Battle of the Third Reich

v6 Chapter 97: Equipment (continued)

Regarding the German snow equipment, Xu Jun prepared a lot of drawings and plans before, but he found that the German army actually had a lot of professional snow equipment, but it was not equipped with the conventional army, and all were equipped with mountain troops. .Because the German enemy has always been France, conventional troops do not need to fight in the cold zone, so they do not need these snow combat equipment.

The Germans had previously assigned goggles to the soldiers of the motorized units to shield them from sunlight and dust. The German motorized units, especially the armored forces on dry earth-based roads in Europe, or when traveling off-road in the wilderness, sometimes the raised dirt can be simply described as covering the sky and covering the sun, and it looks like a scrape from a distance. In general, sandstorms.

The goggles dispensed by the Germans come in several different materials, the most common being made of canvas and glass. There are two colors, brown and green. At that time, the German motorcycle drivers were equipped with special motorcycle goggles. The style was still fashionable even in the 21st century. The material was made of plexiglass, which was mature at the time. There were also orange, green, and dark gray colors. Optional

As for the special snow goggles to prevent snow blindness, the German mountain troops have been equipped for a long time. It looks like a pair of ordinary goggles, but the lens is covered with two metal sheets, mostly made of aluminum, and the metal sheet is opened. Several observation slits are distributed in a radial pattern. Soldiers can observe the outside through the slits. This design looks very simple, but it can effectively prevent the damage of the snow reflection to the eyes. Historically, it has won a good reputation among the Germans on the Eastern Front.

There is also the conventional wind sunglasses, which are made of leather and equipped with dark gray lenses. Compared with the above goggles, soldiers can aim and shoot more easily.

Xu Jun has already issued an order to Zeiss to increase production. This will be a considerable number of orders. The Zeiss company alone can never afford to eat, so Xu Jun is ready to take all the optical production enterprises in the UK, France and Italy. Pull into this business.

As for skis and sleds, there are more sources of sources. There are a large number of mountain skiers in European countries. The people in the Army Command are screening products, but Xu Jun feels that they may have been picky, maybe they still want to Decide on your own words.

Xu Jun also took out a drawing of a snowmobile and said that it is a kind of motorized sled. It uses a high-powered motorcycle engine as its power. The German army has many high-powered motorcycle engines, such as BMW and Congdap. The power will drive a soft track, the material is made of composite leather plus light metal, the strength is not weaker than the rubber track.

The front part adopts a double skid design, and the direction of the skid is controlled by a motorcycle, which is basically the same as that of later generations. BMW has already produced ten prototype cars. At this time, it is undergoing a field test on the Norwegian snow field, and it ran out of the amazing speed of 95 kilometers per hour on the snow. According to the crazy driver, if it is not the last paragraph to worry about If the vehicle is out of control, he can actually soar faster.

The development process of Congdap is a bit lagging behind. They developed a heavy-duty version that can be used as a snow tractor or even a firepower platform.

The German platoon offensive tactics currently used attach great importance to the low-level commanders' subjective initiative. Under the entire large-scale combat framework, the tactical freedom of the squadrons has always been very wide. The German army allowed the leader of the squad to initiate an attack on the enemy if they were keenly aware of the fighter plane after the battle began without an exact command.

Of course, on the actual battlefield, the German army rarely launches an assault by an infantry squad alone, unless it is a tentative fire investigation operation, usually the German army will convene several adjacent squads, cooperate with each other to initiate operations, and often use positive Enticing the enemy with roundabout outsourcing tactics, attacking important targets and occupying enemy positions.

It sounds very similar to the tactics used by the Japanese infantry squad. This is because the Japanese infantry tactics were actually learned from the Germans. Of course, Japan has made some improvements on this basis to adapt to the national army. The actual situation.

It was just that after undergoing several mutinies in the early Showa period, the Japanese army experienced subtle changes in the training of grassroots officers. It began to emphasize the obedience of lower-level officers. As a result, a group of grassroots officers with rigid thinking were trained, and they only followed the dogma to follow the military. The textbooks and superior command lines gradually lost the tactical flexibility originally admired, and the combat effectiveness of the Japanese army also turned sharply.

