After getting Jumo started in a tool shop off the Commission's funds, you promptly got to work setting out the requirements of a new gun. Recoil controlled, seven hundred kilo max weight, fixed ammunition (you had to make sure someone didn't try and sneak a gun-mortar in) and a borrowed standard from the Reichsmarine of six centimeters of rolled plate at one hundred meters with a fifty percent or better success rate, you got to work testing guns.
Interestingly, the stock model of 5,5cm field gun neatly achieved this objective firing a slug round, with the caveat that the gun with a recoil-stabilized carriage came in at about three hundred and eighty kilos. Minus sixty for the carriage, and you had a solid three hundred twenty kilo weapon platform. Penetration-wise, of the twenty shot trial it penetrated the plate thirteen times, with three ricochets and four shell failures (in which the shell did not penetrate but rather sorta went squish). The artillery crew was happy they weren't doing a fast course of fire, and were quite happy to leave and park their gun off the range.
Before you got to the armories, Skoda had sent in a gun as well. With an absurdly short twenty caliber barrel and broad nine centimeter bore, you had to question what, exactly, they were thinking. Then you saw it clock in for weight at just over four hundred twenty kilograms, and the lightbulb went off. It was supposed to be a shell-firing gun primarily, thus the large bore and low pressure. Firing a slug round, in the penetration trial it scored fifteen in twenty penetrations, with two shell failures and three ricochets. The Skoda engineers, once firing was finished, proceeded to check the main pivots and mount mechanisms of their gun, and recovered it easily.
Thryssen's gun was quite unique, being a six centimeter sixty five caliber design, and equipped with a special proprietary armor-tearing shell that worked on the principal of having a hard, shearing head, and a soft and heavy body. With recoil mechanism the design came in at four hundred kilograms, and was boasted to be the most accurate at range. In firing testing, the gun scored nineteen penetrations, and one shell failure. You did out of the corner of your eye note that the Thryssen armorers were fretting over the barrel, and scrubbing it down very thoroughly afterwards.
The fine gentlemen from the Hannover Armory were next, with a very interesting rework of the rugged seven point five centimeter fifty caliber gun. By completely reworking the drop breach and using a unique pivot-stroke cam action to use a large, broad pedestal-like piston, it managed to clock in at a very respectable three hundred sixty kilograms. On test firing, it clocked a very respectable fourteen penetrations, with six shells striking true and failing to penetrate. After firing, the Hannover Armorers cleaned the gun professionally, cleared the breech, and then proceed to take it home.
Over the following month, you also got word back from Jumo- he'd already started covering a good bit of his own costs with a production run of a V-12 engine made of two smaller straight six engines which had been suffering anemic sales. The J-66 engine produced nearly seven hundred horespower running at full stroke, but at the cost of consuming a hundred and fifty kilograms of fuel an hour at a high cruise. Jumo swore blind he could refine the design to where it wouldn't produce such ruinous results for endurance, while at the same time starting sales to Skoda for consideration for the new Light Patrol Boat concept. You'd have to see what he came up with next.
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