After the Battle of Slutsk, the 2nd Panzer Group was encircled and annihilated, and the news of Guderian's capture had already spread throughout the Soviet Union through Pravda and other media. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

There was jubilation throughout the country, and the people of the whole country were quite encouraged by this great victory of the Soviet Red Army.

However, on the other hand, the German military has tried various ways to limit the spread of this matter, so as to avoid a devastating blow to the morale of the military and prevent the people at home from losing confidence in the army.

But paper can't contain fire, and Hitler's suppression not only did not stop the spread of news, but also contributed to the spread of various rumors.

In various parts of Germany, various versions of the rumor spread like a germ, quickly spreading, what "Guderian is a Soviet spy", "Marshal Bock deliberately got rid of Guderian" and other absurd rumors spread ten, ten hundreds, and finally the Ministry of Defense made public the ins and outs of the whole thing, coupled with Goebbels's propaganda, which stopped the development of rumors and stabilized the morale of the military and the people.

As a result of this battle, Army Group Center had lost the ability to attack the Soviet Union, and the Soviet defense line had been consolidated and had entered the stage of preparing for a counteroffensive.

Sooner or later, Western Ukraine, Belarus and other places will be recovered by the Soviet Union, both in the history we know and in the parallel universe in which Manturov lives.

The Soviet army now has enough troops, sufficiently advanced weapons, and a certain amount of combat experience, and basically has the conditions for a counteroffensive.

While deploying a counteroffensive, Manturov did not leave behind the development of new weapons. In his opinion, the more advanced the weapons of the Soviet army, the fewer casualties, and the longer the war lasted and the less damage it brought.

It's a pity that before the start of the war, because the Soviet leaders did not have the vision of future generations, many potential scientific research projects were canceled, which led to the stagnation of some weapons technology in the Soviet Union (including jet engines and recoilless gun projects). It wasn't until the Western countries came out and showed their might that the Soviets woke up from a dream, but it was too late.

Fortunately, in that parallel world, there is Manturov, a traverser. With the eyes of future generations, he saw the potential of some projects, and turned the tide in time to restore these projects.

However, with the exception of Katia and the directors of these scientific projects, almost no one understood the purpose of Manturov's efforts to revive them, and even Stalin objected, insisting that they were a waste of resources and meaningless to the state and the army.

Fortunately, these days, Stalin still takes Manturov's opinion quite seriously. So he summoned Manturov, People's Commissar of Ordnance Ustinov, and Rurika and other people who had presided over these projects to the Kremlin for a special meeting.

"Comrade Manturov, the recoilless guns developed by Kurchevsky have some flaws in each piece, and the actual performance is very different from the data on paper, why do you insist on continuing to develop these weapons?" It was not Stalin who spoke first, but Ustinov, the People's Commissar of Ordnance Workers

Manturov thought for a moment and replied: "Comrade Ustinov, although there are some problems with these recoilless guns, as long as we solve these problems, these weapons will definitely be useful on the battlefield in the future."

Although these recoilless guns have a short range and are not very powerful, as long as we develop the corresponding high-explosive armor-piercing shells and use them against tanks, the effect is first-class.

Think about it, if our infantry were equipped with this kind of anti-tank weapon, their tank units could be easily wiped out by our infantry. ”

Stalin nodded, also thinking that what Manturov said made some sense, but he still couldn't understand why he wanted to develop a jet engine. "You have a point, if we can develop a specialized armor-piercing projectile that can be used on this recoilless gun and be massively equipped in the Red Army units, then we will not suffer in the face of enemy tanks.

But I never understood why you insisted on developing a fuel-guzzling, unreliable aircraft engine. ”

Jet engine designer Arhip Mikhailovich Rurika, who was present, naturally had an impulse to explain when he heard Stalin's negative comments about his work.

Just as he was organizing the language and was about to explain it to Stalin, Manturov took the lead: "Comrade Stalin, the engine designed by Comrade Rurika has really had the problem of high fuel consumption and poor reliability so far.

But in any case, if we want to develop a better, faster aircraft, we can't help but develop this engine.

Although there are still problems with high fuel consumption and poor reliability of this engine, as long as we continue to develop them, these problems will be solved one day.

If we abandon the project and stop R&D, we will inevitably lag behind other countries. As far as I know, both the Germans and the British are already working on jet engines, and significant progress has been made.

If they succeed, their aircraft will overwhelm us in speed and performance. If we continue to develop by then, I'm afraid it's already too late. ”

Manturov's words were a bit exaggerated and alarmist, and the purpose was only to make Stalin aware of the need to develop a jet engine.

In fact, before World War II, the Soviet Union had already started the research and development of jet engines, and made some progress and accumulated valuable technical experience.

As early as 1938, Rurika's team had succeeded in developing the first axial jet engine in the Soviet Union with a thrust of half a ton.

In 1940, Rurica designed the world's first turbofan engine, the РД-1, and applied for a patent in April 1941.

However, when the engine assembly was 60% complete and ready for testing, development was suspended. The design team was disbanded, Rurika was sent to Chelyabinsk to supervise the production of tank engines, while all technical documentation was put in the dust at the Kirov plant, and the development of Soviet jet aircraft engines was suspended.

Historically, it was not until the end of 1942 that the Soviet rocket and plane engine project suffered a setback and failed completely, and Stalin woke up from a dream and realized that the development of jet engine was the general direction of the future, so he hurriedly recalled Rurika and others to continue the development of jet engines, but it was too late.

Originally, the technology of Soviet jet engines was only about half a year behind Western countries, and after Rurika designed the РД-1, it recovered a little gap, but at this critical time, Stalin's wrong decision widened the technical distance between the two sides, and the Soviet Union, which was originally only about half a year behind, actually lagged behind by 2 years.

As a result, after World War II, the Soviet Union had to combine German technology, and even buy an engine technology and production rights from Britain, which solved many technical problems.