In late March 1994, the skies witnessed the maiden flight of Europe’s new symbol of military might: the Eurofighter Typhoon. Aircraft engineering companies from the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, and Spain joined their efforts at the last stage of the Cold War to create a contemporary combat aircraft that would fit their requirements. They couldn’t pick any of the available foreign offers for reasons of pricing, quality, or politics, so the only remaining thing was to design their own machine.
In the last decade of the Cold War, the military shifted its attention to ‘multirole combat vehicles’ that could be used against both ground vehicles and aircraft. Most of the projects, although there weren’t too many of them to begin with, eventually got discarded, but some machines managed to see the light of day. The Italian OTO Melara company, for instance, created a new system with the sophisticated name of ‘OTO main anti-aircraft tank for intercept and combat’, better known as the ‘OTOMATIC’.
Should someone have a competition for the most unusual aircraft created during World War 2, the Dornier 335 Pfeil, which means ‘arrow’, could surely fight for one of the top places. With an engine and a propeller in both front and rear, this machine was surely exotic to say the least. The layout had actually been used before, during the First World War, but it never became popular due to a number of unsolvable issues. Among those issues were the high vibration of the long drive shaft connecting the pushing propeller and the low effectiveness of the tail surfaces.
In our previous videos, we talked about the arsenals of the most popular jet aircraft, but many props have already received their own custom loadouts, too! Today we’d like to go back to the lower ranks and talk about one very famous ground-attack aircraft, the legendary Il-2 ‘Flying Tank’.
The Type 95 Ro-Go heavy tank was designed at the end of the multi-turret period in the history of Japanese tanks. Its story can be traced to the Type 91, a predecessor made by Mitsubishi in the early 1930s. With a mass of only 18 tons, it would be more of a medium tank by the standards of Western Europe and the Soviet Union. Its main caliber was a 70-mm cannon, though, which in Japan meant that the tank was a heavy one.
Self-propelled anti-air vehicles, or SPAAs for short, are the main tool against hostile aircraft in combined battles. Modern SPAAs are equipped with high-tech guidance systems, which makes them extremely dangerous for aerial targets. Today we’d like to discuss how they work and how you can use them.
In 1934, the French Air Force issued a design requirement for a fighter that was going to replace the aging Dewoitine D.500 and Loire 46 aircraft. The future plane needed to have an engine with a thrust between 800 and 1000 horsepower, a mass of up to 2.5 tons, and a speed of at least 450 km/h.
The Enter the Serpent event is almost over now, and many players have already received its main reward, a British MBT designated the FV4030/3, or simply the Shir-2. This vehicle was developed to be exported to Iran but never saw mass production. Despite the fact that it’s based on the Chieftain tank, this vehicle’s design is much closer to the next British MBT, the Challenger. Many solutions tried on the Shir-2 were later used in other vehicles.