The Shooting Range
In this episode:
How to stay a decent human being under any circumstances, or the story of the Tu-2 bomber
The unkillable Churchill: how a very problematic tank made it to the Korean war;
Hotline: the developers answer questions that you've left in the comments!
But first, let's start with...the deadly duo: let's fly the B-29 Superfortress and the Tupolev Tu-4!
Just look at these two. Aren't they beautiful?
It's no coincidence that we're going to speak about this exact pair.
These two legendary bombers do not just look alike: they fly and play in pretty much the same fashion.
Just keep in mind that the BR of the Soviet machine is considerably higher
as its defensive armaments consist of cannons instead of machine guns (which allows it to fight jets).
To be fair, that also makes the Tu-4 a tougher pick:
it fights deadlier opponents,
the starting bombs are way too small and it takes a lot of time to get better ones.
The best way to upgrade both of these bombers is pretty straightforward:
get as high as you can and then bomb the heck out of enemy bases and airfields.
Despite the respectable armour and all the defences,
a low-flying B-29 is a welcoming sight to any enemy fighter. And the Tu-4... is simply doomed.
So get up in there! There are two main things to remember.
First. Fight the urge to fly to the nearest target with all your bomber buddies.
Hit several targets at the same time! Coordinate your efforts in the chat
or just see where other bombers go and then pick a target for yourself.
Second. Do not open fire until the enemy is in the palm of your hand.
Wait till they get to the distance of 1-1,5 km — and only then turn them into flaming cheese-graters.
And practice, practice, practice. If you want to fly these majestic
beasts, you have to be better at shooting down enemy planes than any veteran Petrovich.
Also... it pays to get your timing right.
Don't forget that it takes some time to open your bombing hatch.
Take it into account — or it will ruin your bombing run.
If you are forced to hunt smaller ground targets (which we do not recommend) pay attention to your altitude.
Nothing is more infuriating than getting blown up by your own high explosive bomb.
Every type has its own effective fragmentation radius, please take it into account.
And the last thing. The B-29 and the Tu-4 are great picks for the aircraft RB.
But it's not a good idea to take them to Mixed Battles.
It is a real pain in the butt to hunt moving targets on a strategic bomber aircraft (unsurprisingly)
and the enemy AA guns will have a field day shooting at such a slow, bulky target.
Good hunting!
…next up is the second part of the story of the British Churchill,
or how it survived all the efforts to sweep it under the rug…
The first two versions of the Churchill, Mark I and Mark II, were created in 1941
and instantly became outdated. They had great armour
but the two-pounder gun couldn't even leave a scratch on the newest German machines
like the Panzer III and the Panzer IV with their 50-mm front armour.
And even the older German tanks became a problem as they were routinely fortified with additional armour,
which meant that the British gun had to penetrate 60-mm of steel. So… the two-pounder had to go.
That wasn't the only problem with the early Churchills. They weren't exactly reliable or fast.
Having spent some time fighting in the desert,
the British realized that they needed a completely different machine.
The Royal Army wanted an agile and multipurpose heavy tank, preferably with a 75-mm main gun.
And with some explosive shells, please. So, basically, they wanted to create… a British Sherman?
And so the military proposed to assemble heavy A33 Excelsiors instead of the poor Churchill
and rearrange the resources to boost the production of new medium tanks like the Centaur and the Cromwell.
At some point there was even a plan to use a few American factories to produce a line of
the heavy T14's for the Royal Army. But the Churchill wasn't going to go down this easily
In March of 1942 there was a new modification of the tank, the Mark III.
It had a brand new welded turret and a 57-mm gun that could penetrate the armour of any German tank.
Right after that the British created the Churchill Mark IV with a cast turret.
The new tanks weren't just deadlier, the engineers also got rid of a bunch of construction flaws
that plagued the early modifications.
For example, the reworked air-intakes for the cooling system could block a lot more dust.
The Mark III and the Mark IV performed really well in battle,
so the army agreed to continue the production and the development of the Churchills.
It's worth noting that at that point the British didn't yet embrace the "one-tank-do-all" approach.
