Strategic Arms Quest 3/2: Armor Edition

[7734]

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.

---

VOTES

[] Write RFQ
-[] Write in RFQ plan
[] Write-in further research topics- engines, steel, enemy equipment, domestic readiness, how much trouble is Wanderer in, etc.

 

[7734]

NOO LINKS

Hey all new Discord link so that when I don't have time to make a conversational post y'all can follow along anyway.

Also, given the extreme inertia the Irromic forces have, I want to adopt a tank that (with upgrades) can last us at least until we can adopt an actual Centurion.

Click to shrink...

Current plans for the SkW-1 only expect it to be in use until 865~ ish, so call it fifty years of service? That's perfectly normal for a tank, right?

(Seriously though, y'all can't really overstate the institutional inertia that the Irromics have. The J.Gew 48 (the Gerbsjaeger rifle) was originally built in 778, and is slated to get replaced at current growth rates in 850-ish. It's 834 or thereabouts, and there's currently trials going on for a selbstladergewher going on. There's not even a doctrinal SMG yet; for most work of that nature they just build an oversize C96 with a longer barrel, detachable stick mag, and fixed stock. Heck, there's still a debate going strong over adding 15cm artillery to the standard artillery park, and not tying it on as a corps level asset.)

 

[7734]

After writing your request for quotes, you waited with baited breath. Information back from Jung revealed that the weight limit was causing some serious issues back at Commorate, as well as everyone else. It was four months before the first design came in- interestingly enough, a Skoda design.

For a hot minute, you thought they were secretly Thryssen, as you compared the design to your requirements. Thirty kilometers per hour? Nope. Seventeen tons? Nope. Hannover 7,5cm gun? "Optional". What they had you couldn't argue, though, was a tank that was almost as well armored in sum as an SkW-1, with seven centimeters of massively sloped forward and four centimeters on the sides. Clocking in at twenty four tons dry and hitting twenty two kilometers per hour at the test track, the Skoda representative told you point blank it would resist any direct fire gun you could scrounge up to point at it. Also, it had a brand new Field Radio Set 3 in it, complete with the bi-directional and open loop accesses.

Ghermain Brothers Automotive came in next, about a week later. Their design was a lot more interesting, being a very long hull with a Jumo engine in the back, and six road wheels. The main reason for the long body was to fit in the twelve-gear transmission, which existed to get both maximum torque and maximum speed out of the system. Sticking with the bellcrank bogey suspension, they had dutifully mounted the 7,5cm gun in a turret, although they'd had to significantly redesign the recoil apparatus and flip the gun upside-down to get it to fit in the very limited turret. The loader now sat below the gun, of all places, and on a spare crate of shells to refill the ready rack in front of him. In the front of the tank, there was a driver, and the radio requirement was fulfilled by a Tactical Receiver Mk. 4 in the hull body connected to a wire bus to the gunner/commander. It made fifty-five kilometers on road testing, came in at just a hair under seventeen tons, and had a very sturdy front sloped system with it's rear-mounted engine.

Thryssen's submission was about a month after Skoda, and initially confused the hell out of you. Working with an underpowered flat eight engine, they'd managed to somehow push their weight optimization team to the absolute limit in this design to come in at twenty-two tons and still get thirty kilometers per hour on the nose out of it. With a driver, loader/radio operator, and gunner/commander, it looked fine until you saw how much space the tank had in the turret- to be exact, none. The loader had a ready rack of three shells, and additional ammo was kept in a large rack under the turret basket. Radio was handled via a Tactical Receiver Mk. in the hull, with provisions to hang a Field Radio Mk. 1 off the turret in a wooden box.

Commorate Casting Corporation called to inform you they'd be ready in about two more months, due to difficulty with sufficiently bracing their design so that the rear hull didn't absolutely crumple in versus impact and so that they could redesign the gun's recoil mechanism.

Armid's Coaches called in to inform you they were going to be ready in about three more months due to difficulties securing a suspension plan and in acquiring enough welders to build prototypes.

MANN CO. called to inform you that they'd be ready in five months due to the fact their engineering team had just been impounded in Kubachin after a diplomatic snafu and that their prototype team was currently on loan to Fenrus' Motorcycles & Tracked Ltd. while they set up expanded production lines for the Kettenkrad.

Fenrus' Motorcycles & Tracked Ltd. called to inform you their submission would be available next year, funds for a prototyping shop pending a grant or loan.

---

VOTE

[] Wait until all entrants are available for testing

[] Wait until more entrants are available for testing
-[] Write-in wait time in months
-[] Write-in suggestions for submissions.

[] Screw it, run a round of testing now
-[] Brief testing plan.
-[] Refuse a design

(engine research is automatically continued through any wait period taken unless specifically stopped)

 

[7734]

It was about two months into your five month lag that news came in on the telegraph, followed by the largest scandal to rock the Imperial Palace since Count Rosenburg had been found selling secrets to the Bahlks for a pleasure estate in the Macedon Highlands. Apparently, at one of the rather large and formal cross-the-isle Landwere/Reichsmarine events, someone had cocked up in the kitchen and delivered several dozen kilos of garbage shellfish, of which was then cooked and served to all and sundry. Your wife and children were down sick, the Kaiser was hideously ill, the entire Reichsmarine First Fleet flag staff were down as well as most of the general Navy staff who'd come in from Hamburg, and then there was the Landwere High Command.

Apparently, as the joke was going around in the papers between funerary announcements, the only thing that could kill a member of High Command was some foul sea-beast served half-raw on the table. The catch was it looked too damn true, with four fifths of the highest echelon coming out and dying (which wasn't too terribly expected, most having won their spurs back when the Cavalry Branch were still the Imperial Hussars and Curriasiers) and most of the other designated old farts were horribly horribly sick and incapacitated.

