Battle of the Third Reich

As mentioned in the previous article, the German infantry lacks individual anti-tank training. In fact, the German infantry also does not have anti-tank weapons. The only two grenades can only scratch the tank shell. Patent leather.

In the Western Front, this problem has actually been exposed. When encountering a target that the 37-mm knocking hammer attached to the platoon could not deal with, the German infantry faced the enemy tanks that were thrown at themselves. The power to fight back, even the elite troops at this moment, will inevitably end in a hurry.

On the western front, the German front collapsed and the German officers and soldiers panicked and fled, not once or twice. For example, in the battle of Arras that Xu Jun encountered when he was in your land, the German infantry unit was crushed by British tanks. If the 88-mm anti-aircraft unit had stabilized its position in history, the end of the 7th Armored Division was really very good. Unpredictable.

Xu Jun did not think that the German infantry would be more powerful on the Eastern Front. The historical "t34 panic" was first circulated from various infantry units. In contrast, the German tanks can at least work with the Soviet tanks. This round, but the infantry only had a 37mm door knocker. In the t34 of the Soviet army, they could only let the other party kill.

A tens of tons of steel giant beating at the speed of thirty or forty steps, as long as the mentally sound people will panic, especially if you know that you can’t harm the other party, few people are here Can still maintain a calm thinking. Before obtaining effective anti-tank methods, the German infantry's t34 panic even developed into a tank panic, and the infantrymen would retreat in a panic when they saw a shadow with a turret.

In fact, the senior German army had learned these problems before the war in 1991. The German General Staff began to sum up the lessons of the defeat after the defeat of World War I. One of them is that soldiers who have not been trained in professional anti-tank training cannot respond calmly. The offensive tanks, positions and lines of defense will often collapse in the panic of soldiers.

Normally, now that the problem is recognized, the Germans should consider strengthening the individual anti-tank training of the infantry to make up for this obvious shortcoming in the troops. But no one expected that they chose another solution. The German General Staff decided to use artillery to undertake anti-tank tasks. The priority tactic was to destroy the enemy tanks with heavy artillery on the starting position. Although the Germans did have similar success stories in World War I, it was obviously too much to take it as a conventional tactic, but the German senior executives at that time insisted on their own judgment and wrote it in detail in the German tactical manual. inside.

So when the Germans declared war on Britain and France, the Germans put all the front-line anti-tank missions on the 11,000 pak35/36 anti-tank guns that were equipped. If it was not the German armored forces and the air force that played extraordinary, while the British and French armor The troops made another serious mistake in the choice of strategy and tactics. The Germans may still win eventually, but the loss of the infantry units on the Western Front will be quite ugly.

However, after the Germans fully replaced pak40 and pak41, they finally reversed some of their disadvantages. At least in the positional defense, the infantry units had the confidence to deal with armored forces.

The problem is how to resist the enemy's surprise attack after the German infantry encounters the enemy armored forces in the field after leaving the solid position.

Usually German infantry companies have a professional anti-tank squad, equipped with three anti-tank rifles, which are evenly divided into the following three platoons. During the Weimar Republic period, the Germans were still equipped with the T-type anti-tank gun of the Second Empire period, that is, the famous Mauser 18, which fired a 13 mm steel core bomb and could penetrate 25 mm of homogeneous steel. Armor, this value is not too outdated in the 1930s, enough to penetrate the mainstream tanks equipped by European countries at that time.

Until Hitler came to power, the Germans were still equipped with more than a thousand of these heavy guns. This anti-tank gun is too bulky, weighing 17 kilograms, and its range and power have gradually become insufficient, so the Germans developed the expensive pzb38 as its replacement product.

