Steel Soviet Union

What Malashenko said is not pleasant to hear, but strictly speaking, it is the truth that tells the truth. What's more, it is said from the attitude of a winner. Malashenko is fully qualified to do so.

Regarding Malashenko's words, Lieutenant Colonel John had nothing to say. After all, he just waved his arms slightly helplessly and spoke slowly.

"You are right, we lost, and we are convinced that we lost."

"You and your troops are as powerful as the rumors say, but there is one thing wrong. Everyone described it wrong."

Lieutenant Colonel John spoke half a sentence and left half a sentence, as if he wanted Malashenko to guess what to say next. Our Comrade Ma did indeed have a hint of emotion that was neither too strong nor too light. interest.

"Oh? Everyone described it wrong? What is that?"

Lieutenant Colonel John paused slightly, but his expression was still extremely calm when he finally spoke.

"Everyone said you were a cold-blooded and ruthless person, like a steel butcher in a slaughterhouse. But what I saw was a flesh-and-blood general, a real soldier."

""

Malashenko didn't say anything. He guessed that Lieutenant Colonel John would have something to say next, but what happened next turned out to be exactly what he expected.

"You gave both of us a chance, General Malashenko. If it weren't for that short cooling-off period, I would even let my troops fight to the death with you. But now, I think this result will be good for both of us, Isn’t it?”

Malashenko smiled slightly, and it seemed that he had not misjudged the person.

"Of course it's good for both of us."

The chat-like conversation ended here. Malashenko continued to gain mutual recognition to some extent from Lieutenant Colonel John, and got some answers that he was interested in and wanted to know.

The 502nd Heavy Armor Battalion was indeed sent to perform support tasks, but it did not arrive on the battlefield at full strength.

It's also funny to say that the 502nd Heavy Armor Battalion received these King Tiger heavy tanks, which happened just half a month ago.

This batch of King Tiger heavy tanks that uniformly adopt Henschel turrets are new and powerful, and have an overwhelming advantage over the previous generation Tiger tanks. All the officers and soldiers of the 502nd Heavy Armor Battalion greatly appreciated this new heavy tank. During the test run, it was found that the maneuverability was a bit poor, but it was still within the acceptable range. Everything else seemed to be perfect.

But bad, unexpected problems always arise when you least expect them. ɱ

The 502nd Heavy Armored Battalion, which was not happy for two days after taking over the King Tiger, soon discovered that these cutting-edge heavy tanks looked delicious but tasted extremely bad. They were like Ollie covered in chocolate.

After just a few days of running on the training ground to hone the running-in of the car crew, the King Tigers gradually exposed many serious and even fatal problems and flaws.

At first, the engine always stalls suddenly when you don't expect it, or even goes on strike and becomes completely paralyzed.

The people from the maintenance team came to check and quickly found out the problem. The cause of this embarrassing situation was very simple: the engine was overwhelmed.

The engine that was used on the Tiger tank was just okay, but it was moved directly to the King Tiger whose tonnage increased by more than ten tons.

This is like a girl who weighed less than 100 pounds the day before, but woke up the next day and turned into a fat woman weighing 150 pounds. It is inevitable that she would have difficulty taking two steps and feel overwhelmed.

Although this description may sound a bit exaggerated, for heavy tanks, which are already heavyweight land combat equipment, a sudden increase in weight of more than ten tons is enough to crush the engine and cause it to be overwhelmed.

What's more, the mechanical reliability these days is just that, the Maybach HL230 gasoline engine is already struggling to drive the Tiger, and it has basically reached its limit function. It is simply unrealistic for you to graft this thing onto the Tiger King intact. If there is no problem at all, it would be a fucking weird thing.

Originally, the failure of the engine alone was enough to cause a headache, but what the 502 Heavy Armored Battalion did not expect was that even more unfortunate things were yet to come.

Sudden stalling of the engine is only one of the problems. The short lifespan and serious unreliability of the entire transmission system and gearbox are even more critical flaws.

The service life of many gearbox and transmission system parts marked on the manual often needs to be folded in half or even broken during actual use.

The real service life is often less than one-third of the marked life. Either the transmission shaft is severely worn, or the gearbox gear directly cracks the red hub, or even the suspension system of the external running device has problems.

The German logistics personnel who had been in trouble for eight lifetimes had to painstakingly dismantle, reinstall and dismantle the power system. It only took less than a week to basically know how many screws and nuts there were in the King Tiger's power compartment.

In fact, it is good to dismantle the power compartment, open it for maintenance and replace accessories. What really made the German maintenance team and logistics personnel feel like a nightmare was coming when they repaired the suspension system and external running gear of the King Tiger.

Today's staggered dog-shaped road wheels, I really don't know which dead orphan designed them.

The German maintenance personnel, holding steel crowbars and various maintenance tools in their hands, and serving the huge and heavy road wheels back and forth, were really about to cry.

With luck, you may only need to remove two or three road wheels to find the problem and fix it. But if a member of the crew says, "Hey, I don't know where the problem is, but after it starts running, the walking part on this side always feels wrong," then the German logistics maintenance team will have great fun.

In the most unlucky case, in order to troubleshoot one by one and find the precise point where the problem occurs, it may even be necessary to remove all the road wheels on this side to solve the problem. And even if you dismantle it all, you are only making preliminary preparations. Whether it can be repaired or not really depends on your appearance.

Maybe you wait until you think it's repaired and put all the road wheels back on, but after you start running you still report that there is a problem and it's not completely repaired, then you're ready to roll up your sleeves and try to reinstall all the road wheels on one side. Take it apart once.

A variety of desperate criticisms were piled up together. When the 502nd Heavy Armored Battalion received the action order, nearly half of the King Tigers were in a state of repair and unable to move.

Such an appalling equipment readiness rate was not to mention "shocking the old horse for a whole year." Even Lieutenant Colonel John, who was used to the delicate properties of his own equipment, said that he felt so embarrassed that he wanted to find a crack in the ground to crawl into.