Chapter 704 RB Army's "Zoo"

A 10,000-ton bulk carrier that looked a bit shabby and flew the flag of the neutral country Sweden arrived at the dock in Yokohama. It was a good time of autumn. The clouds and water were clear and the sea breeze was refreshing. The pier was heavily guarded by the RB Army Military Police with live ammunition.

A car with a military license plate drove up and climbed the gangway lowered by the Swedish freighter and stopped steadily. First, a lieutenant got down from the front passenger seat and respectfully opened the back door. Then, a general of the army with a ribbon and medals on his body and a big knife in his hand came out of the car. This general is the core figure of the RB Army today, the Chief of Staff General Sugiyama Moto, who is nicknamed "Silly Yuan". Following behind this general, there was another colonel in his 40s with a somewhat gloomy face. Like the silly Yuan, he also carried a big knife. This colonel is called Hattori Takushiro. He is now a powerful figure in the RB Army General Staff Headquarters and serves as the chief of the operations section. In addition, Hattori Takushiro is also the confidant of Tojo Hideki, who is now the Prime Minister and Minister of the Army.

The previous RB Army's combat plan to sweep Southeast Asian countries came from Hattori Takushiro and another staff officer of the General Staff, Tsuji Masanobu.

After the combat mission in Southeast Asia was basically completed, Hattori Takushiro and Tsuji Masanobu began to look for new offensive targets.

There are two goals, one is to move westward and completely solve the Manchurian issue; the other is to move southward to attack Australia.

Originally, there were many people in the RB Army who advocated moving westward. After all, these guys have been thinking about this for decades. But the world revolution that began in June scared them. The Soviet Red Army was so powerful, with tens of thousands of tanks! Even Warsaw controlled by the Germans was captured by them.

Moreover, RB military observers in Germany also carefully studied the T-31 and KV-1 tanks captured by Germany. Finally, it was concluded that all RB tanks could not withstand a single shot from them even at a distance of 1,000 meters! All the anti-tank guns of RB could not penetrate their frontal armor even within 500 meters.

How could they fight? The Soviet Far Eastern Front alone had millions of people and thousands of tanks! What could the RB Army use to fight? They could not win at all.

So the argument that "RB is a country of faith and should abide by the neutrality treaty" gradually prevailed.

Going west is not an option, at least it is absolutely not an option before RB completes the introduction and mass production of Tiger tanks.

But the RB Army cannot just sit there idle. Going west is not an option, there is also going south, south to Australia!

This Australia seems to have a large territory, and it is said that the resources are also quite rich. If it can be occupied, it can be the eternal foundation of the RB Empire. The most important thing is that Australia does not have the terrible Soviet Red Army, but only the US and British armies with poor combat effectiveness - in the Philippines, in Malaya, in Burma, and in Hawaii, the British and American armies were all defeated by the RB Army. It seems to be easy to bully!

But to bully Britain and the United States to seize Australia, a large-scale land battle must be fought. Because there is accurate intelligence that the Americans have been transporting troops, weapons and supplies to Australia since the fall of Hawaii. And according to the intelligence provided by Germany, there are many M4 "Sherman" heavy tanks (more than 30 tons of Sherman buns are heavy tanks for RB) among the weapons shipped by the United States to Australia.

To defeat this kind of "heavy tank", according to the experience of the Soviet-German battlefield, it is definitely not enough to rely on a half-meter-long bayonet. The effect of using towed anti-tank guns is not very good either, because the number of cannons and self-propelled artillery shipped to Australia by the United States is not small. In the Soviet-German War, medium-caliber anti-tank guns without armor protection and not very mobile were easily destroyed by self-propelled artillery. The most effective way to defeat "heavy tanks" is to use a more powerful tank or tank destroyer.

And RB definitely does not have such a vehicle. Now the main vehicle type of the RB Army battlefield unit is the Type 97 series of medium tanks. The 15-ton vehicle carries a 57mm short-barreled gun or a 47mm cannon. It cannot penetrate the front of the T-34 at a distance of 500 meters, and it is estimated that it cannot deal with the M4 tank. The 76.2mm gun of the M4 tank can definitely beat the Type 97 at a distance of 1,000 meters.

So the RB tank expert who led the team to visit the tank war on the Soviet-German battlefield, Major General Koreo Hosomi, the principal of the Army Mechanized Maintenance School, proposed to imitate German tanks or assault artillery. At first he wanted a Tiger tank (RB people want the best of everything), and after getting Hessman's approval, this RB devil saw the "Rhino" on the Belarusian battlefield and it seemed to be good, so he proposed to buy two "Rhinos" for reference.

Out of consideration for the overall situation of Japan-Germany friendship, Hessman not only agreed to provide two "Rhinos", but also sold two additional "Weasel" 2 tank destroyers, two "Wasp" self-propelled artillery, and even two newly finalized Sd.Kfz.234 eight-wheeled heavy armored vehicles (the basic model of Puma or Cougar).

