In fact, the choice faced by Hoffman had been played out in the Kremlin a few days earlier, represented by Zhukov and Vasilevsky, the General Staff of the Red Army was divided into two factions, and a large number of people had a fierce debate on the big and small solutions, and basically everyone who attended the Politburo meeting made speeches and statements, and after two days and one night of long discussions, Zhukov's plan was finally approved under Stalin's final decision. Of course www.biquge.info there is a clear premise for promoting this plan, and it can only be carried out after the Central Asia strategy has achieved certain results, that is, after the German army has been fully mobilized.

In order to enhance the feasibility of Zhukov's plan, Stalin invested a lot of money and allocated Zhukov six newly formed Guards tank brigades in one go. Among them, the two tank brigades are all equipped with the IS-1 heavy tanks just produced by the Red Army, each brigade has 58 units, this new tank, which has always been pinned on high hopes to compete with the Tiger tank, has undergone different stages of testing and development such as KV-13, KV-85 and IS-85, and finally matured and began mass production in September, and the first batch was fully used to equip the new Guards tank brigade.

As for the other four brigades, they are equipped with a mass-produced model that has never appeared in history at all -- the T-43/85, because Germany has not put the Leopard tank into combat (the product has already begun to be produced), coupled with the remarkable success of the joint operation of the Tiger and the No. 4 tank, so the Red Army borrowed and imitated the German army's ideas in terms of armored equipment, and also took the concept of the combination of heavy and medium tanks, and the requirement for medium tanks was to restrain the main force of the German army, the No. 4H type. Past encounters have amply proven that the T-34/76 is not very useful, and it is completely inferior to the No. 4H model. Although the T-43 had improved a lot in defense and equipment, its firepower was still weak, and finally Marshal Voroshilov made a decision to install the same 85mm gun as the IS-1 on the T-43, forming a new model of the T-43/85.

There was a debate within the Red Army about whether to produce the T-34/85 or the T-43/85 at the beginning, but after argumentation and comparison, it was believed that although the T-43/85 was more difficult to manufacture, its performance was stronger than that of the T-34/85, so the latter was finally chosen as the development channel.

The new T-43/85 is larger than the T-34 and T-43/76, and the number of people has risen to a five-person crew, due to the hasty development work, there are still many incompletes in the T-43/85, but the anxious Stalin can no longer care about this, and can't wait to take it out and use it. On the one hand, he ordered continuous improvement, and on the other hand, he ordered the arsenals in the Urals to increase their production capacity and transform the old T-34 production line into a new T-43/85 production line as much as possible.

Due to the fall of the Caucasus oil fields and a large number of industrial areas, by the autumn of 1943, the Red Army began to move towards a different approach to army building: no longer pursuing the absolute number of heavy equipment, including tanks, but emphasizing the improvement of unit performance while maintaining a minimum number. The reason is obvious, whether it is oil or steel, the Red Army is no longer allowed to continue to build and maintain the scale of mass production of 2-30,000 tank armored vehicles per year, and it is necessary to change from a sea of tanks to a strong and refined way of thinking. In addition, due to the heavy loss of human resources, the reserves of armored troops are also insufficient, and qualified armored troops cannot rush to the front line with rifles like infantry, but must be trained and trained. Training will inevitably consume a small and very valuable amount of fuel and vehicle resources, and if we want to ensure that front-line troops are fighting, we can only reduce the resources and training of reserve troops.

If Hoffman had known, he would have felt how similar the historical process was, and that Stalin's choice now was the choice of Germany in history. Nothing more than Stalin did not have to maintain a large submarine force, and the complexity of Russian products, no matter how refined and emphasized in quality, could not be compared with German goods, so the Red Army could be armed with more armored vehicles than the Germans at the same time in history.

Taking tanks as an example, Stalin demanded the production of about 12,000 tank vehicles per year in the future, of which 2,000 were heavy tanks of the IS-1 class, 6,000 were superior medium tanks of the T-43/85 level, and 4,000 were tanks equivalent to the T-34/76 level and their deformed vehicles (such as Su-100\Su-76, etc.), which was cut in half compared with the historical figures.

The IS-1 was far from the perfect heavy tank for the Red Army - this title was reserved for the IS-2, which was armed with a 122mm/43 x diameter gun with a weight of just over 40 tons, and the frontal armor was more than 120mm thick at its thickest point with an inclination angle, which, according to the designers, surpassed the German Tiger tank in terms of defense and firepower, and Voroshilov had assured Stalin that mass production of the IS-2 would begin in January 1944, which is not lower than the current level of IS-1 production - 120 vehicles per month, and strives to increase it to 200 vehicles per month in the autumn of 1944.

