Alien Arms Empire.

Chapter 844 844 Main Battle Tank
Frankly speaking, the Panther was not the best WWII tank, it had many shortcomings and was not as famous as its peers.

In terms of fame, the Tiger tank is obviously better. In terms of overall performance, it actually has no obvious advantage over Sherman and T-34 tanks.

Judging from the paper data, its performance is slightly better than that of the Sherman and T-34 tanks, but the good ones are completely hindered by its complicated process and expensive price.

In fact, it was selected as the main battle tank of the Tang Dynasty entirely because of its balanced performance and relatively strong armor protection performance.

Tang Mo attached great importance to the safety of Tang's armored personnel, so he would rather push the problem to the tank factory and the logistics maintenance team than let his ace car crew go to the front line to die in vain.

That's why the Leopard tank was selected as Tang's main battle tank. At a time when external conflicts were very acute, it became a sharp knife in the hands of Tang's armored forces.

But now that the war is over, Tang has more time to improve its weapons, so many shortcomings of the Leopard tank have also been singled out and included in the improvement items.

Among them, the most criticized by the soldiers is the complex running mechanism of the Leopard tank.This thing broke down on the front line and it was difficult to repair, which seriously affected the efficiency of the armored troops in investing troops.

From this feedback, we can clearly understand how the defect of a weapon was communicated to the leaders: if it is just soldiers yelling at the street, it is actually difficult to solve the problem.

Only when middle-level commanders believe that this weapon affects combat efficiency, the problem will be rectified-it seems that the solution to this kind of thing is exactly the same in any country.

The new tank that replaced it adopted an epoch-making design: a hemispherical turret, five pairs of road wheels... Tang Mo is most familiar with and the most legendary generation of famous cars.

That's right, the 59 that has gone down the mountain, the 59 that has been in service for half a century and is still strong, it is kind and nostalgic... 59!

At the same time, this improvement also increased the weight of the tank, so the track of the tank was also widened a little bit.

Because the electromechanical operator was cancelled, the heading machine gun was also canceled-this further improved the protection of the front armor of the car body, which can be regarded as an increase in the level of protection.

There is another progress worthy of recognition: because of the gradual maturity of the radio system, Tang Jun officially decided to cancel the electromechanical personnel specially set up on the tank and reduce the number of members of the tank team to four.

Inheriting the exaggerated reliability of the 59 series tanks, the failure rate of the new tanks is lower than that of the Leopard tanks, and the maintenance is relatively easier.

Soon, more advanced ballistic computers, cross-wind sensors, laser rangefinders... will be added to the tanks, allowing Tang's tanks to truly throw off their opponents and establish an absolute technical barrier.

Another reason for abandoning the heavy gun mantlet is the birth of newer artillery aiming technology: Datang Group has been testing their artillery stabilization system. This mechanical stabilization device can greatly improve the aiming efficiency of tank artillery.

In order to realize these new technologies, the entire turret must also be redesigned.After Tang's Leopard tanks shined in the war against the Dahua Empire, they had to face the fate of being eliminated across the board.

The armor thickness of the front of the new tank body still maintains the anti-sky standard of 120 mm on the front, and there are also 80 mm heavy armor protection on both sides of the tank body.

After trying to manufacture the chassis of the Type 59 main battle tank, the tank factory in Tongcheng immediately fell in love with this brand new tank chassis.

Huaxia has produced more than 1 Type 59 main battle tanks in total. It can be said to be a truly famous car of the first generation.

In comparison, the Type 59 main battle tank is much better, but it is influenced by the Soviet industry, and the rough workmanship is not so comfortable for the members.

The newly designed tank body increases the weight of the vehicle, but the weight of about 38 tons does not seriously affect the main combat performance of the tank.

At the same time, the turret of the Leopard tank also began to have many problems, and gradually began to fail to meet the needs of the new combat environment.

Therefore, Tang Mo made a series of improvements to this tank: first of all, he took out a main gun with higher technology and more powerful power, directly allowing Tang State's new main battle tank to use the caliber of 105mm.

However, Tang Mo didn't intend to use 59 directly, because it also has its own weaknesses and shortcomings.

However, the new tank has a height stabilizer, a range finder, and an infrared night vision device that can be installed at the same time, so that it can carry out night-time marching operations.

These invisible changes in design ideas are real progress: Tang's tanks are gradually getting rid of the influence of World War II and moving closer to the tank design ideas of the Cold War period.

