Chapter 28 Confrontation (Part 2)

He had no idea that the commander of the Type 3A assault gun named Michel Wittmann was leading his crew to ambush on the road he had to pass.

After leading his troops to set off, Malashenko was now commanding his armored company to rush at the fastest speed towards the German positions on the opposite side that were already visible to the naked eye, hoping to tear open the German defense positions of the enemy in front of them before the German army, which had just been baptized by the Soviet heavy artillery group, completely recovered, thus opening an attack path for the subsequent large forces.

Soon, the armored company, which was advancing at full speed, took almost no time to gallop across the vast grassland to a position less than 600 meters away from the first line of defense of the German army.

Sitting in his gunner and commander position, he held the wide-angle periscope with both hands and observed the view outside the vehicle in front of him. Looking at the First German Army position in front of him, which was close to him, it was obviously much higher than Malashenko's current position and surrounded the defense line set up closely around the outer perimeter of Brod Town. After witnessing this scene, Malashenko couldn't help but curse in his heart.

"Damn, these Germans are really good at choosing places! They built all the defense positions in a high position close to the outer perimeter of Brod Town. What a bunch of smart bastards!"

For the first wave of T34 medium tanks led by Malashenko, the German defense position built on the steep slope outside the town of Brod, which was relatively high and low, was definitely not good news.

Why did the German defense position built on the slope from a high position make Malashenko so angry? All this has to start with the design performance of the Soviet T34 medium tank itself.

As we all know, as the first tank in human history to systematically arrange inclined armor in exchange for stronger equivalent armor protection, the design concept and actual combat performance of the T34 medium tank can be said to be unparalleled and second to none in the era when it was born.

Following the early tank design concept of the Great Patriotic War that the Soviet tanks required comprehensive protection, the T34 medium tank used a homogeneous steel armor with a physical thickness of 45 mm in the upper armor plate area of ​​the body, which is the most important defense weight, and arranged it at a 60-degree tilt angle.

In this way, the upper armor plate area of ​​the T34 medium tank body with a defense tilt angle of 60 degrees will be able to provide a maximum of 90 mm thick equivalent armor defense when facing enemy artillery shells attacking from horizontal trajectories.

In addition, the side and rear armor plates of the T34 tank are slightly inferior to the front armor plates of the vehicle body. They are arranged at a 40-degree tilt angle, which can provide at least 70 mm equivalent thickness of armor defense when dealing with enemy shells in a horizontal trajectory.

The turret also follows the design concept of comprehensive defense. The physical armor thickness of the integral cast turret in the left, right and rear directions is 40 mm, and it also has a certain tilt angle in exchange for a stronger equivalent armor defense.

It is no exaggeration to say that when the German army launched the Barbarossa invasion in the summer of 1941, the German officers and soldiers who first saw the new Soviet T34 tank were almost completely scared by its "four ounces to move a thousand pounds" tilted armor defense.

The PAK36 37mm anti-tank gun and the PAK38 50mm anti-tank gun, which had made great achievements in the earlier blitzkrieg against Europe, instantly became useless stepping stones that could only tickle the T34 tank.

The German armored forces, which conquered France, known as the "world's first army" at the time, in just seven weeks, were also dwarfed by the T34 tank. The main German tanks of the first, second, third, and fourth, as well as light tanks such as 35T and 38T, all became "waste" of the backward era overnight.

In addition to relying on the FLAK36/37 88mm anti-aircraft gun, which was the strongest anti-armor weapon in the German army at the time, to use armor-piercing shells to shoot at the T34 tank, the huge German army that conquered the whole of Europe could no longer find any anti-armor weapon that could effectively deal with the Soviet T34 tank.

This cruel fact undoubtedly dealt a heavy blow to Hitler, the German leader who had been promoting the racist theory of "the inviolability of the Great Germans" at the time. This made the German leader, who had always promoted and believed that the Germans were the best people in the world, see that the weapons made by the inferior people he called had actually been ahead of his army for a whole era.

And finally, after scolding the think tank around him, the extremely annoyed leader did not sleep well for a whole week.

But even so, the tilted armor used by the powerful T34 tank was not an absolutely invincible "golden bell magic".

As the front-line wars gradually advanced with the victory of the German army, the German armored forces, who had profound attainments in armored warfare and tactical research, soon discovered the crucial and fatal weakness of the tilted armor used by the T34 tank.

Theoretically, the T34 tank's upper front armor plate area used for "facing the enemy head-on" has a physical armor thickness of 45 mm and a 60-degree inclination angle, which can provide an equivalent defense of up to 90 mm armor thickness on a horizontal ballistic attack route. However, all this is only based on the premise that the incoming shells are "horizontal ballistics."

As the German armored forces and anti-tank gun teams gained more and more combat experience against the Soviet T34 tanks, the German troops who exchanged combat experience privately soon discovered a physical phenomenon that seemed quite magical at the time.

Assuming that the anti-tank guns and the German anti-armor tanks were deployed on a hill or steep slope higher than the Soviet tanks and then fired, the German armor-piercing shells in the overall "high-to-low" terrain would break through the usual horizontal ballistic attack restrictions and accurately hit the Soviet T34 tanks with an attack angle of 30 degrees or more flying from a high altitude.

In this way, the German inclined artillery shells in the high-to-low state would offset the tilt angle of the upper armor of the Soviet T34 tanks in the lower terrain to a certain extent by virtue of their own angle of incidence.

As a result, the T34 tank's sloped armor defense with an equivalent thickness of up to 90 mm on the horizontal ballistic attack route was severely weakened, and it could only provide an equivalent armor defense slightly more than the 45 mm physical armor thickness of its own upper front armor plate.