LVT(A)(4) (ZiS-2)
(4)_(ZiS-2).jpg)
Contents
Description
The LVT(A)(4) (ZiS-2) is a rank II Chinese tank destroyer with a battle rating of 2.3 (AB/RB/SB). It was introduced in Update 1.91 "Night Vision".
General info
Survivability and armour
Its large and spacious hull might seem hard to knock out all of its crew, but that's only true when you are getting shot from the side. From your side, there is a huge empty area between the driving compartment and the fighting compartment that will absorb any shell, regardless of their explosive fillers. However an experienced player will know to shoot at these two compartments and avoid the empty space. From the front, the spacious hull does not help to keep the crew safe as a penetrating shell will travel through the empty space and hit any crew at the back, so you could die sooner than you expected. Avoid tanks with solid shots, for example British/Swedish tanks.
Armour type:
- Rolled homogeneous armour
- Cast homogeneous armour (Gun mantlet, Machine gun shield)
| Armour | Front (Slope angle°) | Sides | Rear | Roof |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hull |
12.7 mm (31°) Front plate |
6.35 mm (11-51°) Top |
6.35 mm (0-62°) | 6.35 mm |
| Turret |
38 mm (10°) Turret front |
25 mm | 25 mm | N/A |
Notes:
- Suspension wheels and tracks are 15 mm thick.
- Front hull has flat armour area where driver & co-driver sits.
Mobility
| Game Mode | Max Speed (km/h) | Weight (tons) | Engine power (horsepower) | Power-to-weight ratio (hp/ton) | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Forward | Reverse | Stock | Upgraded | Stock | Upgraded | ||
| Arcade | 44 | 6 | 18.3 | 355 | 477 | 19.4 | 26.07 |
| Realistic | 40 | 5 | 221 | 250 | 12.08 | 13.66 | |
The LVT's mobility is adequate. On hard surfaces it easily reaches its top speed of around 38 km/h. On soft surfaces it needs more time to accelerate, and the top speed is lowered. The hull traverse is great, allowing you to quickly change direction, however a downside is that when you turn the hull to aim, you might over-turn and swing the gun past the target, increasing the aiming time which can be fatal.
Due to its big and tall tracks, the LVT can drive over some obstacles that are too tall for normal-sized tanks.
Modifications and economy
| Mobility | Protection | Firepower | ||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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|
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Armaments
Main armament
| 57 mm ZIS-2 | Turret rotation speed (°/s) | Reloading rate (seconds) | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mode | Capacity | Vertical | Horizontal | Stabilizer | Stock | Upgraded | Full | Expert | Aced | Stock | Full | Expert | Aced |
| Arcade | 76 | -5°/+15° | ±25° | N/A | 10.6 | 14.6 | 17.8 | 19.6 | 20.9 | 8.7 | 7.7 | 7.1 | 6.7 |
| Realistic | 7.1 | 8.4 | 10.2 | 11.3 | 12.0 | ||||||||
Ammunition
| Penetration statistics | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ammunition | Type of warhead |
Penetration @ 0° Angle of Attack (mm) | |||||
| 10 m | 100 m | 500 m | 1,000 m | 1,500 m | 2,000 m | ||
| BR-271 | APHEBC | 145 | 143 | 132 | 119 | 108 | 98 |
| BR-271K | APHE | 145 | 143 | 132 | 119 | 108 | 98 |
| O-271 | HE | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Shell details | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ammunition | Type of warhead |
Velocity (m/s) |
Projectile Mass (kg) |
Fuse delay (m) |
Fuse sensitivity (mm) |
Explosive Mass (TNT equivalent) (g) |
