Two vehicles arrived on Supertest last Thursday, including the first vehicle from the upcoming branch of Japanese Tank Destroyers:

Ho-Ri 3

The Ho-Ri 3 will join the Supertest first and then will take its place as a Tier X vehicle in the new Japanese tank destroyer branch.

It’s armed with a naval gun. The feature of such an armament is its AP shells that serve as both standard and special ammunition with high armor penetration parameters. The damage per shot is 700 HP. The standard shell has 305 mm of penetration, while the special shell penetrates 360 mm. The accuracy is 0.34 m, and the aiming time is 2.5 s. The reload time is 15.3 s.

Effective frontal armor of the hull and superstructure reaches 300 mm, and the durability is 2,000 hit points. The gun depression angle is -7 degrees. The vehicle’s top speed is 35 km/h, while its specific power is 15.2 h.p./t with a view range of 400 m.

The Ho-Ri 3 has a huge silhouette, which means it has a very low concealment coefficient. This limits the situations when you can stay unseen after an ambush on the enemies.. However, thanks to its good frontal armor and gun, it can play both at medium and short distances, providing support to allied heavies. Also, keep the following in mind: Its low speed makes it unable to react quickly to changes in battle and switch flanks, so you need to plan ahead your routes. Due to weakly armored lower glacis, you need to hide it using the terrain and objects on the map.

In-game previews courtesy of WoT Express.

As mentioned earlier, this vehicle is the first of the upcoming Japanese Tank Destroyer branch. The other vehicles from this branch will likely arrive on Supertest soon — stay tuned for more!

UPDATE (9 Feb 2023): See this post for news regarding the next two vehicles in the branch: Ho-Ri 2 and Ho-Ri 1.

LKpz.70 K

The Tier X German LKpz.70 K light tank is equipped with hydropneumatic suspension with the feature of hull inclination. The standard gun depression angle is -10 degrees, but it’s increased to -17 degrees(!) thanks to this. The hull inclination mode is activated automatically.

The LKpz.70 K is armed with a 105 mm gun with 360 HP of damage per shot. Its standard shell penetrates 248 mm of armor, while its special shell penetrates 276 mm. Its aiming time is 2.5 s, the accuracy is 0.3 m, and the reload time is 11 s. Its view range is 390 m. The frontal armor reaches 50 mm on the hull and turret. The vehicle’s top speed is 70 km/h, and it has a specific power of 39.8 h.p./t. Its durability is 1,500 hit points.

The combined usage of the good gun depression angles as a result of the hydropneumatic suspension and the uninhabited compact turret allows the tank to fire from behind cover while hiding the hull completely, making it an unpleasant target.