Chapter 591

On July 10, in the production workshop of Chelyabinsk in the hinterland of the Soviet Union, a tank was slowly driving out of the workshop. This is not a T-34 tank, but a bigger and more powerful tank than the T-34.

"Ivan, this is our latest super T-34 tank. It has a loud name, Stalin." The engineer pointed to the tank and said, "this is a test model. When it comes to mass production, it will be the most powerful tank in the world."

"In order to deal with the German 75mm caliber and 88mm caliber high-power armor piercing bullets, we have made some efforts." The engineer pointed to the gun barrel of the tank and said, "because of the metallurgical technology, we can't use the high multiple diameter design to improve the armor piercing power, so we can only increase the caliber of the gun to achieve the goal of surpassing the German gun power."

This gun is refitted from the army's 122mm caliber cannon. It seems that the successful anti tank guns of this era are all amateur guns who are temporary monks. The Germans use antiaircraft guns to make a guest appearance, and the Soviets don't use their own 100 mm war defense guns. When we think of the power of the German 88 mm antiaircraft artillery against the tank, we know how terrible the Soviet artillery is. In fact, if we only discuss the destructive power of the artillery, the power of the artillery has surpassed the German Tiger tank in service.

The main reason that forced the Soviet designers to use such a large caliber gun was that so far the Soviets had not been able to get a complete German Tiger tank. So the Soviets did not know what kind of power the German 88mm cannon had, so they had to increase the artillery power as much as possible to ensure that the next generation of tanks could surpass the German Tiger tanks.

As a result, the 85 mm caliber artillery was not in the scope of choice. According to the level of metallurgical technology of the Soviet Union, it was totally unrealistic to rely on the 85 mm caliber artillery to surpass the 88 mm artillery of Germany, so the Soviet Union had to use the artillery with greater power.

Among the numerous choices, there were three kinds of artillery in front of the Soviet Union designers, namely, the artillery of 100 mm caliber, the artillery of 122 mm caliber, and the artillery of 152 mm caliber.

152mm caliber was the first to be excluded. This kind of gun was used on kv-2 tank. Its battlefield performance and reputation are extremely poor. Its firing speed is too slow, and it will affect the turret volume of the tank, so the gain is not worth the loss.

After that, the artillery of 100 mm caliber was excluded. Although this kind of artillery is expected to be full of power, and can be loaded in one body with more guaranteed firing rate, and the volume of tank turret can be further compressed, it is a pity that the volume of the reference version of this kind of artillery is too large, and the recoil force is also a headache.

Therefore, Stalin's final weapon choice for the tank determined the 122 mm caliber artillery as the first choice for the tank. After a series of experiments and modifications, he took out such a super tank with a tonnage of more than 45 tons.

However, the Soviet tank technology is not particularly mature, so although the data of this is-2 tank looks good, there are still many problems. Because the weight of the tank exceeds the standard seriously, the speed of this kind of tank is not high. The driving speed on good roads is not more than 40 km / h, and the cross-country speed is even below 20 km / h.

Because the main gun is refitted from a 122mm cannon, part of the design of this kind of cannon is still used. The cannonball still uses the split ammunition, and because the internal space is narrow, the layout of these split ammunition inside the tank is terrible.

The warheads are basically placed inside the turret, while the launch charges are placed under the floor, which is a disaster for the loader. The loader must first push the shell into the bore, then bend down to open the floor, take out the charge, straighten up to load again, and then close the bolt to complete the whole loading action. In this way, the battlefield firing speed of is-2 tank is only two rounds per minute, if not very skilled, the firing speed may even be lower.

But the Soviets solved the German tank advantage problem with the most primitive method: they made a trade-off on the three important performance of the tank, and rearranged it with their own understanding and the needs of the battlefield: they thought that the firepower of the tank was more important than the armor protection, and the armor protection was more important than the mobility.

"When will this tank be mass produced?" A general frowned at the rough looking tank, banged on the tank's crooked fender and asked, "I'm talking about mass production of 100 vehicles a month."

