In the brightly lit office, where huge drawings are laid out on long tables, this is the design office of the Krupp factory. Pen, fun, and www.biquge.info

Each of the drawings here is an important document that is absolutely confidential for Germany, because it is the key drawing of the German future tank No. 5.

These drawings include various parts of the chassis of the tank that have been designed and built, as well as a new tank gun that has just been refitted.

Fearing that the 75-mm 48-diameter tank gun would not be able to perform the important task of destroying enemy tanks in the future, the Krupp factory quickly modified the existing anti-aircraft gun at the behest of Li Le.

This modification was taken directly from the famous 88 mm caliber cannon, and even part of the ammunition was universal! In this way, the design cycle of this "new tank gun" has been directly shortened to zero.

After taking out the tank gun, the German designers began to figure out how to stuff the cannon into the turret of the tank, which was obviously a very difficult job.

In the beginning, the designers simply enlarged the turret of the No. 4 tank, hoping that this mature turret design could be directly inherited.

However, the Führer then rejected this junk design and put forward a more mature request - a new tank turret that did not require a hatch that opened on the side!

In addition to the enhanced protection on the side of the turret, the new tank will have two hatches directly above the turret for personnel access!

With this design, the number of hatches on the turret has been reduced by one, and the loader has no separate hatches of his own. However, the armor on the sides can be made as a whole, and the protection has been improved a lot.

After making a trade-off, the German designers decided to satisfy the Führer's "design hobby" by adopting a similar design structure to the Tiger tank, but with a square-headed design......

At the same time, the original vertical armor shield on the front of the turret of the Tiger tank was tilted at an increased angle and turned into an inclined plane.

In order to make the new turret meet the programmatic requirements of the No. 5 tank as a whole as "fit for production", the new turret has a welded construction.

As a result of such changes, the latest 5th tank turret was easier to produce and surpassed the historical Tiger tank in frontal defense.

As a result, the new No. 5 surpassed the historic Tiger tank in terms of frontal protection, but was slightly weakened on the sides and rear.

Overall, the entire tank was more than 16 tons lighter than the Tiger by reducing the weight waste of the staggered load wheels, weakening most of the armor thickness, and switching to the inclination to compensate.

The No. 5 tank, which has just started at 40 tons, has already met the basic requirements of the Tiger tank in terms of performance, and it has also maintained the same firepower.

After weighing, although the protection power has decreased slightly, the 41-ton No. 5 tank completely surpassed the Leopard and became the main combat weapon of the German army in 41 years, which is completely competent.

Because of the simplification of the production process, the production of this tank is much faster than the cumbersome Tiger and Leopard tanks.

The reduction in the cost of production, the absence of a decrease in basic combat performance, means that the development of the German tank in the future has been corrected, at least much more than in history.

On the one hand, the size of the tank has decreased, and the new tank is much lower and smaller than the Tiger tank.

On the other hand, it was because the weight occupied by the staggered load wheels of the Tiger tank was placed on the armor protection.

Of course, the latest inclined armor technology, as well as the design of adding glove boxes around the tank to indirectly improve the level of tank protection, have also been fully affirmed by German tank design experts.

There are two sides to everything, and after using a single row of load-bearing wheels and sticking to the torsion bar suspension design, the new tank was inferior to the Tiger and Leopard tanks in terms of long marching and off-road comfort.

Because of the reduction in the weight of the tank itself, as well as the "shrinkage" of the suspension system, the new tank was a little bumpy when rushing, and this is the price paid for weight reduction......

Following the example of the Soviet Union in advance, the use of wide tracks, as well as the dividends brought by the weight reduction of the tank, the new tank has improved its passability and cross-country performance.

It's just that during the experiment, the crew felt that the comfort level needed to be strengthened. Some opinions say that the chassis is too low, others say that the handling of the tank is average.

The good news for the German army was that they had a new tank that was on par with the Tiger in terms of main performance, and it would not be long before they could equip their troops.

The bad news is that the new tank is a little more cumbersome for the driver than the Tiger, and the level of protection on the sides and rear has dropped slightly by a few millimeters......

