afterglow

Chapter 655: Being fooled, three consecutive accusations; two-front war
On the eve of his departure half a year ago, Zhou Changfeng hurriedly read through a development plan while doing the finishing work, signed it and stamped it. He probably doesn't remember it now.

Super-heavy tanks like Land Cruisers have always been an exciting idea, and people naturally hope that the tall and mighty steel behemoths will be invincible.

However, considering its actual combat value, the deployment of heavy tanks is already very troublesome, not to mention the larger and heavier Land Cruiser - the super heavy tank?

Just like the various multi-turret tanks, infantry tanks, and ultra-light tanks in the interwar period, there will always be all kinds of short-lived things on the road of trial and error, after which the tanks of various countries will gradually begin to converge and evolve.

There were also some people with wild ideas in the Ming Army. In the early 1930s, the Ming Army followed the trend of ultra-light tanks that were popular all over the world and developed its own three-ton ultra-light tank. At the same time, it also developed a twenty-ton multi-turret heavy tank.

Because it was not very practical, only a small number of the former were produced and all were given to the border troops for use.

The latter was even more flashy, and its actual combat capability was far inferior to that of the orthodox Type 38 heavy tank. Therefore, only a dozen or so Type 36 heavy tanks with two sub-turrets, one in front and one in the rear, were manufactured. They were only used to display to the public for publicity and fundraising, and became a completely ceremonial thing, because the Ministry of War found that the public generally felt that multi-turret tanks were more majestic and domineering.

The Ming Army's super-heavy tank plan originated from two technical officers. In the 40th year of Zhichang, they envisioned building a land cruiser with powerful firepower, heavy armor, and the ability to dive and cross rivers - they also knew that such a thing would not meet the existing field pontoon bridge construction standards.

However, this plan only remained on paper. The Armament Bureau of the Ministry of War flatly rejected their application for funding, and then the draft and plan were shelved.

Later, a naval civilian major happened to discover this aborted ambition while reviewing the archives, and he told this interesting story to Technical Lieutenant Colonel Cao Yuan.

Perhaps it was because naval personnel naturally had an indescribable love for large mechanical steel structures, Cao Yuan decided to restart this plan and continue developing it.

He was responsible for designing the main structure of small ships. The Gen-shaped minesweeper, which played an important role in every war since the beginning of the war, was his design.

It was impossible for a ship designer to suddenly start working on land warfare weapons smoothly. During this period, Cao Yuan often went to Shuntian and consulted relevant people from the First Heavy Machinery Company many times.

In short, after overcoming many strange difficulties, he and several assistants worked together to complete the complete design of the super-heavy tank, and also asked someone to make a wooden scale model.

But soon Cao Yuan also faced the same problem as the two army technical officers - the people in the Ordnance Bureau were very shrewd, and they would definitely not agree to approve the money after seeing this indicator.

In order to avoid wasting his efforts, he decided to muddle through the matter by indicating on paper that this was a heavy mobile coastal defense gun with an empty vehicle weight of dozens of tons.

This suddenly made sense - although fixed coastal defense guns were sturdy and concealed, their firing range was limited and rigid. Once exposed, they would sooner or later be eliminated by enemy bombardment. Therefore, coastal defense guns that could maneuver and move on their own were undoubtedly more flexible and more survivable.

Because of this, the Ordnance Bureau did not notice anything and approved a sum of money in advance for the preliminary development of the prototype vehicle.

The report on this matter was submitted according to routine procedures, which is also the cause and effect of why it appeared on Zhou's desk half a year ago.

Because the total amount was only 55 yen, they had to be frugal with their spending, knowing that the purchase price of a Type 8 medium tank was around yen.

Cao Yuan and others used the money to first build a full-size model using civilian steel to verify the rationality of the structural design, and then placed an order with Fushan Shipyard.

Let the government-run naval shipyard build tanks?
This may sound like an incredible story, but Cao Yuan and others made this decision after careful investigation.

First, the warehouses at the Fushan Naval Base still store some armor steel and structural steel for naval ships, as well as a large number of old naval guns.

Second, tank manufacturing companies lack the experience and machines to process extra-thick plates, especially armor steel, while naval shipyards have both.

Thirdly, after all, they all belong to the same military branch, so it would be easier to work around any troubles they encounter.

Although it felt puzzling, Fushan Shipyard still undertook the manufacturing task.

However, due to its low priority, the manufacturing task progressed slowly and the results were only produced today.

Although these three super-heavy tanks, called the Trial-Production Type 2 Self-Propelled Coastal Defense Guns, were enough to make Zhou Changfeng's eyes go dark, they did have distinct features in terms of design.

Its unique feature is the lower hull to receive missiles, multiple layers of compartments are set inside the vehicle body, and there are protruding ears on the left and right sides of the turret - actually optical rangefinders - just like the turret of a naval battleship.

