I recently posted some quick & dirty tank concepts on
my profiles thread, but in case anyone didn't see them there, I thought I'd post the relevant profiles here, as well. The following images are only mockup concepts, not finished profiles. I made them for my own reference and hadn't intended to post them anywhere, but I know there's a number of tank buffs on the forum and I thought they might be interested in the concepts.
There isn't a real backstory to these. I have a few Excel files that I update pretty regularly where I have outlined my "ideal" Table of Organization & Equipment (TOE) if I had my pick of WWII equipment. It's just a little exercise that I use to help me evaluate the relative merits and disadvantages of equipment in WWII. It also helps to understand the problem of things such as "why did Germany use so many different types of trucks?"
Anyway, to permit the interoperation of different types of equipment, I do allow myself a limited amount of equipment swapping for comparable armament, engines, radios, etc. So, here are some examples of the designs I've gone with.
The first is an IS-2 variant. It's actually pretty standard. I've extended the turret rear somewhat to give more room for ammunition and operation of the radio. I've also eliminated the machine gun at the turret rear, replaced the cupola, and added an M2 .50cal machine gun for the commander. I'd keep the original main gun, suspension, engine, etc. I'm really of the opinion that the IS-2 was one of the best tank designs of WWII. The more I study it in comparison to its contemporaries, the more I like it. Armed with the 122mm D-25T howitzer, a single battalion of this variant would serve as an integral part of late war infantry divisions.
The second is a more drastic modification. This involves the replacement of the 122mm gun with the German 88mm KwK 43 from the King Tiger. This would give the tank greater armor penetration, greater accuracy, greater rate of fire, and a greater ammunition load. This would be at the cost of barrel life and much worse high explosive content. This variant would essentially be a late-war medium/heavy tank making up nearly half the tanks in a 1945 tank division. Why bother with this variant rather than a standard IS-2? Well, a couple reasons. First is that it's more likely to engage in tank vs. tank combat compared to an infantry support tank. The second reason is that a tank division operates cut off from supplies for up to days at a time. As a result, 28 rounds is really insufficient for the deep penetration mission. Swapping out the gun for the 8.8cm KwK 43 should alleviate some of this without a reduction in anti-tank firepower.
Cheers,
Logan