Grand Alliance (Kirov Series) by John Schettler

Author:John Schettler [Schettler, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: The Writing Shop Press
Published: 2014-07-08T00:00:00+00:00

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Lieutenant William Bowers watched the artillery fire come in to silence the hilltop battery and then engage suspected gun positions on his left. His Sabre had the wadi limited approach that led right up to that hill, a narrow channel that the enemy obviously thought was well protected from direct attack by armor. He radioed back and told the Mercian Battalion to hold in place, but to be ready with infantry on his call. Then he gave the order to move out.

The tanks broke column and spread out in lines, three abreast, five lines deep. Behind them a company of the Mercian infantry in their Warrior IFVs waited on call. The next three rounds to come in were smoke, giving his force a thin mask to make their approach, an advantage he hadn’t called for and really did not need. It had been designed to frustrate the optics and thermals of enemy T-72s, but that beast was not their enemy today—not if Lieutenant Reeves had his head screwed on right that morning. Instead Bowers would end up facing the best guns the German army had for killing tanks, bar none, the weapon that would make a legend for itself here in this very desert, the dual purpose 88.

As Bowers advanced, his gunner had not seen a smaller gun position at the base of the hill and off to the right. It was there that Streich had placed a Pak 50 and two smaller 37mm AT guns in defilade within the wadi. The guns were below the ground level the tanks were using, and therefore not seen on the thermal imaging system until the crews suddenly pushed them forward to the edge of the wadi and began firing. The first indication Bowers had of their presence was a small clink against his frontal armor—a sound that was much more than an errant stone kicked up by the grinding tank tracks.

“I think we just took a small caliber round,” he said, though the tank showed no signs of any damage. “Gunner, track left.”

The big turret, nearly the length of the entire tank, rotated fifteen degrees left and saw the guns. Another muzzle flash marked the position, soon followed by a dull clink as yet another round struck the tank. “Target marked!”

“Shoot!”

The HESH L31 was the first round to be fired by the Royal Scotts Dragoons. It was a thin cased shell with plastic explosives inside that splayed out on the target and were ignited milliseconds later. Useful against fortifications, the man who had first developed the idea, the British engineer Charles Dennistoun Burney, was probably working on the project even now, along with other ideas he spawned for gliding torpedoes and bombs, and recoilless rifles that came to be known as “Burney Guns.” He might be gratified to know the terrible form and shape his ideas would take in the 21st Century, and to learn his HESH round had struck the first real blow by ground forces in the battle that was now beginning.

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