Chapter 438 North African Campaign (6)

Admiral Wavell knew that confronting the German armored forces was simply courting death, and planned to use street fighting to destroy or severely damage the Germans in Cairo.

After all, street fighting is beneficial to the defending side. The defenders are familiar with the terrain, and they are in an active position of attacking while defending. The tanks and armored vehicles of the attackers cannot be deployed in narrow roads, and are easily approached and destroyed by the anti-tank weapons of the defenders. In the space where the attackers and defenders are in close combat, heavy artillery and air support can hardly support the operations of their own troops. At the same time, the ruins, buildings, and numerous pipelines in the city have created quite good defensive conditions for the defenders.

Under the command of Admiral Wavell, the defending troops actively participated in the preparations for street fighting, set up barricades, piled sandbags on the roofs, and established defensive positions everywhere.

In order to deal with the German armored forces, Admiral Wavell also ordered people to rush to make incendiary bombs. To put it nicely, it is a firebomb, but it is just a homemade fire bottle. Pour gasoline or high-concentration liquor into the bottle, and stuff a piece of cloth into it, and you can make a simple fire bottle.

This thing first appeared in the Spanish Civil War. In the Soviet-Finnish War in the original time and space, Finnish soldiers carried it forward and named it "Molotov cocktail", which severely hit the Soviet army. In this time and space, because Germany provided Finland with various anti-tank weapons, Finnish soldiers did not use this kind of fire bottle. After all, only when there are no other anti-tank weapons, the fire bottle becomes a close-range anti-tank weapon.

Its use method is also very simple, just throw it at the hood area of ​​the tank. For most tanks that still use gasoline engines in World War II, once the burning liquid flows into the engine room and encounters oil pipe dripping, the engine will definitely catch fire. Most tanks that lack automatic fire extinguishing devices in the engine room, once the engine catches fire, it is undoubtedly a life-threatening job for the crew to lean out of the gunfire and put out the fire with a fire extinguisher. (During World War II, a few tanks were equipped with fire extinguishing systems, such as the Tiger tank, which had an automatic fire extinguishing system in the engine compartment. The bimetallic thermostat device was activated at 120 degrees Celsius to trigger the carbon dioxide fire extinguishing.)

Secondly, because the combustion temperature of the liquid fuel in the Molotov cocktail is not high (magnesium powder or thermite can be added to increase the combustion temperature), but it is easy to produce a large amount of incompletely burned black smoke, most engines that inhale air under the hood will stop working due to lack of oxygen due to smoke or oil entering the combustion chamber or clogging the filter system.

These tanks that have lost their mobility, as long as they are not on the set of "Fury", mean that they are not far from being destroyed.

After working day and night, the number of Molotov cocktails stockpiled in Cairo reached one for each soldier defending the city.

In addition, they also have a powerful secret weapon: the No. 74 anti-tank grenade, commonly known as the "sticky bomb".

Because tanks often move at high speed during combat, it is difficult to throw grenades onto tanks. The impact fuse was too dangerous, so the British army designers had a sudden idea: if the grenade was covered with super glue, wouldn't it be possible to stick the grenade on the tank and detonate it?

Under this peculiar brain hole, the No. 74 anti-tank grenade was developed. It is a handle grenade with a spherical warhead and a glass ball inside, which contains about 25 pounds (about 57 kilograms) of nitroglycerin. The glass ball is wrapped in a layer of elastic fabric, and the outer layer of the elastic fabric is also coated with some bird glue. Because of the use of bird glue, it got the nickname "sticky bomb".

Its shell is made of two hollow metal hemispheres, and the glass ball is then placed in the shell. There is a wooden handle on the outside to fix its position, and there is also a 5-second fuse inside. There are also two needles and a lever on the wooden handle. When the first needle is pulled out, the shell falls off, and the second needle starts its detonation mechanism.

The grenade has a design flaw. Users are advised to move near the tank and stick it to its armor instead of throwing it onto the tank body from a distance. Because during the throwing process, the glue can easily stick to the user's uniform.

This bird glue is quite strong. Many recruits often have the grenade firmly stuck to their clothes and pants before they start using it, and they can't get rid of it by human power. A member of the Home Guard wrote in his diary: "During practice, a grenade thrower stuck the grenade to his pants tightly, and he had to take off his pants to get rid of it."

In addition, the grenade must be stuck to the smooth surface of the tank before it can be used, but in actual combat, it is impossible for the tank shell to appear clean and tidy. This means that soldiers can only choose a smooth surface to blast at a very close distance as soon as possible, and the difficulty can be imagined; in addition, the fuse time of this grenade is only 5 seconds. If the soldier cannot evacuate in time within 5 seconds after throwing it at close range, then basically he will die or be injured.

In order to ensure the safety of the soldiers, the British army finally came up with a peculiar tactic: during combat, the soldiers hid in pre-hidden craters with a towel in one hand and a grenade in the other. When an enemy tank passed by, they quickly wiped a part of the tank's shell with a towel, then stuck the grenade there and quickly evacuated. This operation was a test of the soldiers' dexterity and reaction ability, and the soldiers would die if they were not careful.

Many troops’ quartermasters clearly stated that they would rather use the most primitive anti-tank method to deal with enemy tanks than let their soldiers die in vain. (This unreliable thing was produced by the original British in the original time and space. 2.5 million pieces. They also distributed these tricks to other participating countries; the Australian army, French guerrillas, etc. have all used this thing.)

Admiral Wavell also knew that this thing was unreliable, so he hurriedly made a Molotov cocktail.

In addition, there is the BOYS Mk I anti-tank gun that the British themselves dislike. This anti-tank rifle uses a manual bolt, a five-round magazine above the fuselage, and fires 9x99mm armor-piercing bullets with a steel core. Its power can only penetrate 21mm thick steel plates at 100 meters, and the recoil is so strong that it is criticized by shooters.

As for anti-tank guns, the most equipped is the famous QF 2-pound anti-tank gun. However, when designing this thing, the anti-tank performance of this thing was not considered at all, but it was directly considered to save money. (Because there are many 2-pound shells in stock, the design of the anti-tank gun is to consume these shells.)

From the data on paper, the QF2-pound anti-tank gun was the best anti-tank gun in the early days of World War II. Although it did not perform well in the Battle of France, it shined in the North African Campaign.

In many defensive battles on the North African battlefield, the QF2-pound anti-tank gun became Rommel's nightmare. These QF2-pound anti-tank guns set up in the preset positions are very low, and it is not easy to be found in the positions. The advantage of its own 360° rotation also makes it very easy for them to aim at the German tanks racing in the desert, and destroy them one by one.

Especially in the early days of the war, when most of the tanks of the African Corps commanded by Rommel were Type 2 and Type 3 tanks, it became a suicidal act to attack the British defensive positions full of QF2-pound anti-tank guns. Faced with such high casualties, Rommel had to lament that the war had turned into a war of killing during positional warfare, rather than a war mode of mobile warfare that focused on destroying the enemy's technical weapons. The few troops he had had to surrender in such a harsh environment and gave up the unrealistic idea of ​​charging the British defensive positions.