Ok .. i have done a complete reinstall of the game. Still the same issue. There is no obvious map or tank with which this happens.
Interesting things are that the problem does not occur if you alt tab out of the game while still in queue and that replays work with the exact same mod settings however "live" games end up not responding.
I saw the other post about administrative privs however my account is admin and i have had the crash after running wot with admin privs.
any ideas?