The decisive battle against the Third Reich

There is no turning back in a tank encounter, especially when the speed of the enemy and our tanks is not much different and they are within range.

The reason is simple. If you turn around and run away at this time, it means exposing the weakest rear part of the armor to the muzzle of the enemy tank, and the enemy can chase and fire at the same time until all the targets are eliminated.

Therefore, the confrontation between tanks and tanks is often the most cruel. The enemy and us have only one choice... move forward until the enemy is eliminated or we are eliminated.

Of course, if the German army is facing the British "Matilda" with a speed of only 10 kilometers per hour, it will be another matter.

Qin Chuan felt that things were not good when he heard the fierce artillery sound in front, because most of the artillery fire came from the enemy direction, and if the German army encountered a British convoy, this situation would hardly happen.

Sure enough, after a while, Kuhn ordered: "Encountering enemy tank troops, prepare to get off!"

Qin Chuan thought that the German soldiers would complain a few words at this time, after all, this was the mistake made by Colonel Olbrich.

But what surprised Qin Chuan was that the soldiers said nothing, including Werner.

This can be said to be a manifestation of the obedience, unity and quality of the German soldiers.

Obedience and unity are easy to understand. Soldiers must unconditionally obey the orders of their superiors, even if the order is wrong. At the same time, only unity can make soldiers have combat effectiveness, and they can even turn defeat into victory.

Quality means that the German soldiers all realized that it was useless to complain, complain, and regret at this time. All they could do was to try their best to stand with their superiors to overcome the difficulties, otherwise things would get worse and eventually affect themselves.

If only one or two German soldiers thought and did this, it might not have any effect, but if the whole army did this... then it would condense into a terrible force.

The car followed the tank all the way forward, and the car carrying the artillery had stopped, which was determined by the longer range of the artillery.

I saw German soldiers jumping off the car one by one, those who set up the gun set up the gun, and those who carried the shells carried the shells. Every soldier knew what he should do, even if a few shells flew from time to time around him and blew several German soldiers into the sky.

Further ahead, anti-tank guns were also set up. Perhaps because anti-tank guns are lighter and more convenient, when Qin Chuan saw them, the artillerymen were already firing shells at the opposite side.

Ironically, the German artillerymen were using the British 6-pound anti-tank guns...

With a "bang", a car suddenly stopped as if it had hit a pillar, and a scream of soldiers came from the car.

The car was hit by an armor-piercing shell.

The characteristic of armor-piercing shells is that they are not charged, that is, they do not explode, and they only rely on kinetic energy to penetrate the target, so the damage they can cause after hitting the car is very limited... Most of the screams of the ten soldiers in the car were caused by the fragments brought up when the armor-piercing shells destroyed the car, but the casualties were very limited.

This is the characteristic of British tanks, or it can be said to be a common problem in tank warfare.

Tanks generally carry two types of shells, one is a high-penetration but non-explosive armor-piercing shell.

The other is a high-explosive shell that explodes and produces a large number of fragments, which is mainly used to kill infantry.

This will cause a problem: if the enemy has both tanks and infantry, what shells should be chosen.

When loading armor-piercing shells, the target tank may have already gone out of its field of vision, and the tank is powerless in the face of a large number of infantry in front of it.

When loading high-explosive shells, the infantry hides behind the tank again...

These situations often make the tank at a loss and waste the opportunity.

So there is a kind of shell that combines the advantages of both: high-explosive armor-piercing shells.

High-explosive armor-piercing shells are only charged in the rear half, the front half is responsible for penetrating the armor, and the rear half explodes inside the tank. This not only solves the problems mentioned above, but also causes greater damage to the target tank... Pure armor-piercing shells sometimes hit the target but do not cause much damage to the target and personnel.

But "ideals are full, but reality is very skinny". The high-explosive armor-piercing shells produced by the British Army are loaded with "picric acid" charge, which is sensitive to impact. This makes the British Army's high-explosive armor-piercing shells often explode in advance at the moment when the shells collide with the tank armor. This not only fails to cause damage to the target, but also reduces the armor-piercing ability exponentially. Therefore, the British tank soldiers often use armor-piercing shells instead of high-explosive shells... The matter of dealing with infantry is left to artillery or machine guns.

The German artillery shells do not have this problem. The German Army's high-explosive armor-piercing shells are TNT charges that are relatively insensitive to impact, and a plastic buffer cap is installed above the charge cavity, which can effectively prevent the high-explosive armor-piercing shells from exploding when hitting the surface.

The advantages and disadvantages of this point were soon reflected on the battlefield... Both sides chose the cars and armored vehicles behind the other tanks as targets because they are larger targets and easier to penetrate.

But the armor-piercing shells of the British tanks only made a hole in the German cars. Some cars even continued to move forward after being hit by several shells. Even if they were damaged and stopped, the soldiers inside were most likely slightly injured.

When the German armor-piercing shells hit the British cars, they exploded inside the cars. Since there was not much explosive, the explosion was not violent, but because it exploded inside, few soldiers inside could get out... Later, when cleaning up the battlefield, Qin Chuan once saw a car hit by a German high-explosive armor-piercing shell. The car looked fine from the outside, but the British soldiers in the back were already a bloody mess.

With a sound of "chi...", the car braked suddenly, and Qin Chuan and the soldiers fell forward in unison due to inertia.

Before anyone could react, Kuhn shouted hysterically at the soldiers: "Get off the bus, get off the bus, quickly!"

The soldiers stood up and jumped down as fast as they could with their weapons in hand. In addition to orders, this also comes from inner fear... Everyone, including recruits, knows that cars are the enemy's best targets, especially cars that are stationary.

Facts also proved that the soldiers' idea was correct. The moment Kuhn jumped out of the car, a shell passed through the glass from the left side of the cab and then shot out from the right rear. Qin Chuan only heard a whistling of air. The sound was like a small plane flying overhead.

Looking at the car again, half of the carriage had been torn off... Fortunately, there was no one in the carriage, so there were no casualties.

Soon Qin Chuan discovered that he was wrong, because the driver was still in the cab. Although they were not hit by the shells, the burst glass penetrated their faces, necks, and bodies at extremely high speeds.

Their wounds were so numerous that the medical soldiers could not bandage them in time to stop the bleeding. They eventually became two numbers on the sacrifice list due to excessive blood loss.