For the next few days, I was having quite a time out on the battlefield.
Everywhere I went, I left a number of charred wrecks that were once tanks.
One day, I got another surprise:
Back at Prokhorovka, I sighted an unknown light tank that was painted bluish-gray with a target-like logo on it.
Since it attempted to fire upon me, failing to do any damage in the process, I simply took aim and tore it to shreds.
I wanted to conduct a more thorough study of it, but there was just too much action going on, so I kept on battling.
During the battle, I was also charged by three more unknown light tanks.
These were painted in Soviet colors, but I never saw anything like them in my handbook before.
Regardless, I took aim and fired at the trio.
BOOM!
Two of them were destroyed in the blast, but one of them merely had its tracks broken.
Almost immediately, its crew jumped out to repair the tracks.
I didn't feel like using my cannon, and I wanted that thing alive, so I used the hull-mounted DT machine gun to fire upon the tankers.
Once they were eliminated, I continued with the battle until the action subsided.
When everything got quiet, I pulled up to the first mystery tank (or what was left of it) and searched the vehicle.
On one of the crewmen's bodies, I found what appeared to be a tank handbook similar to mine.
I could barely read it, but I recognized the language as French.
That's when I realized that the tank itself was French.
Looking through his handbook, I was able to identify the tank as a Renault FT-17.
If I also read correctly, this design dated back to World War I.
No wonder I defeated it so easily.
Afterwards, I investigated the mystery Soviet tank.
The handbook I picked up identified it as a "Mk VII Tetrarch"
Oddly enough, the description for this tank stated that its country of origin was Great Britain.
Now, why was our army using British tanks?
I thought I'd heard something about this before, but I just couldn't remember at this moment.
Rather than waste my time trying to figure it out, I went to inspect the rest of the tank.
Inside, it was very different even from my T-26 and T-46.
Furthermore, there was a strange cylindrical device inside the turret that I had never seen before.
After a brief inspection, I pressed a button and out popped a perfect 10-ruble note.
Why did this tank have such a device when none of the other tanks I once drove had one? Was it some new type of reward system?
Whatever the case may be, I went back home to do another round of repair and maintenance.
With each successive battle, I encountered more French tanks.
Initially, they were not too challenging, being quite slow and unable to damage Goliath.
Well, a couple of Char B1s did some damage, but not too much.
However, a few weeks later, I got some more surprises:
My first surprise came in the form of what I identified as a BDR G1B.
This one had a cannon that could actually do significant damage to Goliath.
However, it still had weak armor, so it took me only one shot to dispatch it.
The other surprise wasn't so easy to get rid of.
This was the AMX-12t.
Not only could its cannon damage me, but it had plenty of speed to match.
Still, it gave me some practice with moving targets.
And of course, when all else failed, ramming always worked!
Nevertheless, these new tanks shaped the course of the war.
Criticism is gold. Negativity and nitpicking are pyrite.