Chapter 248 The End of France (18)

If the Germans, who are meticulous and strive for perfection to the point of being in the late stage of obsessive-compulsive disorder, were asked to design the vehicle, they would probably never be able to design a "magic vehicle" like the Jagdpanzer destroyer.

The Jagdpanzer is 83 meters long (the chassis is 77 meters long), and the height of the bottom machine gun is only 17 meters. The width of the vehicle is 123 meters, which makes the space inside the vehicle quite narrow. In order to install a cannon with large recoil in such a narrow space, the designers can only place the cannon to the right of the central axis of the entire tank, resulting in the center of gravity of the entire Jagdpanzer tank also shifting.

Yannick felt that the 50mm KwK 39L/60 tank gun would be enough for a while, so the 75mm StuK 40L/43 anti-tank gun of the original time and space was not installed. With some other improvements, the right side of the current Jagdpanzer has to bear more than 500 kilograms of pressure, which is better than the Jagdpanzer of the original time and space (850 kilograms).

Such asymmetrical design has made German designers feel uncomfortable.

As we all know, the Tiger and Panther tanks use a staggered road wheel structure, which was forced to be adopted because the rubber on the edge of the road wheel had insufficient weight capacity. In other words, Germany had to find ways to install more road wheels to support the weight of the entire tank under the limited length of the vehicle body.

For the torsion bar structure, engineers need to install more torsion bars - the Tiger and Panther have as many as 16 torsion bars, so the simple structural advantage of the torsion bar is immediately gone. Another reason that made the Tiger and Panther walking mechanisms more complicated was found by German designers themselves - they could not stand the asymmetry of their tank road wheels, so they adopted a method to make the complex staggered road wheels symmetrical.

Because of the position of the artillery, the arrangement of personnel is also very different from other tanks. The driver is at the front, behind him is the gunner, and behind the gunner is the loader - three people are arranged in a column, one next to the other. Behind the artillery is the commander of this vehicle, and he also has to shoulder the responsibility of the radio operator.

In this way, four people sat in an L-shaped space in a small space, and there were only two exits on the roof - one for the commander, and the other people who wanted to leave could only go through the other exit behind the loader. The disadvantages of this arrangement are obvious. Once it is destroyed in the war, at most two of the four crew members can escape, the commander and the loader. Whether the driver and the gunner can survive depends entirely on God's will.

Although all this is enough to make the German designers who pursue perfection collapse, the army is quite satisfied.

The front of this tank destroyer uses 60 mm thick armor with an inclination of 60 degrees. The bottom of the car body is also 60 mm thick armor with an inclination of 40 degrees. There is also 20 mm inclined armor on the side and rear. Although the 20 mm armor cannot defend against the attack of enemy tank guns or anti-tank guns, it is more than enough to defend against bullets and fragments.

Although the power of 160 horsepower is not very strong, the weight of the tank destroyer is only a dozen tons, and the highway speed can reach 42 kilometers per hour, with excellent mobility. This is much better than those towed artillery that need to be towed by cars, and when there are no cars, they need to be pulled by mules and horses. When entering the position, they can only be pushed by soldiers. When necessary, they can even be used as tanks! Where can you find such a good weapon? !

And its simple structure and durability are also a highlight of the Hunter destroyer. You should know that the weapons equipped for infantry do not need to be very delicate, because the more delicate the things are, the more difficult they are to control, and the greater the probability of failure.

Just like the famous Gatling machine gun, when it first came out, it was really overwhelming and powerful. In 1882, it had reached a terrifying rate of fire of 1,200 rounds per minute.

However, this seemingly awesome weapon disappeared for a while, and it did not even appear in World War I and World War II.

Because its biggest weakness is that the shooter on the battlefield will be emotionally excited and unable to control himself due to the enemy's charge, and he will turn the handle faster and faster like crazy, causing the machine gun to overheat and jam or explode.

Therefore, what the infantry needed was a large number of cheap, easy-to-use and maintenance-free equipment.

This round of shooting destroyed five French B1 heavy tanks, and the French tanks' counterattacks did not even touch the edge of these hunters.

Four hundred meters, this distance is not long or short on the battlefield. A charging troop can run this distance and break into the enemy's position in just a few minutes.

Of course, this also means that they have entered the effective range of almost all weapons of the defenders except pistols and grenades. In history, there have been cases where the attackers could not break through this short few hundred meters even if they shed all their blood.

Although the French who are now attacking are accompanied by tanks, the heavy rain that just fell has made the ground muddy, greatly reducing the mobility of these big guys. The B1 heavy tanks weighing more than 30 tons are even more affected. Two tanks even sank into the mud and could not move. They can only adjust the turret to fire at the German positions on the high ground, which is quite embarrassing.

The rest of the Soma 35 medium tanks and Renault 35 light tanks also advanced slowly, stopping from time to time to fire a shot.

Perhaps because they had lost confidence in the performance of their own tanks, the French infantry even surpassed the tanks on the left and right and charged towards the high ground desperately. The accompanying officers did not stop the soldiers from being out of touch with the tanks. They just shouted at the soldiers to maintain the formation of the charge.

"Tsk, what kind of infantry-tank coordination is this?" David looked at the other side's formation, which turned into a strange formation with infantry in front and tanks in the back, and rushed towards the high ground, and couldn't help shaking his head.

The French soldiers stepped on the mud and rushed to a place more than 200 meters away from the German position with difficulty. At this time, they had thrown their tanks more than 100 meters away.

"Fire!"

The German position suddenly erupted with dense gunfire. The high ground was guarded by a battalion. The German army was organized in a standard three-three system (it is not necessarily the case for divisions and above). Their battalion had 27 squads, which means there were 27 MG3 squad machine guns.

Of course, these 27 machine guns could not fire at the same time. After all, the machine gun position was the enemy's key target, and it was impossible to stay in one place and output firepower infinitely.

Machine guns had to move positions frequently, so these machine guns had to fire in turn to maintain a stable firepower output and not let the enemy take advantage.

P44 assault rifles and MG3 machine guns fired one after another, and the dense firepower beat the French soldiers who rushed to 200 meters away and retreated step by step. The first row of French soldiers were instantly torn into pieces by the terrible firepower, and the soldiers following closely behind were knocked to the ground in rows like cutting wheat, and they could not break through the range of 200 meters at all.

The fierce offensive of the French infantry was stopped in an instant. The recruits ran around in the crazy barrage of the Germans, and the veterans fell to the ground with their heads in their hands.

At this time, the German mortar shells kept falling into the crowd, turning into countless fragments, tearing the fragile human body to their heart's content, and constantly knocking down pieces of French soldiers.