By the way, the "Puma" wheeled armored vehicle (actually it is the basic model, but Hirschmann still gave it the code name "Puma") appeared much earlier than in history. The main reason, of course, is the huge demand. It was started to be developed in 1940, but because the demand was not great, it was delayed until 1944 to go into production.

But now Germany controls the Middle East, Italy and France control North Africa. In addition, operations in Africa and India are also on the agenda, and Germany has also intervened in Guyana in South America. In these areas, the enemies faced by Germany do not have large-scale armored forces (except for the British 7th Armored Division in India, which has a small number of useless cruiser tanks), so Germany does not need to equip the troops sent there with a large number of tanks weighing dozens of tons. The "Puma" eight-wheeled heavy armored vehicle with light weight, good mobility and convenient maintenance is obviously more useful. Therefore, "Puma" has become a very important research and development project, with relatively sufficient resources and much faster progress.

And this "Puma" wheeled armored vehicle is really very suitable for the current RB Army. The "Puma" launched now is only a basic model equipped with a 20mm machine gun. Historically, this wheeled armored vehicle can be equipped with 50mm L/60 guns and 75mm L/48 guns. This is almost a wheeled tank!

So Hessman asked the Arms Trade Bureau of the Ministry of Defense to give the RB the design of the 50mm L/60 gun and the 75mm L/48 gun and strongly recommended that they import and imitate such vehicles.

At the same time, Hessman also strongly recommended the "Weasel" 2 tank destroyer to the RB. And suggested that the RB Army use the chassis of the existing Type 97 medium tank to install a 75mm caliber assault cannon (German or RB imitation) to form RB's own "Weasel".

This is actually a very conscientious plan, because mechanized equipment is actually a "consumable". As long as it is started, it will wear out, and various failures are inevitable after a long time of use. If you want to fight, there will be more demand for maintenance and parts.

If Germany provides the RB with some equipment that they cannot "understand", such as Tiger tanks, Rhino tank destroyers, or T-34 tanks and KV series tanks captured on the battlefield, the RB will not be able to use them in large quantities (such things can be given to RB for reference, but they will definitely not be used in large quantities). Otherwise, the pressure of maintenance and logistics alone would be enough to drive the commander of the RB mecha unit to death.

So instead of equipping a bunch of high-end tanks that are difficult to use, the RB Army might as well equip itself with some practical mechanized equipment that is compatible with RB's industrial strength.

…

"General, Mr. Hattori, I have benefited a lot from this trip to Europe. Not only did I get the prototype and blueprints of Germany's most powerful Tiger tank, but I also got a way to improve the combat effectiveness of RB tanks in a short period of time."

Major General Koreo Hosomi was escorted back with the equipment purchased from Germany. In addition to the "Tiger", "Rhino", "Weasel", "Puma" and "Wasp", he also brought back samples and blueprints of the KwK40 75mm tank gun from Germany, as well as samples and blueprints of various ammunition used by the KwK40 75mm tank gun.

So when he met General Sugiyama Moto and Lieutenant General Hattori Takushiro, he was quite proud.

"Oh?" Sugiyama nodded, "Are they equipped with Tiger tanks?"

"Not Tiger, but modified Type 97 medium tanks. They can be modified into a style similar to the German 'Weasel' tank destroyer. Just remove the turret and install a KwK40 75mm tank gun on the Type 97 chassis. In this way, combat effectiveness can be formed in the shortest time, enough to support the Australian land operations in 1937."

The Type 97 medium tank is a RB standard medium tank that was finalized in 1937 and began to be produced in small quantities in 1938. Starting in 1940, because of the approaching war, RB began to step up the production of Type 97 medium tanks. 361 vehicles were produced in 1940; 512 vehicles were produced in 1941; and 97 Kai was produced from 1942, with a total of 402 vehicles produced as of September. Together with the production in 1938 and 1939, there are almost 1,400 Type 97 and 97 Kai, and more than 1,000 Type 97 and 97 Kai are still available. The performance of the Type 97 Kai is not bad, and it has a 47mm gun with good data on paper. The Type 97 is modified according to the appearance of the "Weasel" tank destroyer. Because the "Weasel" is a light tracked vehicle of about 10 tons, and the Type 97 is a vehicle of about 15 tons, it is not difficult to imitate the "Weasel" for modification.

In addition, the "Puma" wheeled armored vehicle is a car, and the difficulty of production and manufacturing is much smaller than that of a tank (relative to RB, RB did not need to develop a tractor industry before the war, and wheeled vehicles can still be produced by itself), so it should not be difficult to imitate. So Major General Koreo Hosomi also had the idea of ​​producing a "wheeled assault gun", based on the "Puma", to produce RB's own "Toyo Lion".