【Picture】

The basic armor of the vehicle's main body is not very strong, with a thickness of 50mm on the front and sides. These cold-rolled homogeneous armor steel plates are from the same source as the LZ26D used in the Type medium tank.

This is to minimize the empty vehicle weight, as the reported indicators stated only a few dozen tons.

Through specially reserved grooves and bolts, the vehicle can be equipped with additional armor, including 128mm steel plates for the front and 80mm thick steel plates for the sides. These steel plates come from the excess parts of the main armor belt of the remaining heavy cruisers, which can also be said to be scraps.

For such a bulky behemoth, there are not many options for the power system. Obviously, Cao Yuan never thought of driving it with an electric motor.

The vehicle uses a Crane-1030 type fourteen-cylinder air-cooled radial engine with a maximum output power of 850 horsepower. However, due to heat dissipation difficulties, the speed is reduced to horsepower. Even so, it is still necessary to use four forced cooling fans to barely suppress it - after all, when the aircraft is flying in the sky, the oncoming cold wind helps to take away the heat.

The engines came from spare parts in stock. The early models of the Type 37 twin-engine torpedo bomber have now been retired, and these idle low-horsepower engines have no use.

The main gun of the vehicle is even more shocking. Vehicle No. 112 and Vehicle No. 46 use Type 1000 112mm, 1.6-caliber naval guns. They can fire armor-piercing explosive shells (SAP) that can penetrate mm thick steel plates at a distance of m, and the charge is as much as kg.

This is an ancestral magic weapon of the Ming Dynasty Navy. It was first used on the Pingyang-class destroyer more than 30 years ago. It is still used on many frigates today, but no one thought that it would one day be transformed into a tank gun.

The No. 160 vehicle was even more terrifying. It happened that there was a 50.4㎜ ship-use mortar made by Lan Fang in the naval base. They simply requisitioned it and installed it on the vehicle after modifying the gun mount. It could fire a 290㎏ explosive bomb. Lan Fang's military production capacity was limited. In order to equip more merchant ships with self-defense weapons, the National Dongwanlu Arsenal designed and manufactured a special simple artillery for attacking submarines. It was essentially a heavy smoothbore mortar loaded from the rear, with an initial velocity of 9.2m/s and a charge of ㎏. The killing area exceeded seven standard basketball courts.

Interestingly, the Ming Dynasty's army, navy and air force were all very interested in it. The army thought it could be used to replace the howitzers of the light infantry division, the navy thought it would be very useful for merchant ships to deter and drive away US submarines, and the air force thought it was just the limit of artillery that could be deployed by airborne.

In addition, the Type 25.6 heavy self-propelled coastal defense gun is also equipped with a sub-turret equipped with a 80mm aircraft gun on the right front of the vehicle. The front armor thickness of the sub-turret is 50mm, and the thickness of the sides and rear is mm. The rear is curved and is made of a whole piece of strip armor steel plate processed by a large plate bending machine.

When fully equipped, the vehicle has a combat weight of 126 tons, a power-to-weight ratio of 6.7, and a maximum road speed of 20 km/h, making it quite clumsy.

The evaluation team sent by the Ordnance Bureau was shocked by this so-called self-propelled coastal defense gun - so after half a year of hard work, you guys are just selling dog meat under the guise of mutton, right?
At this time, human relations and worldly wisdom are of no use. The Ministry of War and the Navy are not in the same system at all. The officials of the Ordnance Bureau must first keep their official hats.

This incident did not cause any major commotion afterwards. However, the Military Equipment Bureau, which had been defrauded of hundreds of thousands of dollars, was very angry and immediately filed a lawsuit with the Military Court, accusing Cao Yuan and others of deceiving their superiors for profit.

However, Cao Yuan insisted that this was a self-propelled coastal defense gun, not a giant siege vehicle, and that the Ordnance Bureau had not made any additional requirements before, so it was simply unbelievable that he suddenly changed his mind now.

The Military Court stated that this case could not be tried, as from a procedural point of view, the application and approval steps of Cao Yuan and others were legal and compliant.

The frustrated Ordnance Bureau subsequently withdrew the lawsuit against the defendant for deceiving superiors for profit, and instead filed an accusation against the defendant for misappropriation of government property - namely, the armor plates, naval guns, and engines in stock.

Although the Ming Navy was at a loss as to what to do, these technical officers were their own people after all, and the Navy had to teach them a lesson. Therefore, the Navy also insisted that these idle stocks were appropriate, with complete procedures, and were not misappropriated without authorization.

The Military Equipment Bureau then changed the charges against Cao Yuan and others for bribery and other trivial matters. In the end, the Military Court reluctantly sentenced him to six months in prison. Seeing this, the Navy also took a step back and did not try to protect him.