When things all shook out a week later and several cooks were jailed and three pursers shot in private, it looked like you'd been unofficially promoted in terms of social circles your name went around in. Of the twenty-five officers who made up the Army High Command Board, five were still the usual old farts, twelve were new moderate reformists who had field staff experience in the Great Pig War, and eight were full blown members of the neue Techniken, coming off field command in the Great Pig War's earlier stages before it all went completely to shit. Most of the Field Marshals were the Moderates, while the neue Techniken were focused on the technological aspects like the Armor Branch, Intelligence Office, Educational Department, and Logistics Branch. Naturally it was one of the old farts who still sat in the chair of Procurement, so you weren't getting more money.

That said, though, your star had still shot up immensely, and you had nothign better to do while you were waiting around for people to finish their designs. Time to crank out some whitepapers, and not get dragged back into the academia. Given the way Lt. Vorbin was laughing into the newspapers, it would probably be a good idea to look very busy so things stayed nice and calm until Anne-Marie and Ilse Volta got out of the hospital. Poor things must be half mad by now with boredom. Doctrine would be a good place to start, right?

Also Jumo had sent you a telegram about this new engine plan he'd cooked up for a double headed double crankshaft thing that wasn't as powerful as the last one, but wasn't nearly as angry-acting in a number of ways you'd throw at the companies when you were done with this.

---

VOTE

It's a Whitepaper. Lines are free, so go big or go home. Your topic is DOCTRINE. Remember, if someone manages to write a 1000+ word whitepaper as an actual address on the topic, that paper will automatically win.

So get cracking, and don't forget to ask questions and read the thread. I'll try to include information for everyone in every post, so read things carefully.

 

[Winged_One²]

​

Purpose and Organization of the Armored Branch

Tanks are uniquely suited to overcoming the obstacles that get placed in the way of an advancing army and keep the keeping up the advance. These advantages should be exploited in their use on the battlefield and enhanced through the organizational structure of the armor branch.



This armored brigade is a highly independent unit. Each armor company has its own motorized maintenance and supply platoon and each armor battalion has motorized infantry support. The Brigade Headquarters also comes with an attached pioneer troop to help pass obstacles, be they natural or created by the enemy, and an artillery battery able to support the attack of the armor either through attacking the same target or through counterbattery fire if the enemy is trying to counter the armor with his own artillery. All members of the brigade should be motorized to the highest possible degree to increase its maneuverability on the battlefield.

All tank companies forming the brigade only have a single type of armored vehicle to ease logistics and to make them more effective at their role.

The heavy tank company concentrates the firepower and armor to where it is needed most, being a strong threat to enemy armored forces and fortifications. Individual platoons can be detached to the armored battalions, but them being independent means that they do not hinder the speed at which the other tanks can move across the battlefield.

The light armored vehicle company is the exact opposite: it has the fastest, most maneuverable vehicles, which do not have to be tracked as long as they have very good offroad capability. These vehicles cannot resist medium and heavy field guns, but should be able to resist anti-tank rifles and if possible light anti-tank guns. They can be armed with either a high or medium velocity tank gun or with an autocannon. If armed with a tank gun, they are able to lend firepower, but not armor, to the front where the enemy armor is pushing. But the main purpose of them is to act as scouts and skirmishers as well as to exploit openings. Their speed should be high enough to make them able to pursue retreating motorized infantry, and when there is an opening in the enemy lines, they can go into the rear and destroy as much of the supply and transportation network as possible.

The remaining armor companies make use of a mainline combat tank. Combining most of the speed and mobility of the lights with most of the armor and firepower of the heavies, they are able to fulfill most tasks without assistance from either. In the frontal section, their armor should be enough to resist its own gun from at least the outer edge of combat range, ideally closer. The gun should produce a decent muzzle velocity to enable fire at enemy formations that are advancing or retreating without having to leave their position in the larger formation for something more vulnerable as well as to make it easier to hit tanks at medium ranges. On the attack, it falls to these tanks to engage enemy armor. If the threat enemy armor poses is too strong, then they are to call for assistance from the heavy tanks. If the enemy front is broken, these tanks also have the task of preventing the enemy from closing it so that further troops can move through.

The motorized rifle companies that are part of the armored brigade should have at least one weapons team.

All headquarters and all platoon lead tanks are equipped with a long range radio, if possible the remaining tanks and the trucks of the motorized infantry are to carry shorter-range two-way units, but receivers have to be present in all tanks.

This formation can make a strong push and, with the artillery, infantry and supply units, is able to also defend it until the rest of the army catches back up. However, such a push can leave the front vulnerable to a counterattack that bypasses the armored brigade still involved in combat. The infantry should thus have its own anti-tank guns. Since attacking armor is able to concentrate its force to a far higher degree than the defending infantry, these anti-tank units should be very mobile so that they can be brought to where the attack is happening. This role can be filled by a tank-gun armed light armored vehicle, but this should be an infantry program.

​

All vehicles should have a single turret with a single gun and a coaxial machine gun. The loader is to be separate from the gunner so that the target can be tracked while reloading. If possible, the commander is to be placed in the turret to give him the best visibility possible. The commander should be separate from the gunner if possible so that further targets can be spotted while one is being serviced. The turret should also have a basket so that no crew members trip when the turret unexpectedly rotates.

Due to the large weight required to armor a vehicle against field or tank guns, the armor needed for this should be concentrated on the front, with the sides and rear only armored against weaker weapons.

