The Stingray was advertised with a 535/550 HP engine and 67/71 km/h top speed ever since its first exhibition at AUSA 1984, both should have the same engine.
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I’ve been trying to look into early Stingray development but it’s hard to find sources from those first few years. Could you share the sources you have? (unless they’re classified, you never know aroundn here)
From what I’ve seen it seems reasonable that the initial Stingray prototype (and possibly the second one) would’ve had that 535hp / 67km/h figure initially, while the 550hp / 71km/h capability would’ve been prototyped sometime before the Thai order.
Before I just assumed this was a change done to meet Thai requests, but if you have sources saying it was initially intended to meet those figures this might have been the design goal from the start, which would mean that it’s likely at least one of the prototypes was rated at that performance before.
But then I would still hope for the US Stingray to visually represent one of the two prototypes.
One of the two initial Stingray prototypes. It’s likely the first Stingray hull prototype, here seen with an unusual flat drivers hatch design. This photo might have been taken during trials in Thailand (note the camo is the same as the turret Thailand got to test with their M41A3) but that is unconfirmed.It can be identified as a prototype by the mirrors and the mounting points on the LFP.
The flat drivers hatch seems to be a result of editing the image to let an open hatch appear closed. The hatch design remained unchanged during prototype development.
Details marked
It seems to be mounting the second stingray turret, which can be seen by the smoke launcher and machine gun positions being the same as the production models.
The same prototype during earlier testing. Here it is mounting a more standard drivers hatch design similar to that of the final tank.This tank can again be identified as a prototype by the mirrors and mounting points on the LFP.
The turret it is mounting seems to be the first completed turret, the same that was initially mounted to an M551 hull. This turret can be identified by the smoke launchers being mounted lower and further forward than any following turrets. While it’s not mounting a machine gun here and seems to be missing the mount for it before the commanders hatch, it actually has a gun mount positioned closer to the center of the turret which can be seen on images of it mounted to the M551 chassis.
Another difference is that the prototyles lack the attachment points for the gun mount, which are placed between the mounting points on the UFP on the Thai variant.
But even for the Thai version Gaijin made a mistake when adding the gun mount to the model, as it’s actively blocking the driver from opening his hatch
On the real tank it is most commonly simply detached when not in use. But in rare cases it is mounted, it is folded forward to not obstruct the drivers hatch
Examples
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Technically that’s a Belgian-Finnish vehicle, the first trials were in Belgium and it was built by Cockerill in Belgium and then exported to Finland for trials.
And I also agree that Benelux should have been more unique, the suggestions are already there.
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After finding another image of this prototype from a different angle, it seems like the flat hatch may be a result of editing in some way. This would also explain why the tank seems to use the normal hatch in older as well as newer images of the same tank.
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they added another 2A72 btw