Reborn in Brazil As a Plutocrat

Chapter 696 Self-developed Tank

Fang Lang's statement that Sherman is not worth mentioning is obviously wrong. Moreover, the current US military has no intention of eliminating Sherman. You must know that Sherman tanks can also be regarded as the well-deserved main force on the peninsula battlefield. .

Although the US military already has the M26 Pershing heavy tank, it does not have the luxury to directly eliminate the Sherman. The reason why Fang Lang said this is actually to highlight the power of the tank he is about to produce himself.

Wulf Fairclough naturally had doubts about this. After all, as an army officer, he was very clear about the current main equipment of the US military, and he also understood that Fang Lang's words were too exaggerated.

This made him look at Fang Lang a little strangely, and he began to whisper in his heart, was this kid a little too young? He didn't even look down on the current equipment of the United States, and he was so brazen that he wanted to fight for the Americans. Eliminate.

 At the same time, he had to sigh with emotion, Fang Lang had indeed prepared a road to the sky for him. This was completely different from what he had in mind. In his opinion, even if he joins Fang Lang's command, he will most likely become a powerful leader, which is already very good.

But I didn't expect that the other party's ideas were completely different from my own. He skipped the step-by-step process of climbing up from the grassroots level and sent him directly to the U.S. Military Academy for gold plating. Then, when he came back, he upgraded his rank by one level and relied on himself to achieve breakthroughs. He became a real general through the school-level officer barrier that could not be broken.

After becoming a general, he did not directly compete with the army bosses for the command of two armored divisions, but made a roundabout arrangement to take over the command of a motorized division.

　　If the army bosses are asked to give up the command of the armored division, they will definitely not be willing to do so. It will definitely cause a fierce backlash, and even General Crook will be difficult to suppress it.

 But now Fang Lang's cooking is different. I don't want your armored division, I only need the command of a motorized division, so the difficulty is obviously reduced a lot.

With General Crook's reputation and Fang Lang's strength, recommending him to become a motorized division commander is difficult, but it is not impossible.

Then, when the time is right, the motorized division will be transformed into an armored division. Of course, the bosses of the Army Department will not refuse such a thing that will obviously enhance the strength of the army. At most, they will arrange for people to come in and pick peaches.

However, this time it depends on his ability as Wolf Fairclough. If Fang Lang has paved the way for him and he is unable to obtain the command of this new armored division, he will not have to mess around. .

Even Fang Lang might give up on himself without hesitation, and he himself would be even less able to forgive himself.

“Ahem… General Fang, I think Sherman is very good. I’ll be satisfied if I can command a Sherman tank division.”

Hearing this, Fang Lang smiled slightly and said:

 “So Woolf, you agree with my proposal?”

Wulf Fairclough thought about it and nodded without much hesitation. He knew very well that in his own words, he might be like this for the rest of his life.

As for following Fang Lang, although he might be regarded as a traitor by the army, he couldn't resist Fang Lang and gave him so much! Even if he just upgraded his rank to a general and broke through the barrier of a school-level officer, he felt like he had made a lot of money. What's more, there is an opportunity to study at West Point Military Academy.

 Even after returning from studies, he was at least a motorized division commander, which made him excited from the bottom of his heart.

"Hehe... I agree, how can I disagree! General Fang has paved the way for me. If I continue to disagree, wouldn't I be disrespectful?"

However, if you are really planning to add an armored division to the Army in the future, I think Sherman is already very good. "

Hearing this, Fang Lang could not understand what he was thinking. He smiled and patted the other party on the shoulder and said:

"What? It seems that Mr. Woolf doesn't really believe in our domestically produced tanks?"

“Eh! It’s not that I don’t believe it, but I think based on the current situation, the American Sherman is far from being eliminated.”

Seeing the other party's appearance, Fang Lang smiled and took out a pile of information from the briefcase beside him, placed it in front of the other party and said:

“You should first take a look at the design information of our first domestic tank and the corresponding technical indicators, and then think carefully about whether you want the Sherman or our new tank.”

Wolf Fairclough obviously did not expect that Fang Lang would directly throw out a stack of information in front of him. When he saw the tank design drawings on the first page of the information, he could no longer take his eyes away. .

