Moving this out of Mini-Stories, since I'm digressing.

> 4) The Mighty Jingles considers the Luchs the cutest tank in World of Tanks.

When it comes to cute tanks, I'm going to put in a word for the Hotchkiss H35.

I was fortunate enough to see one of these at the Israeli Tank Museum at Latrun a few years ago. These things were the backbone of the IDF's armored corps (such as it was) in 1948.

The history, as was recounted to me by the tour guide:

Dodgy semi-legal arms dealer: Good news! I can get you ten Sherman tanks!
IDF: Great! That'd be wonderful!
Arms dealer: They're in the USA, so I'll put them on the boat right away, and they'll be here in three months!
IDF: Um, we're at war right now...what do you have that's nearby?

So the delivery that showed up a week or so later carried rather a less impressive collection of armor.

>
>When it comes to cute tanks, I'm going to put in a word for the
>Hotchkiss H35.
>

Is it wrong of me that I immediately cross-referenced with Hokago Tea Time's song, "My Love is a Stapler?"

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

>>When it comes to cute tanks, I'm going to put in a word for the
>>Hotchkiss H35.
>
>Is it wrong of me that I immediately cross-referenced with Hokago Tea
>Time's song, "My Love is a Stapler?"

Heh, as it happens, there is evidently some controversy as to whether the Hotchkiss who founded the French armaments company by that name and the Hotchkiss whose stapler is so well-known in Japan were related. They were both inventors from Connecticut, so it seems likely to me, but I'm not a genealogist by any stretch.

Also, in re tanks, the H35 is two different Tier II tanks in World of Tanks—once as itself in the French tech tree, and once in the captured German guise of the slightly improved H39 model, the Panzer 38H 735 (f). Back in the early days of the game, when there were only US, Soviet, and German tech trees, other powers' tanks were occasionally slipped into the game as either captured German vehicles (like the French H39) or Lend-Lease Soviet gear (e.g., the British Matilda Mk IV debuted in the game as a Soviet tank). The German Hotchkiss hasn't been for sale in a very long time, probably since Wargaming added an actual French tech tree, but as far as I know, players who bought it back then and are still playing can still use it.

The other tank that is often brought up as a contender for the "cutest tank in WOT" title is the US M24 Chaffee light tank (Tier V in WOT).

--G.
f**k me, WOT is an old game now
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

LAST EDITED ON Oct-08-18 AT 04:34 AM (EDT)
 
I'd like to put in a good word for the TKS, a Polish tankette which is... just... just look at it. It is so small. This is the bijou tankette perfect for the first time sensha-doka.

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

>I'd like to put in a good word for the
>TKS, a Polish tankette which is...
>just... just look at it. It is so small. This is the bijou
>tankette perfect for the first time sensha-doka.

Heh, it looks as if a Bren Carrier decided to dress up differently today. ;)

--
Unable to save the day: File is read-only.

>>I'd like to put in a good word for the
>>TKS, a Polish tankette which is...
>>just... just look at it. It is so small. This is the bijou
>>tankette perfect for the first time sensha-doka.
>
>Heh, it looks as if a Bren Carrier decided to dress up differently
>today. ;)
>
>--
Or a bigger tank took a Bren Carrirr to "take your kid to work day" and it insisted on dressing up just like dad.

>>I'd like to put in a good word for the
>>TKS, a Polish tankette which is...
>>just... just look at it. It is so small. This is the bijou
>>tankette perfect for the first time sensha-doka.
>
>Heh, it looks as if a Bren Carrier decided to dress up differently
>today. ;)

The Universal Carrier (as the Bren Carrier became when the British Army realized you could also put other things on it) and the TKS, along with many other tankettes of a similar vintage, have a common ancestor: the Carden Loyd tankette, the inspiration for which was, like all great British inventions, literally made by a man in a shed.

(Interestingly, Vivian Loyd himself thought the TK/TKS was the best of the many tiny tanks based on the Cardon Loyd.)

I think it's mentioned somewhere in Girls und Panzer that novice Tankery players do in fact start in tankettes and/or armored cars, in grade school, then advance to light tanks in junior high and graduate to mediums, heavies, and TDs in high school. Can't remember if it's in the anime, the manga, or what.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

A man in a shed with, it must be said, possibly the best name ever given to a human being before or since.

On another note, and not really a tankette: I'd also like to put forward the Bob Semple tank, about which even Wikipedia puts tank in inverted commas that feel more piteous than sarcastic. It's got that clunky, homemade, jerry-built charm to it that to me is entirely precious. Certainly more charming than purpose-built machines.

