My German Empire - Chapter 35:

Meeting room No. 1 is a small meeting room with only a dozen seats.

Wilhelm picked up a stack of paper and shook it after they had finished greeting. “This is the tank design you gave me?” Before visiting the Soviet Union, he asked his secretary to find the person in charge of these companies and asked them to design three tanks each. Now he is holding the design of these tanks.

Porsche asked with some confusion. “Uh, your Highness, is there any problem?” Wilhelm is now his boss. He didn’t dare to be sloppy with the drawing.

Wilhelm patted the paper in his hand, feeling out of breath. “What’s this? 4.5 tons, 5 tons, 6 tons, 6.5 tons… Are you planning to use it to play house? Huh?…” The data of one of the six-ton ​​heavy tanks caught his attention.

The car body is more than four meters long. On each side, there are 4 balanced and suspended large-diameter road wheels, 4 supporting pulleys, and inducers rearward. The turret is equipped with 2 machine guns and adopts an air-cooled diesel engine produced by Krupp.

Hey, isn’t this the No. 1 tank?

You don’t even need to look at the physical car. Just relying on the data on the drawings, Wilhelm knew that this was the next generation tank No. 1!

The head of Mercedes-Benz explained. “His Royal Highness, this is the tonnage of mainstream light tanks today, like the French ‘Renault’ FT-17 light tank, as well as the British…” As he said, the voice became smaller and smaller, and after a few vague words, he stopped talking .

“…” Wilhelm could only roll his eyes helplessly. After all, the first tank appeared on the battlefield only more than ten years ago. Now all countries have a blank view of what the tanks of the future will look like. Many countries are taking detours. Even the British Empire on the opposite side, as the country where tanks were born, came up with tasteless cruise tanks and destroyer tanks.

The United States on the other side of the Atlantic also produced so-called support infantry tanks and tank destroyers.

Their theory of armored soldiers is; tanks are used to support infantry, and tank destroyers are used to destroy tanks.

Therefore, the standard process of the American armored forces’ combat operations is like this: the m4 tank accompanies the infantry to move forward bravely. If it encounters an enemy tank unit, then the commander of the m4 tank calls the nearby m10 tank destroyer in charge of support to come and eliminate the troublemaker enemy tanks. The situation encountered by the Americans in actual combat is that the m4 tank was hit by German tanks all over the battlefield, when the m10 tank destroyer came, the Germans had already cleaned up the battlefield and evacuated. .

Therefore, it is not surprising that Germany has taken many detours. The Tiger tanks of the World War II era focused on protection, but after World War II, the heavy tanks were found to be the wrong choice with lacking firepower, and they went extreme on their design. The Leopard 1 tank had outstanding firepower, excellent maneuverability, but extremely weak protection!

It just so happens that the British Armstrong Vickers company recently designed a light tank specially designed for export, Vickers Mk.E. Although this tank has not been widely adopted by the British Army, its innovative and excellent design is appreciated by the country.

This tank has a certain level of firepower and mobility, and is reliable and easy to maintain. The body adopts the current mature technology of willow welding. In order to maintain a certain degree of maneuverability, the armor is slightly weak; the power source is an upright four-cylinder gasoline engine made by British Armstrong. The power provided by this engine allows the tank to travel in pavements at a speed of 35 km/h.

The tank designs he received obviously “borrowed” from this tank, which uses a dual-track structure with four pairs on each side. The suspension system is considered to be a very good system that can withstand long-distance driving. It can be considered as a very good design in this era. (The Soviet Union developed the T-26 tank on the basis of this tank).

But Wilhelm certainly doesn’t like this kind of thing. “Mainstream? What is mainstream? It will not be long before German tanks will be the mainstream. Our standards will be the standards of Europe and the world. Those guys have to copy our designs in the end. I want to redefine the German tank standards, 15-30 Tons are light tanks, 30-50 tons are medium tanks, and more than 50 tons are heavy tanks. As for those less than 15 tons, they are all ultralight tanks.”

Hearing that several persons in charge couldn’t help but look at each other blankly, suddenly the person in charge of Rheinmetal Company spoke embarrassedly.

“Uh, Your Majesty, although your idea is good, but we don’t have the accumulation of technology, we can not make tanks that are more than twenty tons right now.”

His remarks are not an excuse. Now Germany does not have a good pre-research on tank projects. They are all starting from scratch. In this case, the best way is to build a primary model first, and then continue development.

The 15-30 ton plan proposed by His Highness was a bit too advanced.

Wilhelm waved his hand to interrupt him. “Rest assured, I don’t want you to make finished products right away. The development time for light tanks is five years, and the time for debugging and perfecting is two years. The development time for medium tanks is seven years, and the time for debugging and perfecting is two years. Heavy tanks basically require ten years of research.”

These few responsible talents breathed a sigh of relief, they thought that the prince was asking them to make a finished product right away.

“I want the operating procedures of these three types of tanks to be as similar or similar as possible, which means that tankers of light tanks can skillfully drive medium or heavy tanks without special training.” The control panel of Soviet Russian fighter jets has not changed much for several generations. Pilots with flight experience can easily familiarize themselves with another aircraft. Unlike the Americans, sometimes the operation method of a different model of an aircraft is completely changed, and the pilot has to learn again.

“And all parts should be as common as possible. After you go back, discuss the standardization and generalization of parts. For example,the armored vehicles from BMW and Mercedes will have a breakdown on the battlefield in the future. I hope I can remove BMW parts to repair Mercedes-Benz, or use Mercedes-Benz parts to repair BMW. I also want to let the repairman learn two maintenance methods. I don’t care about your respective civilian cars, but military cars must meet this standard.”