readx;

Chapter 420 The Great European Chariot Race

[Today's first shift, there will be two to three shifts later]

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Before the U.S. Navy arrived in Europe, in order to combat the arrogance of the Allies and break the stalemate on the battlefield, the Entente once imported M07 tanks from the Chinese Empire on a large scale. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info╔╗^//^

Before the United States joined the Entente side to enter the war, the Chinese Empire provided 1,100 M07 tanks to the Allied side, but after the United States entered the war, only 100 were provided, and a large number of M07 tanks were exported to the Allies.

Before the United States entered the war, the Allies obtained a small number of M07 vehicles from the Chinese Empire, but there were many anti-materiel rifles from the M07 tanks, and the M14 12.7mm anti-materiel rifles modified from the M2 heavy machine gun of the Chinese Empire helped the Allies destroy more than 900 M07 tanks of the Allied Countries, so that the gap between the Allies and the Entente in terms of the number of combat vehicles was quickly reversed.

When the United States entered the war, the economic losses of the Chinese Empire were entirely borne by the Central Powers, so the Chinese Empire sold the advanced weapons and strategic materials that were originally intended to be supplied to the Entente Powers to the Central Powers, of which Germany obtained 800 M07 tanks and 200 M10 vehicles.

In the Third Battle of the Somme in May 1915, Germany put these 1,000 tanks into the battlefield, breaking through the three lines of defense of the Allies in one day, widening the front by 122 kilometers and deepening it by 45 kilometers, severely damaging the British and French forces. In the battle that day, Germany dispatched 330,000 troops under the cover of chariots, sacrificed 130,000 people, and for the first time broke through the strong defense line in the coastal direction of the Somme that the British and French forces had been defending for two years, and surrounded the Somme fortress Abbeville. Participating in the war of 450,000 Anglo-French troops, losing 250,000 in one day, in the face of the German steel torrent, the Entente was seriously insufficient in the number and quality of combat vehicles, unable to resist, and was forced to retreat to the Brelle River to redeploy.

Because the German army was not psychologically prepared to break through the Somme defense line, the plan formulated for the third Somme battle was only to severely damage the Anglo-French troops on the Somme defense line, and as a result, the German tank cluster broke through the Somme defense line in one day, and the German vanguard was crazy, forgetting the original plan, and quickly marching east to sweep away the British and French army rout, which led to the elongation of the German front and a series of problems soon appeared. ╔╗

The performance of the tanks exported to Europe by the Chinese Empire has shrunk, especially on the issue of tank tracks, the maximum service life of the tracks of the M10 tanks exported to the Allies is only 50 kilometers, the German tank regiments are rapidly advancing in the process, the tank tracks are advancing with high loads on uneven ground, and each tank will break down many times for various reasons on average, of which the tracks are the biggest problem, after the breakthrough of 30 kilometers, most of the tracks are irreparably damaged, resulting in a sharp reduction in the German offensive, Coupled with the fact that the logistics of the tanks could not keep up, and the fuel and ammunition were scarce, the Germans finally stopped the offensive after advancing to a depth of 45 kilometers.

The Third Battle of the Somme ended in a German victory, but the hesitation of the German General Staff, coupled with Germany's tight financial resources and insufficient preparations, made it impossible for the Germans to fully break through the Somme defense line of the Anglo-French forces in one go, giving the Anglo-French forces a chance to breathe.

The Anglo-French command took the opportunity to urgently order the mobilization of chariots from all over Britain and France to replenish the eastern and western fronts of the Somme and the Brelle River, and to block the German chariot regimental assault.

Due to the significant reduction in the supply of combat vehicles to the Allied countries by the Chinese Empire, the M07 tank was destroyed by the German anti-materiel rifles, which proved to be unable to meet the needs of the battlefield, and the Entente countries also stopped importing the M07 tank. The Entente wanted to import M10 chariots from the Chinese Empire, but the Chinese Empire refused, and the Entente was furious about this, and the relationship with the Chinese Empire took a sharp turn for the worse, further reducing the share of imports from the Chinese Empire.

As early as the Entente imported M07 chariots from the Chinese Empire on a large scale, the Entente countries began to develop and imitate their own M07 chariots, before considering that large-scale illegal imitation of the Chinese Empire M07 chariots would cause the Chinese Empire to be dissatisfied, but with the Chinese Empire's military aid to the Entente countries decreased, and turned to the Allied countries after the large-scale export of advanced chariots to the Allied countries, the governments of the Entente countries began to allow their own enterprises to imitate M07 chariots, in order to avoid disputes, officially changed the name to tank.