I want a New Zealander tankery team which fields this sort of thing due to a total misunderstanding of how the rules work; not that they're bad tankers or cheap, but because they're under the impression that you have to build the tank yourself. They almost never win, but the important thing is that they're trying really hard, you guys! They're doing their best! Why are you laughing so hard?

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

And then they manage, through a combination of knocking it out of the park and the opposition completely underestimating them, manage to beat the Germans. Now that's an Eyrie kind of story. =]

LAST EDITED ON Oct-12-18 AT 04:25 PM (EDT)
 
>On another note, and not really a tankette: I'd also like to put
>forward the Bob Semple tank, about which even Wikipedia puts tank in inverted commas that
>feel more piteous than sarcastic. It's got that clunky, homemade,
>jerry-built charm to it that to me is entirely precious. Certainly
>more charming than purpose-built machines.

Ah yes, the Bob Semple! The kind of tank you get when you lock the A-Team in a shed, assuming that in addition to the tractor and everything else you left in there, they also use the shed itself.

>I want a New Zealander tankery team which fields this sort of thing
>due to a total misunderstanding of how the rules work; not that
>they're bad tankers or cheap, but because they're under the impression
>that you have to build the tank yourself.

A Tankery squad deploying all-improvised/homebuilt equipment would be pretty funny, although one assumes they'd have to sign even more waivers than usual before they could ever get a team equipped with proper tanks to fight them. Let's see, in addition to the Bob Semple, what else could they have from history? The Russian NI and KhTZ-16 tractor tanks, of course. Maybe a platoon of Toyota Hilux technicals for scouting and fire support, although they're not really armored beyond being Toyotas and therefore indestructible. And, as a hole card for a special match that has building destruction as a win condition, Killdozer.

(Killdozer is unarmed, and very slow, so it must be escorted closely at all times, but boy can it knock buildings down. Just, uh... scout ahead to make sure they don't have basements first.)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>Let's see, in addition to the Bob Semple,
>what else could they have from history?

Well, in addition to what you've mentioned, I'd submit the Kubuś, a Polish IFV equipped with a resistance-built flamethrower, which should give you an idea of how many more forms this ragtag bunch of misfits had to sign before being allowed to compete. There's also an argument to be made for the Bedford OXA, which was a Home Guard vehicle converted from a crappy old Bedford van and given a Boys rifle for, er, presumably some kind of purpose. Quite what obviously escapes me, as anyone putting this thing up against a Panzer division deserved whatever they got.

However, my favourites have to be the Armadillos and Bisons, British "extemporised" armoured fighting vehicles of World War Two. The latter was a (theoretically) mobile concrete bunker that chugged around the place defending airstrips, while the former was an anti-invasion armoured car-type affair armoured with, and I swear I'm not making this up,

GRAVEL.

I want this team. I WANT this team. You have no idea how much I want this team.

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

seriously. fucking gravel. jesus h senshadoking christ.

>The latter was a (theoretically) mobile concrete bunker that chugged
>around the place defending airstrips,

Presumably in the same sense that a Maus or a Ratte was considered "mobile"...?

--
Unable to save the day: File is read-only.

No, the Bison drove... sort of. Just slowly. And it didn't really like hills. This was because it was based on a crappy old 1930s civilian lorry bed that didn't do too many miles per century when it wasn't lugging several tons of concrete and Dad's Army extras around. But it was genuinely used - it was designed and utilised as airbase defences in the event of a ground invasion of Britain. Sort of a moving pillbox, with emphasis on the moving; they actually came with a little operational handbook that said not to use them as purely static defences.

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

not entirely on topic, and i've prolly brought it up before, but i also love the idea of combining this mad New Zealander team with a mine flail tank and two words: RAMMING. SPEED.

>not entirely on topic, and i've prolly brought it up before,
>but i also love the idea of combining this mad New Zealander team with
>a mine flail tank and two words: RAMMING. SPEED.

On a point of order, actually mulching the opposing team is very firmly frowned upon by all known Armorsport leagues.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

> actually mulching the opposing team is very firmly frowned upon by all known Armorsport leagues.

So here's a related question- how are the various open-topped TDs (e.g. the Hellcat, Marder, etc.) handled? I know the series hand-waves it as "there's a fancy spall liner inside the tanks which prevents the girls from being affected by the shell impacts", but how does it work when there's, er, not enough tank to go around?

