Time Slip Reiwa Japan

A.D.1938 - 042 - Tank Development Competition/G4

The lessons of the Siberian War of Independence led countries to compete in the development of tanks. It was a time when tanks with sufficient armor, high mobility, and firepower that could defeat any tank were desired.

. . .

United States

The M2 tank, which was deployed in the Siberian War of Independence, had many problems due to its underdeveloped technology, but its firepower and armor were effective enough to defeat the Soviet BT tanks, leading to a one-sided victory.

At the same time, however, the KV-1 tanks that engaged the Japanese came as a shock. The main gun of the KV-1 was 76 mm, almost the same firepower as the M2 tanks, but the heavy armor given the vehicle weight of 45 tons was overwhelming. The M2's main gun, 75 mm, was installed as a replacement for the 90 mm gun due to delays in its development, and since it was originally a field gun developed before the 1900s, it was extremely difficult to break through the frontal armor of the KV-1. *1

Therefore, the US Army was determined to develop a new anti-tank 90 mm gun. Initially, it was planned to be mounted on an improved M2 tank, but due to the lessons learned from the Siberian War of Independence, it was produced as a new tank with a completely new body structure, the M3 medium tank. It had a newly developed 90 mm gun and weighed 32 tons. The US Army wanted a tank with thicker armor, but it needed to be manufactured on the US mainland and transported by sea, so it was necessary to keep the weight down.

The US Army was not happy with this decision. In the event of another war with the Soviet Union, the M3 tanks were clearly not armored enough to fight the KV-1 tanks and their successors. For this reason, they brought the guns and other parts to the Frontier Republic and tried to build a system to manufacture them in the heavy machinery factory there.

Defeating the KV-1 tank is the US Army's anxiety and frustration that led to this action. As a result, the tanks that will be abolished the weight limit will be developed as the tentative name F (Frontier) tanks. It was the development of a de facto heavy tank with a 90 mm gun with a longer barrel and a weight of over 40 tons. *2

. . .

Britain

The development of a heavy assault tank in collaboration with Japan is finally completed, resulting in the Challenger tank. It was a 42-ton heavy tank with a newly developed 17 lb. tank gun, sloped armor, and spaced armor—the birth of a de facto main battle tank.

The reason it took so long to develop was that the Challenger was not just a high-performance tank, but was desired as a tank that could be easily mass-produced and maintained in today's Britain. In that sense, the Challenger tank was also a tank to absorb the know-how about tanks that Japan had. And based on the know-how accumulated in the development of the Challenger tank, the mobile artillery vehicle, the successor to the infantry tank, was developed.

Because of the high cost of the Challenger tanks, it was too much of a burden to upgrade the infantry tanks that accompanied the infantry troops, let alone the cruiser tanks for the tank units. The mobile artillery vehicle was developed as a low-cost vehicle with enough mobility to accompany infantry, enough firepower to destroy targets other than tanks, and enough armor to protect against infantry firepower. *3

The main gun was a newly developed 6 lb. anti-tank gun, and the weight was kept to 18 tons. The turret, which was cast to reduce weight, was thinly armored, but the slope was well calculated, and from the perspective of countries other than the G4 and the major powers, it was a fine tank. On the other hand, it was a troublesome opponent for Germany and the Soviet Union due to its high-powered 6 lb. gun, which had a punch that could destroy anything other than the heavy tanks of the 40-ton class and above.