Chapter 1352 A cup of tea, a pack of cigarettes, a Tiger King for a day
What Malashenko said is not pleasant to hear, but strictly speaking, it is the truth that tells the truth, not to mention that it is said from the attitude of a winner, and Malashenko is fully qualified to do so.
Regarding Malashenko's words, Lieutenant Colonel John had nothing to say. In the end, he just waved his arms slightly helplessly and spoke slowly.
"You are right, we lost, and we are convinced that we lost."
"You and your troops are as powerful as the rumors say, but there is one thing wrong. Everyone described it wrong..."
Lieutenant Colonel John said half a sentence and left half a sentence, as if he wanted Malashenko to guess what to say next. Our Comrade Ma did indeed have a hint of emotion that was neither too strong nor too light.
interest.
"Oh? Everyone described it wrong? What is that?"
Lieutenant Colonel John paused slightly, but his expression was still extremely calm when he finally spoke.
"Everyone said you were a cold-blooded and ruthless person, like a steel butcher in a slaughterhouse. But what I saw was a flesh-and-blood general, a real soldier."
"...."
Malashenko didn't say anything. He guessed that Lieutenant Colonel John would have something to say next, but what happened next turned out to be exactly what he expected.
"You gave both of us a chance, General Malashenko. If it weren't for that short cooling-off period, I would have even let my troops fight you to the death. But now, I think this result will be good for both of us.
Isn’t it?”
Malashenko smiled slightly, and it seemed that he had not misjudged the person.
"Of course, it's good for both of us."
The chat-like conversation ended here. Malashenko continued to gain mutual recognition to some extent from Lieutenant Colonel John, and got some answers that he was interested in and wanted to know.
The 502nd Heavy Armor Battalion was indeed sent to perform support tasks, but it did not arrive on the battlefield at full strength.
It's quite funny to say that the 502nd Heavy Armor Battalion received these King Tiger heavy tanks, which happened just half a month ago.
This batch of King Tiger heavy tanks that uniformly adopt the Henschel turret is new and powerful. It has an overwhelming advantage over the previous generation Tiger tank. All the officers and soldiers of the 502 Heavy Armor Battalion are enthusiastic about this new heavy tank.
As a compliment, during the test run, the maneuverability was a bit poor, but it was still within the acceptable range. Everything else seemed to be perfect.
But unexpected and bad problems always arise when you least expect them.
The 502nd Heavy Armored Battalion, which had not been happy for two days after taking over the King Tiger, soon discovered that these cutting-edge heavy tanks looked delicious, but tasted extremely bad, just like Ollie covered with a layer of chocolate.
After just a few days of running on the training ground, the Tiger Kings, who were practicing the running-in of the car crew, gradually exposed many serious, even fatal problems and flaws.
At first, the engine always stalls suddenly when you don't expect it, or even strikes on the spot, completely paralyzing it.
The people from the maintenance team came to check and quickly found out the problem. The reason for this embarrassing situation was very simple: the engine was overwhelmed.
The engine that was used on the Tiger tank was just okay, but it was moved directly to the King Tiger whose tonnage increased by more than ten tons.
This is like a girl who weighed less than 100 pounds the day before, but woke up the next day and turned into a fat woman weighing 150 pounds. It is inevitable that she would have difficulty walking even two steps and feel overwhelmed.
Although this description may sound a bit exaggerated, for heavy tanks, which are already heavyweight land combat equipment, a sudden increase in weight of more than ten tons is enough to crush the engine and cause it to be overwhelmed.
What's more, the mechanical reliability these days is just that. The Maybach HL230 gasoline engine is already struggling to drive the Tiger, and it has basically reached its limit. It is simply unrealistic for you to graft this thing onto the King Tiger intact.
If there's no problem at all, then that's a fucking weird thing.
Originally, the failure of the engine alone was enough to cause a headache, but what the 502nd Heavy Armored Battalion did not expect was that even more unfortunate things were to come.
Sudden stalling of the engine is only one of the problems. The short lifespan and serious unreliability of the entire transmission system and gearbox are even more critical flaws.
The service life of many gearbox and transmission system parts marked on the manual often needs to be folded in half or even broken during actual use.
The real service life is often less than one-third of the marked life. Either the transmission shaft is severely worn, or the gearbox gear directly cracks the red hub, or even the suspension system of the external running device has problems.
The German logistics personnel, who had been suffering for eight years, had to painstakingly dismantle and reinstall the power system. It only took less than a week to basically know how many screws there were in the King Tiger's power cabin.
and screw caps, memorizing them backwards and forwards.
In fact, it is good to dismantle the power compartment, open it for maintenance, and replace the accessories. What really made the German maintenance team and logistics personnel feel like a nightmare was coming when they repaired the suspension system and external running gear of the King Tiger.
Today's staggered dog-shaped road wheels, I really don't know which dead orphan designed them.
Holding steel crowbars and various maintenance tools in their hands, the German maintenance personnel who served the heavy and heavy road wheels back and forth were really on the verge of crying.
With luck, you may only need to remove two or three road wheels to find the problem and fix it. But if a crew member says, "Hey, I don't know where the problem is, but it's
After running, the walking part on this side always feels wrong." Then the German logistics maintenance team had a lot of fun.
In the most unlucky case, in order to troubleshoot one by one and find the precise point where the problem occurs, you may even need to remove all the road wheels on this side to solve the problem. And even if you remove them all, you will only make a
Preliminary preparation, whether it can be repaired really depends on your appearance.
Maybe you wait until you think it's repaired and put all the road wheels back on, but after running, you still report that there is a problem and it's not completely repaired. Then you are ready to roll up your sleeves and reinstall all the road wheels on one side.
Take it apart once.
All kinds of desperate criticisms were piled up together. When the 502nd Heavy Armored Battalion received the order to move, nearly half of the King Tigers were in a state of repair and could not move.
Not to mention that such an appalling equipment readiness rate "shocked the old horse for a whole year", even Lieutenant Colonel John, who was used to the delicate properties of his own equipment, said that he felt so embarrassed that he wanted to find a crack in the ground to crawl into it.