Presently, the T-51a is listed in the wiki as a reward for the 8th Season of the Battle Pass, but for some reason, I vividly recalled having taken it to battle before.
This was in the old days before the Coastal-Bluewater split, where I was trying my damnest to climb up the tech tree to get those coveted early destroyers. I remember getting a relatively large Japanese torpedo boat with the only forward armament being four torpedoes and the only guns it had were some punchy triple or quad mount at the back of the ship I had to broadside dangerously to use. I remember the hilarity of one match where those guns that I had such difficulty using proved unexpectedly competent as the hit to my bridge jammed the rudder and sent my stock boat into a spin, and every time I did a revolution, an enemy would float on by to make it easy for me to pelt their sides with the guns, sinking them in quick order.
When I was returning to the coastal with the goal of spading everything there recently, I noticed that the subject of that memory was nowhere to be seen. There’s the T-51b but that one has forward guns and two torpedoes, so that wasn’t it. The closest I could find was the T-51a…which, as mentioned at the start, a Battle Pass vehicle. It is impossible for me to confuse my experience with this because the T-51a was paid Battle Pass, something I don’t have, and there was never any BP stage where you get to test drive the thing, even if I was confused enough to think it’s a tech tree unlock. And even more awkwardly, there is no evidence of the T-51a in my Service Records.
So this leaves me with an impression that the vehicle was removed from the tech tree and was redistributed as a Battle Pass reward. Has this ever happened before to any other vehicles? Or am I just seriously misremembering something?