Chapter 1352: A Cup of Tea, a Pack of Cigarettes, and a Tiger King Repaired in a Day

What Malashenko said was a little unpleasant to hear, but strictly speaking, it was the truth, not to mention that it was said by a victor, Malashenko was fully qualified.

For Malashenko's words, Lieutenant Colonel John had nothing to say, after all, he just waved his arms helplessly and spoke slowly.

"You are right, we lost, and we lost with conviction."

"You and your troops are as strong as the rumors say, but there is one thing wrong, everyone described it wrong."

Lieutenant Colonel John said half a sentence and left half a sentence, as if he wanted Malashenko to guess what to say next. Our old comrade Ma did have a little interest that was neither strong nor weak.

"Oh? Everyone described it wrong? What is that?"

Lieutenant Colonel John paused slightly, but his expression was still calm when he finally spoke.

"Everyone says you are a cold-blooded person, like a steel butcher in a slaughterhouse. But what I saw was a flesh-and-blood general, a real soldier."

""

Malachenko didn't say anything. He guessed that Lieutenant Colonel John would definitely have something to say next, and the result that followed was as expected.

"You gave both of us a chance, General Malachenko. If it weren't for that short period of calm, I would even let my troops fight you to the death. But now, I think this result is good for both of us, isn't it?"

Malachenko smiled slightly, it seems that he didn't make a mistake.

"Of course, this is good for both of us."

The conversation that was almost like a chat ended here. Malachenko continued to get some answers that he was interested in and wanted to know from Lieutenant Colonel John, who had gained mutual recognition to some extent.

The 502 Heavy Armored Battalion was indeed sent to perform support missions, but it did not arrive at the battlefield in full strength.

It's also funny to say that the 502 Heavy Armored Battalion received this batch of King Tiger heavy tanks, which happened just half a month ago.

This batch of Tiger King heavy tanks, which all use Henschel turrets, are new and powerful, and have an overwhelming advantage over the previous generation of Tiger tanks. All officers and soldiers of the 502 Heavy Armored Battalion praised this new heavy tank. During the test run, except for the poor mobility, which was still within the acceptable range, everything else seemed perfect.

But unexpected bad problems always come one after another when you least expect it. ɱ

The 502 Heavy Armored Battalion, which had not been happy for two days after receiving the Tiger King, soon discovered that this batch of new heavy tanks looked delicious but tasted extremely bad, just like a layer of chocolate wrapped in a layer of Ollie Gei.

After running on the training ground for a few days to temper the running-in of the crew, the Tiger Kings gradually exposed many major and even fatal problems and defects.

At first, the engine would always suddenly shut down when you least expected it, or even go on strike on the spot and completely paralyzed.

After the maintenance team came up to check, they quickly found out the problem. The reason for this embarrassing situation was very simple: the engine was overloaded.

The engine used in the Tiger tank was moved intact to the King Tiger, which had increased its tonnage by more than ten tons.

It was like a girl who weighed less than 100 pounds the day before, and woke up the next day and became a fat woman weighing 150 pounds. It was inevitable that she would have difficulty walking two steps and feel overloaded.

Although this description may sound a bit exaggerated, for heavy tanks, which are already heavyweight land warfare equipment, the sudden increase in weight of more than ten tons is enough to crush the engine and cause it to be overloaded.

What's more, the mechanical reliability of this year is just so-so. The Maybach HL230 gasoline engine is already struggling to drive the Tiger and has basically reached its limit. It is not realistic to graft this thing onto the King Tiger intact. If there is no problem at all, it would be a fucking weird thing.

Originally, the engine's broken problem alone was enough to give people a headache, but what the 502 Heavy Armored Battalion did not expect was that even more unfortunate things were still to come.

The sudden engine stalling and breaking down was only one of the problems. The low life and serious unreliability of the entire transmission system and gearbox were even more criticized defects.

The service life of many gearboxes and transmission system parts marked in the manual often needs to be halved during actual use, and sometimes even broken.

The actual service life is often less than one-third of the marked life. Either the transmission shaft is seriously worn, or the gearbox gear directly cracks the red hub, and even the suspension system of the external running device has problems.

The German logistics personnel, who were unlucky for eight generations, disassembled and installed the power system so hard. It took less than a week to basically know how many screws and nuts there were in the power compartment of the King Tiger, and recite them by heart.

Actually, dismantling the engine compartment, opening it for repair and replacing parts are all good things. What really makes the German maintenance team and logistics personnel feel like a nightmare is repairing the suspension system and external running gear of the King Tiger.

This damn staggered road wheels, I really don’t know which orphan who died of his mother designed it.

The German maintenance personnel who were holding steel chisels, crowbars and various maintenance tools, and handling the heavy and huge road wheels back and forth, really wanted to cry.

If you are lucky, you may only need to remove two or three road wheels to find the problem and fix it. But if the crew members say "Hey, I don't know where the problem is, but after it runs, the running part on this side always feels wrong", then the German logistics maintenance team will have a lot of fun.

In the worst case, in order to eliminate the faults one by one and find the exact location of the problem, it may even be necessary to remove all the road wheels on this side to solve the problem. And even if you remove them all, it is just a prerequisite preparation. Whether it can be repaired depends on luck.

Maybe when you think it has been repaired and put all the road wheels back, it still reports that there is a problem after running and it has not been completely repaired. Then you should be prepared to roll up your sleeves and remove all the road wheels on one side again.

All kinds of desperate criticisms piled up together, when the 502 Heavy Armored Battalion received the action order, nearly half of the Tiger Kings were in maintenance and could not move.

Such an appalling equipment availability rate not only "shocked Lao Ma for a whole year", but even Lieutenant Colonel John, who was used to the delicate nature of his own equipment, felt so embarrassed that he wished he could find a hole to crawl into.