Arriving at Dimarchssen, you promptly got down to business. Setting the competitors up in vehicle barns, you started liasing with the Balloon Training Companies and the local Dimarchssen staff who would be operating your testing apparatuses. Soldiers to run the machines would be drawn from the Third Flak Regiment to operate the guns, while vehicle operations crews would be from Fifth Anglamated Cavalry and the Twelfth Light Armor Regiment, of the Palatine.
First up was mount testing, to be done on the most flat piece of Dimarchssen you could find. Considering the ranges were all in the very sandy soil between the beach dunes and the rolling coastal plains, it wasn't hard to get one that only needed a few passes with a scraper to be acceptable.
First up was the Skoda SkW-3fz. On turning the turret, it was found that in power traverse it made about twenty five degrees a second, or ten degrees a second on the hand-crank flywheel. There were no problems across the entire range of traverse for the gun, although the SkW-3 chassis had a distinct dislike of the sandy terrain.
The MwF1 was a good bit better, making forty degrees a second on it's power traverse system, and twenty five on the hand crank. The entire turret could turn the full 360 degrees around the hull without issue. Travelling out to the range, however, the tank frequently spun sand and had issues in the thin soil.
The F2, surprisingly, was a little bit faster even considering the weight of the two dummy rocket cells on the right of the turret. With power traverse it made forty two degrees per second, and twenty one on the hand crank. Oddly, the turret was more responsive when turning counterclockwise than clockwise, but was otherwise the same as the F1.
The F3 was the first model with problems, though. With power traverse, it only made thirty eight degrees per second, and eighteen per second on manual traverse. Also different from it's predecessors was the fact it had a distinct acceleration curve as it came up to rotational speed, due to the large masses of dummy rockets hanging off the side of the turret. Also like the F2, it was more responsive to counterclockwise movement than clockwise movement.
The F4 was the worst of the Thryssen entrants, with a painful twenty nine degrees per second of rotational speed, and barely twelve on the hand crank. According to the testing crews, the hand crank didn't have sufficient mechanical advantage, requiring them to really saw on it to get the arrangement moving. Also like the F3, it needed to accelerate it's large turret to get up to it's maximum speed, and for some reason it was easier to use the hand crank going clockwise, rather than counterclockwise.
The Kettenkrad Fenrus GmbH entrant, the TmvSp, was probably the fastest of all the entrants, capable of bringing it's pintle mount around at what was roughly clocked at sixty five degrees per second, and closer to seventy if the gunner was willing to dive and throw himself around his little gun roost to get it onto a new bearing.
The GBA entrants were amazingly bland in this contest. With the Mglkw 1 (armed with the double 2cm guns) clocking in at forty degrees of constant traverse and the Mglkw 2 (with the 4,6cm Baal) got thirty two degrees per second of traverse. Of interest, however, was the fact neither vehicle was inconvenienced getting to or leaving the range, and in fact did better than the observer's staff car at some points.
The Reindhart entry, currently with the working designation of Ft-1, was amazingly mediocre with a thirty two degree per second traverse on the power system, and the only really interesting thing was that it made the same traverse speed when working the hand crank as the power system.
The W-5J was, however, the worst competitor. With barely twenty degrees per second of hand crank only traverse, it was quickly found that the gun arrangement could not traverse over the full three hundred and sixty degrees of the hull, and instead was limited to a 270 degree arc of fire. This turned out to be a fault of the original turret ring, which had a casting flaw in that the turret had a second driving crank located behind the turret that would engage on a teether bar so that Wanderer didn't need to actually put a fully stamped fixed planetary gear for his turret to drive the traverse. You wrote Armor Branch a strongly worded telegram about the discovery and it's effects, and then carried out the next testing.
The HsKw from Gronsky, meanwhile, took some babying to get it out to the test ground, but once it was there did fairly well. Maintaining a steady thirty seven degrees of turn per second on power traverse, it did stumble some at twenty degrees per second when it went to manual traverse. On the way out, however, it did experience some trouble with it's gas turbine, before the crew operating it finally managed to get the rpm reducers to properly engage.
While you planned to do incline testing, the fact there wasn't really a good incline over about fifteen percent grade put a dent in that. None of the mounts seemed affected by the quick tests you did there, so you'd call that test checked off and completed.
Then came the glider testing. Due to realities of road and range placement, the car wouldn't be driving a straight line during the eight hundred meter approach run, and would begin the "attack run" about twenty degrees off the bow of the attack at a kilometer as the bullet flew, driving through the slightly curved coastal access road as fast as they could, terminating about two hundred meters away from the gun as the car made a turn that would bring it into an area where the glider couldn't be allowed to crash. If the glider was still flying, the Dimarchssen floatplanes would go check it out, take photos to assess damage, and then the glier would be released before another turn so that the tow car was clear of the crash. If the glider crashed mid-firing, then that was a success. The provided gliders were all Lufwaffe tug target gliders, retrofitted to work with a downward pull source by having some of the weight moved tailward and the tow and control points moved off the upper nose to the lower nose.
The first test run, which was a simple feasibility test, worked beautifully. The glider took off, flew the course admirably well with the ocean wind and the car's guidance, and then preformed their simulated attack run easily.
