The summer of 1943 was hot in more ways than one. Near Kursk, one of the largest battles of the Second World War was about to begin. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers, along with thousands of armored vehicles and aircraft, were concentrated on both sides of the front. The Wehrmacht was preparing Operation Citadel, hoping to regain the strategic initiative after its defeat at Stalingrad. The fields of the Belgorod and Oryol regions became a vast staging ground, where thousands of fighting vehicles started their engines in the early morning haze.
Some combat vehicles get a special kind of attention from War Thunder players, and sometimes even earn their own nicknames, although not always flattering ones. The French AML-90 wheeled light tank and its South African cousin, the Eland 90, are perfect examples. Today, we’re taking both of them for a spin to see why players have grown so fond of these little machines.
The Soko J-22 Orao (Yugoslavia) and the IAR-93 Vultur (Romania) were twin-engine, subsonic ground-attack and reconnaissance aircraft. Jointly developed in the 1970s, they represented the industrial and military independence of both nations from the Soviet bloc; Yugoslavia and Romania signed an agreement to share costs and engineering under the codename “Project YuRom” (Yugoslavia-Romania) with the shared objective of creating a light tactical fighter capable of replacing Soviet ground-attack aircraft and operating from short or improvised dirt runways.
In the Pacific War, it quickly became apparent after the initial deployments of the Japanese Chi-Ha tanks that they lacked sufficient armor and firepower to contend with the American M4 Shermans and M3 Lee/Grant. Consequently, development of successors began as early as 1940; one of these was the Type 5 Chi-Ri (五式中戦車 チリ / Medium Tank Type 5 Chi-Ri). Parallel to this, the Ho-Ri, intended to serve as a heavy tank destroyer, was designed based on the Type Chi-Ri. However, due to a shortage of raw materials, which were allocated to the Type 4 Chi-To rather than the Chi-Ri, it never entered serial production; only a single unfinished Chi-Ri prototype was built, while the Ho-Ri project was abandoned entirely, with only a scale model ever being constructed.
Throughout the Second World War, the Wehrmacht captured large numbers of Soviet T-34s on the Eastern front, many of which were repaired and returned to service, under the designation Panzerkampfwagen 747(r). While most of these examples remained largely unchanged apart from the addition of German radios and paint schemes, etc, a fair number were converted into various vehicles capable of fulfilling roles far beyond that of a medium tank.
Among the many combat helicopters ever built, the Soviet Mi-24 has always stood out for its unusual concept of a "flying infantry fighting vehicle.” The Mil Design Bureau created a helicopter capable of carrying troops while also providing fire support to forces on the ground. In practice, however, the troop compartment was rarely used. In Afghanistan, during the Iran-Iraq War, and in other conflicts, the Mi-24 was far more often employed as an attack helicopter.
While we wait for the vehicles of the next update, this is a perfect time to dig into the far corners of the hangar and take out an old War Thunder veteran that recently got a reason to make a comeback. Today we’re looking at a fairly rare and often overlooked American carrier-based fighter, the F9F-8, better known by its rather fitting name, Cougar. Let’s take off!
Anti-submarine warfare began soon after the first armed submarines appeared. In WW1, the main weapons were depth charges and mines. Then the first active sonars began to appear, along with a new type of weapon: anti-submarine mortars, with its prime example being the British Hedgehog. These mortars would later be improved into rocket launchers, which had considerably greater range and could launch much larger explosive charges. Bofors would develop one of the first such launchers: the 375 mm M/50 anti-submarine rocket launcher. Adopted by many countries and installed on numerous ships, it revolutionized close-range anti-submarine warfare and is still in use today.
The Mi-35M is one of the helicopters produced by the Mil Design Bureau, borrowing the design from the legendary Mi-24 “Hind” with a number of positive changes. Although the “Crocodile” has lost two hardpoints of its armament, it has been replaced with advanced electronics, excellent optics, and new external weapons. How does the successor to the legendary Mi-24 perform in combat? Read the article to find out!
April 2026's Monthly Decal collection included one from China: the “Super Over-Limit” (CN: 超级超限) sign. This article will introduce some relevant knowledge about this decal to all the readers. The content of the article includes the decal’s meaning, function, common situations, and so on. I will also show some methods and wagons used for transporting the vehicles through the whole of China.
