War Thunder International Tank Tech Tree - Belgium! - video Dailymotion

Toreno

Having taken a rather long break in order to focus on revision, I have returned to carry on the proposed International Tank Tech tree series!  In this episode I look at potential Belgian vehicles that could be included in War Thunder, such as the T-13 tank destroyer, the ACG-1 and the CATI 90!  Vehicles in this episode: Introduction: 00:00 Belgian history: 00:28 ACG 1: 03:25 T13 Tank Destroyer (B1, B2 and B3): 07:34 CATI 90: 12:54 Belgian events: 16:20 Conclusion: 17:50  International Tank Tech Tree series Argentinian Tanks: https://youtu.be/Z6p0kXANlrI Austrian Tanks: https://youtu.be/cha99aucLPY Australian Tanks: https://youtu.be/Z-P0xkdHQZQ Belgian Tanks: https://youtu.be/IPUmZ1TFaIs Canadian Tanks: https://youtu.be/dlkyfIcukqs Czechoslovakian Tanks: https://youtu.be/OgGtRi07OIM Egyptian Tanks: https://youtu.be/TXeQki7i854 Finnish Tanks: https://youtu.be/1SzQl9kRQiE  Sources: Zaloga, Z.J and Palmer, I. (2014) French Tanks of World War II (2). Oxford, Osprey Publishing, Page 11 Dr Etterlin, F.M.V.S.U. (1962) The World's Armoured Fighting Vehicles. Translated from German by R.M Ogorkiewicz. London, MacDonald, Page 18 Forty, G and Duncan, J. (1990) The Fall of France: Disaster in the West. 1939-1940. Tundbridge Wells, The Nutshell Publishing Company LTD  Social Media ⬇️ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/toreno.bsky.social Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/Toreno4 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/toreno170 Mastodon: Toreno17@mastodon.social Threads: https://www.threads.net/@toreno170 Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Toreno17 Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/toreno5/videos   Game: War Thunder  ⬅️  #warthunder #belgium #belgian #tanks #toreno

Transcript

00:00Hello everybody, Torano here and welcome back to another episode of my proposed

00:03international tank tech tree series. I haven't done one of these episodes in a little while,

00:08or I haven't actually done any episodes in a little while, as some of you know I've been doing

00:12tests for the last month or so and revision before that, but finally finished all the tests,

00:17possibly resets might come up and hopefully not, but um you know I've got time to do these

00:21episodes now and finally get back to replying to all your comments on the previous episodes.

00:27Now in today's episode we're looking at potential Belgian tanks in the international tank tech tree,

00:32but before we look at the tanks to just give a little bit of background information on Belgium

00:36in the war. It suffered massively during world war one where a lot of Belgian territory had been

00:43occupied by the Germans, there had been lots of fighting over it and you know the country

00:47generally suffered quite a bit, and it had actually gone into an alliance with the French,

00:52but in 1936 they had abandoned this and gone back to neutrality. It actually ended up kind

00:58of repeating like world war one, Belgium went to neutrality, Germany ended up invading through it,

01:06allies moved in, except unlike with world war one the allies were beaten, France surrendered

01:13and Britain had to retreat back to Dunkirk and back to Britain. The Belgian army fought bravely,

01:20but at the end of the day it didn't have enough men or equipment to be able to stop the German

01:24panzers, and it also fell victim to new weapons of warfare. For example at the fort of Abenamel

01:301,200 troops had been defeated by 80 via the use of gliders and shaped charges for only six lost

01:36on the German side. Belgium just wasn't able to stand up to the assault by the panzers and

01:42paratroopers, it was just you know like I said it was a small army, it had good equipment but not

01:47enough of it. Nonetheless Belgium still managed to contribute massively to the allied cause,

01:52there were three Belgian forces, the Belgian Congo had stayed loyal to the allied cause and kept on

01:58fighting, and it provided many rare resources, for example gold, rubber and uranium, much of which

02:05was used in the Manhattan Project. Unless I'm misremembering, I believe most of the uranium

02:11used in the atomic bombs dropped on Japan was actually from the Congo, so that was a massive

02:16contribution by Belgium to the war effort even after the country itself had been occupied.

