T42

The T42 is a tier 7 American medium tank. Its very lightly armoured, has mediocre speed and gun handling, but is quite agile and has an accurate and high DPM gun.

1. Armour
2. Gun
3. Mobility
4. Equipment, provisions, & consumables
5. Gameplay advice
6. Overall
7. Is it worth getting?
8. Most recently sold for:
9. Camo cost:
10. Historical note:

Armour

(The T42 in the images is using Improved Assembly)

vs 168mm AP (left image), 218mm APCR (right image)

Flat ground:
Upper plate 115-170mm
Lower plate 66mm
Turret 95-125mm
Gun mantlet 220-250mm

VS all tier 6-8 tanks:
The T42 has terrible armour.

Every tank it faces can penetrate its upper plate, lower plate, and turret very easily.

The only areas that may get a bounce are the gun mantlet, which is not very big; or the very small red area on the upper plate.

VS HE:
T42 could potentially be HE’d by guns with good HE penetration, such as the Vindicator, SU-152, Smasher, Pharaoh, RU 251, Škoda T 56, etc.
The lower plate is only 66mm thick, and all these tanks will be able to go through it with HE.

Side armour:
The side armour is also terrible, its only 40mm thick, so it really can’t sidescrape. Its also covered with 2mm spaced armour, which will stop HE from the side, but means that all AP and APCR shells will normalize more against it (caused by the double overmatch mechanic).

Gun

The T42 mounts a typical 90mm gun

-Damage per shot is 225 on AP, 190 on HEAT, and 270 on HE
-Reload time is 6.1s, giving it 2179 DPM
-Penetration is 160mm on AP, 243mm on HEAT, and 45mm on HE
–Estimated aim time is 3.1s/3.3s
–Base aim time is 1.7s, but it can get down to 1.39s.
-Dispersion is 0.308/0.277
–Gun handling is 0.16/0.16/0.14, or 0.14/0.14/0.12 with Vertical Stabilizer.
-Gun depression is -10 degrees

Overall this is quite a nice gun. It has good standard penetration and great premium penetration, great accuracy, great base aim time, and good DPM. Gun depression is good and makes this tank very flexible in positioning.
The big downside with this gun is that its handling is really quite poor. 0.16/0.16/0.14 may not seem that bad, but this gun is quite low caliber, and in this tier most guns with this caliber have far better gun handling. Its quite noticeable in battle, though its compensated for by quick aiming and good accuracy.

Mobility

-Top speed is 48km/h, reverse is -20km/h
-Traverse speed is 59.8 deg/s on hard terrain, and 54.4 deg/s on medium terrain.
-In game acceleration rate is shown as 21.8 hp/t, it has a strong 748 horsepower engine for its 34 ton weight.
-Actual acceleration rate is 21.8 hp/t on hard terrain, and 19.8 hp/t on medium terrain.
–Ground resistances are a good 1/1.1/1.6

The T42’s mobility is quite good, it has unimpressive top speed and average reverse speed, but it has very nice acceleration rate with decent traverse speeds, which make it a fairly agile tank.

(With consideration to its armour though, this isn’t very impressive mobility, and it feels “decent” at best.)

Equipment, provisions, & consumables

The T42 has no special provisions/consumables.

Gun rammer:
Improving DPM to be able to compete with enemy tanks is most beneficial to the T42, especially as its already got the 2nd highest penetration for a tier 7 medium tank. It doesn’t need improved penetration, calibrated shells is just a waste on this tank.

Its a far better choice to use gun rammer, as tier 7 (especially medium and light tanks) is a very heavily DPM-focussed tier.
With rammer, the tank has a 6.1s reload with 225 alpha, giving it 2227 DPM.

Improved Assembly:
The T42 has no armour worth enhancing. Its better to use improved assembly, which would increase the hitpoints of this tank from 1200, up to 1272.

Vertical Stabilizer:
Vertical stabilizer is essential on the T42 due to its poor gun handling. The tank already has great aim time and accuracy, so refined gun really won’t help it. What the tank suffers from is quite high bloom when it moves, and vertical stabilizer will reduce this bloom so that the tank can be more accurate during and after movement.

Gameplay advice

The T42 plays a fairly standard medium tank role. However due to its poor armour, it can’t quite play like hulldown mediums; and due to its unimpressive mobility, it can’t quite play like a fast medium (fast type being tanks like the Leopard 1 or Dracula).

This makes the tank quite awkward to play, as it doesn’t have many advantages over its opponents, its not fast, its not armoured, its gun isn’t special.

Don’t rely on armour:
Play this tank like it has no armour and won’t bounce anything. This will cause you to play the tank accordingly, which is to be more careful with positioning and taking shots.

