the damage Wallis' Tallboy bombs had done to the U-boat pens there. Much to their surprise they'd gotten the time of the cities capitulation wrong, and so were the first allied forces into the port area. The harbour commander offered his surrender to them, which they accepted.
The harbour commander then gave them a tour of the the U-boat pens, he stated to Wallis that the bombs used to penetrate the massive concrete roof were rocket powered. The Tallboys dropped on Brest were not. But later in the war rocket powered bombs would appear. Today I'm going to take a look at them.


Walt Disney produced several cartoons during the Second World War, many were short propaganda cartoons. However in 1942 Walt Disney read the book Victory Through Air Power, and decided that the message contained within the book needed to be made into a popular idea. So Walt Disney produced a film by the same name. The film can be found on Youtube: Here.
It should be noted that by the point in the war the film came out that the Allies were already starting to implement the basic principles of the book. Such as the air campaign against German industry.

The story of the rocket assisted bomb starts with the film. Although there is no proof to say this is how it happened, it is rumoured that a group of Royal Navy engineers from the Directorate of Miscellaneous Weapons Development saw the film in 1943 and one scene caught their interest. The scene shows a rocket powered bomb smashing though the concrete roof of a U-boat pen.
At the time the battle of the Atlantic was in full swing, and the idea of such a weapon, able to hit U-boats while in dock was certainly appealing to the Royal Navy. With support from the admiralty one of the engineers, Captain Terrell started work. The design he eventually came up with was called the Disney Bomb. Its warhead was 500 Lbs of explosive in a massivley re-enforced pointed case. To give you some idea of how heavyilly armoured this bomb was, the total weight was 4500 Lbs.
The rocket power was from 19 rocket motors taken from RP-3 rockets. RP-3's are the iconic weapons seen fitted to the bottom of RAF planes such as the Typhoon.

When dropped from 20,000 feet a mechanical time fuse would be activated. After 15,000 feet the fuse would fire all 19 rockets for a 3 second burn. Accelerating the Disney bomb to 1450 fps (or about Mach 1.29). The  impact would smash the bomb through 13 feet, 10 inches of reinforced concrete before the warhead detonated. In one post war test a Disney over-penetrated the roof and the floor of the target and buried itself in the ground below.

Without suitable targets to test the bomb on it was decided to put the bomb into service based solely on the mathematical calculations. As it turned out those calculations were exactly right. Some test drops were carried out to enable bomb sights to be calibrated. Due to technical issues, that I've not yet been able to find out about, the only plane that could carry the Disney bomb was the B-17. A pair of bombs would be slung under the fuselage of each plane.

On the 10th of February, 1945, the 407th Bomber squadron joined up with its parent unit, the 92nd Bomber group, and headed for Ijmuiden the E-boat pens.
At Ijmuiden there were two E-boat pens that sheltered the fast attack craft that raided cross channel shipping at night.
Of the entire 92nd group's 164 planes only 9 carried Disney bombs. The group lined up on the second much larger bunker and bombed together. The bunker was hit and penetrated successfully. However the E-boats weren't there. The bunker hadn't been completed yet. Four days later the 92nd repeated the bombing, this time aimed at the first smaller bunker. Due to its smaller target size the aircraft bombed on their own, and not as was the usual practice all at the same time. The effects of the bombing are not recorded.

On 30th of March the 92nd and 303rd Bomb groups joined together to attack Bremen. Heavy flak caused major damage to 13 aircraft and wounded 4 airmen of the 303rd. As the formation approached the target the lead plane took damage from Flak to its wing and lost both engines, after slipping out of the formation it was lost to sight. Eventually it crash landed in a corn field and all the crew were captured unharmed. The only other incident was when a lone ME262 made a single attack run on the formation, failing to cause any significant damage.
The target for the Disney's was the Valentin U-boat factory. Only one Disney hit the target causing minor damage. However the massive number of normal bombs dropped on the area from the two bomb groups caused such damage to the surrounding facilities that the site was abandoned by the Germans.
The final target for the Disney bomb was Hamburg submarine pens on the 4th of April. Due to cloud cover the bombers tried to bomb using radar, however no Disney's scored any hits. Again the supporting bombers did damage, sinking three U-boats. The 92nd lost a single plane in this raid. Rapidly running out of targets for Disney's and with the war drawing to a close there were no more Disney missions.

Although the story doesn't quite end there. After the war tests were carried out, under the name of Project Ruby. These included most of the bombs used for concrete penetration, such as the Tallboy, Grand Slam and Disney bombs. At first the targets were in France, until the French objected to still being bombed despite the war being over. So a selection of targets in Germany were used. The tests showed that the Disney had roughly the same performance as the Tallboy bombs. Also that a portion of penetration from both bombs came from the warhead exploding after the bomb had seated itself. Two flaws in the Disney's design were discovered. First the rocket motors had reliability problems, and second the bomb wasn't very accurate.

The final entry in the Disney's story comes from 2009 when the French discovered one of the Disney's that had been used in the early tests, still with its warhead intact. The bomb has since been recovered and stored by the French military.