During the First World War, the fighting in Eastern Europe was raging. After three years of fierce fighting with Russian cattle, the German-Austrian forces finally knocked the behemoth to the ground and blew a bloody freak on its corpse. However, compared to the enthusiastic scene of mutual attack on the Eastern Front, the main theme of the battlefield on the Western Front was almost always defense.

Since the European topography is in the shape of an inverted funnel from west to east, the further west you go, the narrower it becomes; The relatively short battlefields of Germany and France, supplemented by the fact that the three industrial empires of Britain, France and Germany produced far more machine guns and cannons than on the Eastern Front, constituted an impenetrable trench and trench. On more than one occasion, both sides tried to break head-on, only to be beaten in the face of a defensive system of machine-gun trenches and barbed wire. In order to break this stalemate, the British and Germans racked their brains and used their own tricks: the Germans gave full play to their advantages in the chemical field and land warfare, successively developed poison gas and gave birth to infiltration tactics; The British, on the other hand, transferred their naval experience to the Army, creating tanks, the "land cruisers" that would change the pattern of land warfare in the future.

Although the early tanks of World War I were still in a very primitive stage, the trio of fire protection speed was lackluster, and the reliability of their work was even more disastrous, they undoubtedly played a very important role in the subsequent battles. This kind of guy who is not afraid of bullets rumbles over the barbed wire fence that has taken the lives of countless attacking officers and soldiers, absorbs a large amount of firepower from the defending side, and plays an irreplaceable role in saving the lives of his own officers and men and in creating offensive conditions. Tanks don't always make it possible to break through the enemy's solid defenses, but it's almost impossible to break through the enemy's line without tanks! In addition, this weapon will also play an extremely important role on the Eastern Front; The battlefield on the Eastern Front, where the density of artillery was reduced by a geometric multiple compared with that of the Western Front, gave this primitive weapon an excellent living environment. This enabled them to face the Russian army, which was desperately short of weapons, with no rifles and almost all cavalry equipped with melee sabers. can have a supernatural performance like slaughtering a child.

Because tanks will play an extremely important role in future wars. As a traverser, Qingying naturally will not sit idly by and ignore this. In 1905, just after the Americans had just built the first tractor in the modern sense, Qingying began to fully introduce this ready-made technology from the United States, and invested in the construction of factories in Germany in the name of improving agricultural output, engaged in the production and research and development of tractors, the predecessor of the tank. Under the deliberate impetus of Qingying, German engineers have developed the field of fuel-powered tracked tractors to a fairly high level: in addition to equipping them with more powerful engines, they have also carried out a series of tests to lay steel armor and equip them with artillery.

On a sunny and warm day in March 1908, on the test grounds of the Royal Tractor Factory near Berlin. A steel chariot with a very different shape from a normal tractor caught the eye of everyone around the venue. The dark gray body made of steel is extraordinarily broad and powerful, and the stretching tracks under the load-bearing wheels are laborious and loving; And the short-barreled gun in the rotating turret is exuding a unique temperament of enthusiasm and unrestrained in the sunlight!

"Your Highness, this is the weapon that has been developed on the basis of the fuel-powered tracked tractors we have produced in small quantities according to your previous request. It is controlled by three personnel responsible for commanding, piloting, and firing; Its combat weight reached 9 tons, which is more than 4 times that of an ordinary car. Oliver, the head of the Royal Tractor Factory, looked at the young man in front of him respectfully, and there was a little more eagerness in his words. Due to Qingying's strong support for R&D projects, Oliver, who is also the main project designer, has benefited from the injection of massive funds; At this moment, facing a huge amount of money, Oliver naturally wants to show his research and development results to Qingying without reservation.

Qingying nodded when she heard this. A smile quietly spread out at the corner of his mouth. With his own direct intervention in the research and development process, the nascent German tank already had the classic prototype of the modern tank of later generations; It not only adopts the optimal design concept of a single turret. Instead of being boxy with direct shells, as was the case with the German tanks in history, it undoubtedly had slanted armor at the front. The German Army, which had applied naval experience directly to the Army, and thus created a large number of multi-turrets equipped with multiple guns and machine guns, and was as flashy as an arsenal, had been avoided and improved to an almost optimal extent.

