The Anglo-American information on the production and composition of the Tiger tank was very accurate, and the production of the Tiger has been slowly climbing, with 167 units produced in January, and Speer expects it to reach a peak of 200 by March and 250 in June - this is the basis for the Allied estimate that Germany can equip three heavily armored battalions (each battalion is 54 units) a month.

However, due to battle damage and the integration of the independent Tiger Company into the Panzer Division, the formation rate of the Tiger Heavy Armored Battalion was still maintained at two per month, the 501st and 502nd battalions were assigned to Guderian, the 503rd, 504th, and 505th battalions were assigned to Manstein, and the 506th Battalion was on its way to Africa and would be placed under Rommel, and after January 20, the 507th Battalion was able to fully mobilize and be integrated into Army Group South.

It's not that the German General Staff doesn't want to get more Tigers, but the Leopard tanks have basically passed the acceptance in early January, and will make final modifications in order to start trial production from March 1, and will enter the mass production stage in June, in order to ensure productivity, the monthly production of the Tiger will remain unchanged after reaching 250 units, and the No. 4 tank is expected to start declining after reaching the peak of 1,500 units in March - part of the production line will be converted to prepare for production, while the No. 3 tank production line has been closed in December and is now being transferred to Italy, Prepare to change places and restart production. Although the technical level of the Italians is a little behind, the production capacity of Fiat and other companies is not bad, and the transferred production line is guided by German engineers, and no tanks are produced, only focusing on the production of No. 3 assault guns, Speer believes that the level of the Italians is enough to cope, and he gave several Italian tank factories an initial plan of 500 vehicles a month.

In this way, including M15 \ P40 and other models of Italy's own tank development and production can only be stopped, according to the principle of integration of German and Italian key equipment, all the equipment of the Italian Army is required to be common with Germany, so the Italian designers have all changed their doors to participate in the development and implementation of relevant German projects, although this makes the Italian leaders unhappy, but in view of the fact that there are still people in the direction of Sudan and Ethiopia, Coupled with the fact that the Italian Army also selected more than 50 Crusaders and Cromwells from the trophies of North Africa, and also accepted more than 60 No. 3 tanks from Germany, all they paid was a little worse M13, and the Italian leaders knew how to calculate this account.

With the design and research and development of the Leopard tank came to an end, the improved Tiger tank began to enter the field of vision of the Army Armament Bureau, according to the preliminary research preparation and Hoffman's instructions, the general technical indicators of the second-generation Tiger (internal code name Tiger King) began to be finalized: the total combat weight is about 58 tons, and the 105mm L65 tank gun (improved from the high-level dual-purpose gun on the Scharnhorst) is proposed, and the hull is added on the basis of 8 groups of staggered overlapping load wheels of the Tiger type. The length was increased to 6.9 meters, the width was increased to about 3.5 meters, the height was changed to 3 meters, the front armor of the hull was initially designed to be tilted at 50 degrees of 135mm, the front armor of the turret was 150mm, and the turret shield was 185mm pig's head type. The engine is planned to use 800 hp HL234, the gearbox is still Maybach L600C, the tracks, load-bearing wheels are still common to Haw Par, due to the rise in ground pressure, the maximum road speed drops to 35km/h, the maximum off-road speed drops to 19km/h, due to the increase in ammunition caliber, the reserve ammunition is reduced to 52 rounds again.

In Hoffman's view, the biggest obstacle to the program was that the HL234 engine had not yet been developed, but fortunately, there was still a little time, and according to the schedule of the Weapons Bureau, the prototype was required to be successfully developed in March 1944 and enter formal production in July.

In addition to tanks, truck production has also undergone major changes, Speer will be tried-and-tested, unanimously recognized by all aspects of the Opel Lightning 36S truck identified as a "standard truck" (load capacity of 3 tons), requiring other companies' trucks to stop production, including Steyr, Mercedes, MAN, Henschel, Krupp and other companies truck production lines are required to complete the conversion of standard trucks as soon as possible, the ambitious Speer set a standard of 10,000 per month for this batch of trucks, The only thing that was not included in the conversion was the Ford V3000S tracked version of the truck (this is a subsidiary of Ford in Germany, although Henry Ford was an admirer of the Führer, but this did not prevent this company from being confiscated as enemy property after the declaration of war between Germany and the United States), the production target of these trucks was set at 3,000 per month (all of which would be used on the Eastern Front), and the unique German staggered overlapping load wheel trucks were written off.