The Mark III and the Mark IV were outfitted with six-pounders
and were meant to fire only armour-piercing shells — and only at enemy vehicles.
The high-explosive ammunitions and smoke shells were the prerogative of the Churchill Mark V,
which had a 95-mm howitzer for a main gun.
But then the British got to drive the American Shermans that had a 75-mm gun
that was capable of both penetrating armoured targets — and firing high-explosive rounds.
The British tankers loved it so much that they salvaged these guns with its mantlets
from damaged Shermans and installed them on their Churchill Mark IV tanks right in the field.
Closer to the end of the war the latest modification of the tank was the magnificent Mark VII.
It boasted a new body and a turret that had up to 152 mm of armour in the front.
It also got an upgraded suspension and a reworked transmission.
And instead of the six-pounder, the Mark VII came equipped with a British 75-mm gun that was
perfectly compatible with American shells.
So, is this a happy ever after type of story? Well, no.
Sure, the army finally got a reliable tank with decent armour and a good multipurpose gun.
It outlived the American T14 and the British A33 Excelsior. Remember those guys?
The very same that were supposed to bury the Churchill.
But the 75-mm gun couldn't cope with the new German Tigers and Panthers,
and the frame of the tank didn't allow for the installation of bigger guns.
It didn't stop the Churchill from fighting in the Korean War though!
And only then this heavy tank finally went to its long rest.
...now let's speak about the phenomenon of designing aircraft in prison
In the late 30's at the peak of the Stalinist purges the bolsheviks needed a new bomber
that could replace the outdated Tupolev SB.
And who a better man for the job than Andrei Nikolayevich Tupolev himself?
And what a lucky coincidence — he was right there, within the reach of a hand
locked inside the GULAG prison with almost all his crew and brilliant minds like Petlyakov and Myasishchev.
How convenient: now these engineers could earn their way out by creating this new bomber!
The authorities didn't ask for much, after all: it just... had to be an awesome multipurpose plane
that could serve as a high-speed bomber, a dive bomber, a reconnaissance aircraft and, let's see, a heavy fighter.
No big deal. The one who invents it — walks out a free man!
(we're not joking, by the way: that was exactly the task the prisoners were given,
and it was already scaled down — the first version had already been swept under the rug,
because even the party had deemed it impossible).
Petlyakov and Myasishchev presented their projects rather quickly and were soon released.
But Tupolev was destined to spend a couple of years working in the prison construction bureau.
His plane, the "Aircraft 103" that later became the famous Tupolev Tu-2,
was the most ambitious of the three projects, but also the one with the most problems.
It got into the air only at the beginning of 1941.
Around this time Tupolev was released as well
but there was a twist: he didn't get to return to his work at the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute.
Instead, he was sent 2000 kilometers away — to Omsk, to supervise the production of his new plane.
The Tu-2 still had a lot of problems — the chassis weren't working properly,
there were some troubles with the power plant, a few test pilots perished while flying it
In the end only a small batch of these planes made it to the front line.
There the Tu-2 quickly became very popular with the pilots
but it wasn't enough to keep the production going.
The party decided to close the project and repurpose the factory to build fighter planes.
This could mean the end of Tupolev's career as an aircraft designer. And what could he do?
Desperate for options, he did everything he could to persuade the Party
of his project to a special commission. This request reached the ears of Stalin himself.
The Father of Nations agreed — but decided to appoint the head of the new commission himself.
Stalin went with another famous aircraft designer, Nikolai Nikolaevich Polikarpov.
Tupolev was terrified. They knew each other for many years — and their relationship was turbulent at best.
They had their first fight even before the revolution — and that time it cost Tupolev his job.
In mid 20s they were arguing bitterly over a lot of things — and Tupolev lost quite a few of these arguments,
some — in front of their superiors, the top members of the bolshevik party.
Polikarpov wanted to build fighters — Tupolev was a bomber type of guy.
The former was reluctant to build all-metal aircraft, the latter was obsessed with them.
This kind of thing. To make matters worse, Polikarpov remained a religious person and had
balls to wear a baptismal cross in the open — which really pissed a lot of people off.