The base of the large-scale imitation of the M07 tank of the Entente countries was located in the French company Renault, and the imitation M07 tank was renamed the French Renault FT-15 tank. ╔╗

Since more than 900 M07 tanks were destroyed by German anti-materiel rifles, the Allied countries began to develop new tanks to resist the German M13 anti-materiel rifles while copying and producing a large number of Renault FT-15 tanks.

In the Third Battle of the Somme, in order to contain the German offensive and reduce the pressure on the Anglo-French forces on the western front of the Somme, and at the same time, in order to obtain the M13 anti-materiel rifles made by the Chinese Empire equipped by the German army, the French army deliberately launched a small-scale and high-intensity offensive and dispatched 100 combat vehicles to attack the German army on the eastern front of the Somme. The main attack of the German army was on the Western Front, and the German army on the Eastern Front was mainly defensive. As usual, the Germans used M13 anti-materiel rifles to attack the Anglo-French tank regiments, and the French sent a special commando team to keep an eye on the German anti-materiel riflemen's positions, and soon killed a dozen German anti-materiel riflemen and captured the complete M13 antimateriel rifles.

After the French army obtained this rifle, they actively began to disassemble and study, and soon figured out the structure, ammunition type and destruction ability of the M13 anti-materiel rifle. After testing, the French army found that the M13 anti-materiel rifle could only penetrate 15 mm of Chinese special steel and less than 20 mm of French surface carburized steel, and the penetration distance of this shrunken version of the M13 anti-materiel rifle was within 400 meters, and it would not be able to penetrate beyond 400 meters, and even the accuracy was not enough.

Therefore, the French army added a layer of 8 mm thick steel plate to the existing M07 combat vehicle to solve the situation of being threatened by the M13 anti-materiel rifle, and at the same time, the French imitated and improved the new Renault FT-17 tank directly replaced with 22 mm frontal armor to resist the attack of the German M13 anti-materiel rifle.

The French "Renault" FT-17 light tank, despite being a copycat of the Chinese Empire M07 tank. But it has to be said that France's scientific and technological strength is still very strong, and they are able to create new ideas based on the design concepts of the Chinese Imperial scientific and technological personnel, and upgrade and improve the M07 tank.

The FT-17 was upgraded from the FT-15 and was the first tank in the world to be equipped with a turret that could rotate 360 degrees, and the power compartment was rear-mounted and the driver's seat was in front of the hull, while the M10 of the Chinese Empire had only a 270-rotating turret.

Although the French Renault FT-17 has a 360-degree rotation strike mode, but limited by the tank technology and technological level of this era, the 360-degree rotating turret at this time is a chicken rib, because the artillery control and retreat machine, direction machine, high and low machine, observation and sighting system is huge, the size of the tank is small, the installation of these huge equipment occupies too much space, after 360-degree rotation, the performance of many systems can not be guaranteed, especially the stability of the Chinese Empire has not been solved, French tank designers simply imitateI don't know the principle of this real design, so the 360-degree rotating turret design has become a great addition to the painting, which greatly reduces the overall performance of the FT-17 tank. ╔╗

The Renault FT-17 tank weighs 7 tons, has a maximum speed of 10 km/h, has a crew of 2, is equipped with an 8mm Model 1914 machine gun with 4,800 rounds of ammunition, or a 37mm smoothbore gun with 150 rounds of ammunition and armor 6-22mm thick. For French industry, the engines capable of driving Renault tanks at 10 km/h were not enough, and they had to be imported from the Chinese Empire. Although the Chinese Empire has made restrictions in this regard, the export of military combat vehicle engines needs to be approved by the Congress, but there are always loopholes, the French turned to import high-performance civilian car engines from the major civilian automobile companies of the Chinese Empire, although the life is not as good as military engines, but it can solve the urgent needs of the French Army, and it is barely suitable for installation on the Renault tank.

However, in terms of the progress of the war, it is still remarkable that France was able to imitate and upgrade the M07 tanks of the Chinese Empire in a short period of time, at least these tanks could be mass-produced, which played a very big role in quickly blocking the offensive of the German tank regiment.

At the same time, the French side also commissioned private companies to develop the "Schnader" assault tank, the "Saint-Chamond" assault tank, and the 2C heavy tank.

Among them, the Schnader tank is a tank developed entirely by France itself, which was developed by the French when the M07 tank of the Chinese Empire entered France. Due to the technical limitations of the Chinese Empire at that time, imitation was prohibited, and France did not have actual tank combat experience, so it did not know which tank design was the best choice, so the design style of Schnader tank appeared.

