Re: Blood and Iron

Chapter 115: Introducing Armored Cars

Chapter 115: Introducing Armored Cars

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One of the major problems with the Great War, and why it suddenly ended up in a stalemate where millions of men died for the gain of a single mile in static and brutal trench warfare, was because, to put it simply, military weaponry advanced well beyond the means of transportation.

Trucks and armored vehicles weren't really a thing yet. Those were inventions that spawned from the end of the Great War and throughout the interwar period. Hell, the entire oil industry was really not developed enough to sustain a full-scale motorized form of warfare.

And though Bruno had begun making substantial investments in the oil and natural gas industries, if he was being honest, it would be years before Germany had enough fuel stored to properly make use of such advancements in military transportation.

Frankly speaking, it would be decades before airplanes and cars advanced enough to sustain a functioning logistics network. At this time, railways and horse-drawn carts were the primary means of transportation.

But Bruno wanted to change this. Logistics was a huge part of winning a war, and this was fully realized in the Second World War when, in several critical battles, the Germans ran out of ammo and fuel, ultimately forcing either their retreat or surrender.

Because of this, Bruno had plans to secure oil from Kamerun and Romania to sustain not only the German military's logistics network. Hence, he had begun making investments in such areas. But at the same time, Bruno needed to introduce a truck capable of transporting supplies from the railways to the battlefield.

Hence, he began making use of a design from his past life. The GMC CCKW 2/2-ton 6x6 truck was, by all means, the most vital aspect of WW2 that most people forgot about. Given in significant supplies as lend-lease by the United States to the Allied Powers, including the Soviet Union, this truck was the primary backbone of all Allied Armies.

Without these trucks, it is entirely possible that the Soviet front would have collapsed long before they ever managed to change the tide of the war. In other words, this truck was the unsung hero of the Second World War.

If built in sufficient supply, they could not only ferry supplies to the frontlines but soldiers as well, and carry off the wounded from the battlefield to the railways, where they could be taken to a proper hospital.

It was a gap in technological capabilities that basically ensured, if properly fueled, that the defensive lines Bruno was building in the West would constantly be resupplied. In addition to this, they could secure the offensive supply lines when the time to push into France finally arrived.

An operation that would be spearheaded not only by the new Panzer tanks Bruno had made, which were loosely based on the theoretical E-10 designs from his past life, albeit with heavy modifications, but also by armored cars to support them.

Frankly speaking, armored cars began being phased out in the Cold War, primarily being operated as reconnaissance vehicles and in limited capacity. Even so, there were some designs that Bruno could be inspired by, at least in terms of the hull. For example, sloped armor was a concept that proved to be very effective in the Second World War, especially in the use of tanks.

It was something Bruno made use of in his current tank designs. However, it really wasn't applied to armored cars, as they quickly began being delegated to reconnaissance roles in the middle of the war. And even then, they were of a lesser priority.

But without infantry fighting vehicles, and in an era where anti-tank weapons didn't really exist, armored cars were not only faster than tanks but also provided enough firepower, in the form of a 20mm cannon, that they could wreak havoc on the enemy lines during the initial push.

And if designed well enough, with sloped armor, for example, they could pretty much repel any weapon used against them during this era. Thus, Bruno modeled his armored cars, or at least their hulls, upon the Cold War-era Spähpanzer Luchs 8x8 reconnaissance vehicle.

In Bruno's design, he made use of rolled homogeneous armor, which was basically the best form of armor that could be made for a vehicle before the introduction of composite materials.

In addition to this, it made use of a 2 cm KwK 30 L/55 main autocannon that was mounted in a Panzer II Luchs-style turret. It also made use of a 7.92mm MG 34 machine gun as its secondary armament.

To put it simply, a 2cm or 20mm autocannon was highly effective against infantry but less so against armor. While the tank design Bruno was introducing had a 5cm gun that was designed for busting armor and fortifications, which could deal substantial damage to enemy trenches, the armored car made use of a main gun more designed to shred the infantry in those trenches with high-explosive 20mm rounds.

Pretty much, it was the perfect counterpart to the E-10 series tank, known as the Panzer in this life, for Bruno to add as a support vehicle. With the push into France after the French Army had been broken against his fortifications, Bruno would have a wall of steel to protect his soldiers as they charged forward, while also having substantial firepower mounted to them. Quite honestly, Bruno felt a slight sense of pity for the French and British soldiers of the upcoming war. An entire generation of their society would die while trying and failing to break into the borders of the German Reich, only for the few survivors to face an onslaught of steel and explosive firepower that the world had never really seen at this point.

Then again, this sense of pity only existed for the briefest of moments as Bruno remembered that their deaths would be necessary to forge a new century of German hegemony, one built upon the traditional values of Western Civilization and not the false gods of liberalism and progressivism that proclaimed themselves to be the West in the world from which Bruno had originally come.