Chapter 280: British Counters to German Panzers
A loud explosion went off as a shell struck a Panzer I… The explosive blast was sufficient to damage its front plate, which was where the armor was thickest.
In fact, the shell surprisingly bore through the rolled homogenous and sloped armor of the Panzer I and caused what would have been a confirmed kill of the entire crew inside had the vehicle in question not been derelict for testing purposes.
The shell had been fired by a 5cm PaK 38, or a 5cm PaK 15, as it was known in this timeline. In fact, the shell was not an ordinary high explosive shell fired by artillery, but rather a dedicated Armour-piercing ballistic capped high explosive tracer shell developed over the course of the last five years deliberately to counter the eventual introduction of Allied Tanks.
As Bruno tended to do, he over-prepared for this eventuality by giving a rough estimate of what he had in mind, and sending it to his most talented engineers in the field of artillery munitions. His requirements, to be able to secure a single shot kill when hitting a Panzer I at its most heavily armored point.
After years of trial and error, the Panzergranate 39, or as I should say the Panzergranate 15 had come to life to accompany the guns used on the Panzer I, and the variant of the chassis being referred to as the Panzerjäger I. Which unlike the variant used in Bruno’s past life, made use of the larger 5cm PaK 38 Antitank gun mounted on a E-10 Chassis.
The engineers rejoiced as they saw the success of their newest shell. It was a principle that could easily be scaled up to accompany larger guns in the future. And could very much be used to obliterate tanks even until the later years of the Second World War.
Assuming, of course, this war occurred again in this timeline, and Allied technology had not been advanced 10 fold as a result of the butterfly effect. Either way, this was not a worry to be had at the moment.
For the Panzerjäger I, its main gun, and the ammunition it would use had proven to be a monumental success. If this weapon could obliterate a German Panzer, then whatever poorly assembled knockoff the Allies tried to come up with to counter it would not stand a chance.
The lead engineer was quick to contact the project manager and inform him of his opinions on their most recent success.
"You can inform the Generalfeldmarschall that by 1916 at the latest, the Panzerjäger will be approved for mass production!"