The commander is also responsible for operating the radio if it is place within the turret, if the radio is placed within the hull, the operation can fall to another crewmember. The input and output however should still be routed to the commander.

All tanks should be operatable by crewmembers of standard adult height, ideally a standard deviation above. This enables the armor branch to have a wider pool of recruits. Thus, it can look for the best tankers, instead of those that fit inside the tank. The hatches through which the crew enters should be positioned in such a way that it is easy for the crew to evacuate the tank in case of a fire.

Tank crews should be wearing helmets to prevent head injuries when riding over rough terrain. Also present in the tank should be hard gloves, a wrench, a crowbar, a shovel and the tools needed to open a track link for maintenance. Spare track links are ideally also carried. Easy access to the engine, transmission and suspension is likewise valuable. Tanks should also carry something to get themselves out when they're stuck in mud or similar. Suitable for this task is a log that can be fixed to the tracks, greatly increasing the traction and ideally getting the tank back on ground where it can drive normally.
​

- - -
​

That's 1019 words, AKA I made it across the border. Also a picture says more than a thousand words, and I have a picture, so I effectively have 2k words there

I tried to write something that makes sense in this time period (the Irromic military is bite-and-hold) while also being very capable in both modern maneuver warfare and deep battle (thus the reference to breakthroughs).​

 

[7734]

Once the waiting period finally finished, you were fuming at the new High Command. Sure, you'd pushed for a less heavy armor unit based on your (and more importantly Folger's) experiences in Ostafrika, but the new table of organization was such a hard shift from what you'd been used to as to mean entirely new regiments would need to be raised!

Then there was the "medium tank" concept. Oh Lord, the Medium Tank Concept. Given the opinion of the W-5 (this thing is junk literally everything you're testing looks better quoth Oberstgeneral Jacob Hans) your task was now to design a flat-out replacement tank for the W-5 that was suitable as the Medium Tank Concept, and could take on the W-5s low role in the long/short blend of the older Heavy Armored Regiment (to contrast to the new model Lightly Armored Regiment)

Anne-Marie certainly didn't find you drunk as a skunk in the lounge after you got that telegram, no sir.

On to good news, though.

Skoda Panzerwerke (they apparently shuffled things around to maximize throughput so they now delivered a whopping fifty SkW-1s a year plus this if it sold) had taken the LSkW-23 (leichtes Skodawerke modell 2 Ausführung 3 in the company paperwork) and re-engined it into the LSkW-24 with the new Jumo 200 engine he was putting out. The new design could hit 28 kilometers per hour on the test track, but due to the engine configuration tended to cut out if trying to traverse a hill perpendicular to the direction of slope.

Ghermain Brothers Associates had likewise taken in the new engine, and had gone down to a six speed gearbox for it thereby shaving about a ton off the GBA-16. As a happy result, the tank only lost about two kilometers of top speed, and had far fewer suspension issues when dealing with broken terrain. Interestingly, since it didn't have the engine on it's side like the LSkW-24, it didn't have any issues with hills, but did have the tendency to complain more if it had too light a fuel mix.

Thryssen did not bother to change their design.

Armid's Coaches had also used the new Jumo 200, and their design was flat-out weird. Using a casemented 7,5cm over the top of the tank with a surprisingly wide field of fire, they supported this with of all things two 2cm autocannons in a cupola turret for the commander. The result was a very well-armored vehicle, which could make roughly thirty kilometers per hour and came in at twenty tons.

MANN CO. came in with an unusual proposition, sacrificing the 7,5cm gun in exchange for a custom turret mount with the 5,5cm field gun and a coaxial Mg.64. With an absolutely featureless front end at a 50 degree slope and likewise nearly equally sloped sides, they managed to get a whopping forty kilometers per hour out of the chassis with an Anzani nine-cylander W-block engine while keeping the whole array down to eighteen tons on the money.

Right, time to book a few weeks at Ulm to get this testing done. Oh boy.

---

Votes

[] PLAN NAME

Y'all know the drill. Testing plan is a go.

 

[7734]

Heading out to Ulm on the second train after the tanks went, you grumbled as you went over a number of dispatches and notices. The Armor Branch had been trying to get up in your face with scheduling and production, but you had more than enough pull to get them to back down. Having a good track record and popular support meant that you could keep asanine demands away, although it was a bit of a problem to balance political capital and funding.

Still, on arrival and on meeting the new Ulm Testing Facility Commandant, you got right to work on the hobnobbing while the Ulm Motor Cavalry Regiment got shaken down for volunteers. It was the next day that you started up bright and early with the dirt road speed tests.

First tested was the LSkW-24, which was put out on the dirt maintenance track and was given three test runs for the test. After making sure the crew were familiar with the vehicle (which was not done by jousting with the GBA-16 crew in the parking lot and those paint chips would obviously buff out) the tank was off to the races. In the flat section, it clocked twenty six, twenty five, and twenty eight kilometers per hour in the trials, and in the curved track section it held steady at about twenty six.

Next up was the GBA-16, which was certainly the most interesting to watch. It's straight-line racing got the cavalrymen whooping and hollering, clocking in at fifty five kilometers an hour at its slowest, and fifty eight per hour at its fastest. On the curved track, however, it had to be much more cautious. After a "sedate" run at forty five kilometers an hour, the crew took it up past fifty and promptly flipped the tank like a Carragian stacking doll resulting in concussions all around and several broken bones. The next crew didn't push it nearly as hard, only going about thirty eight kilometers per hour through the course.

The Thryssen tank, by comparison, was almost sedate to watch on the flats. It averaged twenty nine kilometers per hour, and then proceed to go to the curved track and did twenty eight kilometers per hour after a mediocre first run.

