Li Xiaofeng did have some difficulties and pushed Ubolevich to the post of chief of the General Staff, he must have been happy, but at the same time, Li Xiaofeng was not willing to give up the position of head of the General Armament Department. It's not that he wants to take all the benefits, but at present, the General Armament Department is very important. For example, the missile program and the nuclear bomb program mentioned earlier, without the strong insistence of the General Armament Department and the KGB, even Ustinov would not have been able to carry it out.

Not only these two plans, but also what weapons should be equipped and developed within the army, there is a lot of confusion between different branches of the armed forces. For example, the old stubborn of the Navy likes battleships and dislikes aircraft carriers, such as the Air Force's six-engine giant intercontinental bombers, and the Army wants to get a super-heavy tank to play with.

All in all, all kinds of inexplicable ideas are a bunch, but as mentioned earlier, the resources of the Soviet Union are limited, and if you waste all your precious resources on these brain-opening projects, you will really be beeping the dog. At least Li Xiaofeng can't allow these shabby projects to grab resources. Therefore, it is also very important to take control of the General Armament Department.

If Tukhachevsky is removed from power and Ubolevich is transferred to the General Staff, then who will take over the General Armament Department? Anyway, Li Xiaofeng does not have too good candidates for the time being, either Terry Andafilov will be transferred back, or Shaposhnikov can only be promoted. However, the former is a pure tactician and strategist, and he is certainly not as comfortable as Ubolevich in dealing with the complex interests of the administration, especially within the army, after all, the latter has worked in this department for more than ten years, and everything is clear.

As for Shaposhnikov, it is not impossible to transfer him back, but who can be asked to receive the commander of the Kyiv Military District? And Shaposhnikov is not purely his own person after all. And it's old and not in particularly good health. Letting him be the head of the General Armament Department can only be a transition. In the long run, we still have to find a more suitable person.

But this more suitable candidate does not exist for the time being. If in a few years, when Rokossovsky and his party grow up, Li Xiaofeng will not have to worry about this problem, and now, whether he is helped to ascend to this position, he will have trouble in the future.

After thinking about it, Li Xiaofeng made a decision, that is, to drag it. Anyway, the power of the General Staff has been limited, and it is not so easy for Tukhachevsky to die even if he wants to, and it is not unacceptable for him to continue to do it.

And considering that Trotsky was not so easy to let go of the General Staff, in order for him to agree to Tukhachevsky's resignation, a certain exchange of interests was necessary. And in the long run, this will definitely make Li Xiaofeng suffer, so it is better to just forget it. At most, in 1945, Trotsky would have to step down, and the old Trotsky would have rolled his calves, and Tukhachevsky could not stay if he wanted to. At that time, it was the right way to take the General Staff as it sits.

With this in mind, Trotsky remained silent. Li Xiaofeng is naturally too lazy to get angry, Tukhachevsky did perform clumsilyly in the Great Patriotic War, but after all, he was the first batch of Soviet marshals, after all, he contributed to the society during the domestic revolutionary war, and it seems somewhat impersonal to get rid of him, so Li Xiaofeng will not be stupid to be a villain.

Trotsky did not expect that a certain immortal would be so patient and able to resist the temptation of the General Staff, and now it was his turn to sit on wax. To tell the truth, Tukhachevsky will not step down, his side is actually passive, and he was originally ready to sit back and enjoy his success, who would have thought that Li Xiaofeng would not be fooled, what should I do?

For a while, neither Trotsky nor Li Xiaofeng was silent, but Tukhachevsky, who was shaky at the beginning, temporarily stabilized his position. Of course, Tukhachevsky did not know that the reason why he was able to continue to be chief of the General Staff was not that the Politburo and the Military Commission chose to continue to trust him, but that they had to compromise and delay in the internal struggle for power and interests. To put it bluntly, the time has not yet come.

Tukhachevsky did not know this, he thought he had made it through, so his dead heart began to be restless again. He felt that he should seize this opportunity and put on a good performance to secure his position.

