The T-55AM ATGM reloads as fast as a maxed out crew regardless of crew skills and expert/ace


Credit to this person for noticing this.

Whenever I play the T-55AM tanks, I always preferred to use the ATGMs for their great post-pen and penetration combined (especially after the chemical round buffs). But I also noticed something was off, because it literally felt like it reloads faster than normal. Turns out, it was not a psuedo effect at all.

2025-04-30 19_56_00-War Thunder (DirectX 12, 64bit)
Here’s my current reload rate.



As you can see, I have the crew experted aswell as having maxed out weapon reloading and leadership.

For the test, I added weapon reloading to my user sight. Here’s the closest result I could snapshot from a video:


The ATGM just barely came out of the barrel, but the reload is already at 7.5 seconds, literally reloading as fast as an ace crew.

I did another test where I put my T-55AM-1 into a crew slot with low crew skills and no expert/ace crew.
2025-04-30 20_04_04-War Thunder (DirectX 12, 64bit)


The reload resulted in the exact same reload rate:

I have no idea if this is intentional or not, but I thought it should be known to others as it gives the ATGM another clear edge before the crew slot is aced and has maxed out leadership + weapon reloading.

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All cannon launched ATGM if it’s not autoloaded currently have a specific and fixed reload time, it applies to the M551 Sheridan, XM-803, MBT-70 and KPz-70 or any other cannon launched ATGM that is not autoloaded like T-90M’s.

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Except the T-55AM’s ATGM doesn’t show any difference on the statcard unlike the other tanks which even suffer reload penalties just for using the ATGM, which is really strange.

I don’t think we are getting any changes for a reload penalty, don’t get me wrong but the 9M117 is incredible at short ranges.

Regarding the reload penalty, the use of the 9M117 in old Soviet vehicles is poorly documented specially at the cannon-fired conpared to the MGM-51 Shillelagh.

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I really don’t mind it, it actually makes the T-55AMs really good in general due to that reason. But it definitely requires more clarification on the statcard atleast if not more research properly done on it atleast.

I’ll never understand why we have such absurd discrepencies in atgm loading across vehicles.

M60A2 loads HE rather quickly, but ATGMs very slow.
BMP-3 loads HE rather quickly, but ATGMs very slow.
BMD-4 loads HE and ATGms very quickly.
T-55AM loads ATGMs rather quickly, normal rounds slightly slower.

I’m aware of the loading mechanim differences in a lot of these tanks, but the numbers are truly arbitrary. I can’t imagine how manual loaders could have such absurd differences in atgm load time vs HE for the M60a2 and BMP-3. Much the same as the T55AMs have a faster load time for what should be a heavier projectile.

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