When this thing would be driving around to the dozens, wrecking M10, M44 and whatnot with 72mm pen autofire, you’d understand. Or not, since most US tanks enjoy cal50 rooftop guns.

Did you forget these exist?
Also you don’t need .50’s to slaughter these things, Literally any 7mm does the job too since half the crew is fully exposed.
The Pz III has 137mm of pen at 3.3. It must be unstoppable.
Real, I mean everyone knows that best tanks under Rank V are Dicker Max, Sturer Emil and IKV-103 because of high pen. Penetration is the only thing that matters in this game as we are all well aware.
Alr so let’s put the cards on the table
M42 is %100 more mobile than the M19A1 (better hp per Ton and better top speed but worse reverse speed, however it is still respectable)
M42 has better turret placement, because M19A1’s needs to peek it’s entire body before it can start to shoot, if M19 is shot in the driver or powerplant it is dead because it can’t move or fire back.
M42 has more ammo but worse deppresion.
So M19A1 is very easy to kill when it tries to peak and it can’t flank as well, so it could be very reasonavly 4.0 / 4.3
M42 could move up
IF it is possible, M42 recieves a he-vt (since it is a later SPAA with different 40mils maybe it was issued some of these shells at one point) and sent to above the skink or preferably replace the skink.
IF not just send the M42 to 4.3 to act as a ratty SPAA.


Also add the 7.62mm M60 for M42
AND ALSO, both SPAA suck as AA compared to their rivals, that slow firerate (and randomized) is no joke, sometime you do have moments where both cannons fire on turns and the firerate roll is pretty beneficial so you end with like 500RPM, sometimes you end with both cannons firing at the same time and with a bad firerate roll.
Very unpredictable and low firerate for AA duties, that’s why T77 went to 4.0 next to them and why stuff like the ostwind feels better to use despite worse ballistics
M42 could be moved up if they ever model the computing site in some capacity so that its actually proficient at killing planes.
Also worth noting the M19 has this small edge over the M42: Like the Chaffee, it should have dual driver controls. In practice, this would only be useful every now and then, since most shots that kill the driver will probably kill the co-driver too, or knock out the engine or transmission.
Most US tanks since the M5 Stuart had this features besides the Sherman. Even the upcoming M7 medium, which I’m sure will be overlooked.
post will get deleted use the BR forum
don’t forget about the crusader mk.1 at 3.0 with 72MMs of pen, or, the ZIS-12 with 57mms of pen at 3.0, or- or, better yet, any US rank 1 tank with a 37mm
As I said, there are many of these tank hunting SPAAs around this BR bracket. But US based models are the most common ones. Its a major nation and these vehicles have been spammed out to more tech trees. Also chinese players love to bring theirs, crusaders, ZSU’s, DCA’s at 5.0 BR is one step higher, but Frenchies love to zap Panzers with almost 100mm (lol) pen autocannos. Its a bit crazy. Especially when you consider German SPAA pen values and its BRs. Just now I had a match where 5 of 5 of my kills were enemy SPAAs. There really seems to be an issue with SPAA vs. tank gameplay. Players usually play whats most op and here we go.
There is a reason that so many players chose to play SPAAs in a ground role, when its against German Panzer teams. They seem just more efficient to play. Their pen is totally sufficient to driveby axis standard tanks. They usually move faster than real tanks, gun handling superfast, autoguns are more useful than single shot cannons and their armor layout ignores Germany’s greatest strength: Panzergranate shells. They never fuse. Since German tanks have just small calibre MGs, there are no downsides.
All this without considering far too low BRs and spawn costs for tank zapping SPAA’s. 74mm pen is too much, when standard turret armor is 50mm frontally and the side…well even more sad. You can’t play slow tanks with slow early WW2 turrets and 6 sec reload against these brrrrp or bam bam bam SPAAs when they easily pen tanka.
4.0 isnt even issue omg some nations like france and sweden have the same 40mm gun at like 2.3 with pen of pretty much average tank but autocanon
It is not a good AA and your average US main is not experienced enough that AA tanks can be AT tanks
But true, it should move to 4.7 at least
The “issue” is people expecting SPAAG to never engage tanks or to be utterly defenseless against tanks and then whining when their expectations get violently shattered.
Anyone who’s played SPAAG seriously in WT outside of the lowest-tier MG trucks knows that in order to be remotely effective against planes, you need to move where the CAS likes to congregate. Problem is, moving outside your own spawn pretty much ensures you will run into enemy tanks at some point, either punishing an unaware flanking party or they are homing in on your tracer stream thinking “monke SEE free kill.”
Thus, given the reality of how SPAAG actually are played, I do not think tankbusting AA are “overpowered,” nor do they need any nerfs. Rather, the ability to bitch and complain about them is what needs “nerfing” instead. People have been crying about AA shredding their tanks for over a decade, and despite dozens of vehicle-targeted nerfs, they crying has not ceased. Therefore, I think it’s long overdue to say “fuck you people,” undo all the nerfs, and let them cry until they empty their tear glands. If the game clearly cannot make people not use AA for going Rambo on tanks, embrace the behavior instead.
The 40mm Bofors cannons are entirely missing APDS rounds on both the L/60 and L/70 varieties. I can only imagine the torrent of idiot tears if stuff such as the M42 Dusters, the Lvkv 42, the AMX-13 DCA-40, the Leo 40/70, and other assorted postwar 40mm platforms such as the York and Swedish York got said bullets.
If we want to make SPAAG “not insufferably annoying to fight against,” the answer is not to nerf or castrate their ammo supplies - the answer is to remove the ability to melt cannon barrels entirely from the game so when they cannot frontally pen you, they can’t stop you from obliterating them.
Ohhhh, what a treat!
Where the computer for it located! how does it work! You have any photos or videos of it?
Its a two vehicle setup, as far as I know.
Vs WW2 props its as useful as any AA gun of its class. You can shot stuff down with it. If you prefer rapid firing SPAAs, you can easily use the cal50 quad one.
The average Thodin post is them getting killed by something in game and then coming to the forums to complain about how said thing is broken op.
Also real ball knowers remember the pre-nerf wirbelwind and ostwind… those were far worse to deal with.
No that was a scrapped concept early on.
I found the treat was the “M38 Computing Sight”