For a moment, he forgot to answer Fang Lang's words. Instead, he picked up the information on the table and studied it carefully.

 At the beginning, after Fang Lang obtained the design information of the Tiger tank from the Porsche factory, he had the idea of ​​designing a domestic tank. But it has never been implemented concretely, but with the beginning of the Peninsular War, he knew that even if he designed a powerful tank, it would not be used against his hometown, so he put this plan on the agenda.

Fang Lang still has a direct understanding of the future development direction of tanks, the king of land warfare. Although he has not really come into contact with real tanks, he has been exposed to many tanks from online videos, movies and television.

I don’t know if it’s because he lives in his hometown, but he is more familiar with Soviet tanks. During the Cold War, the Soviets successively developed a series of excellent tanks such as T62, T64, T72, and T80.

As for the United States, what impressed him most was the M60, and the M1 "Abrams" tank that was still used in large numbers by the U.S. military until he was reborn. There is also the German Leopard tank that has been touted to be amazing.

 But he only had a general understanding of the situation of these tanks and did not conduct in-depth research, so he could not copy and paste them directly.

Even so, he still has a far better understanding of the future development direction of tanks than ordinary people. For example, the current classification of heavy tanks and medium tanks will become main battle tanks in the future.

 The development direction of tank main guns will change from the current rifled guns to smoothbore guns, and the type of artillery shells will also change to armor-piercing discarding sabots.

 The loading methods also include manual loading and Soviet-style automatic loading. The tank gun must be equipped with a smoking device to prevent gunpowder smoke from polluting the tank cockpit.

In terms of observation and sighting equipment, not only the T62 infrared night vision device has appeared, but also the laser rangefinder developed by the US military, and the development trend of computerized fire control systems.

In terms of protection, composite armor, shielding armor, reactive armor and depleted uranium armor have appeared. Composite armor seems to be divided into many layers of different materials, consuming the kinetic energy of concentrated shells and changing the direction of the jet.

 The reactive armor seems to reduce the kinetic energy of the shells through active explosion and weaken the damage caused by the shells to the tank.

What impressed Fang Lang the most was the stabilization system of the tank turret, especially those in later videos where a wine glass or wrench was placed on the muzzle of a moving tank. No matter how the tank body bumped, the things on the muzzle could remain stable. The motionless look really shocked Fang Lang deeply.

He also knew that this was the key to the tank's ability to develop from the original requirement of stopping and aiming to fire to the technology of firing at any time while traveling at high speed. Of course, the above are all technical directions in Fang Lang's impression. As for how to implement this technology specifically, he has no idea at all.

 But it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t understand. As long as he provides good ideas, he can naturally organize people to study it. With the guidance of his advanced ideas, he believed that the tanks they produced would definitely become famous in the international market.

Maybe, in the future, what countries will be looking for is no longer the German Leopard tank, but the Tiger tank produced in Brazil.

However, things definitely don't happen overnight. Fang Lang didn't think about designing a perfect tank all at once. His plan was to design a basic model first, and then slowly develop it as technology continues to advance. Various new technologies were added to the tank, and finally, it met the requirements he had in mind.

Of course, deep in his heart, he also knows that although the tanks of the future are very powerful, they also have their own natural enemies, which are helicopters known as treetop killers. This is why he actively introduced Bell 47 production technology and OEMed Bell 47.

As the factory began to manufacture Bell 47s, and the Bell 47s were originally sold in Brazil as agricultural aircraft by Fang Lang and others for a period of time, Embraer has already trained a group of excellent helicopter production workers.

 Because they have a lot of experience in the production of Bell 47, the designers of Fangyuan Aviation have begun the development of new helicopters. Like tanks, Fang Lang disclosed what he knew about the development direction of helicopters to the company's researchers early on.

However, for the sake of training the team, Fang Lang plans to first build a Huey helicopter similar to the UH-1 that was most used by the US military in the Vietnam War.

The topic has gone off topic, let's get back to the topic, but when Wolf Fairclough picked up the information in his hand and looked at it carefully, he found that the shape of this tank was obviously different from the common T34 and the US Army's Sherman. Too same.

