Chapter 976: American Strategy (10)

"There is also a magnetic anti-tank grenade, but it is a bit dangerous to use. Soldiers who use it must be close to enemy tanks to install it. If the enemy armored units have infantry to cooperate and cover, there is basically no chance." Today, the German army is the most proficient army in the world in infantry-tank coordinated tactics. Even if the enemy is equipped with this magnetic anti-tank grenade, it is likely that there will be no chance to get close to the German tanks; therefore, this thing was not used after a few samples were made.

"We also referred to the Soviets' anti-tank methods. They trained a group of dogs as anti-tank dogs. But I heard that the effect is not very good. Those dogs carrying bombs are often frightened by artillery fire and run back after being released from the trenches, and they blow up their own people instead." He admired the Soviets' imagination. How did they come up with this? The imagination is so big that it is comparable to their own "pigeon guided missiles".

"There are also British sticky anti-tank grenades. This thing is not very reliable either, so let's not talk about it." Sticky grenades are to coat the grenades with sticky substances, so that they stick firmly to the tanks and then destroy the tanks. But most of the tanks on the battlefield were covered with thick mud or dust, and the sticky grenades could not stick to them at all. For this reason, the British army also came up with a peculiar tactic: during combat, soldiers took a towel in one hand and a grenade in the other hand to hide in a pre-hidden crater. When the enemy tank passed by, they quickly wiped a part of the tank shell with a towel, then stuck the grenade there and quickly evacuated.

When Marshall first saw this instruction manual, the sentence that flashed through his mind was: Damn idiot!

The guy who could come up with this method must have had his head caught by the door!

"..." Vice President Truman's brows were getting more and more furrowed. After all, they didn't have a single-soldier weapon that could effectively deal with German tank armor. The most reliable one seemed to be the tandem warhead rocket launcher that had not yet been successfully developed, but the question was whether that thing could be successfully developed before the German landing? !

Marshall picked up the water cup on the table and took a sip to moisten his throat, and continued. "As for anti-tank guns, calibers below 70mm can basically not deal with German tanks, and can only be used against other armored vehicles."

"The Soviets moved all these medium-caliber guns onto tank chassis and converted them into self-propelled guns. Although the Soviets did not have much effect, this method is still worth learning from. Anti-tank guns above 70mm are heavy, and towing will affect mobility."

"The German 105mm gun tanks will not be mass-produced in a short period of time, but we also have a tank equipped with a 105mm tank gun, to be precise, a tank destroyer, code-named T-28." Although the M26 heavy tank has begun to be produced, the army still decided to find some insurance, that is, the T-28 heavy destroyer.

The T-28 has a low profile and no turret. A 105mm T5E1 main gun is installed on a spherical gun shield, which looks like a beetle with a long nose. The main gun has a range of 10° on the left and right, 5° to -5° on the top and bottom, can fire 4 shells per minute, with an initial velocity of 1130 m/s and a range of 19 km. It can penetrate 250 mm thick armor at a distance of 1500 m, and has strong enough firepower.

Although the T29 heavy tank is also equipped with the same 105 mm, its 178 mm frontal armor thickness is not satisfactory to the army. They are more optimistic about the thicker T-

The armor protection of the T-28 is more exaggerated than that of the Maus. The front armor of the body reaches a terrifying 305 mm, the side armor is 64 mm, and there is a 100 mm thick skirt armor, which can be said to be indestructible.

Such heavy armor naturally brings an insurmountable disadvantage, that is, excessive weight, and its weight reaches an astonishing 95 tons! Although it is a lot worse than the Maus tank, it is enough to crush other peers. The Tiger King tank (H) in the original time and space is only 70 tons.

It is powered by a Ford GAF ​​V-8 gasoline engine with a maximum output of 500 horsepower. This power is obviously not enough to drive a 95-ton big guy, so the T-28 is naturally underpowered, with a maximum speed of only 13 kilometers per hour. The slow movement also brings the weakness of low climbing ability, and its off-road and obstacle crossing capabilities are not satisfactory.

As a result, the Americans have a lot of ideas and have developed staggered road wheels, which are the staggered road wheels commonly used by Germany in the original time and space during World War II and are called "logistics nightmares".

As for why the Germans used this kind of road wheel structure that can kill logistics, because the torsion bar system was a new technology at the time. Torsion bar suspension was not used on cars until the 1930s, and tanks with torsion bar suspension first appeared in 1934.

For Germany, the torsion bar was first tested on the Type II D and Type II E, and the torsion bar suspension was officially used on a large scale on the Type III tank, but the failure rate was very high in actual combat, and it was forced to return to the technical route of leaf spring suspension on the Type IV tank. The leaf spring suspension of the Type 4 was also a very successful design at the time. From the initial A type to the later H type, the weight increased by 40%, but the suspension was not changed. In contrast, the weight increased by 17% from the T-34-76 to the T-34-85. The weight of the Sherman increased by 30% from the initial model to the M4A3E8, but the suspension was changed (HVSS).

Therefore, when designing the Type 5 and Type 6 tanks, the designers had no confidence in the suspension of such a heavy tank and could only adopt a staggered road wheel system. Because staggered road wheels, coupled with double torsion bars, can arrange as many torsion bars as possible on the same body length, so that the load distributed on each torsion bar will be reduced, and the quality of the torsion bar does not need to be too demanding.

Moreover, adding more road wheels can reduce the load of a single set of road wheels when the total weight remains unchanged, but the total vehicle length is limited after all, and too many road wheels will definitely not be able to be arranged, so if there are too many road wheels, each road wheel must be small, and it is difficult to increase the suspension travel if the road wheels are small, and the ground pressure of small road wheels is also large, and the off-road performance is not good. At the same driving speed, the small road wheels rotate more times and have a poor lifespan, so large road wheels are always good.

Staggered road wheels can make the size of a single set of road wheels large, and can put down the most road wheels within the limited vehicle length. It is a perfect solution for the design of the suspension system alone.

In addition, Germany lacked rubber resources during World War II. At that time, Tigers and Panthers had to use large hollow road wheels to put rubber on the road wheels. Multiple sets of staggered road wheels can reduce the pressure on the ground and extend the service life of the road wheels and road wheel rubber.

However, Yannick in this time and space never thought of using this road wheel structure. Unexpectedly, the Americans learned it by themselves and used it on their own T-28. When Yannick heard the news, he almost laughed to death.

Anyway, when Truman heard the protection performance data of this heavy tank destroyer, he calmed down a little. In his opinion, this destroyer is enough to crush the German tanks. "Has this destroyer started production?"

Marshall nodded. "Yes, Mr. Vice President. This destroyer has entered production. It's just that the production speed is not satisfactory. The fastest is one car every two days."

"..." Truman frowned slightly. This production speed is indeed a bit slow. One car every two days, and only fifteen cars can be produced in a month? "Can we reduce the production of other tanks and produce more of this T-28?"