While many people (me included) expect the introduction of the ground war with a great deal of hope, there are few issues with it mentioned in some posts.
The first one is the distances involved - jumping into a plane and flying 20 miles just to get your bellybutton suddenly blown off is fun. Jumping into a tank to get the same treatment is not. With an average speed of 20 miles per hour it would take lots of time just to get anywhere. I am not even talking about the mountains - the tanks would have to drive around them!
Besides AH is a plane simulation. Even if there were some people willing to try driving a tank, they would probably not do that on-line lest to become an object of ridicule of their high-flying mates.
I am sure the bright fellows at HTC will solve those problems for us sooner or later, I just thought to give them an idea that may add some to the game withing it's current framework.
Before the WWII the russians were much more advanced in the area of airborne assault then it is known. They had about a million of highly trained paratroopers, advanced gigantic sailplanes, etc., etc.
They planned to use all that stuff to capture the Europe. Unfortunately (for them), Hitler realized what they intended to do and attacked first. So all those airborne troops were used (and mostly lost) as a regular infantry in the defensive campaigns. They did have a couple of airborne opperations - in the winter 1941-42 using their advanced training and equipment allowed them to drop troops from 300 feet at night. That gave birth to the stupid rumour that russians just threw the regular infantryman out of the low flying airplanes hoping the deep snow would break their fall...
Anyway, one of the developments, which I've seen personally in the documentary movie was the following:
Wings/tailplane/rudder were temporarily attached to the light tank. The tank then was flown off behind a tow plane, like a regular heavy glider. They probably user detacheable undercarriage for that. They could have used their wheel/track tanks with tracks taken off, but I know for sure they tried the maneuver with the tracks on.
During the flight the gunner used the turret rotation and cannon inclination to control elevator/rudder.
At the drop zone the tank was released and glided to landing. Just before touchdown the driver spun the tracks as fast as possible.
Thay all happened in 1936-39 years. I think such a contraption would be a perfect addition to the AH plane set, if we take an artistic license and imagine those experiments continued and advanced into 1942.
Imagine starting in a tank towed behind a B25. The distance and mountains are not a problem anymore!
Just over an enemy field the tank drops from an altitude of, say 30,000 feet. Assume the HTC guys allow as much leeway in the flight model of that tank as they currently do for a B17. Then that tank will be able to perform quite a few dives, loops, barell rolls and 5-G turns on the way down, before settling gently on the surface and attacking those pesky ACKs and ammo dumps. Imagine going HO in a 15-tonn machine with an engine and radiator safely behind, as if that mattered, and a 75 mm cannon (2500_fps) for those 190.
That should attract quite a few pilots to try their luck in the armored forces.
miko--
