Chapter 877 New Weapons (1)

That day, Yannick and a group of senior military officials came to a weapons test base to visit the test of a new type of weapon.

Everyone walked into an observation room that could be described as "iron wall". The four walls and ceiling of this observation room were made of high-standard reinforced concrete with a thickness of five meters. Every one meter, a 100 mm thick homogeneous steel plate was laid. The windows used for observation were one meter thick tempered glass. The defense strength of the entire observation room was comparable to that of a fortress.

Opposite them, ten kilometers away was a small hill. At the foot of the hill, various targets were arranged, including not only German Leopard tanks and Jackal tanks, but also armored vehicles, ordinary trucks, jeeps, etc. There were also many dummies and supporting weapons and equipment. Most of the equipment that could be used in the war was gathered here.

"Your Highness, the test can start at any time." The person in charge of the experimental base said respectfully.

"Then let's start." As Yannick gave the order, five Leopard tanks with four rows of rocket launch tubes on their heads slowly drove into the test site.

This is a replica of the original U.S. M34 "Organ" rocket launcher tank. It retains the turret and therefore retains all combat performance. A bracket (including fixed and pitch mechanisms) is installed on the vehicle body, and a 122mm caliber rocket launcher is installed on the bracket. There are 40 tubes, and the direction of aiming is determined by rotating the turret.

The M34 "Organ" rocket launcher is a very good fire support weapon. Compared with traditional towed artillery, rocket launchers and other self-propelled artillery have the characteristics of fast travel speed and fast response speed. The "Organ" can complete the loading and firing tasks in a very short time, so it has a strong support capability, and its rapid response capability can also quickly evacuate the battlefield after completing the attack on the target, and has a strong battlefield survivability.

And the rockets have also been improved and upgraded.

Most rocket launcher launch tubes do not have rifling (a few rocket launchers such as Tornado and Hail in later generations have rifling, but they only give the rockets a slight spin and cannot meet the high-speed rotation stability). There are two ways to stabilize the rocket, one is tail fin stability, and the other is turbine rotation stability.

Early rocket launchers were stabilized by tail fins, such as the Soviet Katyusha rocket launcher, which had no launch tube and relied on rails for launch. A stabilizing tail fin was installed at the tail of the rocket to ensure the stability of the rocket's flight.

In the 1950s, people invented turbine-stabilized rockets, which relied on the gyroscopic effect generated by the high-speed rotation of the projectile around the axis of the projectile to ensure the stability of the flight. The rocket engine gas was ejected from the tangential angle nozzle. Each nozzle is deflected at a small angle from the center line of the rocket. After the rocket is ignited, the gas not only pushes the rocket forward, but also pushes the rocket to rotate, achieving stability during flight.

The German army's rockets have always used turbine stabilization, but turbine-stabilized rockets have certain disadvantages. If the projectile is too long, the rocket will produce a large nutation during flight, causing the rocket's accuracy to decrease. Therefore, it is only suitable for rockets with a length-to-caliber ratio of less than 8 and a range of less than 20 kilometers.

The limitation of the aspect ratio limits the length of the projectile, which also limits the length and charge of the rocket engine, and ultimately leads to a reduction in range. In addition, the turbine rotation stability puts forward higher requirements on the structure and strength of the missile body and the load resistance of the internal electronic components.

The improved rocket adopts a low-spin tail fin stabilization method, which effectively solves these problems.

Swish!

Five rocket launcher tanks fired rockets at the target area in the distance. The flames ejected from the tail of the rocket blew up the dust on the nearby ground and mixed with the smoke produced by combustion. This is an inherent shortcoming of rocket launchers, which is not concealed enough. This is not a shortcoming in the era of radar ranging and gun-aiming radar in later generations. After all, as long as the shells are fired, they will appear on the radar image, so the size of the movement is irrelevant.

At this time, unless the German army completely lost air superiority, this defect is not a big problem.

The 200 rockets fired by the five rocket launcher tanks fell in the target area. As far as they saw visually, the rockets seemed to have little deviation before landing. Basically, they fell into that area, and only a few of them deviated from the target area. From the first rocket hitting the target area to the last rocket falling, there was only a dozen seconds in between. The warhead of each rocket weighed 30 kilograms, and the flames of the explosion instantly enveloped the entire target area.

"Ha!" Yannick couldn't help but exclaimed. This is much more powerful than the high-explosive bomb of the same weight. Not only does it cover a large area, but even the power of the explosion is significantly increased. However, it is impossible to see the details of the target area at this distance. After the fire in the target area gradually died down, everyone left the observation room, got on several cars, and drove towards the target area.

This 10 kilometers is just a straight-line distance. This observation room can only leave from the back door and go around the foot of the mountain to reach the target area. In addition to the simple dirt road, the convoy drove for nearly 20 minutes.

Before they arrived, the soldiers at the test base searched the entire target area thoroughly to make sure there would be no threats such as duds. They even put on protective clothing and entered the core of the exercise area, measured the temperature zone, and drew an absolutely safe area, not daring to relax at all.

When they arrived near the target area, the convoy stopped. When Yannick got out of the car, a wave of heat hit him in the face and the air was filled with the pungent smell of gunpowder.

Arriving at the nearest position, everyone could roughly tell that it was a machine gun position. The dummy originally placed inside had long since disappeared. The surrounding area was in a mess. A few careful generals found a burnt black gun not far away. The iron lump was picked up. "Your Majesty Marshal, look what we found."

"Oh God!" Marshal Rundstedt's eyes widened in disbelief. "Is that an MG3 machine gun?" If he hadn't noticed the heat dissipation holes on it, he wouldn't have noticed that it was an MG3 machine gun.

This machine gun was actually melted into an iron lump? !

In the past battlefields, artillery was so powerful that it was very common to blow machine guns into parts. Let alone machine guns, as long as the caliber of the artillery was large enough, it would be no problem to blow the tank into pieces. But those are all fragments torn by violent external forces. The breakage and combination are the result of external forces, instead of melting like now. How high is the temperature? !

"Your Highness, is this a new type of incendiary bomb?" So far Yannick has not announced the specific details of this new weapon, but they are shocked enough now. It is obvious that this is a weapon more terrifying than napalm.

(Only one chapter today)