Chapter 35

Meeting Room 1 is a small conference room with only a dozen seats.

After exchanging greetings, Wilhelm picked up a stack of papers and shook them. "Is this the tank design you've given me?" Before his visit to the Soviet Union, he had asked his secretary to find the heads of these companies and requested each of them to design three tanks. The papers he held in his hands were exactly the design sketches of these tanks.

Porsche asked with some confusion, "Um, Your Highness, is there a problem?" Wilhelm was his boss now, and he didn't dare to be careless with these drawings. He put a lot of thought into them.

Wilhelm clapped his hands with annoyance. "What is this? 4.5 tons, 5 tons, 6 tons, 6.5 tons... Are you planning to play house with these? Huh?"

One of the six-ton tanks caught his attention. The chassis is over four meters long, with four balanced suspension large-diameter road wheels and four support rollers on each side, with idler wheels at the rear. The turret is equipped with two machine guns and uses a air-cooled diesel engine produced by Krupp.

Hey, isn't this the No. 1 tank?

Even without looking at the physical vehicle, just based on the data on the drawings, Wilhelm knew that this was the future No. 1 tank!

The representative from Mercedes-Benz explained, "Your Highness, this is the current mainstream weight for light tanks. Like the French Renault FT-17 light tank and the British..." His voice grew softer as he spoke, and in the end, he mumbled a few more sentences before falling silent.

"..." Wilhelm could only roll his eyes helplessly. After all, tanks first appeared on the battlefield just over a decade ago, and what tanks of the future would be like was still a blank space. Many countries were taking the wrong path. Even the mighty British Empire, the birthplace of tanks, produced mediocre cruiser tanks and tank destroyers.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the United States also came up with so-called infantry support tanks and tank destroyers.

Their armored forces' theory was that tanks are used to support infantry, while tank destroyers are used to eliminate tanks.

So, the standard operating procedure for the U.S. armored forces was as follows: M4 tanks would bravely advance alongside infantry. If they encountered enemy tank forces, the commander of the M4 tank would call for nearby M10 tank destroyers to come and eliminate the troublesome enemy tanks. In actual combat, the situation the Americans encountered was this: the M4 tank got beaten up by German tanks and when the M10 tank destroyer arrived, the Germans had already cleaned up the battlefield and had a meal before retreating.

So, it wasn't surprising that Germany took some wrong turns. During World War II, the Tiger I and Tiger II focused on protection. However, in the post-war period, they discovered that heavy tanks were a mistake, resulting in another extreme. The Panther tank had outstanding firepower and mobility but was extremely weak in terms of protection!

Coincidentally, Armstrong-Vickers in Britain had recently designed a light tank specifically for export, the Vickers Mk.E. Although this tank was not widely adopted by the British Army, its innovative and excellent design was appreciated by other countries.

This tank had a certain level of firepower and mobility, and its performance was reliable with easy maintenance. The hull was made using the mature riveting method to maintain a certain level of mobility, so the armor was slightly weak. The power came from a British Armstrong upright inline four-cylinder gasoline engine, which provided enough power for the tank to move at a speed of 35 kilometers per hour on paved roads."

The tank designs of the other companies clearly 'borrowed' from this tank. This tank features a dual-track construction with four pairs on each side. Each pair connects two road wheels, and there are two pairs of road wheels with spring structures on each side. This suspension system is considered quite good and capable of enduring long-distance travel, making it an excellent design for this era. (Based on this tank, the Soviet Union developed the T-26 tank), with a total worldwide production exceeding ten thousand units, greatly influencing tank design worldwide!

However, Wilhelm naturally didn't value such things. "Mainstream? What does that mean? Before long, German tanks will be the mainstream. Our standard will be the European and even global standard. Those guys will end up copying our designs. I am now redefining the standards for German tanks. Light tanks will weigh 15-30 tons, medium tanks will weigh 30-50 tons, and heavy tanks will weigh over 50 tons. As for those weighing less than 15 tons, they will be categorized as ultralight tanks."

Hearing this, the responsible individuals couldn't help but exchange puzzled looks. The representatives of MAN and Rheinmetall-MaK companies spoke with a troubled expression, "Um, Your Highness, although your ideas are good, we don't have the technological foundation to immediately produce tanks weighing over twenty tons."

Their words were not merely an excuse. Present-day Germany had no prior research on tank projects, and everything had to start from scratch. In this situation, the best approach was to first develop a preliminary model and then gradually advance.

The 15-30 ton range proposed by His Highness was too advanced.

Wilhelm waved his hand, interrupting them. "Don't worry, I'm not asking you to immediately produce the finished product. The research and development time for light tanks will be five years, followed by a two-year period for fine-tuning. The research and development time for medium tanks will be seven years, with a two-year fine-tuning period. There will be a ten-year timeframe for the development of heavy tanks, followed by a two-year period for fine-tuning."

Upon hearing this, the responsible individuals breathed a sigh of relief. They thought he wanted them to produce the finished product right away. Five years should be ample time.

"I want the operating procedures for these three types of tanks to be as similar as possible. In other words, tank crew members of light tanks should be able to operate medium or heavy tanks proficiently without specialized training." This was something Wilhelm learned from the future Germans. Soviet fighter aircraft control panels hadn't undergone significant changes for several generations, making it easy for experienced pilots to become familiar with different aircraft types. Unlike the United States, where sometimes the operational methods of different aircraft models were completely changed, requiring pilots to relearn.

"Furthermore, various components should be made as universal as possible. When you return, discuss the standardization and universality of components. For example, on future battlefields, there may be armored vehicles from BMW and Mercedes-Benz with different faults. I hope we can achieve a level where parts from a BMW can be used to repair a Mercedes-Benz, and vice versa. I don't want to wait for specialized parts to arrive for repairs, and I don't want maintenance workers to learn two different repair methods. I don't care about your civilian vehicles, but military vehicles must meet this standard."