Chapter 368 Soviet-Finnish War (20)

The Finnish soldiers on the Mannoheim Line stared at the giant monster that was slowly advancing, and many of them showed nervous expressions on their faces. Although the guy's speed was extremely slow, he had already advanced to a place less than 2,000 meters away from the defense line.

"How to deal with this thing?" The faces of the Finnish officers on the Mannoheim Line were all filled with deep anxiety and worry. "Lieutenant Colonel Hans, can Panzerfaust destroy it?"

This time, there are many Panzerfaust anti-tank rocket launchers in the equipment supported by Germany, and they are the upgraded version of the previous 100 type, Panzerfaust 150.

The Panzerfaust 150 still uses the previous Panzerfaust design in terms of the firing principle, but in terms of the warhead, the Panzerfaust 150 adopts a brand-new structure: a conical wind cap + cylindrical projectile. There are several advantages of this warhead design: 1) Simplified production, the wind cap and the projectile are produced separately and then combined together, which improves production efficiency; 2) Optimized aerodynamic appearance increases the range.

The warhead diameter of the Panzerfaust 150 is only 105 mm, which is much smaller than the 150 mm of other major models. This not only reduces the weight, but also reduces the wind resistance, which helps to increase the range.

Through a more scientific charge shape and detonation distance, although the explosive charge and armor-piercing charge diameter of the Panzerfaust 150 are smaller than those of the 30/60/100, the armor-piercing power is maintained at the same level as them: 220 mm. In addition, in order to make up for the reduction in lethality due to the reduction in warhead mass, the Panzerfaust 150 also specially designed a prefabricated fragmentation sleeve for the warhead, which can greatly increase the destructive effect on soft targets. It can be said that the Panzerfaust 150 is a breakthrough in the development of the Panzerfaust family, and it has preliminarily determined the guiding position of the Panzerfaust as a weapon in the design of individual anti-tank weapons after the war!

Although Lieutenant Colonel Hans was not sure whether his Panzerfaust 150 could destroy this monster, he could not say anything discouraging at this time. "Of course, even if we can't penetrate its frontal armor, it's still easy to penetrate its side armor. As long as the tank gets close to the defense line, it's its doom." Now we can only hope that its armor thickness is thinner than 220 mm.

What Yannick didn't know was that this "Soviet version" of the Maus tank had different firepower from the German version. The 128mm KwK44 L/55 main gun in the original design was replaced with a 152mm Howitzer M-10 gun, which is the tank gun of the KV2 heavy tank; and the 75mm secondary gun was replaced with a 2mm tank gun, which is the tank gun of the KV1.

The gasoline engine was rotating at high speed, and a steady stream of electricity was transmitted to the electric motor at the back through the cable. The driving wheel slowly rotated, driving the more than one-meter-wide track to move forward.

There were six crew members in this tank. Interestingly, they were not real soldiers, but test drivers. This super tank was pulled to the battlefield before the test run was completed, which made Lavrenkin, the commander, a little uneasy. He kept praying in his heart that nothing would go wrong and that they would complete the task steadily. Maybe there would be a reward at that time.

But as the saying goes, "what you fear will come to you". Seeing that the Finnish defense line was right in front of him, Lavrenkin smelled a pungent smell of burning. "Damn it!" He couldn't help but curse inwardly and shouted loudly. "Stop, stop! There must be something wrong again. Yuri, go check it out!" Fortunately, they were no longer surprised by this. This car has had various problems from assembly to now. Lavrenkin skillfully arranged people to check the faults and prayed in his heart that it was just a minor problem.

"" Seeing that the steel behemoth stopped 800 meters away, the Finnish soldiers looked at each other in bewilderment. No one knew why this guy stopped there.

"Fire!" At an anti-tank gun firing position, the artillery squad leader finally couldn't stand it anymore and gave the order to fire loudly.

"Boom!"

The gunner pulled the gun rope hard, and the muzzle was full of fire. An armor-piercing shell hit the huge monster opposite at a speed invisible to the naked eye, and hit its front armor fiercely.

Dang!

With a crisp sound, the 50mm shell bounced away weakly, leaving only a small dent on the armor plate.

Lavrenkin inside the tank also heard the collision, and knew that the Finnish army on the opposite side had opened fire, and sneered contemptuously. "These guys who don't know their own strength, Mikhail, let them have a taste of power."

"Got it!" Gunner Mikhail responded excitedly. "Load the high-explosive shell!"

The turret of the Maus tank is quite large, with sufficient space inside, and two loaders are arranged. One loader picked up the grenade warhead and stuffed it into the gun barrel, while the other picked up the propellant bag and stuffed it in as well, and then closed the gun door. Generally, when the caliber of the shells exceeds 120 mm, they are basically loaded with cartridges, because at this time, manual loading is no longer possible, so they have to use cartridges. "Loading completed!"

The shells were coming from the front, and Mikhail found the target without moving the muzzle, and immediately stepped on the pedal.

"Boom!" Amid the huge sound of the cannon, the entire turret was filled with smoke, and the not-so-efficient smoke extraction system began to exhaust.

Due to the small caliber of the guns in World War II, the turrets did not have overall three-protection and poor sealing (some tanks did not even use periscopes, but just opened a small slit on the body to look out), so the necessity of exhaust gas extraction was not prominent, and the process of drilling oblique holes on the gun barrels at that time was not up to standard, so tanks during World War II generally did not have exhaust gas extraction devices.

But if a large-caliber gun like 152mm is not equipped with an exhaust gas extraction device, the members inside will either be choked to death or have to wear gas masks. So this tank is the first to be equipped with a smoke extraction device. But this thing is not very efficient, and everyone still coughed violently.

While coughing, Lavrenkin saw through the periscope that the fired shells fell near the anti-tank gun firing position.

Although it did not hit directly, the power of the 152mm high-explosive shell is not a joke. This thing weighs 52kg and explodes on the ground, which can easily blow up a large pit with a diameter of about 5 meters and a depth of nearly 2~3 meters. The power of its shock wave can destroy light armor within 3 meters, destroy multi-layer brick walls within 10 meters, and basically cause serious damage to doors, windows and glass within 20 meters. The shrapnel produced by the explosion can cause damage to unprotected soft targets with a radius of about 40~50 meters.

Lavrenkin clearly saw that several gunners on the anti-tank gun position were blown away alive. There seemed to be a few pieces of blood mist in the air. Obviously, they were dead. The anti-tank gun also rolled to the side. Although he couldn't see what happened, Lavrenkin believed that it could not be used again.

At this time, Yuri, who went to troubleshoot the fault, reported. "Report, the core component of the motor is completely damaged, and it can only be replaced with a new component sent from the factory."

"Damn it!" Lavrenkin cursed softly. "Communicator, report to the superiors and ask them to send the parts. Notify the troops in the rear and let them continue to attack. We will cover them here."