The German infantry continued to clear some Soviet firepower points in the ruins. Although the large army had retreated, some surrounded Soviet troops continued to resist.

Karadzic noticed that perhaps because of continuous combat or huge casualties, both the Germans and the Austrians had become a little crazy. Because sometimes they were attacked when capturing the Soviet army, more people chose to kill the enemy completely before stopping the attack. Sometimes when they saw Soviet soldiers surrender with their hands raised, there were still people who shot them to death.

War turned into massacre, which made people feel uncomfortable.

However, the war continues, and the bloody massacre will be staged every day.

The attack of the German and Austrian coalition stopped after crossing the Kuban River. The continuous attack had caused them to lose half of their armored power. Now there are only more than 2,000 tanks left. About one-third of these lost tanks lost combat power due to various mechanical failures. In addition, about 1,300 tanks were destroyed by the enemy. The Russians suffered greater losses, and more than 5,000 tanks had been lost. Almost all KV tanks were discarded because of their poor maneuverability. The t34 only lost about half of their excellent protection and maneuverability. The loss was mainly the t26 tank with weak defense. Although the BT-7 tank had weak protection, the loss ratio was lower than that of its excellent maneuverability because of its excellent maneuverability.

The land battle has calmed down temporarily, and the competition between the two sides has concentrated in the sky. The Soviet army concentrated more than 6,000 combat aircraft, and Germany and Austria also concentrated nearly 4,000 fighter jets in this area. Both sides launched an unprecedented large-scale air battle around air supremacy in the lower Don River in the Kuban River Basin.

On the Eastern Front battlefield, facing a large number of Soviet-Russian armored clusters, the problem of insufficient tanks and armored vehicles in the German and Austrian army was exposed. During the entire Battle of Cuban, although the Soviet casualties and captured personnel reached 450,000, the casualties of the German and Austrian coalition forces and the Don River Army also reached 150,000, which can be said to kill 1,000 enemies, damage to 800 by themselves, and the losses were extremely heavy.

In fact, in 1940, the German and Austrian military had noticed the Soviet-made KV tanks and T34 tanks that appeared on the Eastern Front. They began to use this as an opponent to accelerate the development of new tanks.

Perhaps because the industrial production capacity has always been inferior to that of Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Army has a great difference in the design and use of tanks, which has led to completely different tank designs between Germany and Austro-Hungarian tanks in design. Austro-Hungarian tanks pay attention to maneuverability in design, followed by firepower, and in order to improve maneuverability, it will inevitably reduce the protection of tanks. The design idea of ​​German tanks is the same as their navy, with protection first, followed by firepower and maneuverability.

In order to cope with the "t34 crisis" on the Eastern Front battlefield, the Germans chose to abandon the traditional practice of upgrading the Mark 4 tank with simple structure and reliable performance, but instead started a new job and redesigned the "Tiger" heavy tank weighing 56 tons and the structure were tested, with a sophisticated manufacturing process, and although it has excellent performance, it is not conducive to the large-scale production of the Mark 5 "Leopard" medium tank.

However, the Austro-Hungarian Army adopted the opposite method from the Germans, and only chose to simply increase the body of the mature PT35 tank, thickened the armor and strengthened the suspension system, so that it could equip a newly developed 83mm tank gun, and left enough turret space for the pre-installed 90mm tank gun under development. Both German and Austrian tanks were equipped with the latest engines. The Germans chose Maybach's 700-horsepower gasoline engine, while the Austrians continued to use the usual Steel 680-horsepower diesel engine.

During actual use, although the Stair diesel engine is not as fast as the Maybach gasoline engine, it is far superior to the gasoline engine in terms of passability and off-road performance.

Relatively speaking, the Austro-Hungarian PT-39 tank weighing 41 tons is even stronger than the German leopard tank weighing 45 tons, although its protection capability is slightly inferior.

In Austro-Hungary tank design, easy production is a very important indicator. Although the performance of the PT-39 tank is not very advanced, it is very simple and reliable. In order to be easy to adapt to the large-scale assembly line manufacturing, the PT-39 tank body structure adopts a box-shaped structure that is easy to use automatic welding, and is welded by different thicknesses of homogeneous armored steel plates, divided into three structural parts: cockpit, combat chamber and power chamber. It has a simple structure. It is very suitable for the production of automatic welding production lines.

