Chapter 30 Iron Will (Part 1)

Ding-bang——

Accompanied by a huge dull sound like a brick hitting a steel plate, it echoed in Malashenko's ears for a long time like a monk chanting. Malashenko, who realized that his beloved car had just received a German armor-piercing bullet and it ricocheted, immediately began to shout loudly to the entire crew.

"The German armor-piercing bullet, I don't know if it's a tank or an anti-tank gun, it's right in front, find it!"

The muzzle velocity of the 50mm 39 full-caliber capped armor-piercing bullet is as high as 835 meters per second. The flight speed is more than twice the speed of sound. Before the sound of the German anti-tank gun when firing was finally transmitted to Malashenko's ears through the air, the armor-piercing bullet it fired had already accurately hit the upper front of the tank.

Malashenko was attacked almost instantly, and only the dull sound of the collision echoed in his ears. He could not judge the enemy's position by the sound of the artillery. The battlefield disadvantage of the enemy being in the dark and us being in the light forced Malashenko to immediately swing the wide-angle periscope in his hand and start looking for the target along the direction where the shells might fly.

Before modern high-magnification electronic optical sighting instruments were installed on main battle tanks, all types of tanks from World War II to the early Cold War were actually suffering from too narrow and limited vision.

At that time, when war technology was not as advanced as it is today, tank soldiers from all over the world had only one solution to this situation, which was also very simple. That was that the commander who was responsible for commanding the entire vehicle opened the commander's top cover on his head and leaned his upper body out of the vehicle to observe the enemy situation on the battlefield.

Such situations were quite common among Allied tank soldiers and German armored forces of the same period. The photos of German tank commanders leaning their upper bodies out of the vehicle that appeared in various historical records are the best evidence.

But compared with the Allies and the Germans, there were few photos of tank commanders sticking their upper bodies out of the turrets in the early days of the Great Patriotic War in the Soviet armored forces of the same period. Most of the photos of the T34 tanks showed the commanders staying in the iron coffins.

Could it be that the Soviet tank commanders, who were blessed by the Soviet faith, were too timid and afraid of death to stick their upper bodies out of the car to observe the enemy? No, the reason for this special situation was not anything else, but a bad design defect in the early 1941 T34 tank.

As the Soviet armored forces' design exploration of the first new tank in human history that adopted a systematic tilted armor layout, the T34 medium tank left a strong mark in the history of human tanks, but it also had many shortcomings and design defects.

Take the 1941 T3476 medium tank that Malashenko is currently commanding as an example.

Its integrated huge turret hatch was almost as difficult to open completely by manpower in the era without hydraulic assistance as doing a set of gym exercises. Not only that, the ingenious Soviet engineer team also designed the tank's turret hatch to be half-pushed forward, rather than the rear-opening hatch of the German tanks of the same period.

The reason given for the design is that such a forward-opening turret hatch can serve as a turret bulletproof shield, which helps the crew members to provide certain protection against light weapons when they stick their upper bodies out of the vehicle.

Although such a design reason is indeed understandable on paper, when the 1941 T34 tank was actually issued to the Soviet front-line armored forces and began to be mass-produced.

Before the Soviet tank soldiers could even warm up their newly acquired tanks, they discovered that once the huge integrated turret hatch was fully opened forward in battle, the Soviet tank commanders who wanted to observe the front view had to stick their heads out to a position higher than the turret hatch to do so. At this time, the Soviet tank commanders were almost completely standing up and their entire bodies were exposed outside the vehicle.

On a battlefield full of artillery fire, no one could tell whether a shell would explode next to you or behind the vehicle and pierce your body with scattered shrapnel in the next second, and there was no guarantee that there would be a German ambush waiting to give you a fatal blow in the place you just passed.

The commander of the Soviet T34 tank, whose legs from the knees up almost all of his body were exposed outside the turret, was undoubtedly the best target at this time. Once the commander of the Soviet T34 tank crew, who was responsible for both the gunner and the commander, was killed, the T34 tank, which was left with only three crew members, would lose its combat effectiveness in most cases, and thus the entire vehicle would be written off in the overall strategic layout.

It was precisely because of this bad design defect of the T34 medium tank 1941 model that the Soviet tank commanders not only had to endure the narrow field of vision brought by the not-so-advanced optical sighting equipment of their own tanks in battle, but also could not stick their heads out of the vehicle to observe the situation like their German counterparts on the opposite side to make up for the lack of field of vision. All this was simply the worst news for Malashenko, who was already under attack.

After the attack, except for the command-type T34 tank No. 177 commanded by Malashenko, all other subordinate crews of the entire armored company were not equipped with radio stations for inter-vehicle communication.

It was obviously impossible to climb out of the turret and wave flags in the current combat situation. Lacking effective means of communication and timely command of his subordinates, the angry Malashenko could only hope that his subordinates were not too blind and could find the enemy's position in time before the Germans on the position opened fire again.

Perhaps the goddess of fate heard Malashenko's curses and prayers.

Just as Malashenko, who was extremely anxious and afraid of being hit by another armor-piercing shell, turned the wide-angle periscope in his hand around, trying to quickly find the suspicious place on the German position, a T34 tank accompanying Malashenko's No. 177 car suddenly opened fire at this time.

Boom——

The muzzle was shaking and the flames jumped. The shells that came out of the barrel rushed straight to the German position in front of it in almost the time before the human brain could react, and turned into a scorching and dazzling fireball in the next moment, lifting a large piece of soil.

Without thinking too much, he pointed the wide-angle periscope in his hand to the target position in the direction of the explosion. Before the large pieces of soil scattered in the sky could fall completely from the air, Malashenko, who had excellent eyesight, could barely see a half-exposed slender gun barrel after a gap was blown out by the artillery shells.

"I caught you, damn it!"

"German anti-tank gun, one o'clock direction, high-explosive shells loaded, quick!"