I would love to see the armed Willys Jeep in-game, but I fear that realistically the .50cal will not be able to traverse a lot, since there’s not much room in the back for the “gunner” to rotate in wide arcs, as can be seen in this Short Video:
This limitation will make the Willys hard to use in this configuration in War Thunder. In the Russian GAZ truck, this issue is not as problematic since you have access to a big surface flatbed to rotate around the tripod. Perhaps the .50cal Jeep could work better as a “quick deployment” squad in Enlisted instead.
But we do have other Willys Jeeps eligible for War Thunder, where limited gun traverse can be negated by a more powerful AT gun that does not need for a lot of traverse if used in ambush positions, like the 37mm Jeep variant:
Or this twin-axle Willys Jeep with rear-facing gun:
I considered the traverse (I didn’t change the rotation figure because I didn’t want to arbitrarily make up a number and I didn’t want to cap it at set angles.) That’s right that it would be more limited but I believe it would be pretty similar to aircraft defensive turrets. Those gunners are able to sit in tight fixed positions and still operate their guns to the effective limits of their traverse, sometimes up to 90+ degrees of horizontal traverse depending on the mounting. I think it would be very similar to the GAZ-AA (DshK)'s gun traverse just with the gunner rotating and then stretching to maneuver the gun instead of just sliding around. Perhaps it would be useful for War Thunder tank crewmembers to practice yoga in order to increase their flexibility
Don’t tell the MB I said this, but I think the M38A1 is cuter looking. Having a tiny mobile recoilless rifle for the US tech tree would be really fun. Also, quite a few nations fielded recoilless rifles mounted on the type and its variations as well, all of which would be really cool to see in game!
Fun fact, the IDF never actually used the M38A1C (106). What you see here are actually domestic modifications of the CJ-5, which is the civilian version of the M38A1. Buying these civilian vehicles and then mounting the recoilless rifles themselves was cheaper than actually going out and buying proper M38A1C (106)s. They were called CJ-5 Tolar.
There’s actually already a suggestion for this very interesting domestic modification.
Dual Bazooka Armored(Yes this is a real thing, despite the box you can see the faded picture in the background, confirming it and there are some pictures out there related to a Bazooka Willys Jeep.
That is interesting! Sorry I got that wrong, the source I got the photo from captioned it as the M38A1C so I assumed that was the vehicle. But it being a civilian machine modified/re-modified into an armed military vehicle seems to be a common theme among IDF vehicle procurements