The combat mode of a tank is completely different from that of a warship. Due to the relatively long distance and the limited effect of a single hit, it is almost impossible to kill a single blow in naval artillery battles; Therefore, warships often need a certain number of main guns to guarantee dispersion and hits at long distances in order to inflict the most effective blow on the enemy (the tests of the Japanese Navy concluded that there were at least 6 guns). The land tank's relatively close firing distance, supplemented by sophisticated optical fire control instruments, is enough to accurately hit a shot and completely beat the target to scrap metal. Therefore, multi-turret tanks are completely meaningless, and will be severely degraded in terms of cost, tonnage, technical development difficulty and mobility due to more turrets, and thus be completely overshadowed by single-turret tanks in the most important areas of war economics. The inclined armor that Qingying insisted on using in the research and development of new combat vehicles was also proved to be a superior concept that paid far more than it gained in later generations; Tilted armor is far more resistant to direct fire than the equivalent armor calculated by the master science fiction writer SerB in his Tank World with cosine.

With the roar of the engine, the vehicle, which could already be called a tank, began to operate slowly; Seeing this scene, Qingying's eyes lit up, and she became deeply interested in her upcoming performance in the test field. However, to his surprise, although it spewed out an extremely thick cyan smoke from its tail, its speed was unusually slow, like an old man staggering forward with a cane. And after slowly breaking away from the flat ground, the speed of the vehicle entering the off-road state is even more unsightly; The roar of the engine lasted for more than 15 minutes, but the short section of rock-strewn, undulating and rugged road not far away had not been completely crossed!

Seeing that Qingying's face was slightly stiff, Oliver hurriedly explained: "Your Highness, although its speed is a little slower, due to the current technical conditions, we have already reached the limit of installing a 35-horsepower gasoline engine for this chariot. With this power output, it has a maximum speed of 4.5 km/h on road and 2 km/h off-road. It's a bit slower, but it has a decent oil reserve; The large fuel tank on the back is loaded enough to allow it to travel 50km continuously on the road. ”

For the tragic performance of World War I tanks, Qingying already has a detailed understanding of the materials of later generations; This is only equivalent to the speed of a normal adult walking on the road, which is the inherent technical limitation of the current era. He paused slightly, and was about to speak, when suddenly there was a cacophony on the test floor. Qing Ying's heart sank, and when he turned his head to look, he saw that the chariot, which had inherited the bloodline of tanks in later generations and looked quite majestic, was actually trapped by a ravine less than half a meter deep; After two clouds of green smoke were squeezed out of the exhaust vent at the back of the smoke, the engine and the engine came to a complete stillness in a strange sound that was clearly different from normal operation. The maintenance team members who had been waiting next to them immediately rushed up, holding various maintenance equipment, and carrying out various troubleshooting and parts replacement of the combat vehicle with extremely quick skills.

Qingying covered her forehead with her right hand, and Qingjun's face was full of pain that she couldn't look at directly. The reason why World War I could not carry out breakthrough blitzkrieg like World War II was that in addition to the lack of strong air support, the extremely high failure rate of its original tanks was also one of the most important reasons. In the Battle of the Somme, when tanks were first put into battle in history, the 49 British tanks that participated in the battle were due to mechanical failures, so that nearly two-thirds of their personnel were reduced before they could drive to the offensive position, and the lucky ones who survived and could still move could be counted on one hand. Considering that it was still in the middle of 1908, when the engine, transmission shaft, gearbox and other technical skills were not perfect, and this test car was also in operation for nearly half an hour before the strike was declared, it was already an excellent performance of German workers' excellence!

"Don't go for any distances. With this guy's current failure rate, it simply can't give it the ability to perform long-distance tactical maneuvers. Our main task at the moment is to improve its reliability and make it last longer in normal operation; Only then would there be a need for the Imperial German Army to procure them. Just as Oliver was embarrassed and thought hard about how to explain to Qingying, a clear and peaceful voice suddenly came from his ears. Seeing that the young man in front of him was not as angry as he imagined, Oliver couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief in his heart, and even claimed that it was: "Your Highness's will is my will." I will definitely improve in this area. ”

Qingying nodded slightly and said, "Please sir can solve this problem as soon as possible." Half a year later, I hope that it will be able to pass the military review perfectly on the test field and join the active squad of the German Army. (To be continued......)