02:21Because Belgium was a neutral country and focused on a mainly defensive army, it didn't really

02:26invest that much in tanks. It had tanks called the T15, but as far as I'm aware these were only

02:31really armed with heavy machine guns. The only other tanks capable of taking on German panzers

02:37were the ACG1, of which it only had about 10 or 11 and was actually a French tank, and the T13

02:43tank destroyers, both of which we'll look at in this episode. After the war Belgium joined NATO

02:49and it used a variety of different equipment provided by other NATO countries, for example

02:54Britain, America, France and West Germany, and it got a lot of equipment for those countries,

03:00but it did produce at least one vehicle domestically or converted domestically, which

03:05we'll also be covering later in this episode, the CAT E90. So hopefully that gives you a little basic

03:11background information on what was happening with Belgium before, during and after World War II

03:17with regards to tanks and military history, but without further ado let's get straight into the

03:22episode. Now the first tank we're looking at is the ACG1, otherwise known as the AMC35. Now the

03:31AMC35 is a French tank and like I said it was also known as the ACG1, but some of them were actually

03:37sold to Belgium. The tank in the picture is actually a French AMC35, because Belgium only

03:42actually got something like 11 of them, because the delivery caused all sorts of problems politically,

03:48it was seen as provoking Germany for some reason, and as far as I could tell they were all destroyed

03:54in the war, so there aren't actually any left to get pictures of. I couldn't find any pictures from

03:59the time either, or not any good pictures at least. Now the reason I've put the Belgium vehicle as a

04:04separate vehicle from the French one is because it had a different turret. Now the turret itself

04:09wasn't actually that different, but it actually used a Belgian 47mm gun, which was slightly

04:17smaller in length than the French 47mm gun. Now looking online, because my books don't actually

04:23list the Belgian gun, I managed to find the following penetration characteristics.

04:2840mm at 600m, which is pretty good and puts it on par with the Russian 45mm guns.

04:36Now there was also some tests done by the Hungarians who got their hands on some of the

04:41guns from the Germans. I'm not including them because the figures are quite frankly

04:46kind of ridiculous compared to the War Thunder figures. Something like 51mm penetration at 60

04:53degrees at 100m, which is almost as good as the Russian 85mm gun, so I'm not including them.

05:02Either War Thunder's got his figures wrong or the Hungarians got theirs wrong, because

05:06it shouldn't be performing almost as good as tier 4 tanks, so I'm not going to include them

05:12when choosing battle rating and stuff. But moving on to the armour, the ACG1 had about 25mm of

05:20armour, so that's reasonably well protected. I mean you can see a little bit of sloping on the

05:25front, so I suppose that's reasonably well protected. You know, it should be able to

05:30take a few shots from long range at least, from lower caliber weapons. Speed wise it could do

05:36about 26mph on road, I believe about 20mph off road, so it's not particularly a slow tank either.

05:43Crew, it only actually had three crew. A driver, a commander and a gunner. Well this is actually

05:48better than a lot of previous French tanks, because before a lot of them had only had one

05:53person in the turret, the commander, so having a commander and a gunner was actually a bit of a

05:57step up compared to some of the earlier designs. So where should this tank go in the tech tree?

06:03Now I've put it in tier 1, just behind the AMC35, but battle rating wise probably 1.7 or 1.3.

06:15I don't know if it'll have the same battle rating as the AMC35, that may have a higher one,

06:19it may have a lower one, probably higher if anything. But 1.7 would put it a little bit

06:25below the Panzer III F, just below the Panzer IV E. 1.3 would actually put it right at the

06:33bottom of the tech tree alongside the Panzer 38T and the Panzer IV C. The Panzer III E is actually

06:402.0 and has better penetration characteristics I believe, yeah 52mm at 500m, so yeah 1.7 or 1.3

06:50is where I would put it personally. I think it would do reasonably well there, it'd have to be

06:54tier 1 definitely, can't go any higher than that. So overall it's a nice little tank and I think it

07:00would do very good in the international tech tree. Of course not as a high priority because

07:06of course the French had the AMC35 with the French turret and French gun.

07:10It's a bit confusing because Belgium actually ended up using it in combat more than the French,

07:15the French only used it at the very end of the Battle of France, while Belgium used theirs

07:20straight from the start. But at the end of the day I do consider it mainly a French vehicle,

07:25so if I had to choose priority I would say the AMC35, but I think this should be added at some

07:31point for the international tech tree. Now the next vehicle we're looking at is the T-13

07:36tank destroyer of which there's three basic variants, the B1, B2 and B3. In this picture

07:41you can see the B2 and the next picture will be the B3. Basically Belgium had ordered artillery

07:48tractors to tow around 75mm guns and at some point they had decided to actually put a gun on the

07:56tractors, in this case the 47mm gun, and this was reasonably successful. Because of the weight of

08:03the gun and how the vehicle was designed the actual gun had to be pointed rearwards and it

08:09unfortunately had very limited traverse, only something like 100 degrees, because the only way

08:14to actually protect the gunners and the driver was to have these armoured shields that could

08:18be deployed and undeployed. They could be undeployed to give 360 degree fire but obviously

08:24dis-exposed the gun crew. However the armour wasn't actually that good, it was only something

08:30like 6mm to 12mm so perhaps it wasn't going to be that useful anyway except for against

08:35small arms fire. There was also a Browning automatic rifle as a secondary armament.