The Austro-Hungarian tank turret is similar to the British "Covenant" tank turret. In fact, this inclined armored turret causes the turret to be narrow in the interior space and is not conducive to combat. However, the emperor favors this design very much. In desperation, the designers only need to increase the size of the turret so that it can accommodate a 90mm tank gun and three turret members.

In the development of tank guns and anti-aircraft guns, the performance of German and Austrian equipment has always been ahead of countries around the world. In addition, the performance of the 90mm anti-aircraft guns equipped by the Italians is also quite good. The German and Austrian tank guns are generally developed and developed based on anti-aircraft guns, inheriting the characteristics of high initial velocity, fast firing speed and strong armor-piercing capabilities of anti-aircraft guns, but overall design and development lag behind the progress of anti-aircraft guns.

Lee Hayden is very interested in Germany's latest No. 5 tank. After investigation, it was found that after simplified processes, the large-scale production of the Leopard tank was not as difficult as imagined. However, the problem is that the Germans have been developing some messy tank destroyers, and cannot adjust the production line to full production of such excellent tanks.

In terms of tank production, Austro-Hungary is not behind Germany. Germany has four major tank manufacturing companies: Henschel, Poschel, Krupp and Rheinmetall, while Austro-Hungary has four major tank manufacturers: Linz Empire Standard Manufacturing Company, Karlsonskoda Tank Factory, Salzburg Stevet Company and Vienna Steyer Company. The tank manufacturing capabilities of the two countries are comparable. With all production lines starting, there are about 1,600 chassis manufacturing capabilities per month

The problem in Germany is that it is necessary to manufacture a large number of tank destroyers, self-propelled artillery and deformation vehicles, so the production volume of No. 4, No. 5 and Tiger tanks is greatly limited. The Austro-Hungarian Empire only focused on the production of PT35 and PT39 tanks and the PB39m105mm self-propelled artillery produced with the PT39 tank chassis. Therefore, the monthly tank production volume can reach 1,100 tanks and 500 self-propelled artillery. Moreover, as the production capacity of each factory expands, there is still a great possibility that the production will be increased.

In fact, combined machine tools and automated assembly production lines were widely used in the automobile, tractor and machinery manufacturing fields in Germany and Austria in the 1930s. Although Greenley Company in the United States created a combined machine tool production line for processing auto parts as early as 1911, Germany and Austria have been at the world's leading level in the field of metal processing machine tool manufacturing. After popularizing the automatic production line composed of multiple combined machine tools and the use of assembly lines, it actually opened the door to large-scale standardization and industrial production.

In another world, Germany's industrial production has been greatly weakened, but in this world, due to the victory of World War I, Germany and Austria's industrial capabilities are basically the same as those of the United States. This is also one of the reasons why the two countries are not afraid of going to war with the Americans. In terms of military industry, although the United States has a strong production capacity, its technical level is not satisfactory.

At least now, the performance of tanks and aircraft equipped by the Americans is still lagging behind Europe. The Americans have always lagged behind Germany and Austria in tank development and equipment, and even behind the Soviet Union and Russia and the United Kingdom. They "plagiarized" the sky-breaking P-51 "Broncos" based on the design of the British "Speed ​​Fire" aircraft. In another space and time, the United States is one step ahead of the world in the field of heavy bombers and atomic bomb development, and is not good at other military industries. However, in this world, due to the lack of large-scale anti-Semitism movement, the fathers of atoms Bohr, Oppenheimer, Einstein and Fermi are still academicians of the Royal German Academy of Sciences and Engineering, and are also honorary academicians of the Royal Austro-Hungarian Academy of Engineering in Vienna. In addition, due to the hostile relationship between Germany and the United States, they rarely go to the United States for academic exchanges.

At least Lee Hayden feels that the Americans cannot create atomic bombs before Germany and Austria. (To be continued...) r1292
Chapter completed!