Battle of the Third Reich Chapter 7: Iron and Fire (Medium)

　　 The performance of the German tank company and the French armored forces before the official exchange of fire made everyone fall through. German military historians even used the word unimaginable stupidity in their comments on the beginning of this **** battle. Describe the reaction of both parties at this time.

　　 The German tank group tried hard to demonstrate what is called excessive caution. Snyder commanded his company to retreat as quickly as possible. He didn't even order his tank to put one or two shots to test the French attack. determination.

　　 And the French tank commander also showed sufficient caution at this time. He may have not figured out the reason for the German retreat. It is also possible that the burning of the French tank wreckage had any psychological impact on him. No matter what it was for, he made a puzzling decision. The French tank group suddenly slowed down, and they did not fire. Instead, they only moved slowly toward the German tank group at a walking speed.

　　 So between the push and the advance, the troops on both sides moved apart. On the one hand, they retreated quietly, and on the other side, they marched silently. The two sides are at war, but no one is willing to open fire first. It does make people feel a little weird.

　　 Snyder made a stupid mistake. He didn't launch an active attack to hit the opponent by surprise when the French tanks were not firmly established. If he did that at the time, then it is very likely that he would not fall into the latter game. The **** hard fight may still be able to grasp the initiative on the battlefield.

　　 But now it’s the opposite. He actually gave the French time to stand on their feet, not only allowing the enemy to slowly figure out their own strength, but also giving the opponent the opportunity to take the initiative on the battlefield, in order to make up for it. Snyder paid a heavy price for this mistake.

　　 But then again, Snyder gave this order at the time. This was justified by his reason. After all, Snyder had never encountered such an opponent before, and he knew very little about the performance and strength of those French tanks. It is indeed difficult for him to take the initiative to attack in this situation.

　　 After all, German tank commanders are professional soldiers who have been professionally trained and are full of rationality and pragmatism. They will not consider letting their troops take risks as a last resort. The Americans are full of western cowboy style in the German army. Can hardly be found in it.

　　, of course, there are exceptions. For example, at the same time, the biggest fool in the German Army was leading a bunch of similar people to rush here. The topic is a bit far off, let's continue to understand the situation at that time.

　　 Just when the German army made the first mistake, if the French commander was smart enough to take advantage of this, then the destruction of the German tank group would not become very difficult. Because the tank performance of the French armored forces did not differ much from that of the German tanks at that time, and in some places it surpassed the German tanks.

　　 And in terms of firepower and quantity, the French have already occupied an overwhelming advantage. If the French tank commander has enough fighting determination and fighting vision and skilled command skills, then he can use all of his The tank launched a fast and powerful attack on the Germans, relying on his superiority in numbers and firepower to wipe out all in one go before the Germans realized their mistakes.

　　 But it’s a pity that this French commander obviously doesn’t have the above qualities. The French army colonel Jean de Valle has never had any military talents, let alone command skills. The reason why he can sit in this position is just Because he has been in the armored forces and has a high enough rank. The Luftwaffe used endless bombings to obliterate his fighting determination and hope. His courage has long since drifted away with the smoke rising from the wreckage of the French tanks, and now the horror of the vanishing of the forward troops has made him even more so. Overestimated the strength of German tanks.

　　 As a result, the crappy armored commander also made the same mistakes as the Germans. His excessive caution made him miss the best chance of giving the German tanks a fatal blow, and he also gave the opponent to reconsider the response. Tactical time. The colonel commanding the main tank regiment with 70 tanks got the final promotion because of his mistake.

　　 When the distance between the two sides reached one kilometer, the German tank group finally stopped retreating. They had rested their formation on the way to retreat. The 19 tanks were divided into three rows, with a distance of 70 meters between each row, forming a box attack formation centered on the two tanks of the company. .

　　 Five minutes after the ridiculous confrontation between the two sides, the Germans first lost their patience. Snyder decided to end this stupid tango with their 75mm cannon, and the fierce battle began.

　　"One row attacked the French left-wing tanks, two rows and three rows attacked the middle, and four rows attacked the right wing. Let's see what we can do. Use high-explosive grenades and prepare for a salvo." Snyder calmly issued command.

　　 Now the tank commander is trying hard to recall the situation of the French tanks in the headquarters briefing.

　　In the early stages of the French campaign, only the Reinhardt Panzer Army had the opportunity to encounter this French tank. At that time, this tank caused the German armored soldiers to suffer a lot, although the tankers destroyed it in the end. Several B1s, but also suffered a significant loss of an entire No. 2 platoon and three No. 3 tanks.

