Chapter 65 The Fox and the Hound (Part 2)

In his commander's periscope, he saw the Type 40 tungsten-core armor-piercing bullet trailing a white tracer. After hitting the armor plate area on the front of the opposite T34 tank, it was directly hit by a geometric corner. The ball flew away, and the furious Heizenauer shouted loudly at the gunner Wolfe who was directly in front of him.

"Damn it, Wolfe, are you blind? The front of that guy's car is tilted, hit its turret, do you understand!?"

Regarding this terrible cry coming from behind him, gunner Wolfe, whose right eye was close to the gun scope while still desperately turning the turret steering wheel for secondary aiming, was not in a better mood.

"This guy is moving! Heizenauer! Such a small turret is still a moving target, and it's not easy for me to hit it! Besides, we are not the only one, what about the other crews? Can't they add two more guns? "

Gunner Wolf, who was just complaining about the inaction of his teammates, had not yet finished speaking. The remaining number of Panzer III tanks that had been accompanying the Heizenauer command vehicle in a search formation finally began to open fire and attack after taking aim at the target.

Boom boom boom——

Exactly consistent with the choice made by Wolfe, the other Panzer III tank crews, who knew that the Soviet T34 tank was powerful and difficult to deal with, also used Type 40 tungsten core armor-piercing bullets to launch attacks.

Several rounds of Type 40 tungsten-core armor-piercing projectiles with muzzle velocity reaching the level of one thousand meters per second hit the target almost in the blink of an eye with the flash of muzzle fire, on the front of the vehicle, on the side of the vehicle near the track, and on the side of the vehicle near the tracks. Malashenko, who was hit with one shot on each side of the turret almost at the same time, immediately felt as if his ears were being fired by artillery fire on New Year's Eve.

"Damn, these Germans are not done yet! Is anyone injured? Report the situation!"

As the commander, he was fine, but that did not mean that the rest of the crew members were intact. With the sound of huge steel impact echoing in his ears, Malashenko asked loudly to his crew members before he could think about it. Even Malashenko, who was familiar with the powerful defensive performance of the T34 tank, did not dare to take it lightly when he was hit by three armor-piercing bullets at almost the same time.

Malashenko, who was already sweating profusely, did not wait too long. The other three crew members in the tank quickly shouted a reply to their commander.

"I, Seryosha, it's okay!"

"Nikolai is safe!"

"Sir, our fuel tank seems to have been punctured and is leaking!"

The fuel tank was punctured? Oil leak?

After hearing the words from Kirill on the side, Malashenko frowned and realized the critical nature of the situation. He immediately bent down from his position and spoke to the man who was crouching next to the ammunition rack on the vehicle body. Kirill looked around.

I saw that Kirill, who was holding an armor-piercing projectile that had just been taken out of the ammunition rack, was covered in black oil stains. The thick diesel oil was even smeared like paint, and the entire shell was covered with black marks. , and more fuel was leaking out from the fuel tank of the vehicle chassis under the ammunition rack next to Kirill.

"Asshole! Why are you so afraid? A gas tank was penetrated at this time. It's so fucking fucked!"

Based on what Marashenko could see within his field of vision, the oil tank on the chassis of the car that is currently leaking oil should have collapsed inside the car body after the shell hit the side armor. Armor fragments scratched the fuel tank.

Although the T34 medium tank, which follows a comprehensive defense design concept, has good defense even in the armor on the side of the body, the defense is still weaker than the side armor defense on the front of the body. When the Type 40 tungsten core armor-piercing projectile launched by the tank attacks, it is actually at the end of its power and is very close to being penetrated by the ultimate defense.

Under such conditions, the T34 tank that was hit by one bullet on the side of the vehicle caused a small collapse of the armor inside the vehicle even though it was not directly penetrated by the armor. The scattered armor fragments had a very high damage due to the impact force. The flight was flying at such a high speed that it fortunately did not injure any crew members, but unfortunately it also penetrated the fuel tank of the car body and chassis, causing an oil leak.

But fortunately, the T34 tank, designed as the main medium tank on the front line, does not only have one fuel tank for fuel supply.

The design of multiple fuel tanks located in the chassis and the engine compartment at the rear of the vehicle allows the T34 tank to maintain combat effectiveness without running out of all fuel in a short period of time even after one of the tanks is penetrated.

At the same time, for the sake of greater safety and security, the T34 tank uncharacteristically used a diesel engine as the tank engine from the beginning of its design, instead of the gasoline engine used by its German counterparts to power the tank.

Even if the tank engine and fuel tank are directly hit by bullets and leak oil, the viscous and non-volatile diesel can still ensure the safety of the crew members because of the difficulty of igniting under normal atmospheric pressure. , thus effectively avoiding secondary fires caused by oil leakage accidents and greatly improving the tank's survival guarantee in battle.

On the contrary, the German tanks, which all used gasoline engines as tank engines, were not so lucky.

German tanks, which are faced with the possibility of having their armor penetrated at any time during battle, once their fuel tanks are hit by bullets and leak oil, they can easily cause secondary fires and burns, leading to irreparable catastrophic accidents in a very short period of time. It can be said that it is not uncommon in battles to kill and burn crew members, or even cause ammunition racks to explode.

The Soviet infantry who discovered the flammable characteristics of German tanks were still in the early days of World War II when there was a lack of infantry anti-tank weapons. They concluded that they could use Molotov cocktails to wait for opportunities and throw them onto the engine compartments of German tanks to attack.

This caused the burning gasoline, alcohol and other liquids to flow directly into the engine compartment through the upper heat dissipation system of the engine compartment, thereby igniting the engine oil supply pipeline and volatilizing the gasoline, causing the burning of the German tank or the direct explosion of the fuel tank.

Malashenko, who also knew the non-flammable safety features of Soviet diesel engines, did not take it seriously after noticing that only one of the fuel tanks was leaking, and returned to his commander's position. Then he continued to give orders to Kirill who was standing aside.

"Don't worry about the fuel tank, Kirill, it doesn't matter! Wipe off the diesel on the shells and load them quickly. German tanks are coming!"

"Yes, Comrade Commander!"

After hearing the order from Malashenko, he hurriedly used his sleeves to quickly wipe away the few traces of diesel on the artillery shell. He picked up the artillery shell and raised his hand towards Ji who clenched his fist into the barrel of the gun on the left. Lear immediately shouted loudly.

"Armor-piercing bullets are good!"