The tank from Armid's was a bit faster, with a score on the flat track of thirty five kilometers per hour at best and thirty eight at it's best, with the driver complaining of having to get the engine up to temp. On the curved track it had a mediocre middle run at twenty nine kilometers per hour, and a top run of thirty two kilometers per hour.

The MANN CO/Commorate entry (they decided to collaberate together apparently since Commorate had the hull and MANN CO had the drivetrain) was an exciting one to watch. On the flats it did forty seven kilometers an hour at best, but it really came to shine on the curves. While it's third run resulted in a rather catastrophic failure with both tracks snapping and several lost roadwheels, the first and second clocked at forty and thiry-nine kilometers per hour each.

Gunnery trials were up next, and used the artillery range for sake of convenience. Targets were a three meter by three meter tent canvass in a wooden frame with a red dot in the center of one half meter diameter. Due to limited range space and danger of unexploded ordnance after the recent Siege Artillery Trials and Divisional Artillery Battery trials, moving tests were not conducted. Besides, firing on the motion wasn't part of the current doctrine due to the fact it only wasted ammo. Shots were taken with standard high explosive rounds, and each tank had no time limit on their shooting.

The LSkW-24 was first, and performed relatively well. With the hundred meter target getting shot in one, and the two hundred in the same, it wasn't surprising that the five hundred only needed three due to the crosswind and the unknown distance

The GBA-16 was next, and performed much worse. At one hundred meters, it only needed two shots, but at two hundred meters it took four shots to engage. At the five hundred, it took eight rounds, along with the unknown distance that was only two hundred and forty meters out!

The KW-16, Thryssen's entrant, came in next with the most unusual performance you'd seen yet. With every known range target, they used three shots to engage, while on the unknown range target at six hundred meters they needed five shots. Inspection of the tank revealed a basic primer to ladder shooting painted on the inside turret cheek next to the gunner, who fully admitted to using it extensively.

The Armid's tank was, if you could believe it, even more accurate. It only took one shot on the one and two hundred meter targets, and two on the five hundred. The unknown range was a little harder at four shots while sitting at three hundred twenty five meters, but as it turned out the tank's secret sauce, a stereoscopic rangefinder running the width of the hull using periscopes to peak over the tank, couldn't be focused at the angle to the unknown distance target and the tank couldn't relocate because the motor starter battery was dead.

Last, but not least, came the MANN CO/Commorate entrant. It did acceptably well, with one shot at the one hundred meter and two at the two hundred meter targets, but the five hundred meter target gave it some trouble from windage as the third shell had the right elevation, but came in about five meters too far left needing a fourth shell to hit the target. The unknown distance target at four hundred ten meters needed six shots to engage, which was understandable since the recommended range of the 5,5cm gun wasn't really too far over four hundred and fifty on the standard split-trail mounting.

Last came armor testing, which happened with the proscribed weapons at one hundred meters. Each weapon would be tested in each position with standard slug rounds until penetration could be determined, taking five shots or in the case of the autocannon two strips of twenty rounds. Once an armor segment failed under fire testing on it would cease. For simulating crew damage, the usual dead pigs would be used. All tanks would be left idling for the test.

The LSkW-24 was up first, and you preemptively skipped wasting time with the anti-tank rifles and the autocannons. It was a Skoda, they'd shoot their own tanks with the low end weapons like this before it ever got close to you. As such, you went in with the 3,5cm gun, which at no point penetrated the tank and had every shell fired ricochet except one, which shattered. Thus satisfied, you moved on to the 5,5cm gun. On the side panel test, penetration was achieved on the fourth shot, shattering a plate over the engine compartment, destroying the engine and oil pumps, with shrapnel perforating the under-engine gas tank and risking a fire in the battery. The front panel held up from both the angled and direct fires with aplom and more ricochets, however. You thus decided to move up to a regimental 7,5cm gun and engage with it. The gun managed to have more frequent shell fractures over ricochets when fired at the angle and forward positions, but on the fourth direct front shot it managed to collapse the cockpit position which was less well-sloped to allow for the vision and escape hatch, destroying the driver's position and everything behind it, ripping through the bottom of the turret basket, through the firewall, and eventually coming to a stop shored up in the remains of the engine. It also finally triggered the battery fire, requiring damage control be done to get post-shot autopsy of the vehicle.

The GBA-16, meanwhile, faired much more poorly. The PzJ.Gew 70 was a comparatively low-power round compared to what this tank was expected to face, but the resultant pocking on the turret and flanks was a dim side for what the tank was expected to face next. Sure enough, on the flank the 2cm autocannon scored twelve penetrations of twenty two known strikes, with some resultant damage to the engine, which while making operation more difficult didn't actually stop it, although it did make it cough heavily and oil temperatures were spiking erratically. Forward testing was thankfully passed at this level, although considering the damage the welds were showing on the bow it was doubtful it could survive the larger shell-firing guns. While it did pass the angled fire with five ricochets, the front fire caved the main glacis in on the most sloped portion, tearing the plate out of it's welds and careening through the fighting compartment wholesale, destroying the turret basket, cockpit, magazine, and breaching the firewall and starting a horrific fuel fire.

The KW-12 was next, and couldn't really do worse in theory. That's when the AT rifleman managed to do the bloody impossible, therefore, and work a bullet into the hull through part of the suspension channel, going in beneath the tracks, and right into the ammo rack which then proceeded to start cooking off due to an incendiary AT round being jammed up in there. That ended testing for the day, as well as earning the rifleman more booze than he could drink that evening.

