Steel Soviet Union

He knew nothing about the fact that the No. 3 A-type assault gun commander named Michel Wittmann was leading his crew to ambush on the road he must pass.

After leading his troops to set off, Malashenko was now commanding his armored company, rushing towards the German positions on the opposite side that were already visible to the naked eye as quickly as possible, hoping to catch up with the Soviet heavy artillery that had just been suffered. After the baptism of the group, the German army completely recovered and tore open the German defensive position of the enemy in front of them, thus opening an offensive path for the subsequent large forces.

Soon, the armored company, which was on full throttle and advancing all the way, took almost no time to gallop across the vast grassland to a close position less than 600 meters away from the first German defensive position.

He was sitting in his position as the gunner and commander, holding the wide-angle periscope with both hands to observe the field of view outside the vehicle directly in front of him. Looking at the first German army position that could be said to be very close to him, it was obviously worse than Malashenko's current location was much higher than the altitude and surrounded the defense line set up closely outside Broad Town. After witnessing this scene, Malashenko couldn't help but feel cursed in his heart.

"Damn, these German guys are really good at choosing places! They built all their defensive positions in commanding positions close to the outskirts of Broad Town. What a bunch of smart bastards!"

For the first wave of assault T34 medium tanks led by Malashenko, the relatively condescending German defensive position built on the steep slope outside the town of Brod is definitely not a big deal. Good news.

Why the German defensive positions built on the slopes make Malashenko so angry? It all starts with the design performance of the Soviet T34 medium tank itself.

As we all know, as the first tank in human history to systematically arrange sloped armor in exchange for stronger equivalent armor protection, the design ideas and actual combat performance of the T34 medium tank can be said to be unparalleled and second to none in the era of its birth.

Following the early tank design ideas of the Patriotic War that the Soviet tanks required comprehensive protection as mentioned earlier, the T34 medium tank uses a homogeneous plate with a physical thickness of 45 mm in the upper armor plate area of ​​the car body, which has the most important defense weight. Steel armor and arrange it at an angle of 60 degrees.

As a result, the upper armor plate area of ​​the T34 medium tank body with a defense angle of 60 degrees will be able to provide equivalent armor defense with a maximum thickness of 90 mm when facing enemy artillery shells incoming from horizontal trajectories.

In addition, the side and rear armor plates of the T34 tank are made of 40 mm homogeneous steel armor that is slightly inferior to the upper armor plate on the front and rear of the vehicle body. They are arranged at a 40-degree inclination angle to cope with horizontal ballistics. It can provide armor defense with an equivalent thickness of at least 70 mm when incoming enemy artillery shells are fired.

The turret also follows the design idea of ​​comprehensive defense. The physical armor thickness of the overall cast turret in the left, right and rear directions is 40 mm, and it also has a certain tilt angle in exchange for more powerful equivalent armor defense.

It is no exaggeration to say that when the German army launched the initial stage of the Barbarossa invasion in the summer of 1941, the German officers and soldiers who saw the new Soviet T34 tank for the first time were almost completely frightened by its "four or two" tilted armor defense. .

The PAK36 37mm anti-tank gun, which had made great achievements in the early blitzkrieg against Europe, and the PAK38 50mm anti-tank gun instantly became useless stepping stones that could only scratch the itch of the T34 tank.

It only took just seven weeks to conquer France, which was known as the "world's No. 1 Army" at the time. The German armored forces were also dwarfed by the T34 tank. Tanks became "waste products" of a backward era overnight.

In addition to relying on the FLAK36/37 88mm anti-aircraft gun, which was the strongest anti-armor weapon in the German army at that time, and using armor-piercing projectiles to shoot T34 tanks flatly, the huge German army that conquered the entire Europe could no longer find any one that could effectively Anti-armor weapons to deal with Soviet T34 tanks.

This cruel fact undoubtedly gave a head-on blow to Hitler, the German head of state who was vigorously promoting the racist theory of "the sanctity of the German people" at that time. This cruel fact made this German who always promoted and believed that the German nation was the best nation in the world. The head of state saw that the weapons produced by the inferior ethnic groups in his mouth turned out to be an era ahead of his own army.

And in the end, the extremely angry head of state, after scolding the think tanks around him, couldn't sleep well for a whole week.

But even so, the sloped armor used by the powerful T34 tank is not absolutely invincible.

As the frontline battles progressed with the result of German victory, the German armored forces, which were highly knowledgeable in armored combat and tactical research, soon discovered the crucial and fatal part of the sloped armor used by the T34 tank. weakness.

Theoretically speaking, the armor plate area on the front of the T34 tank used to "face the enemy here" has a physical armor thickness of 45 mm and a 60-degree tilt angle, which can provide up to 90 degrees of protection on the horizontal ballistic attack route. mm armor thickness, but this is only based on the "horizontal trajectory" of the incoming shell.

As the German armored forces and anti-tank gun teams gained increasing experience in combat against the Soviet T34 tank, the German troops who exchanged combat experience privately quickly discovered a physical phenomenon that seemed quite miraculous at the time.

Assuming that the anti-tank guns and the German anti-armor tanks are placed on a higher hill or steep slope away from the Soviet tanks and then fire, the German armor-piercing projectiles will break through in the overall "high against low" terrain situation. The usual horizontal ballistic attack limit is to accurately hit the Soviet T34 tank with an attack angle of 30 degrees or more while flying downward from a high place.

In this way, the inclined trajectory of the German artillery shells in the high-firing-low state will rely on its own incident angle advantage to offset the inclination angle of the upper armor of the Soviet T34 tank in the lower terrain to a certain extent.

As a result, the T34 tank's sloped armor defense of up to 90 mm equivalent thickness on the horizontal ballistic attack route has been severely weakened, and it can only provide a little more than the 45 mm physical armor thickness of its front armor plate. Effective armor defense.