08:41Speed wise it was quite fast, if I can find the speed, about 24.8 miles an hour so you know quite

08:48fast vehicle considering it's an artillery tractor with a huge gun on top. But once the B1

08:56had been tested they decided to move on to the B2. Now the B2 was similar to the B1, there weren't

09:02that many changes. It had the same gun, same speed, same armour, same crew, commander to fire the gun,

09:07loader and driver, but it did have some changes to the suspension. It had a slightly lower silhouette

09:14from the front I believe. And after the B2 had been put into production they moved on to the B3

09:20which was quite a bit different. For one they used a different vehicle for the conversion process,

09:24they used the Vickers Carden Lloyd Light Dragon Mk2B light tank. Obviously this is going to be

09:31stronger and better than an artillery tractor and it was a massive improvement over the previous

09:37vehicle. Now the B3 was obviously a massive change because it was a new vehicle and massive

09:42improvements were incorporated into it. It still used the 47 millimeter gun but it had a rotating

09:48turret so you know better able to actually turn and engage enemy targets. And as you can see in

09:54the picture here they've got rid of the gun shields, they've actually put armour around the gun

10:00and the crew can all you know be accommodated inside the actual vehicle itself rather than

10:06being exposed on the outside although there is still that gap at the back. The armour itself

10:11was a tiny bit thicker 7 to 13 millimeters up from 6 to 12 which is you know better than nothing

10:17but it's not really much of a change. Speed was also improved to about 25 and a half miles an hour

10:23so faster ever so slightly more protected and you know better able to engage targets. Also had four

10:30crewmen as well rather than three so it had the gunner, loader, commander and driver so the

10:35commander could actually focus on commanding rather than having to fire a gun which can now be

10:41done by the gunner. The B3 became the most produced variant of all of the T13s with something like

10:47200 to 250 being built. I think the B1s and B2s only had 50 built altogether but not all of them

10:54were delivered but you know there was a decent amount of them around. I think I've got written

10:59down 150 in the fall of France disaster in the west by George Forty and John Duncan so at least

11:05150. I've seen online sources saying there was about 200 around of all variants so there was

11:12quite a lot of them and as far as I can tell they all acquitted themselves rather well in the

11:15Battle of Belgium or Battle of France. Able to deal with most German tanks or pretty much all German

11:21tanks and you know doing so on multiple occasions. So where should these tanks go on the tech tree?

11:27Definitely tier one. Battle rating wise I believe the B1 and B2 if they're both implemented should

11:34go about 1 to 1.3. They shouldn't be any higher than 1.7 certainly and it shouldn't be higher than

11:41the ACG1 because that has the same gun and the gun is very good but obviously it's not very well

11:47protected and obviously the limited traverse. It depends what happens with the armoured shields.

11:54You know if they're deployed you've got the limited traverse and I don't know if you could

11:57undeploy them in the middle of a battle so that would affect things a lot. The B3's got ever

12:03slightly better armour, rotating turret, more crew. 1.7 to 1.3 I'd say. No higher than that.

12:10You know it'd be able to do very well at that battle rating. It's armour would be a

12:15disadvantage but the gun you know it'd be very well or very good and should be able to perform

12:21very well from ambush positions. You know it should do very good in the game. So as you can see the

12:27Belgians did have some very nice tank destroyers. The B3 is especially good but the B1 and B2

12:33you know they should be good enough as well. It would be very nice to see these incorporated in

12:38the lower tiers. I think they'd be a very good addition for the international tech tree.

12:43You could probably miss out the B2 or the B1 if you really needed to but I do or at least

12:48temporarily but I do hope to see them all included in War Thunder at some point in the future.

12:54Now the next vehicle has caused me a lot of confusion. It's the KT90 otherwise well it

12:59stands for the cannon anti-tank the infantry automata 90mm. Now as you can see it's got a

13:0690mm gun on it which is good but there's a bit of confusion about what chassis it was built on.

