Huge +1 from me as a researchable tech tree tank after the Csaba.
In fact, I myself was literally just in the process of writing a suggestion for this very tank, but you beat me to it!
I suppose my contribution can now be in the form of extra supporting information regarding this tank from my research.
Firstly, I will start by saying this suggestion contains a lot of mistakes and inaccuracies, as it seems to have used unreliable sources like Wikipedia.
- The 40 mm 37M gun of this tank was NOT a Bofors gun, nor was it Bofors-derived. It was a Hungarian developed gun specifically designed for this tank. I believe this confusion stems from the fact that Hungary had another 40 mm gun, that being the 40 mm 36M gun, which was a licence-built 40 mm Bofors L/60 AA gun. Also, the Toldi IIA’s main gun was a modification of the V-4’s 40 mm 37M gun, called the 40 mm 37/42M gun, and that new gun was modified to be compatible with the 40 mm Bofors ammunition used by the AA gun. People must have conflated these two completely unrelated guns and then unreliable sources just parroted the mistake all over the internet. I suggest fixing this and removing it from the title too. The title could read “Straussler V-4/40 - First Hungarian Tank” instead.
- The first and last pictures are not even showing the right vehicle. They are showing the early Straussler V-4 from 1937, while the suggestion is about the later Straussler V-4/40 from 1938. The differences between the 1937 Straussler V-4 and 1938 Straussler V-4/40 are an enlarged turret, a new coaxial twin machine gun in the turret, a cupola, the lack of the circular radio antenna seen on the top of the turret (R/5 radio’s antenna, this was replaced by an R/5a radio with a conventional antenna), a fourth crew member (placed in the turret), and a “beak” protruding from the front of the hull where the upper and lower plates join. You mentioned an additional MG being placed in the hull; that’s not the case, both the old and new versions of the V-4 had that machine gun there.
- Where you said “the front of the hull was heavily modified” and “featured a completely redesigned hull”, I don’t think that’s true since the only change seems to be the aforementioned “beak” being added, which isn’t a huge change. Although the sentence “Compared with its predecessor, it featured a completely redesigned hull, a new hexagonal turret, a more powerful eight-cylinder engine built by Manfréd Weiss, and a 40 mm Bofors-derived cannon.” may have been copied from Wikipedia and was probably referring to the changes between the V-3 and V-4, thus it isn’t relevant here.
- The L-60 was not exactly adopted under licence as the 38M Toldi - the Toldi was a Hungarian further development based on the L-60, and was a new vehicle.
- This is a bit of a nitpick, but it’s not “Manfréd Weiss”, it is Weiss Manfréd (shortened WM, not MW). This is the name of the biggest Hungarian industrial conglomerate of the era, and it was named after a person… in Hungarian, a person’s name is written surname first and forename second, while it is the other way around in English, so many places just switch the name treating it like the name of an individual rather than the name of a company.
- Your specifications are copied from Wikipedia, which wrote an article lumping together 3 different tanks, the V-3, V-4, and V-4/40, so the specification section is a mess combining stats from all three. I’ll try and provide some more accurate specifications for the V-4/40:
Weight: ~12 t
Dimensions: Uncertain, but 3.64 x 2.31 x 2.01 m seems too small and is almost certainly the dimensions of the V-3, and is associated with it. 5.00 x 2.70 x 2.75 m is another set of dimensions I’ve found, which seems more realistic, but it isn’t clear whether it’s describing the V-4 or V-4/40. Either way, the V-4/40 wasn’t much bigger than the V-4.
Crew: 4
Hull armour: 23 mm / 16 mm / 10 mm (other sources give 26 / 13 / 9 mm)
Turret armour: 13 mm / 10 mm / 10 mm (front, sides, rear)
For a detailed 3D armour model you can look at the armour of the V-4/40 in World of Tanks here: World of Tanks - tanks.gg (although I don’t know how trustworthy it is or whether they used accurate sources)
Main armament: 40 mm 37M Hungarian tank cannon
Secondary armament 2 × 8 mm Gebauer 34/37M twin machine gun (2 installations, 4 gun barrels)
Engine: Weiss Manfréd 7.24 L V8 OHC (180 hp)
Top speed: 40 km/h (tracks, probably ideal conditions like on roads)
I’ve seen the top speed given as 46, 45, 40, 35, and 32 km/h, but 40 km/h seems to be the most reliable figure. It could drive on wheels as well to go faster (if you remove the tracks) and was amphibious, capable of floating and propelling itself to independently cross rivers (if you attach separate pontoons to the sides), although I doubt these features would be modelled in-game.
Interestingly, this tank seems to be the most Hungarian of all Hungarian tanks, and might even be 100% Hungarian (in terms of not using any foreign components). The main gun, machine guns, radio, engine, I believe even the transmission, suspension, hull, turret, amphibious equipment, and the entire design/development as a whole are all domestic Hungarian designs, with nothing being foreign. Evidently, it wasn’t even inspired by a foreign design (I mean just look at it, it doesn’t resemble anything else), so the entire concept is unique. This all makes sense though, since it was designed by Hungarian inventor and engineer Nicholas/Miklós Straussler, who designed it around his own patented design for a suspension that allows a vehicle to drive on both wheels and tracks, and he even integrated another of his inventions, the amphibious system, into the design. On top of this, Hungary was politically and economically isolated during this period because of the harsh punitive restrictions imposed on Hungary in the Treaty of Trianon following the end of WW1, which meant Hungary couldn’t just import stuff, especially since they weren’t even allowed to have or develop tanks, and so the whole program was a secret… you can’t exactly be importing foreign tank components while hiding your tank program! The unique conditions at the time resulted in practically everything about the tank being domestic, making this the most uniquely Hungarian tank. And to think many people believe this tank is German because in WoT it was added to the German tree and the surname “Straussler” is Germanic… ironic.
But anyway, thank you for making this (long overdue) suggestion! I’m hoping we see it in the game soon, because the Hungarian subtree really needs something better than the Csaba to introduce players, and the Italian tech tree as a whole lacks a decent rank I starter light tank, discouraging many new players from the entire Italian tree! It has the Csaba and L3/33 CC (both very weak and neither are actual light tanks), AB 41 and AS 42 (again, cars and armed with 20 mms), L6/40 (mediocre, only 2 crew, only 20 mm gun), M11/39 (the main gun is in the hull, effectively turretless, mediocre), and the 47/32 L40 (slow turretless open-topped tank destroyer). This is all from 1.0-1.3. Even if you go to the top of rank I, up to 2.0, you still won’t find an actual light tank with a 37+ mm cannon. The V-4/40 would fix that by being the first, would help provide new players with something decent and easier to play, and would represent the most unique Hungarian tank design. It would also have the highest penetration of all rank I Italian vehicles (excluding the 100 mm HEAT and HESH artillery shells of the Lancia). A very nice addition that I’m hoping comes soon!