The next stay started with getting yourself over a hangover and manning the guns too damn early to test the Armid's. AT fire didn't really do anything other than scratch the paint, and the 2cm autocannon couldn't crack the tank either. The 3,5cm gun, though, was interesting, in that while it managed to hole the side of the tank in the upper portion of the crew compartment, it didn't actually disable the tank- rather, it went through the "lump" of armored space that would house the unit's radio by the commander's coupola. Moving up the 5,5cm gun, the front managed to hold against all five shots, if at the cost of severe buckling and looking rather ratty. The 7,5cm gun put paid to any illusion of sturdiness, however, going right through the forward transmission and deflecting out under the vehicle on the first hit.

Last, but hopefully not least (the KW-12 had still not finished cooking off) was the MANN CO/Commorate tank. AT rifle fire and 2cm autocannons were both shrugged off with every round ricocheting. The 3,5cm gun had a bit more trouble, scalping out rivulets in the armor with it's own ricochets, but examination showed none of the shots had actually suffered a shell failure. You had high hopes for the 5,5cm gun, but those were dashed when it proceeded to bull into the upper engine deck and take out the radiator. It could still theoretically run, but the fact it kept trying to burst into flames signified this would be a bad idea. Frontally, it took three ricochets off the hull armor before the gunners got smart and hit the turret, which proceeded to cave in nearly totally and became hideously skewed on the hull, destroying the tank gun's recoil mechanisms and killing everyone in the turret.

With testing concluded for now, you settled down for drinks and letters home while the manufacturers shipped you the next round of tanks to test- by now, it was standard procedure to have three for testing so you could be good and thorough.

---

Votes

[] Plan Name
-[] Downselect?
-[] Suggest modifications to tanks
-[] Testing plan?

 

[7734]

First things first, you had to pitch the GBA-16 from the contest. The armor deficiencies made it too much of a liability, and it failed the RFQ requirements. On the advice of one of your staffers (you still got surprised when you had permanent staffers, even though you'd known Lt. Baum for about three years now) you sent testing data and materials over to the new Armed Reconnaissance Vehicle Testing Board.

The fact they shipped you back a keg of Emu Bitters told you all about their opinion of the vehicle, including the requirement for the 7,5cm gun which according to Major Sommer, the head of the other Board, was an absolutely ridiculous requirement for a tank under forty tons, much less twenty, and he attempted to publicly lambaste you in der Zeitung des Funkers, the neue Techniken press papers that circulated fairly regularly. Last you'd heard he'd ordered a new turret, scaled for a 3,5cm gun, and was going about his business at the Ravensburg Proving Grounds.

Speaking of turrets, Commorate Casting Company was quite unhappy at your insistence on a new turret. Testing results had proven more than adequate versus your requested parameters, so they felt rather attacked by the demands for a new turret. Nonetheless, they still delivered a turret ausf. B, which had the gun moved forward about eight centimeters to lengthen the turret cheeks, flared armor skirts on the turret to encourage ricochets, and an extra ten millimeter sheet welded to the front. The extra weight did affect speed to an uncomfortable extent, but they didn't have time or a better engine to re-engine the tank with.

The retesting of the KW-12's armor went better this time, and by better you meant not utterly disastrous. With the now rather proud Dragoner Haas up to shoot his anti-tank rifle again, you got ready for some rather dramatic work. After he'd blown out the vision block in the side hatch and taking out the radio box hanging off the back of the turret, he got to work poing around the ass end, at which point a bullet got in via the side muffler pipe and fucked something up. Frontal tests resulted in more blasted-out vision blocks and in one memorable shot through the muffler and into the exhaust port causing massive issues. 20mm testing on the front and the angle was passed with flying colors, but on the side of the tank there were four penetrations in the lower hull below the track base. The 3,5cm didn't penetrate the front on it's shots, although examination proved that spalling would likely have been fatal judging by the heavily pockmarked slabs of beef serving as crew stand-ins. A 5,5cm gun took out the front of the tank in one shot, plowing through the upper hull and careening through the tank, eventually exiting the rear of the tank mostly intact.

While you were cleaning up, the Ulm Commandant offered you a chance to watch the testing of the new anti-tank gun concept over on another range, and you accepted. The gun in question was a 3,5cm/60 based on the classic battalion field gun, equipped with a new pneumatic tire and split-trail carriage. The targets today would be a number of scrapped W-5s behind canvas covers, so as to ensure the gunners could actually find them on the shooting range. Instead of the normal slug shell, however, they were using a new "super hard" shell design which included a unique "windscreen" component to increase aerodynamic coefficients and reduce the spin rate of the gun so as to keep projectile behavior on track at longer ranges. Normally, a 3,5cm/50 Model 788 gun firing slug could reliably penetrate a W-5 at four hundred meters or closer, penetrate about half the time between four and six hundred yards, and lost all hope of penetrating or striking true at seven hundred yards.

To your amazement, the new gun proved to be very much an improvement. Accuracy was maintained well out to about twelve hundred meters, at which point the Commandant explained they'd need different training gear on the carriage and a windage calculator, and more importantly the gun was scoring reliable penetrations on the W-5 to about sixteen hundred meters. It might take five shots to hit the thing, but when it did hit the range referees indicated every hit was a clean penetration.

It was clear your new tanks had high standards to meet!

The next day rolled around, and it was time to do maintenance trials. This, of course, meant breaking things. To test the ease of repair, you had the 'good' tanks driven out to their wrecked counterparts from the armor testing, with crews from Ulm instructed to replace as much of the drive system with parts from the ruined hulks as they could and still drive back to the garages in an hour. Standby tractors inevitably were used to 'recover' the tanks after they had finished plowing into trees, fences, and each other, and the sounds of screaming woke you when the test started after you'd been inspecting your hat lining for holes from the back seat of the staff car.