First of all, it is much larger than these two tanks in terms of size. Look at the seven road wheels, the low body and the non-hemispherical turret. It looks like the current mainstream tanks. There is a big difference.

At the very least, in Woolf Fairclough's opinion, the driver's sight of this tank will not be very good. Of course, the tank's concealment will definitely be better than the Sherman currently equipped in Brazil.

Although he could still vaguely see some shadows of German Tiger tanks in this tank, he had to say that the design style of this tank was completely beyond his expectation.

What he doesn't know is that the design drawing of the tank that Fang Lang gave him now actually has many similarities with the historical Leopard 1 tank developed by the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1960s.

Although the Leopard 1 has the shortcoming of weak protection, it cannot be denied that it is a very good main battle tank. More importantly, it also explored the way forward for the later Leopard 2.

“General Fang, is this... is this true? Do we in Brazil have the ability to build such a tank?”

 Wulf Fairclough was obviously shocked by the design of this tank. After all, the picture may not tell much, but those design parameters really scared him.

Seeing his appearance, Fang Lang couldn't help but smile.

“Haha... Mr. Wolf, you probably don’t know the history of our Fangyuan Automobile! Before our Fang family took complete control, it was actually the automobile factory of Porsche in Germany, and Porsche in Germany was the company that developed the Tiger tank during World War II.

 Our tank was developed based on the German Tiger. You have to know that we have imported all the technologies from German Porsche, and even many designers and engineers are the original crew of the Tiger tank.

 In this case, do you still think that we do not have the ability to manufacture this tank? "

Hearing this, Woolf Fairclough was a little stunned. He looked at Fang Lang, then looked down at the tank information in his hand. After a long while, he swallowed hard and said:

“Then...when will this tank be finalized?”

“Haha... Woolf, don’t be anxious. There is an old Chinese saying that says, you can’t eat hot tofu if you are anxious.

  I must ensure that the commander using the new tank is one of my own before I can officially start trial production of this tank. Otherwise, with the relationship between our navy and army, there is no need for me to invest huge amounts of money in the research and development of this new tank vehicle. What do you think? "

 Wulf Fairclough understood that Fang Lang was asking him to make his position clear. In this regard, he just pondered for a moment, then nodded without hesitation:

“Thanks to General Fang’s great love, I am an unknown guy like me. It’s my honor to serve you.”

 After speaking, he stood up directly and saluted Fang Lang with a solemn military salute.

Seeing this, Fang Lang also stood up with a laugh, saluted Woolf Fairclough with a military salute, then reached out to shake hands with him, gave him a big hug, and then motioned him to sit down. , then raised his glass and gestured to the other party:

“Haha...With the addition of Woolf, I believe that our Brazilian Army will soon usher in a new era of rapid development.

 Let’s drink a toast to future General Woolf Fairclough. "

Hearing Fang Lang's statement and promise, Woolf Fairclough also smiled, picked up his own wine glass and touched Fang Lang's wine glass lightly and said:

 “Haha...cheers!”

 After speaking, he picked up the wine glass and drank it in one gulp.

 Seeing this, Fang Lang naturally did not run away and emptied his wine glass in one gulp.

 After both parties sat down, Woolf looked at Fang Lang slightly nervously and said:

“General Fang, what about the research and development of this tank…”

Wulf Fairclough's impatient expression made Fang Lang laugh for a while, but he didn't realize that this guy was also a fan of tanks! However, thinking about the army soldiers after two world wars, there should be no one who dislikes tanks!

“Mr. Woolf, don’t worry, since I have taken out this design drawing, it proves that we have the ability to manufacture it. You must know that our Fang family’s current mechanical manufacturing capabilities are no joke.

I plan to trial-produce this tank using technology from American Caterpillar, German Porsche, and Mercedes-Benz.

 But you also know that this kind of national weapon cannot be developed by our Fang family alone. The Ministry of National Defense must provide a fund to support it.

 But now most of us in the Brazilian Army would rather purchase their ready-made tanks from the United States and the Soviet Union than support our independent research and development.

 Hence, we must further gain control of the Ministry of War’s voice before we can officially start the trial production work. "

 (End of this chapter)