Next up was the Skoda, the first to serve in a live shooting role. When the signal was given, both guns opened up, quickly training on the target and landing enough shells close enough to cause the glider to shake ferociously. While it was still nominally flying, on the recovery turn the glider lost control and crashed into the sand. Being mostly intact, analysis revealed that several shells had passed through and exploded on the far side, while one of them had passed through close enough to the control relay where the "cockpit" was to damage the cable harness and cause a crash that way.
The MwF1 was next, and quite promptly earned itself the nickname of "bumblebee" for the amount of buzzing and rattling it did as it started pumping lead. The car was about seventy meters down the attack run when the glider broke free from getting the tow point shot off, and then proceeded to pitch up, stall, and then crash into the ground. Crash analysis performed while shovelling it off the road revealed about a quarter of the hits on the glider detonated, and that the wing roots and structural fuselage were barely holding on. Considering there were only about forty strikes on the glider for nearly five hundred rounds fired, however, you weren't entirely happy.
The MwF2, meanwhile, had proceeded to do their research ahead of time on the speed of the target, and were ready when they went into position. As soon as the glider began it's attack run, the entire swarm of rockets greated it, with at least two scoring direct hits. Missing one wing, most of the aft fuselage, and the control relay, the craft promptly crashed. Post-crash analysis revealed it was dead, and that those rockets killed things very dead.
Things did not go as well for the MwF3, however, since the car crew had decided they wanted at least one glider to get through intact and by now were very fluent with the glider controls. After the first rocket dump, the ground crew dived the glider to where it was most likely scraping the dunegras, and then popped right back up to jink around the gunfire. Even though they dumped another two cells of rockets at it, the release was late on the cells, and the double Slk.69 had to hold the line. Fortunately, it was enough, eventually causing the glider to do a hard starboard dive into the dirt. Crash analysis revealed cause of death to be a destroyed main wing spar that failed, and that none of the rockets even got shrapnel damage off. Requesting the range to do a quick test on, the answer was found in that the fuse ranging charts were off- what was supposed to be the five hundred meter setting actually detonated the rocket at something like a twelve to thirteen hundred meters, as well as being more finicky at longer fuze times. The F2 crew then deigned to inform the F3 crew (who were apparently a bunch of brown-noses to get this comfy job) that no, the fuzes weren't that great, so they just fired their barrage in full contact mode.
After seperating the resulting fistfight, the F4 went up to fire. As the glider came into the attack run, the commander ordered the gun up, and then proceded to ripple-fire every rocket battery on the craft. The glider, having been well padlocked by the gun, proceeded to then disintegrate, with the largest recovered piece being a tail assembly portion measuring nine and one half square centimeters. Analysis went to get a drink at this point, and you joined them.
When lunch was over, you got back to work with the Embiggened Kettenkrad. Once the exercise was spun up, things went about as normal- the glider did it's attack run, the guns opened fire, the glider continued it's attack run. Surprisingly, the glider was not destroyed, and continued it's overflight back to the launch field after being photographed. On a controlled set-down, the craft lost it's landing gear and went into a belly skid, but Analysis was still ready to go. Digging through it, the result was pretty quickly found, in that the projectile hits didn't have any real degree of concentration. The glider had been structurally abused, badly, but with twenty hits on it, mostly on the furthest out wing portions, it didn't receive enough damage to actually go down. If the glider attempted any strenuous maneuvers or less practiced handling forcing it into anything past a gentle bank, however, it probably would have broken up immediately.
After what was being quietly referred to as the "Großer Kettenkrad" cleared the range, the Reinhardt design came up. After cleaning the sights while the tow car came around to the position, the gun tracked cleanly and started firing just after they cleared the attack turn, and about twenty second later the tail of the glider fell clean off, forcing the aircraft down into the sand. Analysis, on disecting the remains, determined that the first few shells had hit the glider in the center of mass, with a few detonating in the wings. Once the gun started hitting the fuselage again, the strain promptly shredded the plane and it disolved into the crash.
The next unit, the W-5J, made the Großer Kettenkrad look absolutely flawless however. After the attack run, photography and observation revealed next to no damage on the glider, and as a point of order the tow car took the glider through another attack run to no effect. Once testing was done, the gun operator explained that the slow traverse made it hard to track the plane, and the system stopped firing when the turret accidentally pulled the connector line from the foot trigger to the gun out.
Following the lackluster display Großer Kettenkrad, the GBA flak trucks went up. The first one, with the 4,6cm Baal, was a predictable success story, which managed to take the attacking glider down halfway through it's run. The resulting post-crash autopsy revealed cause of death was the nose, and therefore control lines and tow bar, getting mostly blown off. The second one, with the quad 2cm autocannons, did slightly worse while still downing the glider. Analysis proved that the cause of death was structural failure on the firing range exit turn, which made sense since it had basically spiraled out of control into it's crash.
The Reinhardt entrant proved a much better show, with the gun captain smartly laying his turret onto the target, and then ordering the fire opened up. The shooting was straight and true, and the glider had it's right wing shot entirely off in short order, causing it to roll and dive into the sandy ditch next to the road.
