The decisive battle against the Third Reich

"Did they talk about the weaknesses of this new tank?" General Strike asked.

"No, they didn't!" Colonel Olbridge replied: "They only told us that the armor of this new tank is not thick because it can be penetrated at a distance of six hundred meters!"

The "No. 3" tank can penetrate the "Matilda" at a distance of 400 meters. If it can penetrate the new tank at a distance of 600 meters... this means that the armor of the new tank is not as good as the "Matilda".

"But it seems to be of no use to us!" Colonel Olbridge added: "Because their tank guns can also penetrate our tanks at this distance!"

"This is a matter of quantity!" General Strike said, "But this is also our weakness!"

What General Strike said is reality. The German army only has more than 70 tanks left... To be precise, after the 15th Armored Division suffered losses in this battle, it is likely that only 24 tanks of the 21st Armored Division are left.

"Should we bring up the Italian armored divisions?" Colonel Slain asked.

"This won't be of any help to us!" Colonel Olbridge shook his head: "Their tanks are extremely weak M13 models, and they don't even have a gunner!"

"No gunner?" Colonel Slaine looked at Colonel Olbridge in surprise.

"Yes!" Colonel Olbridge replied: "Although their tank crew is also four people, these four are the commander, driver, loader and machine gunner...that is to say, they are equipped with machine gunners." The gunners are not equipped with gunners!”

"Then how do they fire?" Colonel Slain asked.

"Let the machine gunner do it for you!" Colonel Olbridge spread his hands: "It's just an amateur... I only recently learned about this from the officers of the Italian Armored Division."

This was also the first time Qin Chuan heard about this.

But thinking about it in detail, although this is a bit unbelievable, it also meets Italy's combat needs.

Because before the outbreak of World War II, most of the battles in Italy were in the colonies against local guerrillas or indigenous African tribes, so tanks were more important for machine guns than artillery...machine guns fired accurately and densely. More importantly, bullets are cheap.

As for the artillery... it's just used to scare people. It only needs to be able to fire the shells and explode loudly to scare the indigenous Africans, so there is no need to consider accuracy at all, and of course there is no need to deploy special gunners.

So one can imagine what the consequences would be if such armored units were used to deal with the British army's new tanks.

"Sir!" Qin Chuan interrupted: "Maybe we can stop the British attack!"

"What?" Colonel Olbridge said: "Sergeant, maybe you don't know that the British have defeated the tank regiment of the 15th Armored Division with these tanks, and they have forty tanks, and we only have twenty Four cars!”

"I know, Colonel!" Qin Chuan replied: "But that's because they don't know the weaknesses of this tank!"

"Did you know?" asked Albridge.

"Maybe I know!" Qin Chuan said, "But I'm not sure!"

"You're not sure!" Colonel Olbridge said, "Sergeant, that's my unit, and it's about the lives of hundreds of tank crews and soldiers, including you, and you want us to use a Uncertain weakness to deal with the enemy?"

"Colonel!" General Strike reminded: "You have to be clear, if we continue like this, everything you say will probably come true... But if you are willing to listen to the Sergeant's thoughts, although you can't Guaranteed to be correct, but maybe the sergeant guessed it right?”

Colonel Albridge couldn't help being stunned when he heard this, then nodded and said: "You are right, General. But I don't have hope for this!"

General Strike raised his eyebrows at Qin Chuan and motioned for Qin Chuan to continue speaking.

"If my guess is correct..." Qin Chuan pointed to the sketch and said: "The tank gun on the top turret of this new tank should be the same as the 'Stuart' tank gun, both are 37MM tank guns!"

General Strike turned his attention to Colonel Albridge.

"Yes, it is!" Colonel Olbridge replied: "But the point is the 75MM caliber tank gun underneath it!"

"This is exactly what I want to say!" Qin Chuan continued: "So we can ignore the turret on the top of it at a certain distance, because we know that the artillery of the 'Stuart' tank can penetrate the enemy within five hundred meters. The depth is only 36mm, but the side armor of our army's "Plank 3" tank is 37mm, which means it can't be penetrated!"

"Yes, so what can this do?" Colonel Olbridge said anxiously: "I said, the focus is on the 75MM gun..."

"Colonel!" Qin Chuan pointed to the 75MM gun on the sketch and said, "I don't know if you noticed, but this 75MM gun is installed on the side!"

"Of course, I can see it!" replied Colonel Olbridge.

"It doesn't have a turret, so it can't rotate!" Qin Chuan said: "It can't rotate, which means it can't aim at side targets..."

Hearing this, Colonel Albridge was stunned for a moment as if he understood something, and then nodded and said: "That's right, Sergeant. If they want to aim at us... they have to turn the car body, and the gunner has to wait for the car. They can only aim after their body has stopped, which means their aiming speed is very slow!”

"Yes!" Qin Chuan nodded: "So, when our tanks face this new type of tank..."

As he said this, Qin Chuan casually took a matchbox from the table. Colonel Slain immediately took out a matchbox from his pocket and handed it over.

"This is our tank, this is the enemy's tank!" Qin Chuan placed two matchboxes on the table and explained as he moved them: "Generally, tanks use frontal armor to face the enemy and approach the enemy... "

This is of course because the frontal armor is the thickest part of the tank.

"If that's the case!" Qin Chuan said: "We are walking in a straight line. Even if the enemy's new tank 75MM gun has a small range of fire, it can easily target us and destroy us!"

Then Qin Chuan rearranged the position of the matchbox and demonstrated it in another direction while explaining: "But if we take a diagonal path, that is, use half of the side armor to face the enemy..."

"Then it will be difficult for the enemy's 75MM gun to aim at us!" Colonel Olbridge said: "Because we will constantly escape from their firing range, they must constantly adjust the body, which will not only affect the aiming of their 37MM gun And shooting, and theoretically... its 37MM gun is difficult to penetrate our side armor!”

"Yes!" Qin Chuan nodded.

The weakness of the "General Grant" tank is that it has one more gun and two more crew members, which makes it difficult to meet the combat needs of two guns at the same time, or it can be said that it is difficult for six tank crew members to do it. to perfect synergy.