Chapter 93 Charge (Part 2)

"Smoke bomb!" Bazel shouted.

The advantage of the German army is that the company level has its own mortar support firepower, and this support firepower is not weak... Each of their platoons has a mortar group, which has three people: a team leader, carrying a telescope, a rifle, a standard and 10 shells. Two team members, each carrying a barrel and a base and 20 shells.

In other words, a platoon is equipped with a mortar and 50 shells.

In this way, the three infantry platoons of the company have three mortars.

In fact, in many cases, the German infantry company is equipped with five 50MM caliber mortars because the German army also has an anti-tank group under the company organization.

This anti-tank group was originally equipped with PzB anti-tank rifles... One team leader, six team members, and every two people are equipped with an anti-tank rifle, which is three anti-tank rifles.

But talking about this anti-tank rifle is a tear of bitterness: its armor penetration depth at a distance of 100 meters is only 30 mm, while the British "Matilda" tank even has 50 mm rear armor, which means that the anti-tank gun cannot even penetrate the rear of the enemy tank.

This once became a laughing stock in the German army, and the anti-tank group was completely powerless against the enemy tank.

However, this is not the worst.

Even if the anti-tank rifle cannot hit tanks, it can always hit armored vehicles or enemy cars on the battlefield. After all, armored vehicles can barely be considered "tanks".

This will not have any problems in terms of penetration, and even the anti-tank rifle can penetrate the target at 300 meters (Note: the penetration depth of the PzB anti-tank rifle at 300 meters is 25 mm).

The problem is... the anti-tank rifle is a big thing. It is like a cannon when it is placed in front of the trench. It will be discovered and targeted by the enemy from a distance, which makes it easy for the enemy snipers, machine gunners and even mortars to attack it. At the same time, the weight of the anti-tank rifle of 16 kilograms makes it difficult to move quickly.

So this thing has become a complete waste. The German soldiers are unwilling to take this kind of equipment that can't effectively attack the enemy but only pits themselves on the battlefield. They would rather replace the anti-tank rifle with a machine gun or a 50MM caliber mortar.

Bazel's company changed the anti-tank group into two mortar groups, so the whole company has 5 mortars.

With Bazel's order, the 5 mortars "boomed" and fired a row of smoke bombs at the front position, and a cloud of smoke rose between the enemy and our positions in an instant.

"Mount the bayonet!" Bazel ordered loudly.

Colonel Olbrich, who was commanding at the front, noticed the smoke at the first time and was furious.

"What are they doing?" Colonel Olbridge cursed, "They are actually firing smoke bombs in front of the tanks? Don't they know that this will affect the tanks' shooting?"

Colonel Olbridge was so angry with the British that he had lost the calmness that a commander should have, otherwise he should have known that smoke bombs would affect enemy tanks as well as their own tanks' shooting.

However, what surprised Colonel Olbridge even more was yet to come. After a mortar shell passed, a group of German infantry actually charged towards the enemy by crossing the tanks with smoke and dust!

"Damn it!" Colonel Olbridge yelled hysterically, "Which unit is this? Let them stop this stupid behavior immediately!"

"Yes!" The adjutant responded.

"God!" Colonel Olbridge continued to roar, "How did these infantrymen get out of the training camp? Fighting with these idiots, how can we expect to win..."

But before he finished speaking, Colonel Olbridge seemed to have discovered the problem. The British tanks did not seem to react much to the infantrymen charging forward, and the same was true for the British infantrymen behind the tanks.

Of course, the British tanks would not react. As mentioned before, the main target of the Crusader tank is the enemy tank, so it does not even have a directional machine gun, only a parallel machine gun installed in parallel with the tank's main gun.

The directional machine gun, also known as the front machine gun, is installed on the right side of the driver in the cab and is operated by the radio operator. It can move up and down and left and right to shoot. This thing is the real infantry killer, because it is separated from the gunner and the firing range is not limited by the main gun... The early "Crusader" tanks were not equipped with directional machine guns.

The parallel machine gun can of course also fire at infantry.

But the problem is...

The parallel machine gun rotates with the main gun, and the main gun and the parallel machine gun are operated by the same person, that is, the gunner. At this time, the gunner is operating the main gun and nervously looking for the opposite tank in the smoke, so of course he cannot operate the machine gun.

What's more, the field of vision and external perception in the tank are very limited, so the gunner and other tank crew members did not realize that there were infantry charging them in the smoke.

As for the British soldiers behind the tanks, they may have discovered that the German infantry was charging. After all, the desert wind was strong and the smoke was thick and thin. They could vaguely see the enemy's leaping figures.

The problem was that the enemy's mortar shells were pouring towards them in pieces. They could not organize an effective defense in a short time. They wanted to notify the tanks but could not get in touch with the tank soldiers.

(Note: At this time, the tanks did not have external telephones. It was not until the Vietnam War that the United States installed telephones on the rear of the tanks so that the infantry hiding behind them could easily communicate with the crew in the tanks for coordination)

So, the British army could only watch the German soldiers rushing up with bayonets.

Qin Chuan was one of the soldiers rushing forward in the smoke. He couldn't tell what he felt at this moment... The suffocating smoke, the shells exploded one after another in front of him, the bullets flew over his head with a whistling sound, and what was even more terrifying was the monster-like "Crusader" tanks standing in front of him, their gun barrels towering, and from time to time they would "boom" and shoot an armor-piercing shell at the opposite side.

Although Qin Chuan knew that these tanks would not threaten his safety, this was also the basis for Qin Chuan's proposal to charge... But these were enemy tanks after all, a killing machine, as long as their gunners found something and turned their attention to the ground, or their drivers accelerated and stepped on the accelerator...

All of this made Qin Chuan's feet feel as heavy as if they were filled with lead, but Qin Chuan still tried to make himself leap forward and follow the shells extending forward, because he knew that his only way to survive was to move forward.

Although the maximum range of the 50MM mortar is only 500 meters, which means it is often suppressed by enemy machine guns or snipers, if the battle reaches a certain level that requires close fire support or attacking the enemy's trenches, the 50MM mortar can almost be said to be a magic weapon... Each mortar has 50 rounds of shells. If they are all fired at the enemy's position at the fastest speed in an instant, there will be a period of time when the enemy will be completely suppressed and unable to fight back. The German army often takes advantage of this time to launch a charge.