Every shot you take in this tank is most likely going to penetrate, and each time that happens it shortens your time in battle and the influence you have in game.

Don’t rely on armour, try to avoid taking shots.

Go hulldown:
What little armour the T42 has is on the turret, and by going hulldown, you make your tank’s profile smaller and a harder target to hit.

Enemies will still very easily penetrate any area of the turret around the gun mantlet, so don’t expect to get bounces. Moving back and fourth a bit may cause enemies to accidentally hit the mantlet if they aim poorly.

Aim shots carefully:
Due to having poor gun handling, the T42 isn’t very good at making snapshots. To reliably and accurately hit shots, you need to stop and let the gun aim in for a few seconds. T42 has great accuracy and aim time, so it doesn’t have to aim for long for your shot to be accurate, but you do have to aim.

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The T42’s gameplay is basically that of a standard medium tank, just without the armour. Its most similar to the tech tree STA-1, which also doesn’t have impressive gun nor mobility, with very weak armour.

Overall

Armour – 2.5/10
Gun – 6.5/10
Mobility – 7/10
Speed – 5/10

T42is overall an ok tank.

Armour is very weak to any standard ammo, but is well protected against HE.
Gun has great aim time, accuracy, gun depression, and premium penetration. DPM is decent, but gun handling is poor.
Mobility is good, a strong engine and acceleration rate with decent traverse speeds. Reverse speed is average.
Speed is average, 48km/h.

All tier 7 mediums with 220-240 damage are overall better than the T42, and it just really makes it a completely pointless tank.
Other mediums with 90mm guns all have much better gun handling, while still having good accuracy and aim time. These same mediums also have either better armour, or better mobility.

Is it worth getting?

T42 is not worth getting. This tank is decent at best, weak at worst. The reason its not worth getting is that it doesn’t have anything unique about it, and it doesn’t have any features that make it more enjoyable than other tanks.
In fact it has quite a lot of features that make it boring and frustrating to play, such as the complete lack of armour, poor gun handling, and limited speed.

If you like some of the features that the T42 has, such as being agile, good gun depression, with a quick firing 90mm gun, consider getting the Edelweiss, Magnate, T20, VK 30.02 (D), P 43 Ter., or even the Dracula.
All these tanks offer the same gameplay as the T42, but are just much better at it, and are much stronger tanks overall.

The T42 is worth 2,000 gold. This isn’t a terrible tank, but there’s no reason that you should want this tank when there are so many other, better alternatives. Many of these alternatives are also cheaper, or even free.
Overall the T42 is an ok tank, but isn’t unique or really that enjoyable, there are more fun and better tech tree mediums with the same playstyle, and they are free.

Most recently sold for:

Reward in the “Blitz turns 9!” event (240 wins in 10 days) – June 2023

Camo cost:

Historical note:

T42 was a medium tank project, intended to have the same firepower as an M46 Patton, but with improved armour.

This tank had a very weak engine, producing only 500 horsepower on a 36 ton tank, which gave it poor maneuverability.

Through testing, a T40 was loaded to have roughly the same mobility specs as a T42, and its performance was deemed to be equivalent to an M4A3 Sherman, which was below the requirements for the tank.

Thus, a few T42 tanks were built, replacing some parts with aluminium for lighter weight, allowing it to pass the design specifications for mobility.

However, the tank was still deemed inadequate, and development of it was shifted to the M47 and later the M48.

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The turret of the T42 was adopted for use on the M47 Patton. The 90mm T119 gun was also used on early M47 tanks, and mater renamed to be the “M36 90mm gun”.

T42 was essentially the stepping stone between the M46 Patton and the M47 Patton. The T69 was a variant of the T42, but with an autoloader and oscillating turret.

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Inaccuracies:
A lot is wrong on this tank, as WG wanted to make this a tier 7 tank with poor armour and good mobility, pretty much the exact opposite of what this tank was in real life.

Engine power:
WG has made the engine power 650 BHP, rather than the 500BHP in real life. Engine name is at least correct.

Armour:
This tank has armour which is hardly better than an M4 Sherman, in real life it had better armour than an M46 Patton.

(A more accurate representation of this tank’s armour would be the T69’s hull with an M47 (in game called M46) Patton turret on it)

Gun:
The gun this tank mounted in real life was the T119 90mm gun, the tank in-game has a fake “T114” gun.
The T119 can be found on the Progetto 46 and the M46 Patton (90mm M36).

(In real life this gun could fire various ammo types, including AP types, APCR types, and HEAT types. The ammo types on the guns in game are accurate but the penetration levels are not.)

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