"Comrade General." Ivan, a Soviet designer, was very frustrated and said: "the lathe workers originally in Kiev were stopped by the Germans, which seriously affected the reconstruction of our tank factory here. We can only make many processes by hand, and the output has been unable to meet the requirements."

"The point! When will the production of 100 vehicles per month be achieved? " The general frowned and gave a cold hum. He was obviously not very satisfied with the engineer's refusal: "this is a tank named after our great leader! If you can't be a super weapon to change the battlefield, do you know what the consequences will be? "

"Comrade General! We will work overtime, but we can only maintain the production scale of more than ten tanks per month. If we want to equip the troops on a large scale, we have to wait at least five months before the American machine tool equipment and corresponding raw materials are in place to continue to increase production. " Ivan said quickly. The general nodded, acquiesced to this statement. After a pause, he said, "I don't care what you do. Before winter comes, prepare 300 such tanks. Our counterattack plan has been approved. These tanks must be in place on time to participate in the winter counterattack."“ We promise to finish the plan! " The engineer called Ivan took the general's hand, patted his chest and assured. While standing on one side, walsilevsky went away with the general and continued to introduce the rest of the tank production workshop. There are also kv-2 tanks and T-34 tanks, with tens of thousands of workers On July 19, nine days later, "my head of state, are you so sure that the Soviets are preparing for mass production of new tanks? And the gun is 122 mm? This is quite different from the caliber of the mainstream tank guns in the world. " The person in charge of the Porsche company frowned and looked at the intelligence just obtained from the spy network "beehive" from the German intelligence department at the German defense forces military development conference. The film personally submitted by the leader beehive even contained pictures of such tanks and various parameter data. Guderian, the equipment director of the German armored forces and the expert representative of the front-line armored forces, was frightened by the data of this kind of tank. Once this kind of tank starts to serve, it will be able to compete with the high and low combination of German Tiger tank and leopard tank with T-34. At that time, the loss of German armored forces will rise sharply, and the number of losses will be unbearable for Germany“ My head of state, if this information is true, we have to deal with it. " Goodrian frowned and looked at the pictures of Soviet tanks, and finally said, "the advantage of our armored forces lies in the high quality and mature cooperation of our soldiers. This advantage is based on the fact that the performance of the tank is enough to preserve these crew members. Once the losses begin to increase, the operational level of our armored forces will decline and fall into a vortex of greater losses. " He pauses, takes a look at akkado, and goes on: "if we and the Soviet Union fall into the inefficient competition of quantity consumption, it is likely to bring the war to a deadlock." Akkado did not expect that because he improved the German armored forces, the United States and the Soviet Union launched their own new generation of tanks faster than before, and because there was no difficulty in technology, they adopted targeted design choices, so that the Soviet tanks could catch up with the German tanks in such a short time. But the good news is that akado's technological development has not stopped, even faster than the original German technology. Now he has at least two ways to improve the power of tank artillery. One is to replace the Tiger tank with the long barrel 88mm gun with a larger diameter, and the other is to distribute new tungsten alloy armor piercing projectiles to all tanks in the front line. Moreover, this is-2 tank has not been mass produced in the Soviet Union, only a sample has been produced, and the progress is similar to that of the tiger king tank being tested in Germany. Once the German Tiger King tank weighing more than 45 tons comes into service, the advantage will immediately return to the German side. However, everyone knows that the era of relying on technological advantages to fight a war with almost zero casualties has passed, and the weapons and equipment of both sides are gradually approaching. Unless Germany can produce epoch-making weapons and equipment to change the war mode again, it can only tolerate the current situation“ There's no good way. Let the technical department take action. First, all heavy tank destroyer battalions should be equipped with new type artillery, and then try to replace 88mm 71x caliber long barrel artillery before winter Akkado thought about it, then told Krupp and some other technical department heads, "on the other hand, new type shells are also distributed to the front-line forces, at least to let the soldiers have an understanding of their new weapons." After he finished, he looked at Krupp: "the development speed of 105 mm tank gun should be accelerated! We want to make tiger king tank into mass production in the next few months! In this era, if we do not make progress, we are regressing! "“ I see! " Krupp nodded solemnly