Naturally, he was constantly being reported upon. In 1929 he was arrested and even sentenced to death
it took a miracle of sorts to set him free:
he got out by designing the famous Polikarpov I-5 from inside his prison cell.
After that, on the verge of another arrest, he created a whole range of legendary Soviet planes,
including the multipurpose Polikarpov R-5,
the Po-2 trainer aircraft and the famous Polikarpov I-16 fighter.
Through this work he earned the sympathy and respect of Stalin himself.
Smooth sailing from there on, right? One would think that after the arrest of Tupolev
and a lot of his associates there would be no more problems for Polikarpov.
Well, there were still a lot of other people who would love to see him fall.
And so some of his projects were taken from him and handed over to other designers
and some of his other projects were shut down permanently.
A devout Christian and a true patriot, Polikarpov was devastated.
This kind of injustice took a heavy toll on him.
By the time he became the head of the special commission, he was in constant pain.
The diagnosis wasn't clear at tbe time, but everybody knew that Polikarpov was at death's door.
Horror-struck, Tupolev realized, that this appointment was a gift from Stalin to Polikarpov.
A way to enact vengeance — after all, Tupolev was the man responsible for a lot of Polikarpov's troubles.
And now it was all down to Polikarpov. Had he approved the project, Tupolev would have been saved.
He'd have got his life back — an apartment in Moscow, a personal car, all the awards,
decorations, money and fame, he could have finally met his wife and son,
who were living in hunger thousands of kilometres away from him.
But if Polikarpov had said that the plane was nothing but a waste of national funds,
Tupolev would have been just as dead as Polikarpov himself.
He'd have been arrested again, this time — with a death sentence coming his way,
and his relatives would have forever been considered a family of a traitor.
Moreover, Polikarpov was developing his own multipurpose bomber, they were rivals once again.
There was no way the disgraced aircraft designer could get away.
But even at death's door Polikarpov didn't let revenge get the best of him. On the contrary,
after some careful examination he praised the design and demanded
that the production of the Tu-2 should be immediately reopened. That wasn't all:
he also suggested a few ways Tupolev could get rid of the existing flaws
and make the design simpler and more efficient.
The renewed Tu-2 went into mass production and basically
became the best Soviet multipurpose two-engined bomber ever created.
Nikolai Nikolaevich Polikarpov returned to Moscow and died of cancer
on the 30th of July 1944 despite the doctors' efforts. He was only 52 years old.
Andrei Nikolaevich Tupolev lived to a great age and became a legend of aviation
by creating a long list of machines that surprise us even today.
But sometimes people saw him, alone, sitting at the grave of Polikarpov
the man he hated for many years... the man who had turned out to be his friend,
his saviour and a decent human being till the very end.
...get ready for the traditional last part of our show: Hotline!
Developers answering questions from the comments!
Strictly speaking it's not the most serious-minded section of the show.
If you want answers to be given with solemn faces, feel free to appeal to the Official War Thunder Forums.
Here we'll have a more… lighthearted discussion of the big questions of War Thunder.
The first question (or, rather, a set of questions) comes from a player called Pekán Igenmester:
"Will the bomber cockpits be finished? Will you implement a free for all gamemode to the game?
Will you add more japanese jets? Are there any easter eggs in the game?"
Hey, buddy! Yes, the cockpits will be finished, no doubt about that.
No, we do not to plan to make a game mode like this
but you can find a lot of custom missions of this sort at live.warthunder.com.
We are still working on the Japanese,
yes, and there are quite a few easter eggs in our game (and we're proud of them).
Vlad Midan writes: "I've noticed a few errors in the French version of the game.
Where can I rectify these errors?"
Hey, Vlad! Please submit a bug report at our official forums.
We take matters like this very seriously — and hats off to you for wanting to help us to make a better game!
Trevino Wieler asks: "Can smoke rounds kill other tanks? Or shoot down planes?"
Yeah, it can be done! It's far from easy though.
And the last, very important message: "Deus Vult"
DEUS VULT. Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da glo... Wait what?
That's it for today but feel free to write your questions in the comments below.
We do read them all, and you might see some of them answered in the next episode!
If you like what we're doing, don't forget to subscribe to our channel! See you on the Shooting Range!
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