Chapter 889 Accident (18)
The navy has many aircraft, and the army is also unwilling to be outdone. After obtaining the relevant technology of the British Gloster and De Havilland, the XP-80 project of Lockheed Skunk Works has been accelerated. The prototype has been manufactured and 9 test flights have been completed. Arnold requires mass production by the end of this year. The model is officially code-named F-80 (Note: It is also called Meteor in history, but the British Meteor is a twin-engine jet and the American Meteor is a single-engine jet).
In addition, after Germany bombed with jet groups, the US Army Air Command put forward a formal demand for jet bombers more than half a year earlier than history. The bidding requirements released are very clear: the range is greater than 5,500 kilometers, the practical ceiling exceeds 13,000 meters, the maximum speed is higher than 875 kilometers/hour, and the full-range bomb load is not less than 5 tons - vaguely also the requirements of the Manhattan Project vehicle.
In the past, the United States positioned the vehicle as B-29, but now German jets can easily intercept B-29, and the aircraft must use a higher altitude and faster speed to be sure of penetration. The range also became a problem. Originally, with the support of the British base, 5,500 kilometers could cover the entire European continent. Now without a bridgehead, the deterrence has been greatly reduced.
But the Joint Chiefs of Staff believed that the problem was not big. If there was a real need, at most they could recruit a suicide squad for a one-way attack, which could cover the entire Western Europe by taking off from Newfoundland! There are always warriors under a big reward, at least Jews can be recruited.
Based on this, North American, Convair, Boeing and Martin each took out the design drawings and obtained separate contracts for the first phase of research. The models were XB-45, XB-46, XB-47 and XB-48, respectively. Boeing was the fastest and had already started testing on the B-29 with four jet engines.
History obviously maintained a strong inertia at this point. Hoffman did not expect the Americans' persistent pursuit of strategic long-range bombing - when there was a jet, they still thought of the big 4-engine long-range bomber first, instead of studying the "demonstration path" of twin-engine medium bombers for lightning bombing.
In addition to the idea of demonstration, the air strikes on the British Isles and the display of advanced weapons also have the idea of consuming the national strength of the United States and offsetting the advantages of the enemy. In the field of conventional aviation armaments, although Germany has unique advantages, its overall strength (both in quantity and quality) is weaker than that of the United States. The reason why it can take advantage temporarily is that, on the one hand, Germany concentrates on developing limited aircraft models, especially not equipping expensive four-engine bombers, thus saving huge expenses; on the other hand, it is the huge advantage accumulated by German pilots over many years of war. At the same performance level and the same number, the US military is not a peer opponent of the German army.
But this advantage will be wiped out sooner or later, and new equipment must be forced to upgrade to achieve overtaking. In the era when Hoffman did not travel through time, China was very persistent in developing electric vehicles because the country believed that it could not catch up in the field of internal combustion vehicles, and only by developing new electric vehicles could it achieve overtaking and kill a bloody road.
The routine of displaying new equipment and forcing upgrades is a secret trick summed up by Hoffman based on the experience of the Cold War. In the Cold War, armament upgrades were repeated equipment stimulations layer by layer, but the limitation of the Cold War was that many advanced weapons could not be used, and people did not have an intuitive feeling or a deep pain. The immaturity of the proxy parties in the US-Soviet proxy war greatly reduced the display effect. Take the Middle East War as an example. Are Soviet tanks really as weak as they appear in the war? Of course not. The reason for the poor performance is that the Soviet exports are all parallel imports or monkey versions, and it is impossible for them to perform well when they are used by a group of rough guys in the Middle East. Only when qualified soldiers can sophisticated weapons perform at 100% or even 120% of their level. Apart from other things, if the Turkish army in the Transcaucasus was replaced by 200,000 German troops using the same equipment to defend, how could it collapse so quickly?
Although there is pressure to upgrade the armaments during the Cold War, the sense of urgency is not so strong, and it is completely possible to wait and endure. Now we are fighting a world war, and any weapon will directly affect the performance on the battlefield, thereby pressuring the opponent to keep up. This pressure will force the opponent to enter the rhythm and track of the party, directly disrupting the opponent's development process.
If the US side can still maintain its usual rhythm in aviation equipment, the development process of heavy tanks shows that the rhythm of the US equipment is messed up.
The two SS American divisions explained very clearly that in order to fight the Tiger tank, the US military could not wait to use the M6 heavy tank, which was an immature and defective product. It was said that thousands of them were produced. As a result, they were defeated in Cape Verde. The German designers who saw the real thing simply disdained it - except for the 90mm tank gun, everything else was garbage!
However, Sherman has always been considered good by designers, at least the chassis and mechanical performance are more promising than the domestic No. 4 tank, and they think that the Americans have completely put the cart before the horse. If the German routine is followed, it must be patched up by imitating the upgrade method of No. 4G, such as upgrading its front armor from 51mm to 80-90mm and replacing it with a new tank gun. The new Sherman after such transformation can beat No. 4G and reach 90-95% of the level of Leopard.
