Transmigrated as the Crown Prince

The integration of Europe, especially the issuance of the euro (which cheated the foreign exchange of the United States and Canada, seized all American companies in Europe, and froze funds), made Germany's money bags almost burst.

Yannick was finally able to open his hands and spend money on arms research and development. The huge amount of money he spent was really immediate, and all kinds of new results were pouring out.

For example, new armor-piercing projectiles for tanks.

Armor-piercing bullets have been fighting on battlefields as early as the 19th century. At that time, it was mainly used against armored warships and was not widely used. It was not until the advent of tanks in World War I that armored bullets entered the battlefield with great enthusiasm, and their performance was greatly improved. During this period, the armored projectile was a suitable caliber armor-piercing projectile, that is, the diameter of the armor-piercing body was the same as the caliber of the armor-piercing projectile body.

According to the shape of the head, ordinary armor-piercing bullets can be divided into sharp-pointed armor-piercing bullets, blunt-pointed armor-piercing bullets and capped armor-piercing bullets.

The warhead shape of the pointed armor-piercing projectile is a simple cone-shaped streamline. However, as the shooting distance increases, the simple streamlined shape cannot guarantee the shooting accuracy of the warhead. When the pointed armor-piercing projectile penetrates the armor, the head resistance is small and the hardness is low. The tough armor has a high armor-piercing ability, but when it penetrates armor with a higher hardness, the head is easily broken, and it is easy to jump off the inclined armor.

Blunt-nose armor-piercing bullets circumvent this shortcoming. Because the blunt-nosed armor-piercing bullet has a large contact area when it hits the armor, the bullet head is not easily broken, and the stress state when hitting the target is improved, which can prevent ricochet to a certain extent. The blunt head is easy to damage the armor surface and is prone to shear and impact damage. Therefore, in many cases, especially in high-speed oblique collisions, blunt armor-piercing bullets have higher armor-piercing capabilities than pointed armor-piercing bullets, and can be used to deal with homogeneous armor and heterogeneous armor with higher hardness.

The structural feature of the cap-piercing bullet is that a blunt cap is brazed on the sharp head. The function of the cap is to avoid ricochet as much as possible when piercing armor at an angle and to protect the warhead from breaking when it hits the target. The cap is lower in hardness and tougher than the projectile body. In order to facilitate pit opening, the top of the cap is surface quenched to increase the hardness. When hitting the armor, the stress transmitted to the projectile head through the cap is greatly reduced, thereby protecting the warhead.

During the impact, the hood and armor surface are damaged, while the pointed projectile itself continues to penetrate with less resistance, and is not easy to ricochet when impacting at an angle. Therefore, the armor-piercing ability is improved.

In addition to the above, there are other common armor-piercing projectiles, such as semi-armor-piercing projectiles, also known as armor-piercing blasting projectiles. Their structural characteristics are that they have a larger chamber and a larger amount of explosives. They use the kinetic energy of the armor-piercing projectile itself to make the warhead It penetrates into the target and explodes, destroying the target by shock waves, fragments and projectiles.

Although the tungsten core armor-piercing bullets equipped by Germany at this time can destroy all active tanks, Yannick is not satisfied. He needs advanced weapons that can absolutely crush the enemy in terms of range and power. Before the enemy even got close, we were beating him to pieces. It was so satisfying to think about it.

In the middle and late period of World War II, heavy tanks with thick armor entered the battlefield. As the saying goes, "If there is a spear, there must be a shield, and if there is a shield, there must be a spear." It didn't take long for sub-caliber armor-piercing bullets to appear, that is, the diameter of the armor-piercing body was smaller than the diameter of the bullet. diameter armor-piercing projectile. This sub-caliber armor-piercing projectile has a core made of carbide inside the projectile. Since armor-piercing projectiles rely on the kinetic energy of the projectile to penetrate armor, when the projectile hits the armor at high speed, the high-strength and small-diameter core can concentrate most of the energy on a small area of ​​​​the armor, thus killing the "turtle" in one fell swoop. Shell" penetration.

Sub-caliber armor-piercing projectiles can be divided into two types according to their appearance: spool type and streamlined type. The spool-shaped structure is to dig out the metal part between the upper and lower centering parts of the projectile as much as possible, so that the projectile is shaped like a spool. The purpose is to reduce the weight of the projectile and show the advantage of higher armor-piercing capability at short range, but at long range Speed ​​decays quickly over distance. The streamlined structure has better elastic shape, but the specific kinetic energy is limited.

In order to deal with thicker armor while overcoming the shortcomings of sub-caliber armor-piercing projectiles, discarding sabot armor-piercing projectiles appeared again. The discarding sabot armor-piercing projectile is composed of a flying part (projectile body) and a shedding part (bomb holder, ammunition belt, etc.). After the shell is initially chambered, the part used for air sealing is thrown away, leaving only the slender sub-caliber shell.

Although most of the later generations that fired armor-piercing sabots were large-caliber smoothbore cannons (for armor-piercing sabots, rifling not only did not play any role, but would drag down the stability of the shells and bring unnecessary resistance), the stubborn British Holding on to their rifled cannons, they finally figured out how to use the rifled cannons to fire armor-piercing shells.

They attached fins to the armor-piercing discarding sabot projectile, and four fins were arranged in a cross shape at the rear of the shell. When the shell is first chambered, part of its huge kinetic energy is converted into angular kinetic energy, allowing the shell to spin stably even if it is fired from a smoothbore gun. The artillery shell designed in this way is called a fin-stabilized discarding sabot armor-piercing projectile.

In later generations, fin-stabilized discarding sabot armor-piercing projectiles became one of the most important equipment for tanks in various countries, completely replacing the status of traditional armor-piercing projectiles and becoming the tank killer used by tanks.

Little Alfred introduced. "Your Highness, we have completed the research and development of 75mm caliber and 88mm caliber fin-stabilized sabots armor-piercing projectiles. The performance of these sabots far exceeds the existing ordinary armor-piercing projectiles. The 88mm caliber fin-stabilized sabots armor-piercing projectiles can penetrate 2,000 meters. The outer 200 mm of homogeneous vertical armor." Then he added. "It's just that the cost of this armor-piercing projectile is a bit high."

Yannick nodded with satisfaction. The US military's T26E4 Super Pershing's turret frontal armor is only 152 mm; the thickest part of the Stalin 2's armor reaches 120 mm. In other words, the German 88mm tank gun firing tail-stabilized discarding sabots can penetrate these tanks 2,000 meters away.

Of course, the premise is that it can hit. However, the German aiming equipment is the most advanced in the world, and coupled with the excellent ballistic performance of the 88mm tank gun, it is still possible to achieve it.

As for the cost issue, can it be higher than the price of a tank?

Yannick asked after circling around. "What's the progress on the 105mm tank gun?"

Little Alfred said respectfully. "Your Highness, the research and development is going very smoothly. It will be completed and put into actual use in about a year."

"Very good." The original L7 rifled gun can be said to be enduring. As a tank gun developed in the late 1950s, it has not been completely eliminated after more than fifty years. The main reason is its firepower. The penetration depth of the earliest armor-piercing discarding sabot (APDS) can easily exceed 300 mm. Not only can it easily penetrate five pairs of wheels, it can also deal with the IS-3 heavy tank known as the invincible Iron Turtle. .