Chapter 698: German-Soviet War (42)

Hearing the news that the No. 101 railway bridge was blown up, Yannick couldn't help but whistle. Even if a section of the railroad tracks on the flat ground is destroyed, it is easy to repair and resume traffic, but a bridge that has been blown up cannot be repaired in a day or two. And even if the Soviets restore traffic at the fastest speed regardless of the cost, there are still many places where the nearly 10,000 kilometers of railway lines can be destroyed.

Even if the supplies shipped by the Americans to the Far East are piled up like mountains, what's the use if they can't be transported to the front line.

Yannick continued to think about how to deal with the surrounded Soviet troops in Ukraine and Belarus. It is not realistic to fight street battles in so many cities one by one. If each of them is fought like Stalingrad in the original time and space, how long will it take to fight and how much will it cost.

After thinking for a long time, Yannick picked up the phone. "Dr. Goebbels, let those Ukrainian and Belarusian soldiers write letters of persuasion to surrender. Everyone must write. If you can't read, find someone else to write for you. After writing, make more copies and scatter them in those cities." After all, most of the population in these cities are Belarusians and Ukrainians, and the letters of persuasion from compatriots should have some effect. Moreover, it will be autumn soon, when there will be a shortage of food. There will be so many troops in these cities, and there will be no food. Even if they are trapped, they can die of starvation. There is no need to fight a brutal street battle.

The next day, Yannick was convening a meeting of senior military officials, and Reinhard hurried in. "Your Highness, the US Army tested a new type of rocket launcher yesterday. It uses armor-piercing rockets with tail fins, with an effective range of 100 meters and can penetrate steel plates about 130 mm thick!"

"130 mm penetration?!" Hearing this, everyone present showed a little solemnity on their faces. Penetrating 130 mm steel plates means that it can easily destroy jackal tanks and even threaten leopard tanks. This is not good news.

Yannick saw that the name of this rocket launcher was the famous "Bazooka" anti-tank rocket. The nickname "Bazooka" comes from a tubular instrument used by American radio comedy star Bob Pence. Although this is just a popular nickname and not a formal military term, the name is popular and has been passed down to later generations.

During World War II, the American "Bazooka" anti-tank rocket fundamentally changed the infantry anti-tank tactics, allowing infantry to have the means to destroy tanks at a certain distance. I wonder if the American soldiers of later generations thought that they were the initiators when facing the RPG anti-tank rockets flying across the battlefield in Iraq.

During World War II and for a long period of time after World War II, the "Bazooka" series of rocket launchers were the best anti-tank weapons owned by the US Army. As the originator of the same-caliber rocket launcher, its great reputation made other anti-tank weapons of the same period pale in comparison. Some people even assert that the invention of the "Bazooka" was the greatest contribution made by the United States to the development of anti-tank weapons during World War II.

Britain's anti-tank weapons are somewhat helpless, and they have fallen behind others in terms of weapons, technology and tactics. The anti-tank weapons invented by Britain in World War II were not inherited after the war, which shows its dilemma. Soviet infantry anti-tank weapons are generally associated with the word "heroic". Soviet infantrymen were not equipped with many novel weapons, so they often had to rush at German tanks with grenades and Molotov cocktails raised high, and many people never came back. Therefore, Soviet infantrymen truly interpreted the ultimate meaning of infantry anti-tank combat—the brave and fearless. When the Allied forces approached from the east and west, Germany's anti-tank technology and tactics were also rapidly heating up. Although the "Iron Fist" could not save the inevitable fate of the German army's defeat, it paved the way for the subsequent rocket launcher and became a milestone in the history of infantry weapons.

Seeing the sketch of the new US rocket launcher projected on the wall by the slide projector, the crowd in the audience was somewhat indignant. "These shameless Americans plagiarized our "tank killer"!"

Jannick almost laughed out loud when he heard it. After witnessing the battlefield performance of the bazooka in the original time and space, the Germans, who were good at learning, began to imitate it. They used the samples seized in the North African battlefield to make a German version of the bazooka rocket launcher, named "Tank Killer". The German army, which advocated great power, changed the caliber of the rocket launcher to 88 mm.

However, this "tank killer" is not very practical. The voices from the front-line troops of the German army believe that they still need a simpler and more effective, disposable anti-tank weapon that can be used by a single soldier. Under the urgent request of the military, the military industry stepped up its research and development, and finally produced an anti-tank weapon called "Iron Fist" in March 1943. After the war, the Soviets made RPG rocket launchers based on the German Iron Fist.

"Don't worry too much, you can see that the American anti-tank rocket launcher needs to be within 100 meters (and its penetration depth is only 100 mm at most), which means that the accuracy of this thing is not high."

Rundstedt said with some worry. "Your Highness, if the Soviets use these weapons in street fighting..."

The combat distance of street fighting can be as short as a dozen meters or even a few meters. One rocket can destroy a tank of one's own side, which is a big loss. But if the armored forces do not enter the city, the losses will be even greater if the infantry fights street fighting alone.

"Don't worry, Marshal." Yannick said with great ease. "Early when we were equipped with the 'Iron Fist' and the 'Anti-Tank Killer', I anticipated that one day our enemies would be equipped with the same type of weapons, so I had already thought of a countermeasure. And it's very simple, just put a grille on our tanks."

Later generations of tanks have many kinds of armor, such as ceramic armor, composite armor, reactive armor, and even high-tech advanced equipment such as tank active defense system. Most people will ignore a simple and cheap civilian tank armor - "grid armor".

To put it nicely, armor is just a pile of iron fences. It has no technical content. It is a grid-like fence welded by iron bars or steel bars, and then fixed to the periphery of the tank or armored vehicle, generally ranging from a few centimeters to tens of centimeters away from the body.

This thing was thought up by the Soviets during World War II. Because the German "iron fist" in the Soviet-German War posed an increasingly serious threat to Soviet tanks, the Soviet army had a sudden idea one day to weld the "wire bed" around the tank and found that it was quite effective in resisting the "iron fist".

It is said that in the battle to capture Berlin in 1945, a T-34 tank with an external "wire bed" was suddenly attacked by 8 German "iron fist" anti-tank rockets. However, 5 of them were detonated prematurely by the "wire bed", and the remaining 3 were actually hung on it and became duds, while the T-34 continued to fight as if nothing had happened.

In this way, this civilian armor was later adopted by many countries (the United States adopted it in large quantities during the Vietnam War), and finally evolved into grille armor.