The first tank done was the MANN CO/Commorate entry, having had most of the pistons deliberately fucked, the transmission pulled, drained, and had several broken gears inserted, as well as several road wheels replaced or shot with service pistols. After about half an hour to jack the tank up and swap the road wheels, the work team pulled the top armor off and promptly pulled and scrapped the transmission (it legally being a writeoff at this point) and re-shafted and piston'd the engine in another two hours. New crankshafts took a little longer, and once the engine was repaired and ran clean, the transmission was installed fresh and hooked back into the drive train. After a by-the-book check of the control mains and the turret power rotation system, the tank was checked out as clean after a combined six hours of work.

Next up was the Armid's, which had the engine repeatedly beaten by tensioner wrenches for the tracks, both tracks stripped off, several suspension struts destroyed, the transmission shredded by repeat abuse, the fuel and oil tanks being holed, and the driveshaft heavily sabatoged in an act of spite. Repair work started with jacking the tank up and pulling off all the damaged volute spring suspension units, which was fairly simply done by unbolting them from the hull and throwing them in the scrap pile. The internals was then worked on by acquiring a one-ton shop crane normally meant for engines, unbolting the rather heafty armored cover, carefully lowering it out of the way, and then by simply pulling the transmission and forward drive shafts with it. On finding damage in the control mains, the repair crew elected to remove the entire bottom of the tank, which was done by leaving it on the jacks, pull all the control lines, and replace them. The engine was then pulled, and basically rebuilt from the ground up due to the camshaft being torqued, and the top of the cylinder heads being all badly dented, Once repaired and reinstalled, the armor went on fairly easily, and the tank was checked out as clean after seven and a half working hours.

The next tank was the KW-12, which had been about as thoroughly and systematically wrecked as the last, with the addition that someone had pried up the turret and gotten it to rest cockeyed. At this point, roadwheel damage and power train damage were both par for the course. Maintenance teams started with pulling the roadwheels after the tank had been jacked up, and promptly learned the suspension springs were shot, and not from intentional damage. Pulling those took about two hours, since numerous cuts in the hull had to be made and an oxyacetylene torch scrounged up. Once the suspension springs were fixed, the suspension was checked out with another hour of work, and the crew got to work. Pulling the drivetrain was fairly easy, since the engine and transmission were permanently mated together and locked together on a rolling cage for easy removal. Being a flat eight, the engine wasn't too hard to reassemble, but separating the transmission from it was a hassle. More difficult was getting the module back in, which took the one ton crane and a lot of poking and prodding and water displacing lubricant formula forty to make fit. Then came the turret, which was a very complicated proposition. After getting the artillery crane (used to remount gun barrels) out, they managed to pull the turret off, and then discovered they'd have to cut out and re-weld part of the turret ring. After discounting them the hour it took to build the replacement ring section out of stock, it took about an hour and a half to weld it in, fill it with ball bearings, and then re-mount the turret. All in all, it was a eight and a half hour job.

Then there was the LSkW-24, which had at this time been sworn at to the degree you think no other piece of equipment here had ever been sworn at. With the standard course of damage (roadwheels, tracks, transmission, engine) and a rather notable bit of extra damage in someone wrecking the radio set. The roadheels weren't a hard fix, but once internal work needed to be done it turned out that there was only three ways to get into the damn tank- through the turret, through a top panel that would need the crane, or through the front glacis getting entirely removed. A vote on the crew elected to get the artillery crane to pull the front glacis to get the transmission out, which lead to two hours of pulling bolts to get the four ton forward armor portion removed from the tank. After disassembling the driver's position and pulling the transmission and radio, the question of reattaching the forward glacis came up, which resulted in a three hour session of finagling the damn thing back into place so the nice gentlemen with pneumatic wrenches could get the damn bolts back in. The top hatch was even more troublesome, and getting the engine out for work was an incredible pain, since it had to be rocked to the side and pulled up and out at a stiff angle. All in all, it was fourteen hours to complete work on the LSkW-24.

After this, the repair crews got a day's leave so they wouldn't consider rolling a grenade under your bunk.

For more… commonplace… repair work, your plan was to run the tanks over the same road course you used for the Kettenkrad testing. When you re-tested the Kettenkrad on it by the Ulm Motor Cavalry Regiment, you came up with an average time of six hours, compared to the seven and a half in the previous competition when you were initially testing the Kettenkrad.

The LSkW-24 barely completed the course as written, taking fourteen hours and two refuellings when it had to call for someone to bring them a tank of gas. Standard maintenance and repair work done after changed out one road wheel and topped off the oil for the engine, and then involved a long washdown.

The KW-12 completed the course as written in ten hours and one refuelling call, as it had some severe trouble with it's tracks in the thick mud on the river road. Standard maintenance was to replace the right track after a number of it's linkages were wrecked from multiple detracking incidents, to replace two road wheels (one of which had a casting flaw they should have caught before mounting it) and a good wash-down.

The Armid's completed the course in about eight hours, and didn't need to whine to a Kettenkrad crew to bring out some spare gas, an automatic advantage in your book. Standard maintenance involved working on both tracks and changing one of the volute spring suspension modules, which had lost it's compression unusually quickly, as well as topping up on oil and radiator fluid.

The MANN CO/Commorate entry finished the course in six hours, easily keeping pace with the Kettenkrad assigned to go with them to make sure they didn't get lost. With no refuelling or major incidents to get stuck in, they had a nice, uneventful trip. On returning to the proving grounds, all they needed was oil, radiator water, and a good wash-down.