So, the Minsk counterattack, which he had been planning for a long time, was put on the table again, and our Chief of the General Staff was ready to launch a wave of offensives in late August and early September to drive the Germans out of Belarus!

"This guy is really boring, so he can't stop a little!"

This news made Li Xiaofeng naturally very unhappy, not only because he was not interested in the so-called Minsk counterattack from the beginning, but more importantly, is this time suitable for such a counterattack?

The Battle of Kursk had just ended, and although it was a great victory, the Red Army's losses were also very large, and after more than four months of attrition, the Red Army urgently needed to rest and replenish. How can it be able to invest in new counterattack operations?

If you have to carry out such a counterattack operation, there is only one way, you still have to tear down the east wall and make up the west wall, and the last time Tukhachevsky did this, it directly led to the erosion of the war situation in Ukraine.

Naturally, Li Xiaofeng was resolutely opposed to the so-called Minsk counterattack, and his reasons were very good: the troops were insufficient, the grassroots commanders and fighters were very tired and needed to rest, and the main force of the German army was still very strong.

So did Tukhachevsky listen? If he could have listened, he wouldn't have been Tukhachevsky. However, fortunately, the General Staff at this time was no longer the General Staff at that time, and the Chief of the General Staff had to follow the baton of the Military Commission, so the plan he advocated to immediately carry out the Minsk counterattack was rejected, but he did not completely reject his proposal, but changed the battle to mid-to-late September, and waited for the Red Army to rest and replenish for two months.

It seems that everyone is happy, but in fact, neither Li Xiaofeng nor Tukhachevsky are satisfied with this result, one thinks that the soldiers are expensive and fast, and the other thinks that the idea of a Minsk counterattack is rubbish, can you talk about it?

"If everything follows Comrade Andrei's opinion, then what do we want to do?" ”

Let's put it this way, in fact, it was Trotsky who deliberately couldn't get along with Li Xiaofeng this time, and to put it bluntly, Lao Tuo still wanted to break the silence. forced a certain immortal to take the initiative to cooperate with him, so as to oust Tukhachevsky. Otherwise. Then he will constantly use Tukhachevsky to make trouble for a certain immortal. is to annoy Li Xiaofeng to death.

Does such a tactic work? It's hard to say, because although Li Xiaofeng can endure it for the time being, this does not mean that he can endure it all the time, at least it is impossible to endure it until the moment when Lao Tuo stepped down in 1945.

In the following period, direct or indirect contradictions broke out between Li Xiaofeng and Tukhachevsky over many military issues, and the anger between the two sides became more and more intense. For example, on the issue of tank guns, the two sides had a very unpleasant quarrel.

According to the impression of most comrades. The performance of Soviet tank guns and anti-tank guns was lower than the world's advanced level at the same time. For example, the Soviet 76.2 mm tank gun is actually only a little stronger than the American 75 mm M3 tank gun, the 85 mm tank gun is not as good as the German 75 mm KWK40 and the US imperialist 3-inch tank gun (M7), and the 100 mm of the D-10 series is not as good as the German 88 mm KWK43, only stronger than the KWK36.

Is this really the case? In fact, this issue is very complicated, and to comment on whether a tank gun is easy to use, you have to look at it in combination with national strength and the battlefield environment. Even talking about artillery is nonsense, no matter how good a tank gun is, it is just a cannon, what is the use of having a cannon without advanced ammunition?

For example, before 1941, was the tank guns of the Red Army really much worse than their world counterparts? Let's be honest. Not really, when the tanks of other countries of the same era were still playing with machine guns and 37mm guns. The Soviet Union used a 45 mm tank gun, and in terms of the performance of this 45 gun, it was basically no problem to destroy other tanks of the same period.

But was the USSR satisfied at that time? Not satisfied, on the contrary, the Soviet armored and artillery forces felt a deep lack of firepower (purely to scare themselves), and with the launch of a new generation of tanks, more powerful anti-tank guns were put on the agenda. For example, the Grabin Design Bureau undertook the task of developing 57-mm and 107-mm anti-tank guns.