The Seider CA1 tank was equipped with a 75 mm field gun, two 8 mm machine guns, a total combat weight of 14 tons, a crew of 6, and a speed of 5 km/h. ╔╗

As the first French self-developed tank for combat use, the Schneider CA was developed by Elj.E. Estienne (Jean?). Battisti? Eugène? Estienne) and combined with the design and development of Eugenebrillie, the tank was manufactured by Schneider. Both Estienne and Brillie visited Imperial China to study Beiyang Power's tractor factory, which features a unique track and chassis mounting configuration. This design was eventually adopted by the French as the basis for the transformation of its tank.

This tank is similar to the earliest M05 tank of the Chinese Empire, using a large-caliber 75 mm low-speed short-barreled gun, mounted in the right turret of the tank, and the gun has a very small firing range. The tank system was designed to mount a long carriage on a set of short tracks, but like the previous designs of the Ca-Tan, this assembly did not work as expected. In practice, this assembly of the Schneider CA proved to be insurmountable over any kind of uneven terrain.

The Schneider tank first appeared on the battlefield of the First Battle of the Marne, but the tank did not perform well, the poor ventilation made the crew miserable, and the weak armor and internal mailbox design seriously threatened the safety of the crew.

The carriage of the Schneider CA tank was designed with a nose with a steep angle. The carriage was mounted on a shortened version of the tracked chassis, from which the nose and tail were suspended. The main armament of the tank was a 75 mm caliber main gun. Two 8 mm machine guns were mounted on spherical fixed bases on either side of the body for self-defense. The maximum capacity of the tank is 7 people.

By the time the Schneider CA tank was put into service, its shortcomings in design immediately became apparent. Because the elongated body makes the nose and tail of the carriage protrude too much and cause the tank to get stuck when traveling, the undercarriage of this short track cannot overcome terrain except on flat ground. In the end, the tank suffered heavy losses in the confrontation with the barrage of enemy artillery, and in one attack, a total of 132 Schneider CA tanks were involved, and no less than 57% of the tanks were destroyed. As a result, the entire design concept of the Schneider CA tank proved to be of no practical value. ╔╗

At one point, the French ** team decided to abandon this tank. However, the Allies lost the Third Battle of the Somme, and urgently needed a large number of tanks to replenish their troops, so although the Schnader tank had many shortcomings, it was better than nothing, so Schnader was approved to produce about 1,000 vehicles on a large scale, and the armor protection was increased to 15 mm of Chinese special steel or more than 20 mm of carburized steel.

The St. Chamont assault tank and the 2C heavy tank are basically the same as the M07 tank of the Chinese Empire, but the funds of these two French companies are limited, the production technology is limited, the imitation M07 tank is very clumsy, and the core components have to be imported from the Chinese Empire, and the United States changed to import from the United States after entering the war, but the performance has declined.

The French side rushed to the hospital in a hurry, and could not take care of the production capacity problems of the two companies, and purchased 1,000 tanks respectively, but in the end they could only deliver 50 tanks per month, and they did not deliver all of them until the end of the war.

At the same time, the development and production of various models of tanks in Britain was also carried out on a large scale. "Little Willy" began to design in July 1914, the actual construction began on August 11, 1914, in the development of convenient steering, a pair of tail wheels stretched out behind the body, at the same time, the tail wheel also played a role in maintaining balance, after continuous improvement and exploration, on September 22, 1914, "Little Willy" No. 1 car - "Lincoln" opened the door of the Foster factory in England.

The "Little Willy" tank also avoided the design conflict with the M07 tank of the Chinese Empire because the British had no tank combat experience at that time and did not know which tank design was correct. The tank weighs tons, has a total length of 5.87 meters, a width of 2.86 meters, and a height of 3.05 meters, and is powered by a 105-horsepower "Daimler" gasoline engine, and its main armament is a 40 mm main gun with 300 rounds of ammunition, and four 7.7 mm machine guns. It requires at least two people to work together, and the total number of members is only six.

"Little Willy" only used 10 mm thick steel plate as armor, even so, the hull was heavy enough, so that its maximum speed was only 3.2 km / h, plus the battlefield at that time was mainly between Britain and Germany "trench warfare", the comfort of the members was extremely poor, and its cross-country performance did not meet the design requirements of the British government, so it was not mass-produced, nor did it experience actual combat. But the British quickly improved on its basis.

On the basis of the Mark 1 tank, Britain improved the production of Mark 2 to 5 tanks, of which the Mark 4 tank basically achieved the same performance as the M07 tank of the Chinese Empire, and also met the requirements of the war.

The largest number of modified tanks were produced, about 2200 units were produced in 1915 alone. At the same time, in order to support the Somme front as soon as possible, Britain also developed and produced 800 "Racing Dog" medium tanks and 600 C-type medium tanks.

In November 1915, the Allies prepared a major counteroffensive to recapture their positions on the western Somme front. To this end, Britain and France planned to gather 7,000 tanks in the area, preparing to drive the German army out of France in one fell swoop.

