Puckapunyal Tank Museum

So Wargaming.net, the company behind World of Tanks made a last minute announcement they would be holding a meet & greet at the Royal Australian Armoured Corps Tank Museum within Puckapunyal Army Base in Victoria. They encouraged players to come along and meet members of the South East Asian server team. As a bonus they would be holding a contest for people to post their 10 best photos from the day in a blog.

Welcome to my effort.

To keep in line with the contest rules there are only 10 photos here but there were many more tanks to be seen on the day. I've kept it mostly to pictures of in game tanks with a couple of interesting vehicles thrown in.

The day started fine and got progressively hotter. It took a while for people to get through security at the base so we were encouraged to wander around and then meet for a briefing by the WG team at 11 AM. Ordinarily the museum is shut on Sundays but they opened specially for us and had one of the base sporting clubs set up with a fundraiser sausage sizzle. In a generous move the WG guys offered to cover the costs so there was free BBQ and drinks for the day.

The museum is quite large with a series of sheds in a large square. While there are a large number of tanks many are variants on a specific model, for example there were 6 Centurions spanning different variants including a training vehicle, a bridge layer and two recovery versions.

Starting in the first shed were a mix of tanks and light vehicles, the in game tanks being the Tier 2 Vickers Mk II, Tier 5 Crusader and Tier 6 Cromwell. There was also a Covenanter bridge layer and Churchill Mk VIII Crocodile flamethrower tank present but no version of those you would see in game. There was supposed to be a Churchill Mk VII in the collection but it might have been outside in the base grounds as I didn't spot it in the museum area.

Vickers Mk II

The Vickers defies it's in game appearance by being surprisingly large in real life but you can see it's paper thin armour.

Crusader

 The Crusader was another that comes across as much smaller in game.

Cromwell with Covenanter bridge layer in background

There was also a Bren gun carrier, a tracked truck and the Australian Sentinel tank plus Dingo and Rover scout cars.

The next area had the Tier 3 M3 Stuart and five variants of the Tier 4 Matilda II (infantry support, bulldozer, close support and 2 special Australian variants - the Frog flamethrower tank and the Hedgehog with a rack of 7 spigot mortars).

Matilda II Hedgehog with spigot mortar

Scarily this Hedgehog could launch a salvo of 6 mortars loaded with 16kg of high explosive each (the last round in the 5th tube wouldn't fire in salvo because it needed to first have the turret traversed or it would hit the radio antenna). It never saw service, but that has never stopped Wargaming from introducing a tank so someone definitely needs to start a petition to get this crazy tank in game.

Moving along to the next shed it started with an American M3A5 (a later version of the Tier 4 M3 Lee seen in game) and the British M3 Grant variant. There was also an Australian Yeramba 25 pounder SPG built on the M3 chassis and an M3 beach recovery vehicle.

M3A5

This was followed by the Tier 5 M4 Sherman and an M4A2.

M4A2 with original M4 in background

It then moved through a group of M113 Armoured Personnel Carrier variants to a series of Centurions but unfortunately neither of the in game Mk 1 and Mk 7/1 versions were present. There was a Mk 1 but it was a recovery vehicle conversion. The Mk V was still a good example.

 

The last tanks here were the Tier 5 M24 Chaffee and the tank designed as it's successor, the M41 Walker Bulldog

M24 Chaffee

If WG ever increases the American Light tree the M41 should definitely see action as the Tier 6 with it's slightly upgraded gun and a faster top speed.


A mix of Communist tanks was in the centre of the museum with the stand outs being a Russian T-72, Chinese Type 69 and one of the tanks most requested to be returned to the WoT gift shop, everyone's favourite premium, the Type 59. A lot of people were lining up to get photos in front of this one.

Type 59 - bring it back!

 
The next shed was a strange mix, starting with some German anti tanks guns (the 37 mm Pak 36, the 50mm Pak 38 and one of the great WWII anti tank guns the 88mm Flak 36). This was followed by the Tier 3 Type 97 Chi Ha (a Japanese tank that shows up in the Chinese tree) and it's little brother the Type 97 Te-Ke tankette.

Type 97 Chi Ha & Type 97 Te-Ke

Finally there was a Ferret scout car armed with twin ENTAC missile launchers. A big derp upgrade compared to it's standard .30 Browning machine gun

Ferret with twin ENTAC's

 
The last shed had a couple of more modern tanks including a Leopard (the modern main battle tank not the WWII light scout) and the Swedish S Tank along with a display of various technical items - engine cutaways, various gun shells and a Milan missile launcher. There was also a scattering of modern vehicles and individual guns around the open areas between the sheds however none were game related.

The day finished with people wandering in for some BBQ then sitting around chatting about the game. There was a good mix of various clan members (yay TOG) and some interesting discussions with WG staff about issues with clan wars and upcoming plans for E-sports, SupaNova and PAX.

During the initial briefing in the morning the WG team told everyone there would be a prize draw, it ended up being some WoT branded dog tags (I got one of these), a few mouse mats and two branded sweatshirts (apparently staff exclusives). Everyone then went back in the draw for 3 people to go to dinner with the WG crew back in Melbourne.
As an added bonus attendees were asked to write down their details to score 2500 gold added to their account with further freebies to be mailed out.

Finally everyone remaining lined up for a group photo for the WoT SEA Facebook page.

So great weather, big armoured vehicles, free food and swag. All in all a great day.

Thanks to the Wargaming crew for making it happen and thanks to the museum staff who took the time out to chat about many of the displayed vehicles on what should have been a day off.