One of the 57-mm anti-tank guns was later the ZIS-2, (Plant 92 received the honorary title of "Stalin Plant", the full name was Zavodimeni Stalina, so the artillery developed by the plant was called the ZIS type).

When the ZIS-2 entered service in 1940, it was arguably one of the most advanced anti-tank guns in the world, this gun fired a BR-271 armor-piercing projectile weighing 3.14 kg and could reach a muzzle velocity of 1000 m / s, penetrate vertical armor 90 mm thick at a distance of 1000 meters, and still have an armor-piercing power of 75 mm at a distance of 1500 meters.

And note that the ZIS-2 was not the longest 57-mm gun developed by the Grabin Design Bureau at that time, but the other ZIS-1KV 57-mm gun with a barrel of 86 times the caliber that began to be developed in November 1940. The muzzle velocity of the BR-271 is 1150 m/s, but the life is too short. According to Grabin himself: "After 40 rounds of shooting, the muzzle velocity and accuracy are noticeably reduced, and after 50 rounds, the shells do not rotate and begin to turn over (the rifling is bald!). Although Grabin's statement is somewhat exaggerated, it is an indisputable fact that the ZIS-1KV has a short lifespan, and later the ZIS-4 was similarly troubled.

It can be seen that before 1943, the power of the ZIS-2 was sufficient, and even if the improved No. 4 tank encountered the ZIS-2, it would only be beaten. But the very good and powerful ZIS-2 had a problem, that is, it was too cumbersome to produce and too expensive to build. So much so that the production capacity was very limited, and note that the ZIS-2 was born a little "too late", from 1940, the USSR was already preparing for war, and the general opinion of the Red Army at that time was that the power and potential of 45-mm guns were limited, and better anti-tank guns had to be developed to replace them.

In order to complete this task as soon as possible, the Grabin Design Bureau creatively solved this problem by combining the F22 cannon barrel with the ZIS-2 gun mount with the not very satisfactory performance, and saved the ZIS-3. This was later the main anti-tank weapon of the Red Army artillery. As for the ZIS-2, it will continue to be improved and developed, and will be mass-produced after the process is mature.

Of course, it is well known that the Great Patriotic War broke out in 1941, and the mass production of the ZIS-2 was replaced by the urgent needs of the front. For the Red Army, the ZIS-2, which was more expensive to produce and more complex in terms of production technology, really could not afford it. I can only take the ZIS-3 to make up for it first.

Because of the war. ZIS-2, which was supposed to be the main tank gun of the Red Army, could only retreat into the background and cry silently. So only a small part of the artillery and armored corps received this weapon (the artillery was ZIS-2. And the armored corps was the T-34-57, which was armed with a modified version of the ZIS-2 tank gun of the ZIS-4, which later developed into the ZIS-4M).

Let's put it this way, the ZIS-2 and its improved versions of the 57-mm tank and anti-tank guns were actually somewhat more powerful than the D-34T5T85 mm tank guns that were later widely equipped with the T-85 (the armor-piercing power of the ZIS-2 with the BR-271P and BR-271N reached 105 mm/90 and 140 mm/90 degrees at a distance of 1000 meters, respectively, and 145 mm/90 and 155 mm/90 degrees at a distance of 500 meters, respectively, And the BR-271N still has 1500 mm armor-piercing power at a distance of 125 meters! ）

There may not be a visual image of this, but the straightforward point is that the ZIS-2 and ZIS-4, with the BR-271N shell (APCR), can penetrate the Tiger's armor at a distance of 1200 meters. The armor-piercing power is considerable.

Of course. It must also be said that the "artifact" of APCR shells was too high-end for the Soviet Union, and not all tanks and anti-tank guns could be equipped, and they were generally issued only to the best gunners. Of course, this was also a common phenomenon in other countries at that time, after all, tungsten resources are limited, and the production of tungsten carbide bullet cores is also quite troublesome.

Take the American imperialists, who are not bad for money, for example, after landing in Normandy in 1944, they were issued with three-inch and M1A 176.2 mm tank guns (note that it was not the later Abrams tank!). How many T4 high-speed armor-piercing shells (that is, APCR shells, or HVAP shells) are widely used in M4 tanks and M10 tank destroyers? Only 2,000 rounds!

