Chapter 2276 Prelude to the King

Chapter 2281 Prelude to the King

In order to accommodate the semi-automatic loader in the Tiger King's turret, the Germans also made sufficient adaptive improvements. Google Search Reading

The first to bear the brunt is naturally the first ammunition rack at the rear of the turret, which has been almost completely banned by the commander of the front-line armored forces because of its high rate of secondary explosion and bad reviews.

If we look at the battlefield reports of the Germans, the Tiger King, a heavy tank with strong armor and powerful guns, except for those abandoned voluntarily due to lack of oil or mechanical failure, more than half of the Tiger Kings that were completely lost due to the enemy's attack and could not be recovered died from problems related to "fire", which is simply the secondary explosion of ammunition or the fire of fuel after being penetrated.

As for the ammunition explosion, the absolute main reason for the "Tiger's death" was the destruction of the first ammunition rack in the turret, which caused the explosion. The terrible explosion probability of the first ammunition rack at the tail end of the King Tiger turret made the German armored soldiers on the front line compose a spit RAP, which is a classic.

"Don't give me the King Tiger, don't give me the King Tiger, hey! I don't want a lame King Tiger, hey! My head is full of shells, don't give me a lame King Tiger, hey!"

A spit RAP scolded the two most fatal shortcomings at once. Fortunately, one of the shortcomings can be quickly solved through acquired human intervention.

Since the first ammunition rack in the turret is so prone to explosion, why don't I just empty the first ammunition rack in the turret? In fact, most of the German armored commanders on the front line did the same.

Emptying the first ammunition rack in the turret will of course lead to some foreseeable problems, and the reduction in loading speed is a very direct one. It is not as fast to extract a shell from the ammunition rack of the vehicle body and then carry it back to the turret basket for loading. It is not as fast as turning around to pull out a round of ammunition directly from the rear end of the turret, and then turning around to stuff it into the breech block to complete the loading.

But there is actually no way to do this. The prerequisite for you to continue fighting is that you have to be alive. If the King Tiger has become "dead", how can you continue to fight?

Under the premise that the ammunition detonation rate remains high and the turret is almost bound to be bombed once it is penetrated by the Red Army's charged shells, it is obviously quite unrealistic to talk about combat effectiveness and combat efficiency. It is a castle in the air and pure nonsense.

In a sense, this can be regarded as a blessing in disguise for the Germans.

The Henschel engineering team that started the King Tiger loader modification project found that the first ammunition rack of the King Tiger's turret was so criticized by the front-line soldiers that it was abandoned and empty in most front-line troops. Then they realized that if the useless first ammunition rack was completely removed, more valuable space in the turret could be freed up for the loader modification project, and the space capacity could even be said to be more than enough.

Although the Germans were more stubborn, especially when it came to military design, this was true, but stubbornness did not mean stupidity. They were able to understand and translate those simple principles that they should understand and could understand at a glance into practical actions.

The German engineering team immediately removed the redundant first ammunition rack in the turret of the test prototype, freeing up a considerable amount of available space in the turret of the Tiger King.

In this way, not only could the newly designed semi-automatic rotary loader be inserted smoothly, but even the loaders who participated in the test of the test prototype reported that their space in the vehicle was much more spacious, and they did not feel the space crowded due to the addition of a loader.

Not only was the work easier and more convenient than before, but people were also more comfortable, and the man-machine efficiency and actual combat power were improved. This design is so conscientious that the loader who often helps to repair the King Tiger's road wheels is reluctant to say hello to the Henschel designer's family. It really makes the Henschel engineers who record the test feedback feel ashamed.

At the same time, another King Tiger firepower system modification project that is carried out in parallel with the loader modification project is also being completed by the engineering team jointly formed by Henschel and Krupp under the huge pressure of the Allied bombers bombing all day long.

Perhaps it is a coincidence that these two modification projects that are carried out in parallel but do not interfere with each other finally reached a common point in the process of exploring the modification plan.

All of them cancelled the King Tiger's much-criticized design of the first turret ammunition rack, which can be said to have traded battlefield survival rate for loading speed, and returned to the traditional German tank design with only body ammunition racks like the Tiger 1.

A problem that was not yet realized at the time was that these two originally unrelated transformation projects would eventually be combined one day in the near future. The two transformation projects would be literally unified and merged, and finally integrated very well, becoming the "ultimate King Tiger" that truly made the Allied forces on the Western Front "scare away the tiger", and it was also the most powerful mass-produced heavy tank that the German armored forces actually received before the end of the empire.

Of course, it was indeed too early to talk about this unforeseen "ultimate King Tiger" transformation plan at the time.

Whether it was Malashenko, who was an opponent on the Eastern Front, or a certain SS ace tank commander who fought and retreated on the Western Front but could still cut down the weak Allied tanks, no one expected what the ultimate version of the King Tiger would look like.

Back to the present, Malashenko, who was fiddling with various trivialities in the corpse of the Tiger King, actually did not expect that the Tiger King in front of him, which was equipped with a semi-automatic loader, was actually just a transitional semi-finished product of the "Ultimate Tiger King" plan.

It is true that the combat power has been enhanced, but compared with the "Ultimate Tiger King" plan, this combat power bonus is actually less than half.

There is often an almost universal "objective truth" in the transformation and upgrading of large-scale technical equipment: the larger the size and the heavier the tonnage of the platform, the more redundant space there is for upgrading and transformation. Just like the transformation of a 10,000-ton large ship of the navy, there is definitely more room for development than the transformation of a 3,000-ton small ship, and the transformation and upgrading of large-scale technical equipment of the army is actually the same.

No matter how constrained the modification of the Tiger King is, it can never be more difficult than the modification of the No. 4.

After all, the advantage of large-scale platform brought by the huge size is here. If you are given a larger drawing paper, you can always draw more things and have more room for development. The reason is the same.

So, with relatively more room for transformation, what kind of "German precious object" can be born in the end?

It's really hard to say, just like "Was it the Allied forces on the Western Front that hit this precious object first? Or was it the Red Army on the Eastern Front that hit this precious object first?" It's also hard to say, everything can only be witnessed by the passage of time.