The HsKw was up after that after a twenty-minute engine starting procedure you watched with something halfway between amazement and shock. You didn't know if this gas turbine thing normally needed a turkey baster full of gasoline to get sprayed down the intakes to start it with the APU running full tilt, but the result was a wall of flame out the exhausts before it got into position. Once the glider began it's simulated attack run, it was shot down quickly and brutally, with the entire center of the unit basically collapsing in on itself as the plane spiraled into a crash. Analysis determined the main cause was the junction of the centerline spar getting the shit shot out of it, followed by a lot of secondary damage by the 13.2s.
With the fun stuff concluded, you all went to bed to do road marches tomorrow.
Starting bright and early at ten o'clock, you got to work on the road march plans. Since there'd been unpleasant surprises with long range travel and fuel economy, you got to work planning a road march that would eat a portion of your budget that eclipsed all the other parts entirely- a hundred kilometer road march. After some talking to from General Baumgartner, the Dimarchssen base commandant, however, you amended this up to a hundred and ten kilometers so your vehicles could go to Lunesburg, circle the city in an impromptu parade, and come home. For the trip, each tank would have two dedicated kettenkrads with it, and twelve trucks would be assigned as a supply train, along with one tanker hauling twelve hundred liters of fuel per tank and six tankers for the supply train.
After everyone got all fueled up and rolling, you took your spot in the head of the column and promptly got to watching. Since you weren't allowed to take your vehicles on the macadamized highway, you were taking the county roads out to your destination, which reduced practical speed by a lot.
Your first breakdown was the HsKw, and the second one too. Between the factory supplied repairmen and the crew, the issues identified were thermal dispersal issues and bad throttle response for the first one that had ended up overheating the engine, and the second one was one of the RPM reducers falling entirely and needing replacement. Both were fairly heavy-duty operations, taking twenty minutes to cool the engine off and forty minutes to change the RPM reducer respectively. Distance at this point from Dimarchssen, thirty-five kilometers.
The next major breakdown was on the MwF4, with a double track failure because two of the roller wheels were misaligned. Took about twenty minutes to fix, and another five minutes to get out of the ditch it landed in. Distance from Dimarchssen, forty three kilometers.
After that, it was smooth sailing until something fritzed on the Großer Kettenkrad, which turned out to be one of the transmission breakers getting thrown after a power spike. You hadn't actually realized it used a electrodynamic transmission, but one quick peek under the hood (so to speak) cleared up the misconception- it was, mechanically, basically a kettenkrad and a half with two Opel engines tied to two generators, tied to a bus bar and the electric drive motors. You didn't think Fenrus had it in him to be this creative, but since all the "transmission" needed was a good cooling off, it seemed like his idea worked. At that point, the distance from Dimarchssen was fifty six kilometers.
About ten minutes later the HsKw threw a fit, made a loud screaming sound, and violently ejected through it's rear armor plate a hot mess of flying engine parts, which traveled about four meters, impacted one of the GBA flak carrying trucks, and destroyed it's front end and radiator. After bodily clearing yourself and your aide-de-camp from the ditch you'd dived into from the staff car, Analysis showed up to look at it. Apparently, the turbine engine had overclocked it's run time, overheated, and had a traumatic bearing or shaft failure and the engine basically exploded straight through the rear blowout system. You declared it dead, resisted the urge to shoot one of the Gronsky engineers, and marked the distance down as seventy kilometers and change before moving on.
Once that was done, things continued until the aforementioned damaged GBA gun carrier died an inglorious death to radiator failure and oil loss. The distance was marked as seventy two kilometers, and the crew duitifully got in one of the trucks to finish out the ride.
It wasn't until a half hour later that the Skoda accidentally steered into a ditch during a shift change for the driver, and you got to ask the tank commander about the fact you could switch drivers on it while it was still in motion. Apparently the old engineer's driving station came back as a feature on the SkW-3 since there was space for it (and the new V16 and Opel APU combo could cause issues with power balancing to the subsystems of the tank) so naturally the crew used that capability to swap drivers every hour and a half or so. And then the engineer had slipped, and well tank meet ditch. Six kettenkrads pulling and thrity minutes of swearing later to fix a track, and things were back to normal at about seventy eight kilometers.
The next accident- and you were honestly quite surprised by this- was the MwF3 getting rammed by a traction engine in an intersection about twenty kilometers from Dimarchssen. Apparently the farmer had come out to see the parade and maybe stop in at the mechanics, but in the end the damage was mostly to the traction engine and the tracks of the MwF3 and the turret wing rocket rack. Ten minutes later, you were on the road again.
When you finally got back to the base, you groaned. That road march (and the cash it would take to tow the HsKw back) had cleaned out your budgeting for this period. You'd need to wait until next week to start up the destructive and maintenance testing. In the meantime, though, you could call up Anne-Marie and the kids, though!
VOTES
[] Write-in testing procedures
-[] Write-in recomendations to manufacturers
-[] Write-in any vehicles to drop
(Note: that road march was expensive. You'll need to drop vehicles or next round of testing is your last)
