Sword of Light: Humanoid Self-Propelled Artillery

Chapter 270 Recoilless Cannon

Mei Sheng frowned and sighed at Wang Gensheng's order, but Wang Gensheng, seeing Mei Sheng's appearance and the exhausted look on the faces of the Seventh Company, naturally understood that although the Seventh Company was considered an elite among ordinary soldiers.

However, there is still a considerable gap between them and the Marines in Wang Gensheng's Marine Corps, whose soldiers are all beginners in martial arts.

Especially in terms of energy and physical strength, they were far inferior, so after thinking about it, Wang Gensheng decided not to force himself and said to Mei Sheng:

"Of course, if that still doesn't work, then your Seventh Company will abandon the mission of escorting the radio, and our Marine Corps will take over! Your Seventh Company can return to your unit directly! If the cipher comrade can't leave either, then we'll carry him!"

The final agreement was to travel through the night, carrying the captured equipment, and head towards the front-line command post at Dayu Cave.

Wang Gensheng also changed his weapon, replacing his original M2 heavy machine gun with an M20 recoilless rifle. That's right, this recoilless rifle is the same one that was mounted on a jeep in the movie "The Battle at Lake Changjin" and captured by Mei Sheng to fire at the Pershing tank.

Unfortunately, the M20 recoilless gun was clearly not powerful enough to penetrate the armor of the Pershing tank.

The M20 75mm recoilless rifle was an infantry battalion-level anti-tank gun developed and deployed by the United States in the 1940s, designed to fire without the gun barrel shifting backward.

This gun is mainly used for direct-fire attacks on tank and armored targets, supporting infantry in eliminating enemy personnel and destroying enemy bunkers and other field fortifications.

In 1930, the German Krupp company developed the LG40 75mm recoilless rifle. It was first used by the German army during the invasion of Crete in 1941 and was highly praised by the military for its outstanding performance in actual combat.

However, in 1943, the U.S. Army captured the LG40 75mm recoilless rifle in the North African theater. Although the U.S. had already developed the M18 57mm recoilless rifle at that time, the acquired technology still had to be used in the design of the U.S. Army's new generation of large-caliber artillery.

Then, in February 1944, the U.S. Army requested the Army to develop a 75mm recoilless rifle. The first prototype began testing at the firing range that year, and the test model was designated the T21E4 recoilless rifle.

然后一九四五年三月，75毫米无后坐力炮开始在欧洲和太平洋战场一显身手。接着一九四五年六月，T21E4测试炮正式定型为M20式75毫米无后坐力炮。

The cannon has a caliber of 75 mm, which is 22 times its caliber. It has 28 right-hand rifling grooves, a barrel length of 1.65 meters, and a weight of 47 kilograms.

The muzzle velocity is 300 meters per second. The effective range against stationary targets is 900 meters, and the effective range against moving targets is 350 meters. The effective range against stationary targets is 900 meters. The types of ammunition fired include high-explosive shells, shaped charge armor-piercing shells, and smoke shells.

Unfortunately, this recoilless gun was originally intended to be used against tanks, but the battlefield at this time was no longer World War II, and even the tanks on the Chaozhou battlefield were T-34 tanks.

The armor on the front of this tank, including the hull and turret, is ten centimeters thick, while the armor-piercing projectiles used by the M20 are only nine centimeters thick.

This is why it was impossible to penetrate the frontal armor of the T-34 tank, and even more so against its own Pershing tank. It's important to understand that the Pershing heavy tank had a welded hull; its sides, top, and bottom were made of rolled steel plates, while the front, rear, and turret were cast. Its upper frontal armor plate was 120 millimeters thick, even thicker than that of the T-34 tank.

The lower front armor plate was 76 mm thick, so the only way to penetrate the Pershing tank with the M20 recoilless rifle was to aim at the lower front armor. However, the lower front armor was not as large as the upper front armor, so it was not easy to hit.

As for the Pershing tank, the front side armor plates were 76 mm thick, and the rear side armor plates were 51 mm thick; the upper rear armor plate was 51 mm thick, and the lower rear armor plate was 19 mm thick. The front turret armor plate was 102 mm thick, and the side and rear armor plates were 76 mm thick.

Therefore, if you want to use the US military's M20 recoilless rifle to attack US tanks, you can only aim from the side or from the front at the lower armor of the tank hull. You can't take advantage of the fact that its armor-piercing rounds only penetrate nine centimeters!

In fact, Wang Gensheng was very strong, so he could easily throw heavy anti-tank grenades a hundred or two hundred meters without any problem. After all, his anti-tank grenades could penetrate armor up to 15 centimeters deep, which could easily penetrate the armor thickness of any tank on the battlefield.

However, the other Marines couldn't get very far! So it was still necessary to bring this recoilless rifle. More importantly, its high-explosive shells were very useful, especially when shooting at strongpoints. One high-explosive shell would immediately disable the strongpoint.

After traveling all night, Wang Gensheng finally arrived at Dayu Cave as the sun rose. Along the way, Wang Gensheng led the Marines and others on a 60-kilometer march, which is equivalent to walking more than 7 kilometers per hour.

Even this was only possible after Wang Gensheng had the Marines transfer all the loads carried by the Seventh Company to the Marines, meaning the Seventh Company soldiers marched empty-handed.

There was no way around it; apart from the Marines led by Wang Gensheng, who had mastered the basics of stance training and possessed endurance beyond that of ordinary people, the rest of the Seventh Company were just ordinary people, so they simply couldn't withstand such a high-intensity march.

Once you've mastered the basics of Zhan Zhuang (standing meditation), the most noticeable effect is a significant increase in endurance, much like how an average person can carry a hundred-pound load for over ten kilometers.

However, it would be difficult to carry 100 kilograms of weight for 50 or 60 kilometers.

When Wang Gensheng told the front-line commander about the Ninth Army Corps' lack of cotton-padded clothing, the commander quickly agreed with Wang Gensheng's idea: to use American soldiers' uniforms for warmth, distinguishing them by white cloth strips tied to their arms.

In addition, Wang Gensheng also mentioned that they could take advantage of the increasingly heavy snow to build a snow hut at the ambush site to keep warm!
It's important to know that the snow was getting heavier and heavier at this time, and based on experience, the depth of the snow would soon exceed 40 or 50 centimeters. Building a snow house in such a deep snow would be a very easy task.

Wang Gensheng's method for keeping warm was quickly sent to various combat units of the Ninth Army Corps.

As Wang Gensheng left the front-line command post, the snow fell even heavier. At this moment, Duan Peng ran over and excitedly said to Wang Gensheng:
"Si Ling, that's great! The snow on the ground is now more than 20 centimeters deep, we can ski forward now!"

Wang Gensheng smiled and nodded in agreement with the news.
"Alright! Let's ski to the Chosin Reservoir area and give the US army a surprise!"

(End of this chapter)