Normalisation at 30° from horizontal |
Ricochet | ||
| 0% | 50% | 100% | ||||||||
| BR-271 | APHEBC | 990 | 3.14 | 1.2 | 9.0 | 21.56 | +4.0° | 48° | 63° | 71° |
| BR-271K | APHE | 990 | 3.14 | 1.2 | 9.0 | 27.72 | -1.0° | 47° | 60° | 65° |
| O-271 | HE | 700 | 3.72 | 0.4 | 0.01 | 220 | +0.0° | 79° | 80° | 81° |
Ammo racks
(4)ZIS-2.png)
| Full ammo |
1st rack empty |
2nd rack empty |
3rd rack empty |
4th rack empty |
5th rack empty |
6th rack empty |
Visual discrepancy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 76 | 71 (+5) | 65 (+11) | 49 (+27) | 33 (+43) | 17 (+59) | 1 (+75) | No |
Machine guns
| 7.62 mm M1919A4 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mount | Capacity (Belt) | Fire rate | Vertical | Horizontal |
| Hull | 3,000 (250) | 500 | -10°/+20° | ±15° |
Usage in battles
LVT(A)(4) ZiS-2 is a fragile tank with a strong bite. The main gun is a very powerful Soviet ZiS-2 that have no problem penetrating through the hardest of enemies at its BR. Being such a large tank it has amazing manoeuvrability that works on most terrain. Its high profile makes it a easy target for enemies to spot from afar and behind objects, fences and hills. The LVT(A)(4)'s thin hull armour makes it vulnerable to machine gun and autocannon fire. This makes Self Propelled Anti-Air vehicles and vehicles with 20 mm automatic cannons a lethal enemy, but that is not all the worries, large calibre guns with HEAT and HE can with ease penetrate and cause detonation to the soft armour of the LVT(A)(4).
LVT(A)(4) ZiS-2 has decent speed and is manoeuvrable enough to handle close combat with even while lacking a full 360° traversable turret. But to best counter the most dangerous of enemies is to utilize the long gun to its advantage.
You should memorise certain spots on different maps to make the most out of your amazing firepower. Pick spots that:
- Overlook a key passageway/street
- Are not too close or too far from the frontline
- Have hard cover/slopes around
- Are mostly flat (as your gun depression is bad and gun is mounted very high)
- Have some vegetation, if possible
This way you can sit at a comfortable spot, stay away from most dangers and target opponents that appear. The rather flat trajectory of your gun does not require as much elevation when shooting at distant targets which is beginner friendly, however the shell velocity is not fast, so you have to lead more than you think for moving targets. Because this is a sniper's tactic, if you are to bush up for better concealment, it is recommended to stack all bushes onto the upper front of the LVT. This is because you will mostly face targets from one direction only (your front) so you just have to cover up the front. The lower glacis does not need as much bush as it will usually get blocked by vegetations on the ground, acting as natural camouflage.
Enemies worth noting:
M4A3 (105): this low-tier Sherman is one tough tank to destroy, but luckily your LVT is one of the few that can destroy it with ease (most of the time). Within 500 m, your default shell can easily penetrate its frontal/side armour with an appropriate angle. You can also penetrate its turret between the edge of the gun mantlet and the gun barrel. A penetrating shell is very likely to knock out most of its crew. However, when it's angling, hull down, or >500 m away, either aim really carefully at the turret or wait until it reveals other weakspots (eg. side). Note that you will be hull-broken easily by its HEAT so avoid getting hit by it.