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

>> actually mulching the opposing team is very firmly frowned upon by all known Armorsport leagues.
>
>So here's a related question- how are the various open-topped TDs
>(e.g. the Hellcat, Marder, etc.) handled? I know the
>series hand-waves it as "there's a fancy spall liner inside the tanks
>which prevents the girls from being affected by the shell impacts",
>but how does it work when there's, er, not enough tank to go around?

In Girls und Panzer, I have no idea; every vehicle I can remember seeing on the show is fully enclosed. Most are proper tanks, with a smattering of casement TDs (Ōarai's StuG and Hetzer, I think Pravda has a Trollcannon (ИСУ-152) and Kuromorimine has pretty much the whole range of Jagd-whatevers, since they're richer than Croesus).

Apart from the super-cheaty Karl-Gerät in the movie (which is specifically modified so the crew isn't clambering around on the outside of it), they don't do SPGs in GuP Tankery, because artillery support isn't really part of the game, and I can't remember anyone on the show ever using an open-hull TD—probably for exactly that reason.

In UF, it depends on the league. The more traditional ones want everybody buttoned up and open vehicles excluded, for similar reasons, and limit safety technologies to things that maintain the "period" feel (specialized ammunition, as Nora mentioned in Survivors, is the closest thing to a universal safety convention the sport has). In a few of the most safety-paranoid vintage classes, even dismounting is strongly discouraged-to-outright prohibited. Some of the more "open" (as it were) classes allow for things like deflector systems, not to protect the vehicles, but to prevent injury to the crews (and usually the computers keep track of who would be "dead" and score accordingly).

IAF Standard Armorsport, the ruleset under which most high schools in the Federation compete, has optional rules to allow for things like that, but both parties in any given match must agree to use them. This occasionally causes pregame disputes, as a team that uses mainly American equipment, for instance, may suspect a reluctant competitor of balking specifically to rob them of the use of their Hellcats. Like most interscholastic sports, it gets pretty political sometimes.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Mulching is something of a reach with mine flails. They don't spin that fast and they don't have that much KE, and since they were designed for mine clearance rather than, y'know, tank armour penetration, I can't see them doing anything like that sort of damage.

However, something that might require a rules clarification is that mine clearance tanks kicked up so much dust that they actually formed a smokescreen in certain conditions. Another is using it as a psychological weapon - i.e. just letting the spinning mine flail clang against the armour and build up reverberations on the inside of the target tank. It won't really damage the armour, but one feels it might annoy the absolute piss out of the crew and generally throw them off balance.

Of course, if it did manage to penetrate the tank armour by some... whatever the opposite of a miracle is, then yeah, the crew'd get turned into a bucket of waifu salsa. One assumes there's some sort of risk assessment though. =]

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

it is also worth mentioning that the sherman crabs with the mk 2 counterjib mine flails had a ramming speed of, er, one and a quarter miles per hour, but the hydraulically adjustable mk 1 flails could probably get up to quite a bit faster.

https://twitter.com/pyonpyon_chang/status/1049287238192848896

I think this GuP cosplay in italian tankette must go here.

Offered for consideration is possibly the cutest possible anti-tank: the Vespa 150 TAP anti-tank scooter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vespa_150_TAP

>Offered for consideration is possibly the cutest possible anti-tank:
>the Vespa 150 TAP anti-tank scooter.
>
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vespa_150_TAP

Mods vs. Rockers: The Next Level

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>>Offered for consideration is possibly the cutest possible anti-tank:
>>the Vespa 150 TAP anti-tank scooter.
>>
>>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vespa_150_TAP
>
>Mods vs. Rockers: The Next Level
>
>--G.

Mod Max: Beyond Brighton?

>Offered for consideration is possibly the cutest possible anti-tank:
>the Vespa 150 TAP anti-tank scooter.
>
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vespa_150_TAP

"Oh look, it's the Cyclone's great-great-great-great-GREAT-grand-uncle."

--- Philip

	Philip J. Moyer Contributing Writer, Editor and Artist (and Moderator) -- Eyrie Productions, Unlimited CEO of MTS, High Poobah Of Artwork, and High Priest Of the Church Of Aerianne -- Magnetic Terrapin Studios "Insert Pithy Comment Here" Fandoms -- Fanart -- Fan Meta Discussions

>"Oh look, it's the Cyclone's
>great-great-great-great-GREAT-grand-uncle."
>

That would have broken me if I had not broken years ago from the lot o ye.