　　 In the subsequent battle, the German army captured a whole regiment of this tank in an interspersed operation. At that time, the army attached great importance to this. They quickly transported a tank of this type back to Germany for analysis and research by domestic research institutions.

　　 After simple measurements and experiments, the experts of the German Ordnance Agency believe that this is a weapon comparable to the German No. 4 tank in some indexes. Although it has many fatal flaws, it does not Obliterate its sparkle. The experts asserted that if the B1 tanks belonging to the French First Armored Division had not consumed all the fuel on the roads full of refugees and were waiting for replenishment, the German Army would never have captured them so easily and without loss.

　　 But Germany's bloated bureaucracy prevented these valuable research materials from being handed over to the Army in time. As a result, Snyder only received a simple enemy notification and a warning from the headquarters.

　　Although the command clearly asked him not to fight French B1 tanks without the support of large-caliber artillery in the warning, the reason was not clear. Had it not been for a simple sketch attached to the warning, Snyder might not even know what the B1 tank looked like.

　　 The crude information and the vague warnings have led to the current situation. Snyder was misled by the warning. He did not underestimate the combat strength of this Gaul tank, but the key question is He estimated the armor thickness of his opponent wrong.

　　 The French B1 tank weighed 31 tons. At the time, the weight was between medium and heavy tanks. It was more than nine tons heavier than the German No. 4 tank, which was also a medium tank. This tank has a frontal armor of 60 mm thick, and 40 mm thick at the weakest point.

　　 But as a result of the French pursuit of this kind of protection, the B1 completely lost the mobility that a tank should have. Its top speed on the road is only 27 kilometers per hour, and the speed in off-road state is even more impressive. Think about it.

　　 This is actually related to the French's outdated combat thinking. They have never regarded the tank as a separate weapon. In their eyes, the tank is just a tool to assist infantry combat. Because of this, in their opinion, tanks only need to be able to keep up with the pace of the infantry's offensive, and they do not need strong mobility.

　　 This tank is equipped with two main guns, one is installed on the front of the car body, right next to the driver, this is a 75mm howitzer, this installation method makes its shooting range almost fixed Yes, the French tank driver had to use the rotating car body to aim at the target. For this reason, the tank was specially equipped with a precise hydraulic differential device to achieve precise aiming. The other is a 47mm 35x gun mounted in the small turret on the roof. This weapon is more powerful than the 37mm main gun mounted on the No. 3 tank.

　　 Although it is similar to the German No. 4 in terms of the size of the car, it is taller than any other German tanks at the time, so the German infantry nicknamed it "Giant". From the data point of view, it belongs to the same level as the No. 4 tank, which can be said to be on par. But in fact, it has some fatal weaknesses, and these are not reflected in the data. This can only be discovered in real battles, and the French tankers paid the price of their lives for this.

　　 "The preparation of high explosive bombs is complete."

　　The loader Carl pushed a high-explosive demolition ammunition into the chamber. The young loader then leaned on his side of the observation window and looked curiously at the French tanks that were still slowly advancing in the distance. go with.

　　"The distance is 930 meters." The gun commander reported seriously.

　　 "Attention everyone, fire!"

　　 Snyder gave a loud order to fire, a dull gun sound rang out, and the tail of the 75mm gun slammed backwards. The huge force caused the heavy body of the tank to shake, and the turret was filled. There was a strong smell of fire. When the shelling was over, Snyder poked his head out of the command tower and raised his binoculars to observe the effects of the shelling.

　　 Snyder chose high-explosive grenades instead of armor-piercing shells for a reason. Although the trajectory of the capped armor-piercing projectile is relatively straight, and the hit rate is higher than that of the high-explosive projectile, it should be the preferred target when attacking the tank. But in fact this is not the case. The commanders of the No. 4 tank were very fond of using high-explosive armor shells in the early battles.

　　The reason is that high-explosive armor-piercing grenades are used more than armor-piercing shells when dealing with certain armored targets. The early model of the German No. 4 tank was equipped with a short-tube 75 mm gun with a diameter of 24 times. This was not an anti-tank artillery originally, but from a performance point of view it was more like an infantry gun.

　　 The position assigned to the No. 4 tank by the German Army at the beginning is the fire support and command vehicle used to support the No. 3 tank battle, and it does not need him to have a frontal conflict with the opponent's armored target. However, after the outbreak of the war, the use of this tank deviated from the expectations of the War Department, and the No. 4 tank was pushed to the forefront of the battle. Because it has more powerful firepower than the No. 3, it is used as a main tank in many occasions.

