Steel Soviet Union

When Malashenko said this, Kogin, who had not thought about it further, thought it was right.

After all, the Red Army has so many artillery pieces. If Malashenko casually mentioned an impossible caliber, it would be a waste of time. He should really provide Malashenko with several possible reference plans, at least There needs to be something to compare with.

Thinking of this, Kogin, who no longer hesitated, immediately opened the briefcase he carried with him, took out a pile of documents, leaned forward slightly and handed it to Malashenko.

"At the beginning of the IS1 heavy tank project, the report you first submitted jointly with General Zhukov gave me a lot of inspiration, including possible future firepower upgrades."

"The turret of the KV1 heavy tank has many unreasonable design problems, especially when it comes to replacing the main gun with a stronger one. These have been improved on the IS1 heavy tank, and we have prepared the newly designed IS1 turret. Sufficient space was left, and many possible firepower upgrade plans that were originally conceived were taken into consideration.”

"These are rough sketches of firepower upgrade plans. If there is no suitable one, we can also discuss more specific plans together, Comrade Malashenko."

Malashenko took the thick stack of paper from Kotin's hand. This thing that was very important just by holding it in his hand must not be simple. Malashenko began to guess what was prepared in it. s future.

"I hope it's not too outrageous. As long as Ke Jing doesn't think about carrying 152 up, everything will be fine."

With some trepidation, Malashenko gently opened the title page of the document, and the written data and hand-drawn sketches recorded in handwriting soon came into view.

Malashenko tried his best to read the detailed content recorded on each piece of paper. Some content that was too useless and complicated was simply skipped to save time.

About two minutes later, Malashenko, who had basically finished reading the pile of papers, had a plan in mind, and then slowly spoke under Kogin's unblinking gaze.

"This plan is very good for the Navy's 100mm S-34 naval gun. Comrade Kogin, how likely are we to implement this upgrade plan?"

Malashenko tapped a piece of plan paper he took out in his hand and asked Kogin. Kogin, who knew what was recorded on it, didn't seem too interested.

"This plan is one of our key considerations, but the current problem is that the Grabin team has not completed the improvement work on this naval gun."

"We have contacted them before, but it will take a lot of time, which means there is not enough production for us to use in the short term. If we choose this option, the problem is that the tanks have to wait for new guns. This is Unacceptable, Comrade Malashenko, you know what I mean.”

The problem Kotin mentioned is actually what Malashenko is worried about.

As with the original history, when the project was established, both the 100 mm and 122 mm main gun options were selected for the IS2 heavy tank. In the end, because the production of 100 guns was too small and could not be supplied, the 122 gun was finally chosen. The car can be replaced in order to quickly increase production.

The 100 gun is good. The 100 gun was improved from a variant of the naval gun. It was even the most outstanding tank gun of the entire Soviet Red Army in the Great Patriotic War.

Its ballistic performance is excellent, its muzzle velocity is high, and its armor penetration depth is on the same level as the German Long 88, but only slightly inferior. Moreover, the use of 100mm custom-loaded shells can save a lot of work intensity of the loader. The performance in all aspects is extremely excellent. The overall strength is above 88 in short and below 88 in long, ranking between the two.

But the problem is that this thing is an imported product obtained from the Navy. It is not easy to change the naval gun into a version mounted on a tank. The 130 naval gun that has been tried before can be directly mounted on the tank. Change leads to tragedy.

The SU100Y, which has a head larger than the size of tainted milk powder, cannot be mass-produced at all. Its poor performance has even been marked as failing in the comprehensive evaluation. With the lessons learned from that time, we must be more cautious when installing naval guns in the future. , Malashenko and Kogin both know this very well.

"It seems that it is still too reluctant. After all, it is only the beginning of 1943. The 100-gun version is probably still on the drawing board, let alone being installed on the vehicle."

Since the Navy's is not good, how about our Army's own?

Malashenko clearly knows that although the 122 gun is inferior to the 100 gun in many aspects such as armor penetration depth, muzzle velocity, ballistic performance, and loading efficiency, the 122 gun is not without its merits and advantages.

For example, the 122 cannon has a larger caliber and a larger shell charge, and large-caliber armor-piercing projectiles also have a high kinetic energy crushing effect on sloped armor. The probability of ricochet is compared with that of small-caliber and longer projectiles. For the caliber gun, it is lower. These are the advantages of the 122 gun that cannot be ignored.

Especially when loading grenades to kill soft targets, the performance of the 122 gun is even better.

A full 6 kilograms of TNT charge is more than double the charge of a 100-gun grenade. Malashenko, who has very rich actual combat experience, clearly knows that the anti-personnel and anti-fortification battles he encountered are far more difficult than The number of anti-armor battles has more than doubled, which can be seen from the ratio of high-explosive bombs and armor-piercing bombs on board the vehicle.

In most cases, the number of armor-piercing ammunition carried in the vehicle is only half or even less than that of high-explosive ammunition. Efficient killing of soft targets and anti-fortifications is obviously more important.

As for the shortcoming of slow loading of the 122-gun, Malashenko does not think this is a fatal flaw.

For the Soviet Red Army, the armored cluster operations of large-scale tank units can make up for the shortcomings caused by reloading time to the greatest extent.

There are always only a few tanks that can enter the firing range at the same time. Most tanks with shells in the chamber are still looking for a firing position while maneuvering. When this tank enters the reloading phase, there are always other tanks that can fire. This is not a tank that can fire from a single vehicle. game.

It can be said that the greater the number of tanks operating in a cluster, the smaller the impact of the linear exponential relationship on reloading time will be.

Considering that the First Guards Heavy Tank Brigade under his command is equipped with more than a hundred heavy tanks. Malashenko does not think that the loading problem of the 122 gun will have a big impact. This has also been actually confirmed by the historical Soviet Red Army's steel torrent tactics, and there is no possibility of being questioned.

Malashenko, who combined all the issues of cause and effect, pros and cons in his mind, finally placed his treasure on the 122 family heirloom, then faced Kogin and spoke cautiously again.