Chapter 428: Putting Things Together

Malachenko, who stood there in a daze like a scarecrow in a wheat field, never expected that the latest supply tanks promised by Zhukov to him would be the T34-57 medium tanks, which are known for their diamond-like rarity in the T34 family, which is known for its huge quantity!

Zhukov's frank advice to Stalin and his strong demands dispelled Stalin's original idea of ​​forming a Guards Independent Tank Brigade. All 42 brand new T34-57s that had just come off the production line were loaded onto flatbed trucks and transported by rail to Malachenko to cope with the next Tula support battle.

The ridiculous reality of being forced to use these medium tanks to fight under the name of the First Guards Heavy Tank Breakthrough Regiment was no longer important to Malachenko, who was a little confused at the moment.

The important thing is, this precious T34-57 tank that can pierce even a Tiger tank like piercing an A4 printing paper, isn't it a bit of a waste to use it in the absolute main force of their own, which scraps half of the tanks in every battle?

Compared to Malashenko, who was a little confused and temporarily at a loss, Iushkin, who accompanied Malashenko to see what the so-called new tanks looked like out of curiosity, was deeply attracted by the new T34 tanks with gun barrels that were long enough to make people's eyes wide open, and was obviously much more active than Malashenko, who was silent at the moment.

"I swear, comrade commander, I have never seen a tank with such a long gun barrel. Even our newest KV85 tank is not as long as this guy's gun barrel. This thing looks like a fishing rod. It's incredible!"

Compared to Iushkin's admiration and surprise beside him, Malashenko, who knew the advantages and disadvantages of T34-57, couldn't help but frowned.

The first batch of T34-57 medium tanks that rolled off the production line at the end of 1941 were as reliable as ever, but the problem was precisely with the 57mm tank gun with an overlong barrel of 73 times the caliber.

The 57mm tank gun, which was enough to penetrate 82mm vertical homogeneous steel armor at a distance of 2,000 meters, had a serious excess penetration depth, and the unreliable fuze sensitivity problem exacerbated the problem of excessive penetration armor-piercing shells.

In the original history, the armor-piercing depth of the T34-57, which could even ignore the defense of the Tiger tank, often caused annoying over-penetration problems when facing the weakly armored German Panzer III and Panzer IV.

After penetrating the armor, the 57mm wind cap armor-piercing shells often failed to detonate the projectile charge smoothly and turned into a pure iron lump, or they were directly pushed into the engine compartment of the German tank through the front armor penetration hole before the charge was detonated.

This problem is even more serious when attacking German tanks from the side. In the original history, there was even a terrible problem that a T34-57 attacked the side armor of the Panzer III tank from the side, penetrated the armor on the left side of the vehicle body, and then penetrated the armor on the right side of the vehicle body and passed harmlessly.

The T34-57, which had a very high armor penetration value and did not show any advantage at all when facing the fragile German tanks, performed mediocrely in the Battle of Moscow in late 1941 and had nothing to be praised.

It was not until the appearance of the German Tiger tank in 1942, which was completely immune to the armor-piercing firepower of the Soviet T3476, that the rather tricky Soviet army finally remembered this T34-57 medium tank, which was used by the front-line tank soldiers and received a lot of bad reviews. In the following 1943, the production line was restarted again to try to resume trial production, but it ended in failure due to the proposed production of the T3485 and IS plans and the extremely high production difficulty of the 57mm tank gun.

To be precise, considering the original trend of history, the T34-57, which was born at the wrong time, was not suitable for armored confrontation at the end of 1941. The super high armor-piercing firepower output did not show any advantage on the German armored soldiers who only had the fragile Type 3 and Type 4 at the moment. Malashenko, who knew this but had no choice but to make do with it, was very helpless about this.

"Forget it, as the saying goes, it's better to have something to use than nothing to use, so just make do with it."

Malashenko, who secretly complained in his heart, shook his head helplessly and then waved his hand to order the crews who were waiting on the platform of the railway station behind him to drive these tanks off the flatbed rail cars.

These Red Army tank soldiers who had no cars to use were assigned to Malashenko's unit by Zhukov in advance, and a large part of them were Red Army tank soldiers who originally drove KV1 and KV2 heavy tanks.

The Soviet army's poor performance in the continuous defeat forced the Red Army tank soldiers, who lacked agility and fuel, to abandon their vehicles and become ordinary infantry without any other options.

According to common sense, it is difficult for Soviet tank crews who voluntarily abandoned their tanks in battle to get heavy tanks with higher weight. At most, they were thrown into ordinary troops to drive T34 or even completely naked BT fast tanks and T26 light tanks.

After all, those who can abandon a precious heavy tank once are likely to abandon it again. Based on this principle, the distrustful attitude is the best reason why these abandoned tank crews cannot get heavy tanks again.

But the current terrible war situation gave these Red Army tank soldiers who voluntarily abandoned their vehicles a second chance. Zhukov, who had no one available, was forced to gather these scattered crews with rich combat experience and dispatch them to Malashenko's troops to be used as supplementary crews for battle.

Looking at the new tank crews busy getting on and off the flatbed train in front of him, Malashenko raised his hand to look at the hands of his watch on his wrist and immediately turned his head to Lavrinenko beside him and asked.

"How is it, is there any news from Karamov? He hasn't messed with the German No. 3 tanks until now, okay?"

The batch of German No. 3 J1 tanks captured by Malashenko in the previous village battle was not of much use value, but now that more than half of them were damaged in the battle, there was really no car available, so Malashenko ordered Karamov to repair these severely frozen German No. 3 tanks as much as possible, and reorganize them into his own Guards Regiment as a supplementary force.

Hearing the question from Malashenko, Lavrinenko, who had just said goodbye to Karamov and arrived at the platform less than a minute ago, immediately answered.

"The situation is not very optimistic. Karamov told me that many of the German Type 3 tanks had their oil pipes and even engine cylinders frozen and cracked. We don't have suitable spare parts to replace these things."

"Karamov is now removing parts from those completely hopeless German tanks and replacing them with those tanks that can be repaired. The extra parts that are not used temporarily are directly stored as spare parts. Karamov told me that it is estimated that only about ten German tanks can be incorporated into our regiment in combat status to supplement the losses."