Chapter 1511 High Explosive Bombardment

Unlike armor-piercing shells that fail to penetrate heavy armored tanks, which means they cannot cause damage, high-explosive shells are extremely unsuitable for attacking enemy mobile armored targets at long distances, although they have low muzzle velocity, severe ballistic droop, and unbearable long-distance bullet velocity decay.

However, once a large-caliber high-explosive shell accurately hits an enemy tank, even a heavy tank with strong armor and powerful guns will suffer different degrees of damage depending on the hit part, depending on where the high-explosive shell hits.

And there is another very important point, that is, the German Tiger King is now in a state of broken legs and cannot move, which greatly increases the hit probability of high-explosive shells at long distances. There is no need to consider the low muzzle velocity of high-explosive shells. After combining the corresponding distance decay speed, and then calculating the travel speed of the enemy armored unit, the final result is how much lead time should be used.

Not every Red Army gunner is a professional mathematician. In reality, it is much more difficult to use high-explosive shells to hit mobile armored targets at long distances than in the game. Moreover, this was a backward war era without any fire control system, relying purely on gunners' experience and manual operation. It was natural to imagine how worrying the accuracy was.

Fortunately, the damn Tiger King had its legs broken and could not move. Now it was a real target sandbag, at the mercy of others, so there was no problem at all to use high-explosive bombs to hit such a fixed target, and the accuracy could be reliably guaranteed.

The Tiger King was in an extremely miserable state after being washed by a 122 high-explosive bomb. Although it was unknown how many high-explosive bombs were accurately hit on the Tiger King and exploded, Kurbalov clearly saw the miserable appearance of the Tiger King through the telescope he had been holding and the flares hanging high in the sky.

The skirt armor on both sides of the vehicle body that guarded the tracks was almost completely blown away and washed. After losing the skirt armor, the Tiger King looked extremely awkward, giving people a strange feeling that the vehicle body and the track shape did not match.

Of course, the damage to the Tiger King with a broken leg is more than that.

The MG34 roof machine gun that was originally mounted on the top of the Tiger King has now disappeared, leaving only the bottom part of the machine gun mount on the machine gun mount, like a stump left by a tree that a lumberjack has just felled.

Although the entire front upper armor plate of the vehicle body has not been penetrated, the concentrated bombardment of multiple high-explosive shells and armor-piercing shells has caused serious armor peeling.

The large pieces of defective armor that were blown away by the passive energy impact have now disappeared, and the chemical energy blasting impact generated by the high-explosive shells has aggravated the deterioration of this situation, directly causing the front upper armor plate of the Tiger King to look like the surface of the moon, with pits and depressions, which is unbearable to look at.

On the surface, there are only so many damages, but no one can tell how much internal damage the Tiger King actually has.

Judging from past combat experience, Kurbalov is 60% sure that this Tiger King has lost its combat capability.

None of the German tanks hit by 122mm high-explosive shells had a good ending. At the least, they were paralyzed and caught fire. At the worst, they were directly pierced through the body armor and other vital parts, and the ammunition rack was detonated on the spot, causing a secondary explosion.

As long as the tube is thick enough and the charge is large enough! Even if you are driving a heavy tank, you can still be knocked down by high-explosive shells!

The only thing Kurbalov is not sure about is that Stalin's 1st Guards Tank Division has no experience in bombarding the German new Tiger King heavy tank with high-explosive shells. In the past, the most powerful German tank killed by 122mm high-explosive shells was the previous generation of Tiger King, which weighed 56 tons.

As for the Tiger King with a combat weight of nearly 70 tons, Kurbalov was honestly unsure.

The sturdy protection performance of this kind of thing far exceeds any tank of the German army. It has been upgraded qualitatively. There is no obvious weakness in medium and long-range shooting, and it can fight back and forth with any tank currently in service in the Red Army.

The reason why Malashenko ordered the tanks of Kurbalov's troops to attack forward is because the Red Army really can't do anything about this nearly 70-ton steel precious thing at medium and long distances. Otherwise, he can be shot at a long distance, why rush forward and shoot at close range?

Kurbalov knew that the use of high-explosive bombs was the decision of the experienced tank commanders of the crews below.

To be honest, there is nothing wrong with such a decision. Instead of armor-piercing shells not being able to penetrate, it is better to use high-explosive shells to create some trouble for the King Tiger, which is much better than the embarrassment of simply hearing a noise.

But as for whether the high-explosive shell can destroy the King Tiger, Kurbalov just feels that it should be possible at this moment, but there is no absolute certainty, only 60% at most.

As for what happened next, it quickly shocked Kurbalov, who had originally thought so.

This King Tiger that seemed to be possessed by a demon was not dead yet! After being silent for about ten seconds, it began to turn the turret again and aim at the target.

"Damn it! How thick is the armor of this thing? It can still fight after being bombarded like this?!"

"No, comrade commander! It seems that something is wrong. That King Tiger is a little abnormal, look!"

Before Kurbalov finished his complaints, the gunner who was aiming with a high-magnification, narrow-field gun scope had already seen the details and immediately reminded him.

"What!?"

After picking up the telescope and taking a closer look again, Kurbalov finally saw clearly what the so-called situation was wrong.

The speed of the Tiger King's turret rotation was just like a cervical spondylosis. If the original speed of the turret rotation was acceptable, it was like an adult running for fitness. Then the speed of the Tiger King's turret rotation was just like a staggering old man entering his twilight years. The speed of turning the turret bit by bit was as slow as a turtle.

"Good! The high-explosive bomb is effective, and the Tiger King's steering machine has a problem!"

As the saying goes, laymen watch the excitement, and experts see the doorway.

Kurbalov, who was born as a professional tank soldier and served as the head of the regiment, came to the conclusion instantly after just one glance: Such a bad turret speed can only mean one thing. The Tiger King is now either the turret steering machine is stuck by fragments and difficult to rotate, or the electric steering machine is scrapped and is driven by a hand-cranked steering machine.

In either case, it is the best for the Red Army.

This Tiger King, which already had a broken leg, was now even more seriously injured and suffered from cervical spondylosis. After being so disabled, the threat it could pose to the Red Army was so low that it could almost be ignored.