13:12My book The Welding of Armoured Fighting Vehicles which is a translated book from

13:19General von Senger and Ettelin says it was built on a universal carrier chassis which is the Bren

13:24carrier but all of the online sources say it was built on a Lloyd carrier chassis. I think it was

13:32built on the Lloyd carrier chassis personally looking at you know comparing the Lloyd and the

13:36Bren carriers so I'll probably be quoting from the Lloyd carrier for you know stats and stuff like

13:43that. Now the Lloyd carrier could do about 30 miles per hour which is pretty fast on you know

13:48I think this was on the road but um you know still pretty fast but it only had seven millimeters of

13:53armor. Now I don't know if the Belgians added any armor to the KT tank destroyer because

14:00all my book says is quote the protection of this vehicle is effective only at a range of

14:05approximately 900 yards unquote. Now like I said this was a translated book so I don't know if this

14:12is a translation error um it doesn't say what it's protected from um it doesn't actually say

14:17anything about the armor other than that so I can only assume it means some small arms fire or

14:22something like that um it's the only way it makes sense to me. I also tried to find information

14:27about the 90 millimeter gun um now my book says it's a Makar anti-tank gun um unfortunately Makar

14:34doesn't make guns anymore they make ammunition for guns made by Cockerill I believe um and I

14:40couldn't find much information um obviously I wasn't going to use their modern ammunition as a

14:46you know for penetration characteristics um but eventually I found some information saying it

14:51could do about 350 millimeters penetration with high explosive anti-tank which is um you know

14:57very good that puts in tier 5 definitely especially since it's a post-war tank. Now one other um

15:03strength for this um tank destroyer or it's not even a tank destroyer as my book says it was just

15:08meant to be a mobile anti-tank gun um but as I was saying um it's only five foot um tall which is

15:14about one and a half meters this is actually smaller than the Hetzer which is something like

15:18seven feet tall um so this would be very good in ambushes um you know where it's um light armor

15:24isn't going to be much of a problem so I think this would be a very good ambushing um vehicle.

15:30So where should this vehicle go in the tech tree um well like I said earlier tier 5 it's a very

15:37powerful vehicle it's got a very powerful gun you know it has to go tier 5 uh battle rating

15:43honestly anywhere between 7 and 8 um I'd probably near it a battle rating 8 but you know anywhere

15:50between 7 and 8 would be good uh you know 7.78 probably um would be preferable um I think this

15:57would be a very good um vehicle to have in the game it's definitely unusual and it would allow

16:02Belgium to represent itself in the higher tiers because at the moment we've only looked at lower

16:07tier vehicles plus it would also give a massive boost to the tank destroyer vehicles in the

16:12international tank tech tree in the higher tiers and yeah I think it would be a very good vehicle

16:16to have in the game. So now that we've looked at potential Belgian tanks that could be included

16:23in War Thunder how can Belgium contribute with regards to events and realistic battles and

16:28simulator battles? Well the most obvious event I can think of is the Battle of Belgium. Germany

16:34is invading and you have to use Belgian vehicles to stop them possibly with French or British help

16:40depending on how it goes um so you know you'd get a lot of Belgian vehicles being used there

16:45against German tanks um other events could include perhaps um vehicles have been hidden away by the

16:51resistance and are coming out to help the allies as they drive through Belgium in 1944 and 1945.

16:58Perhaps some can be used by the German army in their events to represent captured vehicles used

17:02against the Russians and allies um potentially we could have alternate history um where maybe

17:08Belgium allied with the Germans and against the French or maybe there was some sort of united

17:12Europe going against Russia or Britain or America. Another fairly obvious event would be NATO versus

17:18Warsaw Pact. The Cold War's gone hot um in the late 50s in which case we could use the Cat E-90

17:26to represent Belgium's contribution to the um NATO forces. Overall I think Belgium would be a very nice

17:32um country to have in the game. It's got very good vehicles not many but very you know they're

17:37high quality um you know there's lots of events they could be included in and I think they'd be

17:42a very good fit for War Thunder overall and I do hope that Belgium and the vehicles it used will

17:48be added to War Thunder in the future. So that's it for today's episode um I hope you enjoyed it

17:54um hopefully it's given you a bit of an insight into what potential Belgian vehicles we could get

17:58in an international tank tech tree. Personally I'm looking forward to the Cat E-90 and the T-13

18:05B3 the most um they're the ones that sort of jump out as um the most unusual to me and you know most

18:11effective but I'm looking forward to all of the Belgian vehicles um and like I said I hope you

18:16enjoyed the episode if you did then subscribe leave a like uh leave feedback I could always

18:21do with more feedback thanks for watching I'll see you next time and if you liked that episode

18:27then don't forget to click the pictures to check out even more tank tech tree episodes.

War Thunder International Tank Tech Tree - Belgium!

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