A nice video of one being unboxed
It is modelled but not functional sadly
Indeed, people were whining about how “OP” those two were prior to the DeMarre standardization and APCR nerfs to utter worthlessness back when I started playing tanks.
The whining itself has not changed, only the target of said whining has.
Therefore, I have taken on a philosophy of “Let Them Eat Sabot” and undo all the autocannon neutering all at once, then let the BRs fall where they may. Let the whiners empty their tear glands while being completely and utterly helpless until they cry themselves to sleep, grow a set, and load HE to shoot the AAs with.
At some point the game has to stop coddling the lowest common denominator or else there will be nothing left that’s really functional save for Russian APHE, it seems.
I remember when the Duster was 6.7, if only Gaijin fixed alternating fire.
It’s called the M38 Computing Sight. A lead setter used course and speed knobs to track the movement of the aircraft. A system of gears and shafts translated the data into horizontal and vertical movement of an aiming rack on the gunners sight, which acted as the aiming reference. At least, that’s my understanding of it.

This field manual details how it works.
The M19 seems to use a conceptually similar system, albeit a different model.
In-game, I’d imagine this would mostly work like the arcade lead indicator, but slightly handicapped. Since the targeting data comes from manual input, it could have an initial delay upon designating the target to track. How precise the input data is could also depend on the rangefind singkill.
This system should have some benefit for gameplay, but I think it makes sense for 40-50s tech to not affording the same level of precision in leading as more modern systems already in-game do.
I made a topic for this a while ago. The squad leader (in-game commander) input the target’s estimated speed, angle of flight, and angle of approach which the computer then moved both the reticle for the gun pointer (in-game gunner) to the correct deflection. The gun pointer then just had to aim the reticle directly over the target once it was within range – which was eyeballed. Both the speed sights (which both the M19A1 and the M42 use in-game) and the computing sights had a fixed range of 900 yards with no way to change it.
The logic behind not giving it a way to adjust range is because it simply wouldn’t have mattered. The effective range of the gun was considered to be between 500 yards (short effective range) and 1,500 yards (near maximum effective range). The average drop for their projectiles was only 3.4 mils every 100 yards, or in other words a difference of 34 mils between 500 yards and 1,500 yards – which is basically nothing.
The M19 had basically the same system. The difference is that the M19 used the M13 or M13A1 system, which used a singular arrow for the target’s heading rather than having a more precise system which was the improvement the M42 had with the M38 system that accounted separately for the target’s angle and heading. The difference between the earlier M13 and M13A1 sight, is that the latter had a singular reflex sight for the gunner, the M24C (which the M42 also used); while the former had separate M23 azimuth and M24 elevation sights that BOTH the gun pointer (in-game gunner) and squad leader (in-game commander) had to aim.