The three prototype vehicles have been basically completed. After all, they were made with 55 real money. Although the deceived Ordnance Bureau was angry, it was reluctant to dismantle them and scrap them. It just stopped the subsequent mass production plan of 90 heavy self-propelled coastal defense guns.

"Strange things keep popping up every now and then. It's ridiculous!"

"Uh... then what does Xia Jinbo think we should do?"

"There is still enough transport capacity in the past two months. Let's throw it to these three things. That's it. There should be no more."

In order to further strengthen the defense of Oahu, the Ming Navy decided to transport the three prototypes directly after simple testing and evaluation - the navy actually had no interest in this bulky super-heavy tank, and some of the decisions it made were more out of face.

Some people secretly wondered if it wouldn't be more effective to use the same transport capacity to transport hundreds of tons of artillery shells or a dozen heavy artillery pieces.

This matter is neither big nor small, and is not worth mentioning compared to some things that can cause a huge commotion.

There was a strange atmosphere at the turn of autumn and winter in the second year of Jinghe. It seemed that wars were about to break out simultaneously on the western, southern, and eastern fronts, and the situation was confusing.

Will the future be good or bad? The government and the opposition have different opinions.

On the western front, the extremely high temperatures and floods and mud had finally passed. Malaria, dysentery, cholera, and dengue fever had caused tens of thousands of non-combat casualties in the past six months. The long-awaited winter of the Indus Corps had finally arrived.

Perhaps because they felt that the benefits were not proportional to the efforts, the cunning and shrewd British did not build the railway between Bangkok, Rangoon and Chittagong before the war. The transportation conditions in the South Asian subcontinent were primitive.

More than 100,000 Commonwealth Army prisoners were responsible for building the railway from Bangkok to Mawlamyine to Yangon. Although the straight-line distance was only more than 500 kilometers, the terrain was extremely complex and the actual mileage was nearly 1,000 kilometers.

But this was far from enough, because the Ming army and its vassal troops had already penetrated into the northeast of Indus. The military trains loaded with supplies could only reach Yangon at most, and the next thousand kilometers to Chittagong depended entirely on trucks.

No matter how smooth this dirt road through the jungle is, it will be destroyed by mountain torrents every once in a while. Once it rains, it will turn directly into a quagmire. The Royal Air Force Mosquito bombers, which are famous for their strong penetration capabilities, also frequently harass them, so the land transportation line is always intermittent.

As for sea transport lines, ideally sea transport accounts for the majority. Without sea transport, the Indus Corps would not be able to accumulate enough supplies to launch an offensive, because land transport can only guarantee the daily consumption of hundreds of thousands of troops.

The British Army would certainly not sit idly by. Submarines, torpedo boats, and bombers took turns to attack cargo ships, or block waterways by laying mines. This year, 13 British submarines were sunk in the Indus Ocean alone, and 8 torpedo boats were lost.

In fact, since last year, the imperial court has been simultaneously carrying out the construction of the Yunnan-Myanmar and Yunnan-India highways to strengthen logistics support, and today they have basically been completed and opened to traffic. A temporary and simple railway from Yangon to Chittagong is also under construction, but it is extremely difficult due to the poor terrain conditions.

The supporters of the theory of quick victory in the Ming army command slowed down the improvement of infrastructure to a great extent. They believed that as long as the main fleet drove away the Royal Navy's Far East Fleet, they could disintegrate India and Duma by simply carrying out a landing operation. The time-consuming and labor-intensive road construction was too uneconomical.

On the southern front, the size of the Australian Corps grew as more troops and supplies arrived in Cairns.

Previously, the US-Australian coalition forces had planned to take the initiative in September and launch a large-scale counterattack with the long-accumulated strength to drive the Ming army out of the Australian continent in one fell swoop. However, due to a series of reasons, the plan was postponed for a month.

However, the Ming army's continuous increase in troops caused fear among the Australian upper class. They were worried that the strengthened Ming army might not be defeated quickly, and they could not accept heavy losses.

It would be fine if they could drive the enemy to the sea in one go, but if they inflict 1,000 casualties on the enemy and 800 casualties on their own, Australia, which is short of manpower, will not be able to replenish its troops, which will accelerate its collapse. Therefore, it is better to continue the sit-in war confrontation and wait for the US military to retake Hawaii before making plans.

After repeated attempts to persuade Australia to no avail, General MacArthur felt like he was talking to a deaf ear. In a letter to Washington, he complained about the cowardice of the Australian rednecks, claiming that they had missed the opportunity and would eventually suffer the consequences.

[The general situation of the war on the Western Front and the logistics line. It can only be said that the British were extremely wicked for not building railways before the war.]

(End of this chapter)