By the end of the Ardennes counterattack in 1945. The American tanks and tank destroyers, who had been abused by the German armored forces, frantically applied for the T4 and immediately replaced it with the M4 with a 76.2mm M1A1 tank gun. And as of March. How many T4s did the US imperialists distribute to the front line after they went out? Eighteen thousand rounds only!

Is eighteen thousand rounds a lot? In fact, if you count the number of 76.2mm tank guns of the US imperialists on the Western Front, you will know how much each crew can get, and in the later records of the Americans themselves, before 1945, each crew could only get one T4 armor-piercing shell per month. And by February 1945, only 5 T4 armor-piercing shells were received at one time for each car group. Even the 6th Army, which was fighting in Alsace, France, did not receive a single T4 before January 1945.

The key reason why it is so tragic is that tungsten is not enough, even a local tyrant like the US imperialist cannot be used openly. And the T4 is not as perfect as imagined, in fact, on the battlefield, the effect of the T4 is much worse than in the experiment, at a normal engagement distance of 800 to 100 yards (731 to 914 meters), it cannot penetrate the frontal armor of the improved Black Panther, only its side.

Going back to this ZIS-2, it was originally planned that it was a tank and anti-tank gun that the Soviet Union should be widely equipped with, but because of the war, its priority fell all at once. Historically, after the Soviet Union encountered the Haw Par after 1943, it felt that the firepower of the ZIS-3 was insufficient, so it wanted to re-develop the ZIS-2. Of course, we also know that the ZIS-2 has not yet ushered in the spring, and in the tank gun competition, this time it is the later D-5 series that will PK it down.

Although the D-5 is inferior to the ZIS-2 in terms of armor-piercing power, the production process and production cost of the D-5 are much lower than that of the ZIS-2 (its body barrel and the 52-K anti-aircraft gun are basically the same thing), so the ZIS-2 extremely developed ZIS-4 and ZIS-4M were once again abandoned by the armored corps (but the artillery was still widely equipped).

And now, when the German Panthers first entered the battlefield, the sensitive Red Army armored troops immediately felt that their firepower was insufficient and that it was necessary to equip their tanks and anti-tank units with better artillery. And on this issue, Tukhachevsky appreciates the ZIS-2 series more, while Li Xiaofeng believes that the D-5 series is enough.

Good guys, this is an irreconcilable contradiction, Tukhachevsky insisted on resuming the production of the ZIS-2, and Li Xiaofeng firmly disagreed. So why didn't Li Xiaofeng agree? The reason has actually been said before, that is, the ZIS-2 is troublesome in production and has a low lifespan.

First of all, this is an ultra-long cannon with a caliber of 71 times, as we all know, the longer the barrel of the gun, the more troublesome it is, and what is even worse is that the armor-piercing shells used in the ZIS-2 require a relatively high manufacturing process. And in order to exert its excellent performance, it must be paired with better armor-piercing bullets. And now the Soviet Union's armor-piercing shell production process is practically not up to par (in 1941, even the quality of armor-piercing shells for 45-mm tank guns and anti-tank guns was extremely poor). Even Ustinov's repeated efforts to strengthen the production process only temporarily solved the problem of armor-piercing shells for 76.2-mm guns.

Is it appropriate to launch the BR-271 series, which is more difficult to launch at this time? Moreover, the main task of tank guns is not only anti-tank, but also needs to cooperate with infantry combat, and the ability to destroy fortifications is also quite important. And in this regard, the ZIS-2 is inherently not good at it, its high-explosive grenade power is too low.

The problem is that Li Xiaofeng reasoned with Tukhachevsky, but the latter did not listen to him at all, and always insisted that anti-armor was the first priority, and that the threat of more advanced German tanks must be prevented in advance...... (To be continued.) )

PS: Bow and thank xxxxxxjj, deep sea snail, 89 xxx, lazy readers, lazy readers, hzwangdd and comrade Juventus!