At that time, the anti-tank rifle was still regarded as an effective anti-tank weapon by the military of various countries. Each European country developed and equipped a batch of anti-tank rifles. The more famous wz35 produced in Poland (remember that the head of state was in Poland. The gun was shot with this rifle. (￣▽￣“)), and the Finnish l39, the Swiss Suroton ss-18 and the British Boys anti-tank gun, these The technical standards of anti-tank guns are different, but they can basically penetrate 12 mm of armor at a distance of 100 meters, which is enough to penetrate most of the tanks popular in Europe at that time.

However, in the late 1930s, European countries began to pay attention to the defensive capabilities of their tanks when developing their own new tanks. The armor thickness was generally enhanced. France and the United Kingdom have begun to develop medium and heavy tanks with heavy frontal armor, with the intention of completely overpowering their imaginary enemy equipment in terms of defense and vehicle firepower.

So that in the early 1940s, the targets that these anti-tank rifles were able to deal with were only some weak and light tanks and armored vehicles, which made it difficult to threaten the main tanks equipped by various countries.

Germany is still developing new anti-tank rifles in three or nine years, because the Army feels that the price of pzb38 is too expensive. In the end, pzb39 replaced pzb38 and became the only anti-tank equipment of the German regular infantry company. This gun can penetrate a 30 mm vertical armor plate within 100 meters, but this value is only 20 after extending to 300 meters. Mm.

In the Polish War, this rifle performed fairly well in the face of the Polish-made British Vickers and its own 7tp tank. But on the French battlefield, in front of the pile of iron turtles equipped by the French army, the German soldiers found that this thing could only be used to hear it, and could not penetrate the other party's armor. It is ridiculous that after the French surrender in history, the German senior officials did not seem to notice the fact that the performance of this gun has fallen behind. As a result, the German Army still used this useless anti-tank rifle until four or three years. .

Xu Jun has decided to remove this weapon from the Army, and on the basis of this, he developed an anti-equipment rifle with a caliber back to the 13 mm of the T-type anti-tank rifle, using tungsten core armor-piercing projectiles and armor-piercing incendiary ammunition . These anti-equipment rifles will be assigned to paratroopers, armored grenadiers, armed reconnaissance and special forces, and are used to snipe the enemy’s valuable targets at long distances, such as oil depots, ammunition depots, aircraft on the airport, and light armored vehicles, if conditions Allowed can also be used to kill individual soldier targets of the enemy.

As for the original anti-tank squads in each conventional infantry company, they will be reorganized into heavy machine gun squads, equipped with two mg40 machine guns, to strengthen the company's defense force.

The Germans are about to start full-scale anti-tank training for soldiers. First, they must let soldiers understand until they are familiar with various armored vehicles. Then they must learn to find the key points and weaknesses of enemy tanks, learn how to avoid and interfere with each other’s attacks, and learn to be on the battlefield. Set up ambush traps and use the weapons on hand to destroy these steel behemoths. They also have to undergo tank pressure training, accustomed to the feeling of tanks roaring overhead, until they can face the tracks of enemy tanks without fear.

This is not a textbook invented by Xu Jun himself. Historically, the Germans trained a group of combat engineers in the middle of the war. As professional infantry anti-tank units, these soldiers are called armored hunters. It sounds familiar, and I always feel They held large caliber pistols one by one, and a miner's lamp hung in their waists.

The Germans will generally organize these soldiers into a series of three anti-tank teams, and then let them use various individual anti-tank weapons to ambush and hunt enemy tanks on the battlefield.

The weapons used by the armored hunters at the beginning were mainly various types of mines and anti-tank grenades, as well as some improvised explosive devices assembled on the battlefield. This is also the main reason for choosing engineers. They are more effective in handling explosives than ordinary infantry. Row.

In fact, at that time, the German high-level leaders fully understood that the Soviet tank tide could no longer be blocked by one or two special arms. Every front-line soldier on the eastern battlefield was actually under the threat of Soviet tanks, so Anti-tank should not be the work of a professional unit, but a test that every German soldier has to face, so in this case, the Germans developed the iron fist.

ps: It took some time to check the information, the update is a bit late, thank you for your support.

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