It's better to conquer them than to command the steel torrent

Chapter 78 | Make Ivan Ross great again!

"Your Majesty, I bring some good news and bad news today."

At the Catherine Palace, Major General Kovalev met with Veronika Alexandrovna.

The latter was playing chess with her maid Ulyana, which was Her Majesty the Queen's biggest form of entertainment.

"Come on, let me hear the bad news."

"Your Majesty, the Vickers-Kharkov Engine Plant still hasn't been able to resolve the manufacturing defects of its tank diesel engines. The V2 diesel engines that leave the factory can only achieve an operating life of approximately 100 hours." Major General Kovalev added: "The British-made ones can operate stably for 160 hours."

"This isn't bad news in my opinion. At least they can be used," Veronica said calmly.

The Ivan Rus people were very frustrated to find that although they had designed a good engine, the manufacturing process was not up to standard. The quality of their own engines was far from that of the engines commissioned by the British.

This problem also existed in history, and it was not until the late stages of the war that it gradually improved.

"The second piece of bad news is that I have to tell you that the mass production of the T-34 is facing enormous difficulties. The plan to produce 1000 tanks cannot be achieved as scheduled. The person in charge has been covering up the problem and has been ordered arrested by the Internal Affairs Committee."

"Covering up the problem? How do they explain it?"

Major General Kovalev replied truthfully: "They argued that there were many naive aspects in the tank's design, that everyone had overestimated the rationality of the tank's design, and that the factory needed a lot of time to modify the details to facilitate manufacturing."

Veronica frowned with dissatisfaction and said coldly: "This must be carefully investigated. Besides, I don't care about any difficulties. I just want the army to be ready on time."

At the beginning of the year, the Imperial War Council officially assigned the T-34 number to the new cruiser tank and issued an order to manufacture 9 of them before September.

However, this is completely unrealistic.

The factory encountered numerous problems while trying to set up the production line.

The designer who created the T-34 was undoubtedly a genius, but he clearly lacked a deep understanding of the capabilities of Ivan Rus's automotive industry. It can be said that the T-34 was a product of unconventional thinking, and the prototype was not at all suitable for large-scale production.

As a last resort, the factory could only try to modify the design.

The Vickers-Kharkov factory cancelled the overall design of the prototype vehicle - to put it simply, the front of the vehicle body was originally made by bending a huge piece of steel plate, and the factory modified it into two sections of upper and lower steel plates that were welded together.

【Picture】

The Mariupol Royal Steel Plant believed that the welded turret of the prototype vehicle was very complex and time-consuming and labor-intensive to manufacture - a whole piece of steel plate had to be bent into an arc through a large plate bending machine, so the factory chose to organize a team to develop a cast turret.

【Picture】

Due to the lack of experience in producing heavy armored vehicles, the Savinkov Automobile Plant was at a loss when faced with orders and had to ask other factories to send people for guidance. However, the teams from other factories were extremely anxious but still could not solve the problem.

In order to meet production conditions as much as possible, the factory made countless modifications to the T-34 prototype. Within half a year, 4622 details were adjusted, and about 2500 details have been submitted and are awaiting approval from superiors.

Therefore, the Ivan Rus Empire War Council sent representatives to the United Kingdom to seek help.

Vickers still has a small amount of spare production capacity and agreed to help with the OEM production of some chassis, welded turrets, and diesel engines, with deliveries starting in July.

Veronica, who was in a bad mood, said, "So, what's the good news?"

Major General Kovalev replied: "Nikitin is extremely grateful for your forgiveness. The second coking plant newly built in the Pechora region is expected to be put into operation at the beginning of next year. His mistakes are being corrected."

"If he hadn't tried so hard, I would have shot him." Veronica said this almost gritting her teeth.

"Everyone has seen your Majesty's kindness." Kovalev couldn't help but feel ashamed.

Nikitin was a member of the Reich Committee for Heavy Industry Construction, primarily responsible for overseeing the chemical industry.

He was rather arbitrary and short-sighted, lacking foresight, but he knew how to please people. Ivan Rus vigorously promoted industrialization, and coke was one of the key raw materials. In order to meet the growing demand, six years ago Nikitin approved a simple innovation - increasing the temperature of the coke oven.

This significantly increases coke production without the time-consuming and labor-intensive construction of more coking plants, which seems very clever.

However, the negative impact of this heating method is that it reduces the yield of toluene (toluene is a by-product of the coking plant), and toluene is the raw material of TNT.

Obviously, Nikitin's clever decision at the time was short-sighted and directly led to major defects in Ivan Ross's explosives production capacity.

The Imperial War Council discovered this potential crisis two years ago when it conducted a comprehensive assessment of war potential.

When Veronica learned about this, she was furious and immediately ordered Nikitin's execution, but many people pleaded for him.

Nikitin has made no contributions over the years, but he has worked hard! Your Majesty, please think twice!
In the end, Nikitin was pardoned on the eve of his execution, mainly because Veronika felt that it would damage his reputation to abandon him after he had served his purpose.

Her Majesty's kindness is beyond measure and I have no way to repay her. I can only serve her with all my heart until my death.

"There's more good news." Kovalev lowered his voice involuntarily as he spoke. "Thanks to the silent dedication of the unknown warriors, the toluene we ordered has cleared customs and entered the country."

"How many tons?"

"A total of 2800 tons, the first batch is 700 tons."

According to the instructions of the Grand Commander, the Grand Command Federation is not allowed to export many industrial products to the Ivan Ross Empire, toluene is among them.

However, hard work pays off.

The Imperial Signal Intelligence Agency took great pains to design a trap.

Using a clever honey trap, they coerced several federal officials into collaborating and misrepresenting toluene as unrestricted methanol on paperwork.

With this method, Ivan Ross successfully obtained a batch of additional important raw materials, further enriching the backup energy of the war machine, which was an unexpected surprise.

After reporting the progress, Major General Kovalev left.

The game continued, but Uliana found that Veronica was distracted from time to time and was not concentrating on playing chess at all.

After a while, she simply stopped playing chess and ordered, "Go and prepare a cup of coffee for me."

She tried to calm herself down, stood up and paced by the window.

By now, after years of hard work, the Imperial Armed Forces had been rebuilt into a formidable force.

Army divisions are divided into four levels:
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A fully staffed division (Type I division) is 95% fully equipped and manned, ready for combat at any time.
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70% of the staff of the division (Type II division) are missing and 7 days of training is required
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25% of the personnel of the large conscription division (Category III division) need 20 days to train
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10% of the small conscript division (Class IV division) will need 45 days to train

The Imperial Army's standing forces are well-trained and not small in size.

Of these, only Type I and Type II divisions are standing forces, totaling approximately 260 million personnel, divided into:
｜16 tank divisions
｜21 independent tank brigades
｜85 infantry divisions
｜12 mountain infantry divisions
｜10 motorized infantry division

｜9 cavalry divisions
Such an army of more than two million is only the standing field troops.

The Army's reserve forces are even larger, with a total of 85 large infantry divisions (Category III) and 107 small infantry divisions (Category IV). As long as the mobilization order is issued, it will not take long for them to transform into a million-strong army.

If all goes well, the ambitious operational plan will be implemented in the fall, and by then, the shame that has plagued the entire nation for more than two decades will be completely washed away.

revenge!

Make Ivan Ross great again!
Regain the glory of being the overlord of Europe a hundred years ago!

(End of this chapter)