We all know the Merkava series is famous for it’s strong armor, right?
Well, apparently Gaijin didn’t hear about that. Merkavas in WT have no armor, to the point that a 30 mm APDS shell can penatreate a slightly-angled Merkava Mk.4 LFP at 500 meters.
All Merkavas suffer from that, but the Mk.3s suffer the most - the entirety of their hull composite armor doesn’t exist in-game, their turret armor, which IRL was the best back then (1989), is vulnerable even to M111 (105mm DM23) and the side armor is like half of it’s real-life power. At 11.3 BR, the Merkava Mk.3 is one of the least mobile MBTs, with a mobilty worse than most - so, basically, a Challenger with no armor at all. The gun itself is not bad, but nothing special at 11.3, and for some stupid reason it only got -7 degrees of gun depression, so forget about hull-down sniping (it’s not like your turret armor will stop anything, but at least it is not completley unprotected like your hull is).
The fact that Gaijin belives the Merkava Mk.4’s hull armor (and turret as well) cannot stop M111, while IRL it can stop high-penatrating modern APFSDS rounds, is just ridiculous.
Merkava Mk.1 and 2 were the worst nightmare of a Syrian armored forces soldier, back in 1983 in Lebanon. A senior Syrian officer once said that “Crews were intentionally avoiding clashes with Israeli tanks, wherever the new ones were told to be there. No one knew what to do against that threat, and eventually we started retreating after the first sign of this new machine coming. Kinetick shells were fired, the best Soviet rounds, nothing worked. We thought it was some new American technology, invulnerable to our T-72s, but they weren’t”.
As for the Mk.3, listen now to an IDF officer, who had lost his Mk.3 tank in Lebanon in 2006: “The tanks… were truly wonderful, yes. A hundred times the armor had saved us from death, yet in the 100th time came the one weapon in Lebanon that could penatrate it - the Kornet. We were hit… two or three of those Russian missiles hit our UFP, turret and roof. Except the loader, who had saly died from his injuries a day later, we all survived - though our tank did not”.
As for the kinetic protection of the Mk.4, may I quote an officer in MANTAK, the Israeli administration of armored vehicles’ design: “We made a gamble there. We didn’t know wether the armor is effective or not, untill the expriments in 2009 - and by now I feel free to say, that we now hold a tank which it’s frontal armor can protect it’s crew from any modern threat, either kinetic or chemical”.
So tell me please. me dear fellows, WHAT IS GOING ON WITH GAIJIN???
Thank you. Have a great day.