Chapter 122: Strangling Yelnia (IV)

"Luck is also part of strength", such words are very appropriate to describe the 88mm armor-piercing shell that Malashenko's car just hit.

In actual combat, in most combat situations, the incident angle between the armor-piercing shell and the armor being hit is unlikely to be the most ideal 90-degree vertical incident angle.

The position of the attacker firing the armor-piercing shell, whether the tank hit by the armor-piercing shell is facing the enemy with pure frontal armor, and the final equivalent armor defense thickness obtained after the angle of fire is calculated based on the tilted armor of the hit tank.

Any seemingly insignificant factor will cause the judgment scale between failure to penetrate and successful penetration to swing left and right. For the improved prototype KV1 heavy tank commanded by Malashenko, it was these small and insignificant factors that were calculated together, which ultimately led to his car escaping from the power of the German 88 gun at a distance of less than 100 meters.

From the perspective of the German launcher, the 88mm armor-piercing projectile just now showed that the Malashenko vehicle, which was marked as the target, was roughly at one o'clock, less than a hundred meters away.

At this time, the vehicle heading of Malashenko's vehicle was not facing the German 88mm anti-aircraft gun, but appeared in the field of vision of the German 88 gunner with a projection area of ​​half of the side of the vehicle body and half of the front of the vehicle body.

In this special target direction, the German 88 gunner, who had rich anti-armor combat experience, naturally filtered out the side armor of Malashenko's vehicle, which only exposed a small half of the projection area, had a very small incident angle and had a high probability of causing ricochets, and then chose to shoot directly at the front armor of the vehicle body with a larger projection area in his eyes.

But the German 88 gunner never expected that the layer of external armor attached to the front armor of Malashenko's vehicle was not a thin layer of iron sheet, but a solid layer of 25mm physical thickness cut homogeneous steel armor.

This 25mm additional armor, together with the 75mm front armor of the KV1 heavy tank itself, is welded externally, and the integrated defense capability it can provide has reached 100mm physical thickness of armor, plus the equivalent armor defense bonus brought by the 31-degree inclination of the front armor of the vehicle.

The frontal defense of Malashenko's improved KV1 prototype can be said to have completely exceeded the German Tiger tank that had not yet been born.

Under such premise, from the perspective of the German army, the 88mm armor-piercing projectile that accurately hit the front armor plate of Malashenko's vehicle with a firing direction of one o'clock had a very bad angle of incidence.

The 88mm armor-piercing projectile that was shot at an angle into Malashenko's car at one o'clock hit the front upper armor plate of the vehicle body that did not show the full projection area of ​​the front of the vehicle body, and then hit the front upper part of the vehicle body with a physical thickness of 100mm at an angle of less than 50 degrees.

The equivalent armor defense thickness that it had to face on its trajectory was more than 140mm. After a certain loss of kinetic energy caused by the cap-turning effect, the 88mm armor-piercing projectile was already powerless in the face of such an iron-clad defense.

After leaving a deep crater that penetrated the 25mm thick additional armor but failed to penetrate the 75mm armor of the vehicle body behind, all the armor-piercing power of this 88mm armor-piercing projectile finally stopped here.

After completely coming back to his senses from the huge sound of the 88mm armor-piercing projectile hitting the front armor of the vehicle body but not penetrating it, Malashenko, after confirming that all members of his crew were safe, immediately returned to his proper state.

"Seryosha, start! The target is the German position, cover the infantry behind and continue to advance in the second gear."

"Others, take your positions, the mission remains the same! Kirill, load the high-explosive bomb, Iushkin, prepare to tear a hole in the German position!"

Just when the German troops in the position, after losing a valuable 88mm gun, felt a little relieved that they had finally destroyed another Soviet heavy tank.

Due to the huge impact force brought by the 88mm armor-piercing shell, the crew members temporarily lost consciousness and stopped suddenly, but the car of Malashenko started again at this moment. The booming black diesel exhaust and the rattling sound of the tracks rolling over the soil were like monsters in the eyes of the German soldiers.

"Oh my God! Can't even the 88mm gun be used against this monster tank? What should we do now?"

For the German soldiers who were specialized in infantry position defense, not all of them could understand the concepts of incident angle and equivalent defensive armor. The only fact they could see was that the Ares 88mm gun they relied on could not stop this monster-like heavy tank of the Soviet army at such a close distance!

For a considerable number of German soldiers who witnessed this scene, it was a huge psychological shock like a life-saving straw.

Faced with such a terrifying scene that was enough to scare people, not all German soldiers fell into panic and temporary helplessness. Some German soldiers with SS lightning symbols on their helmets and collar badges were terribly calm after seeing this scene.

"If Ivan's tank cannot be destroyed, then your courage must not be close enough to its position!"

When nearly 30 Soviet KV1 heavy tanks lined up in a row, with unstoppable momentum, destroyed several German 88 guns that tried to block their advance at a relatively heavy price, and finally roared all the way to the first infantry trench on the second line of defense of the German army.

Dozens of SS soldiers who were silently reciting the pre-war speech of the Imperial Division Commander Hausser immediately took out the cluster grenades they had prepared in their hands, and rushed to the Soviet heavy tanks that were rumbling over their heads with an almost crazy but extremely calm posture. With the courage that was comparable to putting one's arm into a roaring meat grinder, he instantly raised his hand and stuffed the seven smoking M24 long-handled cluster grenades in his hand into the tracks of the Soviet heavy tank.

By the time the Soviet infantrymen following closely behind their own heavy tanks realized the German intentions, it was too late. Although most of the SS Imperial Division soldiers who were responsible for the assault mission were shot dead on the spot by the Soviet infantrymen who followed them the moment after completing their mission, the smoking M24 cluster grenades had undoubtedly been stuffed into the tracks of the KV1 heavy tank.