In the first episode of this series we talked about one of the oldest, and most well-known,
fake tanks you can find.
Although quite infamous the KV-6 has lived more as a meme vehicle compared to other fakes
which have genuinely led to a surprising amount of misinformation.
Today’s topic, however, has stayed just outside of common knowledge enough to truly
confuse and mislead some to believe it was a real design.
With it being German this is only fed more by the uninformed nature of many who claim
to be tank experts but in reality only know some basic facts about WW2 tanks.
I don’t say this to make fun of anyone in particular because everyone starts somewhere.
I only say it to explain why I think it has confused some.
So join me today as we look at the story of the E-79
We interrupt today's video for a very special announcement.
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Now back to the video.
The tank we are looking at today is most commonly known as the E-79.
Originating from the 1999 game Panzerfront for the original PlayStation and the Sega
Dreamcast.
Although the game itself is probably worthy of an entire dedicated video we’ll have
to come back to that another time as today we are just looking at its most well known
tank.
To start with we can look over the specs of this machine which thankfully the game itself
provides us.
The VK6600(h) Panzerkampfwagen E-79 is a heavy tank armed with the 128mm Pak43 L55 cannon
as well as an MG34 hull mounted machine gun.
Measuring 10.4 meters long, 3.7 meters wide, and a little over 2.3 meters tall this vehicle
weighs in at 61 tons with a top speed of 35kph.
For reference this puts the tank around the size of the Tiger II although a bit shorter.
It is also unclear if this length is factoring in the gun barrel as well but considering
the proportions seem to be about the same as the Tiger II I think we can safely assume
it is.
The armor of this tank on the other hand is a different story.
The turret front has 200mms of armor sloped at 15 degrees with 100mms on the side sloped
at 38 degrees and the rear 80mm plate sloped at 57 degrees.
This gives the tank a distinct rounded appearance as if you took a Tiger II turret and squashed
it.
Moving on to the hull we find the hull front having 180mms at 58 degrees which likely applies
to the lower plate as well.
The sides and rear are 80mms thick being sloped at 14 and 32 degrees respectively.
All in all this tank looks fairly similar to most mid to late war German designs especially
those of the E series which it was more than likely based on.
This is obviously aside from the turret which only slightly resembles Tiger IIs turret.
Now with the general design of the tank out of the way we can talk a bit about the tanks
performance in the game before we wrap up with the fake history it has since inherited.
I do want to take a moment here to recommend you try out Panzer Front for yourself if,
like me, you were either born the same year it came out or maybe missed it for another
reason.
The controls are a bit strange but for being a 22 year old game it is a remarkably good
tank simulator.
With the exception of the fake tanks you play as the models and overall gameplay really
still hold up fairly well today.
You can relatively easily emulate the game but since I don’t want to risk linking the
stuff for it below I’ll post them in my Discord which you can join using the link
in the description.
Anyways back to the topic at hand.
Ingame the E-79 is probably one of the better tanks to play with it being fairly slow but
very well armored.
This coupled with a powerful cannon make it easily capable of dealing with the enemies
you will face.
I didn’t play it in too many missions but unlike the other tanks you aren’t as susceptible
to penetrating hits making it much easier.
Despite the E-79 being overall a good vehicle I definitely had the most fun playing with
the Schnell Jagdpanzer with its jet turbines, but that's a subject for another day.
Now we get to the part of the video where we discuss how this tank went from a pixelated
vehicle in a game to something people actually think existed.
It took a bit of digging but with the help of the Internet Archive I was able to recover
an old page which could be one of the origin points of the fake history surrounding this
tank.
Here we also find one of the other common names the E-79 is known as that being Schwarzwolf,
or black wolf.
According to this page the tank is loosely based on the Panther F prototypes and the
Schmalturm albeit the turret was elongated to fit a larger 100mm gun.
This armament is said to be capable of 140mms of penetration at 2000 meters as well as having
an early fire control system and stabilizer.
Things only get more absurd as it goes on to claim the tank would have infra-red detection
systems, a rangefinder, and a new armor coating known as “Brimstone” among some other
equally ridiculous technologies.
Brimstone would apparently deflect incoming rounds making the tank all but invulnerable
to attacks.
Powering this beast would be taken care of by the Maybach HL234, a favorite for these
late war projects.
This entire design process was supposedly done independently by the Waffen SS and conveniently
all documents were later destroyed just as it was ready for a mockup in March of 45.
Only some scraps were reportedly found by the allies who were quote “astonished at
the range of technologies”.
This and likely other posts like it have caused some of the more gullible or more frankly,
stupid people who come across them to actively try to justify them for inclusion in games
such as War Thunder and World of Tanks.
All this is made even more amusing and somewhat sad when you consider that the description
doesn't even get the details of the tank correct.
Not only did the German military never use a 100mm cannon for their tanks but the E-79
itself is supposed to have a 128mm.
The other advanced technologies slapped onto it just go to make the vehicle even more absurd
with the vast majority of them barely existing if they existed at all in world war 2.
Still despite all this some people do believe it or will go on to even make variants of
a nonexistent vehicle.
This brings us to the strangely named Panzerjägerwagen E-79-128.
Already the name gives this away as a fake with Panzerjagerwagen not being a real term
used to designate vehicles.
The creator of this design claims it to be a “historical extrapolation” despite that
extrapolation not actually relating to any historical vehicle.
According to them it would have entered combat sometime in 1948 had the war continued and
not much else is said about the specifics of its design.
Overall the E-79 is a great example of what can happen when you leave fake vehicles in
the hands of people who have questionable motivations.
As I reiterate in just about every video in this series I have absolutely nothing wrong
with fake tanks in games.
However, when those fake tanks are picked up by those who truly believe some of the
German wonder weapon nonsense it quickly spreads like a cancer.
Although this doesn’t make alternate history or fantasy designs bad it certainly can cause
them to be disliked by more serious historians.
Unfortunately there's very little we can do to stop those who cause the misleading information
but we can at the very least share the real story of them and stop more people from perpetuating
the lie.
So if you ever run into someone trying to tell you that the E-79 or any of the tanks
we cover in this series are real, be sure to send them a link to it and with some luck
you can change their mind.
Thank you as always for watching and liking the video if you enjoyed it.
Huge shoutout to my channel members who support the channel each month.
I know we’ve been doing a lot of these Fake Tank videos lately and some of you may miss
the other series but those will be coming back soon.
These just tend to be easier to complete within the week so I can keep consistent weekly videos
for you.
Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss the next time I post a video in whichever series
you like most and I will see you then.