The IS-2 is not the end of the development of the Red Army's heavy tanks, there is still the IS-3 heavy tank lying on the designer's drawing board, and the artillery will use the same 122mm as the IS-2, but the armor will continue to be strengthened, probably reaching the standard of 160mm, which will be used to counter the new heavy tanks that Germany may launch, and almost all the armor steel provided by the United States through the Far East route is used in the production line of heavy tanks.

They were right, and the 58-ton King Tiger tank, which had been heavily weighted at Hoffman's suggestion, had been tested in all respects, except for the engine and gearbox, and the 88mm/L71 gun was particularly good. The only regret is that after gaining 10 tons, compared with the excellent maneuverability of the Tiger, the Tiger King sighs that it is inferior, but compared with the weight of 68-70 tons in history, the stability and maneuverability are obviously better.

The Maybach company has been criticized by Marshal Keitel more than once, accusing them of delaying the delivery of the 850 hp HL234 engine, and even the finalization work has not been completed, so as to delay the production of the Tiger King, but Hoffman and Speer believe that the top priority is to complete the transformation of the 1943 type as soon as possible and upgrade the production of the Leopard tank, and on the schedule of the Ministry of Armaments, May 1944 is a more critical node, which is the time when the 1943 armored division fully completes the refurbishment and rearmament. It was also the day when the production of the Leopard tank was stabilized and the King Tiger tank began mass production.

Hoffman also put forward the correction requirements of the 1944 armored division, that is, after the production and performance of the Leopard tank were stabilized, the elite armored divisions of the first batch of reequipment were reequipped again, and all the No. 4 tanks in their hands were replaced with the Leopard type, and the armored regiment establishment of each armored division was adjusted to 1 heavy tank battalion (Tiger) and 3 medium tank battalions (Leopard, but the number of equipment in each battalion will be slightly less than that of the No. 4 period), and the total number of tanks at the full strength of the 1944 upgraded armored division was about 290-300 units.

The Supreme Command and the General Staff are still expecting the King Tiger with 850 hp HL234 engines to enter service as scheduled, and they have also proposed to adjust the establishment of independent heavy armored battalions to King Tiger tanks in the future. In view of the difficulty in the production of the 88mm/L71 gun equipped by the King Tiger, and the yield of the 88 gun with a diameter of 56 times has decreased by two orders of magnitude, in order to take care of future production, after repeated requests from Keitel and Zeitzler, Speer made an exception and agreed to produce enough tank guns in advance and hoard them, and at the same time expressed preliminary approval of the designer's proposal to consider installing a modification of the 105mm/L68 tank gun, and agreed to continue to improve the test.

With the advancement of the development of the King Tiger, Germany's follow-up development plan in the field of heavy tanks has become a blank, whether it is the Lion, the Mouse, or the P1000, the first day the design draft was handed in, Hoffman was completely shot mercilessly, his requirements are very clear, the follow-up development focus is to promote the development of the E series of armored vehicles and the potential of the existing Tiger and Leopard tanks - such as the requirements for infrared night vision, two-way stability and inter-march firing and the development of various types of shelling and armor-piercing shells (APDS\APCR). In particular, Germany actually has technical reserves, but due to resource constraints and shooting accuracy in the early stage, it has been working artillery, and Hoffman hopes to improve it in the following 1944.

In his mind, neither the 1943 nor the 1944 Panzer Division was a completely ideal Panzer Division, and his ultimate ideal was to be able to uniformly equip the E45 tank by 1946 or 1947, and use the standard main battle tank thinking to solve the current difficulties in the use of heavy and medium tanks. For this reason, the E45 is currently the focus of all tank manufacturers, and its standards are not generally high - it requires both the firepower and defense of a heavy tank, the tonnage and mobility of a medium tank, the output similar to that of the No. 4 tank, and a universal chassis design that is easy to expand and transform. In the words of the designers, this is a "perfect" tank.

After receiving the report, Hoffman sent a telegram of inquiry to Rommel, asking about the specific location of his army group and whether it was possible to retreat to organize a defense on the front line of the Caspian Sea, but the reply received was very unsatisfactory, and Rommel's main force was now located in the center of the oasis in the triangle surrounded by the cities of Bishkek, Dushanbe, and Tashkent. It's a place where you can exert influence on all sides and get supplies nearby.

The location is very good, but unfortunately it is too far, about 1300 kilometers from the Caspian Sea in a straight line...... (To be continued.) )