With most of the testing done for the week, you had another four days in Ulm if you wanted to do any last minute emergency testing.

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VOTES

plan vote y'all know the drill. Vote for any testing you want to do, last drops, nominations for contract, etc.

 

[7734]

Declining aditional testing, you proceded to send in your reccomendations. The MANN CO/Commorate Casting Company design was to be adopted as the winner of the contest, while the rest of the companies were given their tax breaks and other assorted thank-you awards. Production of the chassis was to take place at MANN CO Austerlitz, armor at Commorate Casting Company's Lore facility, with final assembly happening at a new plant being built in Mainz from which the guns would be supplied.

High Command was quite pleased at your relatively snappy judgement on the matter of getting a new armored vehicle, but were a little concerned that the results had been so wild- the best combat was the worst logistically. You'd done what you could, though, and the fact it only took a twenty man crew six hours to do what was effectively a full rebuild made it look like roses next to the SkW-1 which took a forty man crew thirty six hours to do a rebuild of the same complexity. There were a lot of conflicted feelings about that across the upper ranks of the Army, but you let it slide over you.

It was about two months later that you got dragged out to an interservice meeting wherin you were shown the effectiveness of the new Luftwaffe idea, some sort of tactical precision support attack. Normally the Luftwaffe's mission objective was to go after logistics hubs, followed by signals hubs, followed by general recon. With a large number of modifications to the venerable Alder-Arado 68, they'd developed a way to sling a fifty kilogram bomb under the plane, and more importantly drop it accurately in a dive. A level bombing run was an incredibly dicey operation if taken from one of the Bauermann 222, which needed to carry some four thousand kilos of bombs to reliably whale on a farm-sized trainyard. The new ground attack Alder-Arado, meanwhile, could ignore the yard and hit a single train on the train yard, or even one on the rails running flat out. From there, they then demonstrated to nail a SkW-1 that was both probably stolen and more importantly running flat out trying to avoid the damn bombers carrying "simulation munitions" of flour and red corn meal. Naturally, the damn bombers hit the thing every time. High Command was livid, and wanted a solution- and they were all looking at you.

Since a good thing nominally never comes alone, this was when Wanderer fled the country with forty million thalers worth of cash bonds, bullion, and gems to start a tank construction business in the Serene Republic of Thile on the nearly-eternally at war Isle of Thile with plans for his new W-41 tank, one of which existed as a prototype at the Wanderer Armored Vehicles headquarters as an armor shell. It was planned to pack a new experimental 5cm/60 gun from Thryssen, a new engine of unknown features that had all documentation destroyed, and still somehow came in at twenty three tons on the head with four centimeters of rolled homogeneous armor all around. Naturally, politics and the massive pile of bullshit that was contracts meant that until the remaining one thousand W-5 tanks were delivered, the Imperial Bailiffs couldn't hunt him down and drag him in. It looked devastating, though, that some spitball republic could have the means to easily overcome the existing Armored Regiments, and more importantly given the republican nature of Thile the design would be spread to the four corners of the world. As such, High Command wanted a tank destroying vehicle specifically designed to engage and punish enemy armor, possibly combining it with the languid proposal the neue Techniken had come up with for a self propelled regimental gun for breaking apart potential schwerpunkts found on the advance as a unit that had been broken managed to pull itself together faster than pursuing infantry could give chase and engage.

More importantly, though, your boys had finally turned sixteen and had filled out their conscription paperwork for in case another war kicked off. As children of a presently serving officer, they were very low on the rolls, but if you retired or were medically discharged their paperwork would still have to be on file. It was a moot point, since they were already going to the Lunesburg Imperial University Auxiliary for classes (like every other self-important courtier's kids) and they'd been taking preparatory classes for the War College, but paperwork. Oskar had taken to the Cavalry Branch, interestingly enough, while Klaus went into the Armor Branch; both lined up to become officers naturally. It was amusing, watching them flip the coin to see who had to settle with being outside the Armor Branch, with Otto loosing. Ilse-Volta just huffed and told them both they were being stupid and to sign up with the Seebatalions so they could do a tour there and sign into the Imperial Regiment of the Guard, who were the Kaiser's source of bodyguards, personal commanders, and a lot of political backstabbing. It was what she was planning to do, after all.

The thought of your daughter going into what was rumored to be a growing intelligence apparatus was more than a little nervewracking, to be honest, but she would end up where she willed no matter how hard you pushed or pulled. Not like there'd be a coup or anything, the Irromic Empire was too stable for that.

Either way, it was time to pick your poison and decide what vehicle you were going to be working on for the foreseeable future. With the economy booming and manpower at an all-time low, every attempt to streamline manpower towards the front was being made- as such, money was flush and time was at a premium. You were going to be a busy officer at this rate, that was for sure!

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VOTE

[] Work on the Anti-Aircraft Weapons Platform Vehicle
[] Work on the Anti-Tank Assault Gun Platform Vehicle

(no write-ins, obviously. Pick your next contest carefully)

 

[7734]

Your name is Oberstlieutenant Otto von Rabe, and you'd just caught a hand grenade thrown at you with the pin left in it. After the realization that you were the man holding the bag for at least one of the new armored vehicles, you promptly decided that it would be better to give the new kids like that Sommer fellow something easy enough, like the new anti-tank gun slash assault gun thing that was getting kicked around. You'd throw yourself on the anti-aircraft vehicle, and hopefully not tank your career in the process. If you did somehow manage to scuttle things on yourself, though, there was always the option of going over to Fenrus and talking to him about a job as a contractor, though. You'd banked up a good amount of money, so if shit happened then you could always just go private.