Pz.II/Flakpanzer 38: these German 20 mm cannons are a huge threat to the LVT since they can easily tear through the thin armour even at longer distances. Their high firerate also means that they can quickly knock out the LVT's crew or disable multiple critical components like the huge transmission and engine. But these vehicles are fairly easy to one-shot with your powerful 57 mm cannon.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Very powerful cannon for its BR: 145 mm penetration can effectively go through any tank frontally, even in an uptier; upon penetration the 20 g TNT does a great job at finishing off most, if not all the crew
- Good speed and manoeuvrability
- Five crew members with huge space between them increases survivability, especially when most guns it faces have small calibre and little explosive filler (eg. the Stuarts' 37 mm)
- Decent horizontal gun traverse of 50° for a turretless design
- Well-angled turret can lead to some shells bouncing
- Is amphibious, meaning it can launch surprise attacks using rivers
Cons:
- Huge and tall hull makes it easy to be seen/shot at
- Very thin armour, can be penetrated by any cannon/heavy MG
- Easily hull broken by large calibre HEAT, such as the Chi-Ha's 57 mm HEAT
- Below-average 5° gun depression plus the tall hull makes it quite difficult to fight in hilly terrain
- Very slow reverse speed can prevent it from retreating back to cover in time
- The crew in the open topped turret are very close together, meaning they can be taken out in a single shot or by aircraft
- Turretless, meaning it cannot respond to flankers in time
- Poor zoom of the gunsight makes it hard to see and aim at distant targets
History
The LVT series of tracked amphibious vehicles originated from a pre-war civilian design, the Alligator hurricane rescue vehicle which had been designed by Donald Roebling (1908-1959) in 1935. An article on a further development of this vehicle in 1937 caught the attention of the US Marine Corps, but initially the proposal of militarising the Alligator met resistance both from the US Navy, who felt conventional landing craft could do the job just as well, and from Roebling himself, who disliked the idea of his vehicle being used for military purposes. The outbreak of war in Europe persuaded Roebling into building it anyway, and by May of 1940 he had completed a militarised prototype, which was tested in November 1940 and subsequently approved for production.
Even before the first prototype had been tested, Roebling had started designing a turret-equipped armed version of his LVT, intended for providing fire support for landings. Originally the design languished, but in June of 1941 the USMC recommended the development of a fire support version of the LVT. Development of this variant was slow, as the entire LVT had to be redesigned: light armour was added to the hull and a 37 mm armed turret similar to that of the M3 Stuart light tank was mounted on top, resulting in the initial fire support variant, the LVT(A)(1).
Combat experience with the LVT(A)(1) soon showed that the 37 mm gun was insufficient for fire support purposes, so the original M3 Stuart turret was replaced by that of a 75 mm Howitzer Motor Carriage M8, creating the LVT(A)(4) variant, of which 1890 were built. Of these, several dozen were delivered to Nationalist China under the Lend-Lease Agreement.
In KMT service, the LVT(A)(4) ended up being used both against the Japanese forces during World War II, as well as against the PLA during the ensuing civil war. Most of them eventually fell into PLA hands. The lack of western supplies meant that ammo soon became sparse for the 75 mm M3 Howitzer gun mounted by the LVT(A)(4); to keep them useful as well as to bolster the number of available armoured vehicles in the PLA inventory, the LVT(A)(4)s were locally converted to either accept the 37 mm M6 tank gun - essentially retrofitting them to LVT(A)(1) status - or the 57 mm ZiS-2 anti-tank gun - identical to the gun used on the ZiS-30 tank destroyer, and technically similar to the ZiS-4 gun used on both the T-34-57 and the SU-57B.
The haphazard way in which these conversions took place, as well as the lack of official documents on them, make it unclear how many LVT(A)(4)s were converted. The lack of available spares for their automotive components makes it unlikely that they were used for long, and it is likely they were withdrawn from frontline use as soon as Soviet deliveries of tanks and armoured vehicles started in the early 1950s.
Media
Excellent additions to the article would be video guides, screenshots from the game, and photos.
See also
- LVT(A)(4) ZIS-2 (USA) - Identical gift vehicle in US tree.
External links
Paste links to sources and external resources, such as:
- topic on the official game forum;
- other literature.
| Food Machinery Corporation (FMC) | |
|---|---|
| Amphibious AFVs | LVT(A)(1) · LVT(A)(4) |
| IFVs | M3 Bradley · M3A3 Bradley |
| China tank destroyers | |
|---|---|
| PLA | |
| Gun vehicles | PLZ83 · PLZ83-130 · PTZ89 |
| Missile vehicles | AFT09 |
| ROC | |
| Missile vehicles | CM25 |
| USA | |
| Gun vehicles | ␗M8 HMC · LVT(A)(4) (ZiS-2) · ␗M10 GMC · ␗M36 GMC |
| Missile vehicles | ␗M113A1 (TOW) |
| USSR | |
| Gun vehicles | ␗SU-76M · ␗ISU-152 · ␗ISU-122 · ␗SU-100 |