There is also another good news - anyway, the current German tank crews have not seen the Tiger tank two years later, and they have not yet been whetted by the "luxury limited edition" full of German characteristics!

Although it seems that the steering wheel controlled Tiger tank now really created a precedent for steering wheel control tank technology. However, in today's view, this technology was used in 1940, which was a little too far ahead of its time......

How far ahead of the curve? Ahead of the curve, the Leopard tanks produced in Germany at the same time do not seem to be controlled by the steering wheel......

In this case, there is nothing wrong with using a joystick that is better produced, the technology is more mature, and there is actually nothing to delay to control the tank.

The problem of inconvenient control of the joystick, because the weight of the tank was reduced, was also not so prominent on the new tank No. 5.

After this simplification, the new No. 5 tank received a huge step forward in production. This tank is easier to produce than the historical Leopard tank, and the man-hours of the No. 4 tank are about the same!

"It's really a masterpiece of modern industry...... At the same time, it is also an unprecedented disaster in the history of industry...... "Standing in front of the window, watching the first assembled No. 5 tank parked in the test site, Henschel and the designers of Krupp and Porsche, looking at the tank outside the glass window with sourness.

In terms of production details, the new tank can be described as unaesthetically devoid and even a little ugly - the welded gaps are left on the sides of the turret, and the handrails inside are even just a substitute for rope weaving.

Some of the parts that have to be made of steel are also carefully calculated, and some non-load-bearing parts even use some unprocessed offcuts.

For example, on a pedal under the captain's feet, there are some holes of different sizes and shapes, which are actually cut off and used as other parts......

Strictly speaking, in the past, this pedal may have been just a scrap of scraps, but now, it is a pedal on a tank - saving to the point that it is not wasted at all, which can be regarded as ingenious.

As a result of these efforts, the new tank was rigorously calculated and designed, which led to a significant increase in the speed of production. The prototype model numbered A was produced several times in a single day.

Don't look in some inconspicuous corners, this new tank has a shabby "cheap" smell everywhere, but where it should be good, the new No. 5 tank has not cut corners at all!

The tank was equipped with perhaps the most sophisticated sight in the world, and the error was negligible.

A skilled gun commander can operate this tank, aiming at a gasoline canister target up to 1,000 meters away, and has a high chance of hitting it!

There are very few countries in the world that can produce such a sophisticated instrument, at least in terms of the sighting system, the new No. 5 tank and the Tiger tank are exactly the same, or even slightly surpassed!

The new tank turret, in a laboratory environment, can even hit targets at a distance of 2,000 meters, with an astonishing degree of accuracy.

As for why the German tank sighting system is so good, just look at the company that produces these lenses: Zeiss!

The company's lenses are known in the industry as the best camera lenses out there – there isn't one! Even NASA used the company's lenses when it landed on the moon......

While the aiming system is somewhat costless, the tank gun used in the No. 5 tank is also the same model as the Tiger tank - the famous 88mm L56 tank gun!

The gun of this model uses tungsten alloy armor-piercing shells, which can penetrate armor 1500 mm thick at a distance of 122 meters.

With the more common cap-piercing shell, it was able to penetrate 90 mm of armor at a distance of 1,500 meters - which is about the thickness of the frontal armor of all future Allied tanks.

Therefore, when Li Le chose this 88 mm caliber tank gun, which is famous in history, it was destined that the firepower of the No. 5 tank would not be outdated in the entire World War II!

The new No. 5 tank, the sharp blade created by Li Le and German engineers, will become the main battle tank to replace the No. 4 tank, the Tiger tank and the Panther tank!

As for the heavy tank of the future, equipped with the No. 6 of the elite group, that is another design idea.

On the premise of ensuring the production of the new No. 5 tank, Li Le also liked to mass-produce a newer model of heavy tank as the fist of the German armored forces.

"The Führer is trying to make us do it, to produce tank......s like machine guns," the designer of Porsche, who hated the new No. 5 tank the most, shook his head helplessly.

"It's a disaster...... The Führer restrained the new tank to be as shoddy and shabby as the Volkswagen. Henschel's tank designer was similarly sour.

"But...... The performance of the new tank is really strong......" the designer of the Krupp company finally concluded sourly.