First things first, you had to figure out how the hell the whole "plane" thing worked, anyway. For that, you'd need an adjunct from the Luftwaffe, whose main job was to be telling you that you were clearly being stupid and then explaining why. You'd also probably need to develop a way to test the damn thing, plus the ever-critical issue of where you'd even need to start with- gun, chassis, whole nine yards. Developing this was going to be an uphill struggle, before you got into the mess that was the Luftwaffe.

It was telling that not only were you older than the whole damn branch of the service- you had six years of age on the concept- you also had more time in the Army than the current Luftwaffe had existed. Aviation used to be handled in the Aviation Regiments of Dimarchsen, Ravensburg, and Aachen; from which they would distribute squadrons of planes as needed to where they were needed. The Kaiser had reformed things by breaking them off into the Luftwaffe and thus creating the Luftwaffe High Command, gave them a minister in the Diet, and royally added the Air Regiments of Lunesburg, Saxe-Gotha, and Iserlohn. Since then, they'd expanded rapidly, and now stood at fourteen air regiments of forty eight planes, with each air regiment having one Heavy Bombardment squadron of twelve Bauerman 222s, two Aviation Bombardment squadrons of refitted Alder-Arado 68s or Gotha XXIV bombers, and one Pursuit Squadron of twelve Alder-Arado 68s or the brand new Heinkel 112 design.

Back in the office, it was time to start putting together your Board. You had to have your Adjunct, though, so it was time to start going through the submitted profiles.
Hauptmann zur Himmel Rudolf Windisch was your first find. Twenty-two victories in the Great Pig War, captured and held briefly in Carragian prison, and parroled and reputed in the (failed) Sun Week peace talks, the man had an exciting career. He had also been involved in one instance of airborne espionage, dropping off a saboteur in Balkh territory. Since then he'd been a mediocre wing commander, failing to advance to squadron commander due to a war wound disfiguring his face while he was in Carragian captivity. While the long scar on his jaw and lip gave him a very slight lisp when he talked, Windisch was eloquent enough in writing and offered a very sound argument to take him on, mentioning that a headquarters tour would allow him to get some much needed staff experience and help your cachet with the Luftwaffe by adding a well-known ace to your roster, opening up options with getting facilities and assistance from his own wing if nothing else.

Next up was, and this required a double take and a nip of schnapps to process, Hauptmann Erika Hess. Who was a girl- well, young woman- and an officer. Her service in the war had been as a factory pilot delivering flying boats to the Reichsmarine to start, until she'd been jumped and her ship had downed two planes from a Balhk pursuit squadron. After being denied combat pay by the Reichsmarine, she proceeded to 'transfer' to the Luftwaffe, who saw two destroyed planes by her vessel and took her in faster than you could say "field promotion". Naturally after the War this led to a long-running legal battle led by the Reichsmarine to get the now-ace bomber pilot back, as well as accidentally opening the door to females to serve as air crew on Luftwaffe multi-crew vehicles. She brought to the table a history of ground attack missions, which were exactly what you were trying to stop, but on the other hand it would mean major complications if you tried to mine the Reichsmarine for information on the state of naval AA.

Finally, there was Hauptmann zur Himmmel Johannes Janzen, another ace combatant during the War. After scoring seventeen victories, he was finally farmed out to pasture in the Dimarchssen Aviation Regiment, in command of the light pursuit squadron there that was the first to be converted into a ground attack squadron by modification of the Adler-Arado 88. While he personally wasn't a dive-bomber himself, he could easily secure access to the personnel involved when they weren't on training deployments making sure everyone else could do it. He also was apparently an aircraft engineer in his spare time, and was largely responsible for the structural modifications like the swinging cradle used to clear the bomb of the propeller and drop it straight through the Alder-Arado's fixed landing gear.

Fortunately, the armor half of the crew would be mostly composed of the Usual Suspects, so all that was left to do was open up your rollodex and get dialing.

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VOTES

(Y'all know the drill, no plan voting or I throw it out.)

ADJUNCT (choose one)
[] Hauptmann zur Himmel Rudolf Windisch
[] Hauptmann Erika Hess
[] Hauptmann zur Himmel Johannes Janzen

BOARD (choose four)
[] Abbot Marchevion: A Bohemian national who emigrated after a scandal in the Werser crowns forced him from home, this man is rumored to be an intelligence expert and Lithuanian sympathizer.
[] Edmund Volkstuppe: A young reserve kaptain who's spent most of his career in the artillery, Volkstruppe has an unnering knowledge about light artillery and what advancements have been going on in your old backyard.
[] Movo Leib: A Jewish captain of the armored car cavalry sent by the Wersers in part of a bid to get you to adopt the Straßenpanzerwagen S865, now with an anti-air model.
[] Leutnat Paul Heinz: A Pioneer from Ostafrika who moved to the mainland, he is incredibly familiar with light rail and improvised logistics trains.
[] Kaptain Jacob Adler: An up-and-coming proponent of the Luftwaffe's new Battlefield Support doctrine, who worked with them and the Kriegsmarine in the new Flugzeugpeitsche project.
[] Jan Mittlewesk: An engineer from the Thryssen gun labratory interested in seeing if there's any sort of new weapon he can deliver for the project.
[] Etatmäßiger Percius Vogt: A master weaponsmith and operator at one point or another of every gun the Irromic Empire has used since black powder from the Ulm Proving Ground.
[] Vizewachtmeister Mathias Lang: An anti-air gunner from the Great Pig War who was placed into medical reserve after Balhk paratroopers attacked his position.