Here's a film of a base assault I did against A64 (Orange arena) last night in a T34. I had previously killed the ords and de-acked the base with planes, and came back in a T34 loaded for bear.
First things first, I had to kill the VH, so I did it from the inside, where I could shoot HE into the inside of the VH and still be able to respond to any GVs upping within at most one T34-gun reload time. Luckily no GVs upped before I had the VH down, and was then welcome to 15 minutes of aircraft ownage.
I had some manned acks respawn and I got tracked after only 7 or 8 kills, but I heartily thank Sourmash, who brought me a jeep load of supplies right up to the frikken base. <S> Sourmash! Anyhow with the track fixed it was back to business.
I know I was sloppy on letting planes get off the ground. I've done better before, allowing very few planes on other occasions, but hey there were a lot of guys trying to up - I couldn't get them all.
Eventually the VH wasn't smoking anymore and I left my aircraft killing spot and went over to the VH to be read for when it respawned. I'd like to have been able to shoot down the VH again, but unfortunately the tanks started upping right after it respawned, and I had my hands full.
I've done this enough that I know what I can do from short range behind a tank. A T34 will kill a Panzer with a shot in the butt with AP or HVAP. The T34 will usually not kill another T34 this way. A T34 shot in the butt will just kill the engine, leaving the gun to shoot back at you. So you have to shoot a T34 in the turret. In fact, a T34 in this position has to shoot *any* tank over than a Panzer in the turret in order to have any chance of survival. A T34 with HVAP round will usually knock out a Tiger or Sherman turret from the back, often from the side, and only rarely or sometimes from the front. Fortunately Tiger turrets take forever to turn.
And not just any shot will take the T34 turret out. You have to shoot it in the right spot to reliably knock out the T34 turret with your T34 gun from the front. I'll leave those who don't know that spot to figure it out, but in the film you'll notice that I pretty reliably knock out the turrets of a good handful of T34s, while they fail to knock out my turret time and time again, until in the end a guy gets a shot at my turret from the side and knocks it out, leading to my demise. Still, it took a manned ack and three T34s to finally get me killed. Final tally was 26 kills, of which 3 or 4 were undoubtedly proxies and the majority of the rest were aircraft kills, with a handful of Panzer kills for good measure.
With the new T34/85, the body count will be much higher, because all those T34s I shot the turrets out on in this film just towered out and I got no kill on them. With the new 85mm gun and a higher rate of fire, those same T34s would be worm food.
The highlight for me personally of this film was at round 9:04 into the film when I shoot a HVAP round at a P40 that had already taken off and was passing overhead. I got some lead on him with my tank gun and fired and hit him in the tail as he was probably 75-100 feet off the ground, killing him. I also blew a couple of IL-2s and a Hurricane IID out of the sky with my tank gun, which is pretty normal because most guys strafe my tanks from too low an angle and I'm pretty good at getting my turret around and pointed at them, and then they fly right into my shells.
Anyhow, here's the film:
T34 base assaultps: notice right after I had the VH dead a pair of B-17s came down to land at the field. I actually got stopped and hit the B-17 in the freaking cockpit with an HE round right before he towered out, but he towered out and I didn't get a kill. That's some BS man. You can clearly see the HE round hit the bomber right in the face. Planes just don't survive HE rounds to the face in this game. I know the answer to this one, which is that on his computer he towered out before the round hit, and on my computer I hit him before he towered out, and the server gave him the benefit of the doubt. That's BS though. ;-)