Going back to the German side, the German team's weapon configuration did not actually have much advantage compared with other European Army. Regardless of the army forces of France, Britain, the Netherlands, and Belgium, the difference in firepower between the infantry teams is not very large.

At that time, if the rifles used by infantry in various countries were viewed from the technical indicators of range, rate of fire, ammunition load and ammunition power, the performance of the German 98k can only be regarded as excellent, but it was not much advanced than other countries. On the contrary, because the German 98k used The 7.92mm bullets caused the cartridge capacity to be too small, and the recoil was somewhat too strong. The rate of fire was moderate but the firepower continuity was not good.

The mp38/40 series of submachine guns used by the Germans are actually not as good as people think. Among the submachine guns equipped at the same time, the performance of mp38 can only be regarded as medium to high, but there are some defects in this weapon. The initial victory aura of the German army was obscured. It was only after the German army encountered a more powerful enemy that these problems were finally exposed, but it was too late to look for newer replacements.

The advantages and disadvantages of the mp series submachine guns are very obvious. The key is the speed of the submachine gun. In order to pursue the accuracy of continuous shooting, this submachine gun is artificially limited to the maximum rate of fire. Compared with other contemporary submachine guns, mp38/40 is easier to control during continuous shooting, and the bullet distribution is also very uniform, which is its advantage.

The problem is that many times on the battlefield, the submachine gun's firepower delivery is more important than accuracy. A dense projectile rain is more effective in suppressing the enemy's attack than accurate shooting.

In this regard, the Soviets, British and Americans are all in front of the Germans. Their submachine guns are focused on one indicator, that is, they can spill more ammunition on the enemy in the shortest time.

Especially the American soldiers in history, when connected with the German short soldiers at close range, the first reaction was to hold Thompson’s trigger. The life and death may be only one second. At that time, who still has time to consider aiming and compete with each other Only luck and faith.

In this close-range merger, Germany’s mp38/40 suffered a lot. Its rate of fire was too slow, and its fast directivity was not good. As a result, the Germans often fired only a few bullets on the side, but the opposite side had already splashed. An entire magazine came over.

As for the amount of ammunition, to be honest, the thirty-two rounds of mp40 magazines are enough, and there is no need to learn to change the Russians to drums.

In addition to increasing the fire continuity of weapons, the drums in history did not occupy many significant advantages compared to the magazines. On the contrary, due to the weight and volume, the soldiers were forced to carry more ammunition, and they also prevented the soldiers from implementing some routines on the battlefield. The tactical movement consumes more physical strength of the soldier.

In addition, the drum structure is complex, bullet reloading is difficult, and it is easily damaged in a battlefield environment. These problems were also covered up by the Soviet army's aura of victory. The defeat of the Germans achieved the prestige of the **Sha submachine gun, but after the end of World War II, this weapon was quickly eliminated, and the Soviet submachine guns thereafter In terms of design, there has never been a supply mode of the drum.

Xu Jun is well aware of the advantages and disadvantages of the German submachine gun. He has been preparing to equip the German army with a new submachine gun, ready to be handed over to the Erma arsenal for mass production. At present, Elma has produced a number of prototype guns by pure hand. In order to test the weapon test field at Kumestdorf, we plan to send it to Norway before the end of the year to carry out live fire test in polar environment.

At the same time, Xu Jun also sent a drawing of an automatic rifle to Mauser. The gun design experts of Mauser are currently working hard to thoroughly understand the design of the head, in order to develop a dedicated weapon production line. This is a fairly complicated project, and it is impossible to produce results in a short time, because the head of state has adopted a new caliber on this weapon and a new type of bullet that has never appeared.

In President Xu’s plan, this will be the future standard rifle of the Germans and even Europe. In front of this automatic weapon, a bolt-action rifle like 98k will face a complete elimination.

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thank you all. (To be continued...)