The designers even modified several Shermans themselves. They first used 35mm homogeneous armor to add defensive patches to the front armor of the Sherman, then directly grafted the Leopard turret onto the Sherman, and then optimized the suspension appropriately. The total weight of the modified German Sherman was just over 33 tons, and the effect was very good. The firepower, mobility, and defense were relatively balanced - it earned the nickname "Nine-fold Leopard".
This technical level combined with the US tank production capacity is very scary, because the German production of the Panther is less than 700 units per month, and if the US military runs at full capacity, the monthly production of the Sherman can reach at least three times that of the Panther.
There are similar Sherman modifications in the United States, with the standard code M4A3E2, nicknamed Dumbo. That is, the protection is greatly enhanced on the basis of the ordinary Sherman tank: the front armor of the lower part of the body is thickened to 114-140mm, with an inclination of 34 degrees. The front armor thickness of the upper part of the body is 102mm, with an inclination of 43 degrees, and the side is thickened to 76mm; the armor thickness of the part other than the front gun shield of the turret and the sides and rear is 152mm, and the thickness of the front gun shield of the turret is 178mm. Thanks to the Ford V8 liquid-cooled engine that can provide 500 horsepower, although the Dumbo weighs 38 tons, its mobility is still unsatisfactory.
Of course, the 38-ton Dumbo is obviously over-modified - too heavy. Compared with the 38-ton Panther, it has weaker firepower (Dumbo is still a short-barreled 75mm gun), weaker mobility, and slightly stronger defense, but the 88/L56 tank gun can still penetrate it. Even with such a magical modification, it can't stop the Tiger. The original good idea was led astray by the Germans, and a strange scene appeared. The US did not focus on the improvement of Dumbo, but accelerated the 42-ton M26 (Pershing), and even set its sights on the IS-1.
Although the performance of the M6 did not receive much feedback from the Cape Verde front, it was not well received in all aspects. The Joint Chiefs of Staff directly announced that they would give up turning to the M-26. Marshall issued a death order that 1,000 vehicles must be built before September. Unfortunately, the M-26 had various pitfalls, and engineers, troops and factories all complained bitterly.
At this time, Stalin sent two IS-1s and a full set of drawings. Engineers equipped them with American sights and related internal equipment. After testing and comparison, they found that the IS-1 was more stable. Later, it was even replaced with a Pershing turret and artillery. This made things even more confusing. The Pershing turret version of the IS-1, a tank of the same 40-ton level, outperformed the M-26 in all aspects. The engineer said that if the United States produced it, many details would not be as rough as the Russians. He even patted his chest and said that the diesel engine on the IS-1 could be replaced with the same 500-horsepower gasoline engine.
So on April 18, the US Army Department issued an unprecedented order, asking General Motors to copy and produce 10 American IS-1s (equipped with Pershing turrets) according to the technical requirements of the production drawings for comprehensive testing. If the internal parts can be made in the United States, they will use existing American products. The time limit is 3 months, and the M-26 will continue to be manufactured and improved to implement the policy of walking on two legs.
German designers looked down on the M6, but they also thought that the IS-1 tank had some remarkable features, at least it was stronger than the Leopard. Except for Hoffman, everyone thought that the IS-1 was the latest heavy tank of the Soviet Union. Hoffman knew that Stalin must have hidden the IS-2, but he didn't know when it would be taken out (Zhukov roared: You wait, I will show it to you soon!), so he accelerated the production of the Tiger 2 while urging the ultimate improvement of the Tiger 3 (King Tiger).
After the designers took out the Tiger 2 design, they began to think about the improvement of the Leopard. The No. 4 could be improved from A to H, so the Leopard could naturally do the same. Under the stimulation of the IS-1, a Leopard E-type improvement plan that installed the HL230P30 engine (700 horsepower) on the Leopard, thickened the front main armor to 100mm, and added infrared headlights and night vision equipment was quickly approved. The cost was that the Leopard increased its weight from 38 tons to 40.5 tons. Fortunately, the horsepower was increased simultaneously, and the mobility did not decrease but increased.
All new Tiger 2 tanks were also equipped with 700 horsepower engines, and even the Tiger King under development temporarily used this engine for prototype testing. During the test, it was found that the performance of the proposed 105/L68 tank gun was not as good as expected (naval guns, the army was not familiar with it), and the designer tentatively proposed whether to replace it with a 128mm caliber gun. This caliber is the same as the electric twin 128mm anti-aircraft gun, which can be regarded as inheriting the fine tradition of the Third Reich to change anti-aircraft guns to tank guns.
At that time, there were two options, 128mm/LL55. After the test, it was believed that the L55 tank could fully withstand it. If the HL234+ engine is used in the future, perhaps the L61 can also withstand it. Hoffman took into account the threats of IS-2 and IS-3, agreed to adjust the performance of the tank gun, and also replaced the gun on the Berserker (Tiger tank destroyer) with a 128mm caliber.
By mid-1944, various weapons that did not exist or appear in history unexpectedly appeared due to various changes.