"My God, how did those Egyptians create such a monster?" An engineer surrounded the tank placed in front of him and exclaimed repeatedly, and he wished he could stick to the tank to study: "Obviously
The armor thickness is less than 70mm, but it can withstand direct fire from a six-pounder gun. How did they do it?"
At this time, another engineer was flipping through the instruction manual that came with the tank. Hearing his colleague's question, he turned the instruction manual to the armor-related page. After reading the above instructions carefully, he suddenly said: "Egypt."
The people used sloped armor. Although the thickness is less than 70mm, due to the bevel angle, the actual thickness that the shells have to penetrate is more than 120mm. No wonder their tanks have such excellent defense!"
After being reminded by a colleague, the engineer lying on the tank noticed that almost all the frontal armor of Egyptian tanks had steeply inclined slopes, and only the side and rear armor were vertical.
As for the principle of tilted armor, he just did some trigonometric calculations in his mind and understood what was going on.
"This is really a genius idea! No wonder their tanks can be made so light! With sloped armor, they can achieve the same defense with thinner armor!" The engineer lying on the car was obviously very impressed by this design.
Appreciate.
Although the design of tilted armor is said to be simple in principle, sometimes the most difficult thing in designing is not the principle and technology, but the flash of creativity.
When most countries in the world are still using vertical armor, taking the lead in using the design of inclined armor is a genius idea and creativity that leads the world.
"The armor of these Egyptian tanks is so strange. They seem to be made not of steel, but of some kind of multi-layer composite material." At this time, another engineer was checking the armor of the tank inside the tank, and carefully studied the armor of the tank.
, and after checking the technical information in his hand, he discovered the composite armor used by this tank.
The concept of composite armor has not been proposed in this era, so whether it is a battleship or a tank, it is still made of homogeneous steel. At most, it undergoes some processing processes such as calcination and carbonization. No one has the concept of composite armor.
idea.
But because of Chen Mo's orders and the technicians who were the first to be brought out of the "biochemical" world by him, the Egyptian tanks abandoned the homogeneous steel route from the beginning and instead developed composite armor.
Although this era is limited by the development of technology and technology, truly modern composite armor cannot be manufactured, but there is still no big problem in making some simple composite armor that meets the technological level of this era.
Especially with the help of technicians from the "Biochemical" world, Egypt's industrial technology level has improved rapidly. Although the scale has not been improved due to the speed of national development, Egypt's industrial technology level has been blessed by the technology of the "Biochemical" world.
Not low at all.
"Multilayer composite material? What is that?" The engineer lying outside the tank heard the people inside the tank say this and suddenly became curious.
"According to the information provided by the Egyptians, it seems that the middle of the two layers of alloy steel armor is filled with ceramic and fiberglass materials. However, they did not write down why they did this. They just noted that doing so can reduce the weight of the tank."
The engineer who was holding the manual read through the manual again and found the content about composite armor.
"Haha, the Egyptians probably don't have enough steel to make tank armor, so they came up with this method of filling the interlayer with other materials. The British Empire is rich all over the world, so there is no need to consider this problem at all!" The engineer lying on the tank almost said
He made a judgment without thinking. After all, in his opinion, except for the British Empire, other countries in the world were not worth mentioning, let alone Egypt, which was a British colony a few years ago.
Hearing what their colleague said, the other two engineers didn't think much about it. The British's arrogance made them too lazy to think about why the Egyptians used composite armor. They just thought of a reason and thought it was a reasonable explanation.
But they were right about one thing: Egypt did not have enough steel to make tanks.
Although Egypt itself is considered rich in resources, what is needed to manufacture tanks is not just iron or steel, but alloy steel.
Taking the nickel-chromium alloy used in manufacturing warship armor as an example, nickel and chromium, as well as various other elements, need to be added to the steel to improve the performance of the steel, and special processing techniques are required to make the material achieve
Requirements for building warships.
When the Japanese built the Yamato, it was because their own metal processing technology was not good that they spent huge sums of money to add a lot of new equipment to their shipbuilding industry. They purchased a 15,000-ton hydraulic press and three 70-ton acid open-hearth furnaces from Germany, so that they could manufacture products including
Large forgings including 650 mm thick armor steel plate (used in Yamato's main turret).
Japan did not have these equipment at the time, and it is conceivable that Egypt was the same.
Therefore, when Chen Mo faced the British request for Egyptian tank technology, he also made his own request.
First, the UK needs to help Egypt upgrade its shipbuilding capabilities and build a full set of supporting facilities so that Egypt has the ability to build battleship-class warships on its own.
At the same time, Britain also needs to establish an eastern trade route for Egypt and export large amounts of iron ore, high-quality coal and natural rubber to Egypt from Australia and Southeast Asia.
In addition, based on the technical cooperation agreement signed by Chen Mo and King George V before, the United Kingdom also needs to help Egypt establish an aviation industry system so that Egypt has the ability to produce aircraft.
In exchange, Egypt needs to provide its advanced tank technology to the British.
At first glance, it seems that the British suffered a loss. After all, they sent shipyards, aviation industry systems, and exported a large amount of resources to Egypt. In the end, they just changed tank technology. This is obviously not a good deal.
of trading.
But if you study carefully, you will find that the British did not lose in this matter.
Because Egypt needed to import a large amount of resources from Southeast Asia and Australia, and Southeast Asia and Australia in this era were both British territories.
Moreover, Egypt also needs to pay to import resources. For such a large amount of resource imports, the transaction volume will undoubtedly be huge.
This is great news for Britain, which has just experienced a weak domestic economy after the Great Depression.
With the money earned from this export trade, Britain's weak domestic economy and finances can finally get some blood back. How could the British not be willing?
