00:00Hello everybody and today we are going to be taking a look at the main prize for the Normandy
00:041944 event, the T-86 amphibious tank. Now I should get one thing out of the way, this was not involved
00:11in Normandy in 1944, indeed this was not involved in any amphibious operation in World War II because
00:18this was a prototype tank. There were two prototypes, the T-86 which moves through water
00:24via its tracks, and the T-86 E1 which uses a propeller or two propellers, but that was not
00:31particularly very successful so Gaijin has gone for the initial T-86 variant. And this is basically
00:37an amphibious tank based on the M18 Hellcat, so obviously that vehicle is very fast and so is
00:45this one, because despite being 2.7 tons heavier it still has a top speed of 45 miles per hour on
00:516 gears going forward, and a reverse speed of 13.4 miles per hour on 2 gears going backwards.
00:56So it is technically slower than the M18, about 5 miles per hour slower in forward and just under
01:023 miles per hour in reverse, but it's still a pretty speedy tank. And you can also see that it is a very
01:08large tank. We'll show that off in the testing round in a minute, but this is an absolutely huge
01:15target, which is not particularly good because it has very bad armor. So if we go to the protection
01:21analysis for a second, and we go to the Kali OP, not for the rockets, not for the guns, but for its
01:27coaxial machine gun. And at 500 meters, there is a chance of penetrating this armor. If we go down to
01:34about 300 meters, and yeah, your bullets are going to go straight through this. Now they aren't going to do
01:40a huge amount of damage because they are ultimately light machine gun bullets, but you can absolutely
01:45penetrate and do damage to the crew and internals of the vehicle. And of course, because they're
01:50machine guns, you can fire a whole bunch of them. And like I say, that's just with a coaxial machine
01:56gun, fire at it with a regular shell. And yeah, you're going to do a whole bunch of damage. Even a
02:03regular HE shell from a 75 millimeter gun is going to do a huge amount of damage to this vehicle,
02:10just knock it out in one hit probably. And as you can see in the internals, the crew is still five,
02:15but they are spaced out a whole bunch more than on the regular M18. And we still have the 76 millimeter
02:20gun. And interestingly, it comes with a vertical gun stabilizer, which I don't think the regular M18
02:27does. So that is obviously going to help when firing on the move and at sea. So we're going to
02:33take this out for a quick test drive, just to show off how it does. So here we are in the testing
02:37ground. And as you can see, it is an absolutely huge tank. And there is the driver view. One
02:43thing you might have noticed pretty quickly, while this does technically have a very good
02:47top speed of 45 miles per hour, it is very sluggish at accelerating to that top speed.
02:53So with the Hellcat, I'd usually be north of 30 miles per hour by the time I hit that bridge.
02:58And I'd be able to get to the top speed of 50 miles per hour long before I reach that hill
03:04over there. With this, it seems like I need the entire run up to that hill to get to our top
03:09speed of 45 miles per hour. You can also see the vertical stabilizer is doing some work.
03:15Obviously, as we get to a higher speed, it is less and less effective, but at lower speeds,
03:21it does seem to do very well. We're just going to drive up to that King Tiger just to show you
03:26the size of this vehicle. Because yeah, it is absolutely huge, which I know I've already said,
03:32but yeah, this is going to be an absolutely huge prominent target in game. We're just
03:39about to reach 40 miles an hour. But yeah, as you can see, like the Hellcat, I would be at 50 miles
03:47per hour by this point. And yeah, if we include the gunner, well, the commander, we are actually
03:53taller than the Tiger II. If we don't include the commander, we're about the same height.
04:00Like I say, this is an absolutely huge target. And as we saw, most of it is not particularly
04:06well armoured. The turret is basically the most armoured bit about it, and that only comes up to
04:10about 20-25 millimetres. So yeah, this is going to be an absolutely ludicrously easy tank to knock
04:17out. So we've just gone back to the beginning, because we're going to quickly test this in the
04:22water. Now, as I mentioned earlier, there was technically a second variant of this, the T86E1,
04:28which uses propellers to get through the water. This just uses its tracks, and that was considered
04:34the better way of doing it, or the propellers just didn't provide enough benefit, because they were
04:38a lot heavier, so they weighed the tank down even more. As you can see, we've got some deployable bits
04:45on the tank here. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be solid, so this should, in theory, prevent us from
04:52firing straight back, but no, we can just put the barrel straight through it. It doesn't block our sights
04:57either. So yeah, that's going to need fixing at some point. You can see the rudders moving about there
05:07as well. There's the driver's view in the water as well. We'll go back to the gunner's view, and as you
05:16can see, it is a remarkably stable gun platform. There's no movement here, and yeah, admittedly,
05:22that is because we are moving quite slowly, but still, we are on water, and if we fire the gun,
05:28yeah, so it makes us wobble about a little bit, but for the most part, it seems to stay generally on
05:33target. So yeah, this is going to be a very effective amphibious tank. I don't think it'll
05:41be quite as effective on land as the regular Hellcat, just because it's got less acceleration,
05:46and its armor is even worse, but I think it will do decent enough. I could easily see it going down
05:53to 5.7, possibly. I mean, we'll have to see how Gaijin feels about that, gameplay stats and the like.
05:59And so that is the T-86, and yeah, this seems to be like it's going to be a very decent amphibious
06:05tank. Hopefully, we can get some more tanks like in the future. Of course, there is the T-87, which
06:10is basically a very similar version of this, with a short hull and a 105mm howitzer.
06:17Pritin also had a very similar looking tank, or very large tank, in the medium tank AT-1,
06:23so hopefully we can get something like that as well in the future, as an event vehicle,
06:26or even as a regular vehicle. And yeah, I could see this being a very popular vehicle for people
06:31to unlock. I might unlock it, it really depends if I've got the time, I just haven't really
06:35had much time to go on War Thunder lately, so I possibly won't be going for it, but I'll
06:40have to see how things pan out in the future. So anyway, I hope you've enjoyed this video,
06:43hopefully you'll join me for future ones. I've been Torino, and I'll see you next time.
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