Although it seems that the improvement is not large, the improvement in the protection level of the 59 tank can further protect the tank members of Tang State.The new tank design also makes it possible to add new equipment in the later stage.

Its prototype is the T54 medium tank made in the former Soviet Union. The design idea of ​​this tank has been repeatedly verified in the Second World War, and its correctness is beyond doubt. It was the backbone of the Soviet steel torrent at that time.

The new tank has slightly increased the height of the hull to increase the comfort of the tank, improve the internal space, and allow members to fight in the tank for a longer period of time.

No matter from which aspect, the Type 59 main battle tank can be said to be perfect: in that era, it almost perfectly balanced the various performance indicators of the tank, which can be called a work of art.

The comfort of the walking machine, which can be described as crude, has almost no consideration. This kind of tank is completely designed for consumption.

Compared with the Panther tank, the T-54 is indeed very bad in terms of ergonomics, and its low body is not as comfortable as the Panther tank.

The low body makes the Type 59 tank lighter than the Leopard tank after comprehensively strengthening its protection.So even if the horsepower of the diesel engine is only 520, its speed is still comparable to that of the Leopard tank.

If you want to use thicker armor, you can no longer use the outdated design of the integral gun mantlet. In order to increase the protection of the front of the turret, this is a part that must be discarded.

But what Tang Mo knew, or the western tanks he could find the blueprints for, were very unbearable at this technical level: Around the 50s, the design of tanks in Western countries basically let themselves go, and almost none of them could be sold.

Swinging up and down with a whole piece of turret frontal armor is too difficult for the pitching mechanism, and the strength of the pitching mechanism also begins to restrict the thickness of the tank's frontal armor.

Such reductions would reduce the number of armored personnel, allowing more armored divisions to be formed with fewer men.The abolished radio operators have a certain cultural foundation, and most of them have actual combat experience, so they can immediately form new armored units.

In addition, Tang Mo installed an air pressure smoking system on the main gun, which significantly improved the combat comfort of the tank members.

What is even more gratifying is that Tang's tanks have been simplified and returned to the path of mass production: although the Leopard tank is excellent, the Type 59 tank is obviously more logistics-friendly.

Who would have thought that the Tang Empire was already thinking about eliminating the advanced tanks that other countries could not hope for?

Although the overall gun shield guarantees the protection of the front of the turret, the thicker and thicker the gun shield obviously makes the pitching mechanism of the artillery more and more powerless.

With this kind of thing, plus night vision goggles and ballistic computers, tank technology will truly form a generation gap, completely leaving the tanks of other empires behind.

The problem centered on the anti-shield on the front of the tank turret. This huge anti-shield seriously affected the speed of the artillery's up and down adjustment, which became more and more deadly with the advancement of technology.

This thing is the prototype of a two-way stabilizer for artillery, which can significantly reduce the aiming time, and even fire on the move in the foreseeable future.

The armor on the front of the turret is even more exaggerated, with a full 200 mm, which is enough to match the Tiger tank.

The advantage of the diesel engine is its high torque, so theoretically speaking, the new tank is no worse than the Panther tank in terms of maneuverability. The Type 59 tank can have a maximum range of nearly 500 kilometers after the external fuel tank, which is more than twice that of the Leopard tank.

The failure rate of the double-row walking mechanism is higher, and at the same time, the engine linkage shaft in the car body also makes the car body of the Leopard tank sickly high. Take care of all the troubles.

Although most of the Leopard tanks use diesel engines, this is only a temporary improvement. The new Tang tank chassis must be determined to use diesel engines from the very beginning.

Compared with the double-row road wheel design of the Leopard tank, the 59 pairs of road wheels of the Type 5 tank are really refreshing.Every time they see the road wheels of a new tank that are deliberately hollowed out to reduce weight, the workers in the tank factory feel comfortable.

The few logistics troops who saw the new tank were also relieved. The nightmare of the Leopard tank was finally over, and they had less work in their hands: they couldn't think of how to express their hearts other than shouting long live the emperor. joy.

Brand-new tanks do not yet have large-scale equipped troops, and are still in the stage of experimental testing.However, the production of Leopard tanks has been crazily reduced, which already explains the problem.

If nothing else happened, the Tang Empire's armored forces, the future main battle tank, had almost finalized the model, basically the type 59 main battle tank that His Majesty the Emperor of the Tang Dynasty would always dream of.

(End of this chapter)