　　 Although it has a main gun with a caliber of 75 mm, the barrel of that gun is too short, which directly causes the muzzle velocity of the shells it fires to not be very high. The muzzle velocity of the shell is the most critical indicator related to the armor-piercing ability of the shell. Without sufficient speed, the armor-piercing shell will not have enough kinetic energy to penetrate the opponent's armor. No matter how hard the warhead is, it needs huge kinetic energy to function, and this is precisely what the No. 4 tank's 75 gun lacks.

　　 High-explosive armor-piercing grenade is different. It is related to its armor-piercing method. At that time, the German army used a shaped-charge armor-piercing projectile, and the shaped-charge warhead was penetrated by the high-temperature metal jet generated during the explosion. Armor plate. This means that it does not need a high muzzle velocity, as long as it can hit the opponent's hard armor plate to detonate it. Moreover, the armor penetration depth of this shell is the same no matter it is fired at any distance, and it will not happen that the armor penetration ability is reduced due to the distance being too far.

　　 What’s more surprising is that the armor-piercing power of the armor-piercing projectile fired from the short-barreled gun of the No. 4 tank is not as good as the high-explosive armor-piercing projectile, because the weight of the armor-piercing projectile is about two kilograms heavier than the high-explosive armor-piercing projectile. This makes its muzzle velocity inferior to that of high-explosive bombs. It can only reach a pitiful 385 meters per second, while the high-explosive armor-piercing projectile can reach 452 meters per second. The armor-piercing projectile fired at that initial velocity is at a distance of 100 meters. It can only penetrate 41 mm thick armor with an inclination angle of 60 degrees. If the distance is more than one kilometer, its penetration depth is only 35 mm. The high-explosive armor grenade can penetrate 45 mm and 60-degree armor plates at any distance.

　　German captains are very shrewd. After comparison, they learned which shells to use under which conditions. In this situation, Snyder's choice of high-explosive armor shells is a wise choice.

　　 Within two seconds, the first batch of shells from the German tanks hit the heads of the French armored forces. The high-explosive grenades exploded in the first row of French tanks. Snyder was very satisfied with the attack. He saw that more than half of the shells hit the target, even if they missed it, they were all in the distance. The French tank exploded very close, and according to his past experience, this kind of near-missing can also cause great damage to the target.

　　 But when the smoke cleared, Snyder was stunned by the sight in front of him. The French tanks that were hit only paused for a while, and then they began to slowly approach themselves, and the French tanks that were hit by those near missing bullets did not even pause for that moment. It seemed that Snyder's first attack did not cause any substantial damage to the opponent except for adding a few black spots to the front armor of several French tanks. Snyder's cold sweat came down at that time.

　　 "It's really a monster. Its main armor seems to be thicker than we thought."

　　 Snyder decided to change his tactics. Since he can't destroy the opponent from a long distance, he can still fight the French in close quarters. Tracks, engines and sides of the body are the weak links of French tanks. Snyder I don’t believe that the French can cast the side armor as strong as the front armor~IndoMTL.com~ Pay attention to each platoon, move forward at full speed, maintain the formation, and shoot freely. Try to attack the opponent's crawler, first to paralyze it. "

　　 Snyder gave the order coldly. He found himself in an embarrassing situation. His tank could not destroy the opponent's tank at this distance. He hoped that the French would not be like this. Ability, otherwise I would be really miserable.

　　The tank group quickly responded to the command, and all the tanks began to accelerate. The German tank company lined up in a neat box impact formation approaching the French tank unit.

　　"302, I am 301, pay attention to keep the distance."

　　 Snyder gave loud orders to his wingman, but before he could finish speaking, a sudden violent explosion drowned his voice.

　　 The French finally launched the first wave of attacks on him, probably to vent their dissatisfaction with the commander on the opponents. The French fire was urgent and dense.

　　 At that moment, the driver Ravit felt that the ground in front of him disappeared, and the tank of his comrades in front of him also lost track. Instead of these, there was a glare of fire, and huge fireballs kept in front of him. Rising up, it felt as if the whole world was burning, hot air waves violently poured into the cab from the armored observation window, Lawitt quickly lowered the armored cover on the observation window, and then pulled down the eyepiece of the driving periscope.

　　 Although this bombardment of the French tanks lasted only three seconds, in the hearts of these German tankers, it was as long as a lifetime.