Chapter 208 Rocket Hammer

The German artillery, which was far behind the Soviet artillery in many parameters, performance and range, was able to successfully launch an artillery counterattack and directly confront the Soviet artillery this time. It was not without reason.

The German army, which was praised by military fans in later generations as "Germany, the hometown of black technology", was always the pioneer and experimenter of various cutting-edge military weapons and technologies. Although the performance of these cutting-edge weapons, which seemed to be black technology at the time, was good or bad, and the battlefield performance was good or bad, these new weapons and equipment were undoubtedly revolutionary in battlefield rules and leading the future development of weapons.

The 150mm 19 FES rocket-assisted artillery shell used by the German army to return the favor to the Soviet artillery and test its actual combat performance in this artillery counterattack was such an epoch-making weapon.

The origin of this rocket-assisted artillery shell can be traced back to the SFH 18 150mm howitzer, which was standard equipment for every infantry division of the German army.

This type of heavy artillery was born in the early 1930s and was jointly developed by two German arms giants, Rheinmetall and Krupp. It happened to catch up with Hitler's rise to power and led Germany to break free from the shackles and constraints of the Treaty of Versailles. It began to be mass-produced and distributed to the troops as the standard divisional heavy artillery of the German infantry division. Each division was equipped with 12 guns for divisional heavy firepower support.

However, this heavy howitzer, which has the precious blood of two arms giants, Krupp and Rheinmetall, flowing in its body, has a performance in actual combat that is completely inconsistent with its name and is shocking.

The maximum range of this type of German infantry division standard divisional heavy artillery is less than 15 kilometers, which is not only difficult to match the maximum range of 20 kilometers of the Soviet A-19 122mm cannon howitzer.

Even the Soviet ML-20 152mm howitzer, which has a maximum range of 17 kilometers, which is higher than the No. 1 in terms of caliber and projectile quality, can only look up to it, let alone catch up with the B-4 203mm "Stalin Hammer" heavy howitzer that frightened the German soldiers.

The embarrassing situation of "not being able to hit and reach" made the German artillery, which was already inferior to the Soviet field artillery group in quantity, completely become the object of ridicule and training by the Soviet artillery after the launch of Operation Barbarossa because of the inferior quality of the equipment in their hands. The Soviet field artillery group, which was the strongest in the world at the same time, basically did not take the opponent's German artillery seriously.

Fortunately, the German army, which had suffered a setback at the hands of the heavy artillery of the British and French coalition forces when the blitzkrieg against Europe was launched, had already realized the shortcomings and disadvantages of its artillery equipment and began to make improvements.

Given that the SFH 18 150mm howitzer has become the standard equipment of all front-line infantry divisions of the German Army, it is not only costly but also unrealistic to upgrade the artillery on a large scale.

The German artillery engineer team, with great imagination, directly chose to make a big fuss about the artillery shells, and the final product was this 150mm 19 FES rocket-assisted artillery shell.

The biggest difference between this type of rocket-assisted artillery shell and conventional high-explosive grenades is the internal structure of its projectile.

An additional rocket engine compartment is set at the end of the projectile after the warhead charging chamber, which is not connected to the front projectile warhead charging chamber and is separated from the projectile body.

The rocket engine compartment is equipped with a bottom protective plate to prevent the more fragile rocket engine from being damaged by the high-pressure powerful propellant when firing with conventional propellant.

After firing, the projectile of this type of artillery shell will continue to fly inertially in the air with the launch kinetic energy provided by the barrel propellant, just like ordinary artillery shells.

When the propellant in the barrel provides kinetic energy, the projectile will fly far enough out of the barrel, and will be exhausted due to friction with the air and gravity during flight, approaching the limit of the artillery range.

The time-delay fuse equipped in the rocket engine compartment will automatically trigger the rocket engine to start ignition and operation, and the bottom protective plate of the projectile used to protect the fragile rocket engine from damage by high-pressure propellant will fall off.

Before the limited fuel is exhausted, the small rocket engine can allow the 150mm projectile with exhausted propellant kinetic energy to continue to fly forward along the existing flight trajectory for a distance of up to three kilometers. Thus, without changing the artillery itself, the artillery range is increased by distributing new artillery shells to the front-line troops, which greatly saves military expenses for improving artillery.

But as the saying goes, you can't have your cake and eat it too. The rocket engine compartment, which occupies a considerable part of the volume of the small projectile, has forced the entire 150mm rocket-range extended-range artillery shell to reduce the warhead charge by one-third on the basis of the original 150mm ordinary high-explosive grenade, and the power of the shell can be said to be much less than before.

At the same time, since this kind of equipment, which was still black technology, was first developed by the German army and put into actual combat for the first time, there was no experience to learn from or precedents to follow.

The Germans, who crossed the river blindfolded, designed this artillery shell that was a bit too advanced for this era to be extremely complex. The delicate and fragile rocket engine needed to be carefully stored and cared for even when the shell was not in use.

The projectiles that lacked the flight stabilizing tail fins and guidance modules of the artillery shells often had the embarrassing situation that the rocket engine pushed the projectiles directly to an unknown place like New Year's fireworks.

But no matter what, the development and equipment of the 150mm 19 FES rocket-assisted artillery shells finally gave the "naturally short-handed" German artillery the capital to compete with the Soviet field artillery group for the first time. The SFH 18 150mm howitzer with a range of 2 kilometers can barely bring the Soviet artillery into the strike range.

The 150mm rocket-assisted high-explosive projectiles with the famous red rocket engine flight tail flame fell densely on the Soviet artillery positions like raindrops.

The Soviet artillery originally planned to deploy its own artillery positions outside the range of the German artillery, but never expected that the German artillery on the opposite side, who had never dared to fart in the past, would use new secret weapons to fight back.

The reserve shell boxes that were originally piled up at the nearest position of each artillery position for quick loading due to full confidence immediately became the death warrant of the Soviet artillery. The huge explosion caused by the direct detonation of the German 150mm rocket-assisted high-explosive bomb turned most of the Soviet artillery positions into a sea of ​​death with thick smoke and flames in just a blink of an eye.

The explosion on the positions of the entire rear division artillery regiment was so strong that even the division commander Colonel Donskoy, who was in the front observation command post, was about to fall down due to the shaking of the ground. Colonel Donskoy, who was forcibly straightened by his political commissar partner before falling, immediately gave an order while forcing himself to remain calm.

"Quick, call Gaskov and ask what happened to his artillery regiment!"