In addition to standardizing the truck, Speer also identified three other standard models, one is the Volkswagen barrel car, and the other is the Mercedes 1500A command vehicle, the former is a reconnaissance, fast, military police unit and junior officer car, the latter is a command and middle and senior officer car that can seat 7 people, and the last is a Mercedes-Benz 170VK, which is allocated to officers above the military level and senior government officials. The production expectation of barrel cars is 2,000 units per month, while the output expectations of command vehicles and 170VK are 400 and 200 units per month, respectively.

In addition to the standard models, a large number of American ten-wheeled trucks were captured in the North African and Middle East campaigns, and the front line was very satisfied with the use, Speer was a little twisted, and Hoffman directly clapped: "Imitation!" ”

The quick-eyed Steyr and the Drag-and-Shove company immediately snatched the task. I thought that this was enough for this, but not long ago, Hoffman mysteriously asked Speer to secretly carry out a tender for the development of a 15-ton long-wheelbase off-road flatbed truck (in extreme cases, it is required to be overloaded to 20 tons), the latter has not figured out what this model is for, and asked a few truck designers who are puzzled, just when he was about to take it back to communicate with Hoffman, he happened to meet Braun, who came to report on the progress of missile development and apply for follow-up funding, He only looked at it for half a minute before he understood what it was for.

"With this thing, the V2 missile will be able to be mounted on it in the future and launched on a mobile one, the Führer is wise, I thought he would only consider loading it on the train." Speer, who suddenly came to his senses, immediately arranged it through secret channels.

Like tanks, the wave of truck standardization has forced Italy forward, and with the help of ready-made drawings and German engineers, Alfa Romeo, the leader of the Italian truck industry, produced a lightning truck bearing the company's logo in less than half a month.

If Mussolini still has some face-saving factors, all that remains of the major capitalists is to be happy, whether it is to accept German production lines, to send designers to participate in new German projects, or to produce according to German standardized drawings, these are all good opportunities that cannot be fought for and cannot be seized in peacetime, which is equivalent to the Germans taking the Italians to play for free -- their level and ability in heavy equipment will be raised very quickly, and after the war is fought in the future, these industrial capabilities can be used for civilian products. It takes a bit of brains to turn tanks into large tractors, and trucks and cars into civilian products in the blink of an eye. In the future, the technological level will catch up with Germany, and it is still very promising to surpass France. The German capitalists, on the other hand, were fond of Minister Speer's huge orders and the opportunity to enter the Italian capital system, and at first they were skeptical about whether there was enough fuel to drive so many vehicles, but after Marshal Rommel took down the major oil fields in the Middle East, the companies had no last suspicions, and only devoted themselves to vigorous production.

Similar to tank armaments, aircraft armaments are also gradually unified, and Italy's MC-200, MC-202, G50, and RE2001 fighter production lines have all been discontinued and turned to the production of relatively better Bf-109 -- the Messerschmidt company simply moved the entire production line to Italy, and itself ******** the production of Bf-219 and Me-262 into production, and Italy's Fiat, Breda, Piaggio and other famous aircraft manufacturing enterprises have enriched the benefits. Relatively speaking, Italian aircraft designers are of a higher level than tank designers, and they will take on the same tasks of joint development as Japanese designers. Speer has ambitions to develop a high-performance aircraft that can be integrated on the axis and used on land and sea. In order to save Mussolini's face, the Italian SM-79 (Sparrowhawk) bomber was selected by Germany as standard equipment for sea attacks and patrols, and Germany also opened its doors to Italian companies in the field of 4-engine heavy bomber selection.

As German factories continue to be put into production in Italy to release production capacity, plus 10-150,000 laborers are put into Germany every month, Italians are surprised to find that the unemployment problem that has plagued Germany for many years is gradually being solved, and Germany, which has slowly entered the peak of production after the general mobilization, has reached an extremely astonishing -1.7% on the basis of increasing the employment of 2 million women (the negative number is brought by the working class who have passed the retirement age but still continue to work, and foreign workers such as Italy are not counted). Italy's own unemployment rate has fallen to less than 5%. At a time when there was a shortage of labor, a large number of Italian prisoners of war were returning from North Africa - the leaders did not bother to reorganize them, except for a small number of cadres and officers, the rest of the ordinary soldiers were directly demobilized, and the overall economy was booming.

According to Hoffman's requirements, by September 1943, Germany's production level in the main equipment fields, including tanks, armored vehicles, trucks, airplanes, artillery, and so on, should reach 60 percent of the United States' level in the same period, and 75 percent of the United States' output in addition to the output of Italy and other allies. In the field of shipbuilding, which has the largest gap, it is striving to gather the strength of all Europe to reach half the level of the United States.

Faced with such an almost impossible request, Speer felt that he still had a long way to go. (To be continued.) )