At the same time as Britain and France were preparing tanks on a large scale, the German high command also received information and began to actively prepare for the battle.

On the one hand, Germany obtained a large number of M07 and M10 tanks from the Chinese Empire through the Baghdad Railway, and on the other hand, Germany also thought that the tanks of the Chinese Empire were too expensive, so it began to imitate and produce its own vehicles, and at the same time improved the M07 and M10 tanks according to the experience of the war.

The improved version of the M07 tank was renamed the A7V-3 by the German Army, and the modified version of the M10 was called the A7V-4, mainly because most of the parts were made in Germany in order to reduce the cost burden.

Germany attaches great importance to attack, so it dislikes the caliber of the main cannon of the Chinese Empire is too small, so the biggest improvement in the A7V tank is that the main gun is changed to 80 mm, but after the actual combat later, it is understood that this large-caliber main gun is extremely damaging to the tank, but the gains outweigh the losses.

However, the German army at that time did not consider these issues, because the German army did not have much experience in tank warfare.

Before Germany copied the M07 and M10 tanks of the Chinese Empire, Germany itself was designing tanks.

Among them, the A7V is the first combat vehicle of its own design in Germany, the combat weight of the A7V combat vehicle is 30 tons, the length of the vehicle is 7350 mm, the width of the vehicle is 3060 mm, the height of the vehicle is 3350 mm, the width of the track is 2115 mm, and the bottom of the vehicle is 200 mm above the ground. The best feature of the A7V tank is that it is the tank with the largest crew in the world. Up to 23 people operate. In addition to the commander, driver, co-pilot, communicator, signalman, pigeon bearer, sighter, gunner, and loader, there were 12 machine gunners and 2 mechanics. The 23 crew members were drawn from different units, the commander was a sergeant or officer, the driver and mechanic were from the engineer unit, the gunner and loader were from the artillery unit, and the 12 machine gunners were from the infantry unit. This also brings certain difficulties to the command and coordination of the whole vehicle.

The A7V is a typical box-type structure, and from a modern point of view, it is more like an armored transport vehicle, inspired by the M07 armored personnel carrier of the Chinese Empire.

Since the Germans did not figure out the concept of the main battle vehicle and the armored personnel carrier of the Chinese Empire, they regarded the armored personnel carrier as an assault combat vehicle. The result is a boxy shell with numerous weapons that resemble a monster of an "active fortress".

The A7V tank has many unique features in terms of design and general arrangement. It did not have a strict fighting compartment, there was a gun and 2 machine guns in the front of the hull, and there was no doubt that the firepower was powerful. The main armament on the combat vehicle was 1 57-mm low-speed gun with a caliber of 26.3 times. The ammunition base of the artillery shells was 180 rounds (later increased to 300 rounds), which can be called another "world's largest". The auxiliary armament is six "Maxim" 7.92 mm heavy machine guns, two on each side of the hull, two at the rear of the hull, and an ammunition base of 18,000 rounds, which are operated by a crew of 12 people. The engine is located in the middle of the body, and the commander and driver's seat are arranged above the engine, with a fixed control tower, which increases the overall height of the A7V. The power of the engine is transmitted through the propeller shaft to the gearbox at the rear of the body, which drives the driving wheels to rotate and push the tracks forward.

Due to the coil-spring suspension on the A7V, the ride comfort is also stronger than that of the Entente tanks. In terms of paying attention to the communication performance of the combat vehicle, the A7V is also at the forefront, and is equipped with a short-range radio system imported from the Chinese Empire, so that the combat vehicle can receive command on the battlefield, which the Chinese Imperial tank and the Entente tank cannot do.

Of course, the shortcomings of the A7V are that the body is tall and bulky, and the maneuverability is poor; The ratio of track length to track center distance is large, and steering is difficult; The height of the bottom of the car from the ground is too small, and the tank is easy to "support the bottom". Of course, the number of occupants is too large, and the unified command and coordination of the whole vehicle is also a troublesome matter. In any case, it is not easy to independently build a tank of such a level within the "first time" of the birth of the tank.

In November 1915, the Germans prepared 500 M10 tanks, 1,800 M07 tanks, 1,600 A7V-3 tanks, 900 A7V-4 tanks, and 500 A7V tanks on the Marne.

Although the Germans were inferior to the Anglo-French army with 7,000 tanks in terms of the number of tanks, the Germans had a qualitative advantage. In this way, the Germans, because the number of tanks was inferior to the Anglo-French army, quickly switched to strategic defense on the western front of the Somme.

Both sides purposefully assembled in the direction of the Somme, so a large-scale tank battle was about to break out on the Somme front.