Hello everyone,best of to react before this gets out of hand 🙂 In the morning, I published an article “VK7201 – fake or not“, where I wrote about the history of the VK7201. I expected some more outrage, but instead, some people just took it.

Without further ado: I made the thing up.

Well, not totally everything – I mean, the general part about the Lowe tank is true, even the Spielberger’s book exists, but there was never any such a thing as “Feldhaubitze auf Infanterieunterstützungfahrgestell” – I made the name “Failowe” up too.

Why did I do it? Because generally speaking, if you cite reputable sources and publish it as “serious material”, noone will doublecheck the sources and very few people will question it. And that’s what I believe Yuri Pasholok did with this design. He simply pulled it out his ass (god knows why, there were many more historical and interesting vehicles) and when he got called on his bullshit, he started squirming. Neither the Panzer Tracts nor Spielberger’s book on special tank variants mention anything about a rear-turreted 120ton supertank with 200+ mm frontal armor and 150mm L/38 (what was considered for the Lowe was the L/40). It’s a fake and Wargaming should feel shame for peddling this crap.

Of course, as any good fake, it has SOME part of the truth. The vehicle is obviously modelled as a Lowe variant (turret) by Krupp (internally, it’s referred to in WG as VK7201(K) ), the model comes from the early “Leichter Lowe” impressions (VK7001), but as the name suggest, 7201 means “72 tons, 1st design” – so it doesn’t even make sense to name a 120 ton tank like that. Could have such a design existed in the mind of some Krupp engineer? Sure, but the fact it could have existed doesn’t mean it did. I can understand why Wargaming filled some slots with “less-than-real” tanks such as the E50M – simply because it was needed and no other vehicle was found to fit, but making the vehicles randomly up? Uh… no.

Anyway, that’s the end of the rant. I will keep on calling the VK7201 a Failowe – it’s fitting, a fake name for a fake tank.