O’Connor had already started down the hill, as if drawn by some powerful magnetism, and Kinlan looked over his shoulder at Fedorov, giving him a wink as they followed. The General walked right up to the nearest tank, his eyes wide with amazement as the scale of the beast became more evident as he approached. The crew there were standing to attention, saluting crisply as he came up, which he returned, his eyes transfixed by the awesome machine in front of him.
“God in his heaven,” he whispered. “That’s twice the size of a Matilda, and that gun would make a 25 pounder blush. What is it?”
“Lieutenant?” Kinlan looked at the commander of his First Sabre, Lieutenant Matt Gibson.
“Sir! This is the new smoothbore BAE-120 conversion, based on the Rheinmetall 120mm L55. First Sabre was the leading unit selected for this upgrade.”
The gun weighed over 7000 pounds and exceeded 17 feet in length, enough to drop the jaw of any old tank warrior of the 1940s. Popski was now seeing the tank up close for the first time as well, and he was just shaking his head in complete awe.
“Did you say 120 millimeters?” O’Connor gave the man a look. The Matilda only mounted a 40mm gun.
“Yes sir.”
“Artillery? Mounted on a tank hull? My god, the damn thing is enormous! Then this is a mobile artillery gun?”
“Not quite,” said Kinlan. “It’s primary ordinance is anti-tank and AP rounds. Tell the General what we have in the cupboard, Lieutenant. What are our performance metrics?” Kinlan prompted his Sabre commander again.
“Yes sir. This gun will fire armor piercing fin stabilized discarding sabot rounds, HESH-2 high explosive rounds, and the new CHARM-4 depleted uranium rounds developed specifically for the smoothbore. CHARM-3 was the rifled barrel variant for the old L30 gun system. Effective firing range is 4000 meters, but one of our boys hit a T-60 a good while back, and knocked it out at 5200 meters.”
O’Connor heard the range, unbelieving. “Did you mean 520 meters?”
“No sir, 5200. And the new smoothbore also allows us to deploy the new LAHAT system. That would be the La ser H oming A nti- T ank missile, effective out to 8000 meters.”
“Missile? It fires a rocket?”
“Yes sir, and it’s quite effective-a semi-active laser guided tandem HEAT round, rated to penetrate 800mm of standard steel or reactive armor.”
O’Connor heard the words, but not their meaning. The man had just told him this rocket projectile could penetrate 800 millimeters! “Why, that would go in one side of a Matilda, and clean out the other,” he said, “and blow through four in a row! This can’t be so.”
“Our Lieutenant Gibson here is very well informed, General,” said Kinlan. “I’ll vouch for his claim, as I’ve seen these tanks in action. They’ll do everything he says, and more. This big fellow is also fairly agile for its size. You wouldn’t think that to look at the beast, but what is a fair battle speed, Lieutenant?”
“40KPH off road on decent ground, sir. Just under 60KPH on a good road.”
“And we can fire at that speed if we choose to do so,” Kinlan was enjoying this very much.
“Unbelievable…” There was no other work for what O’Connor was now seeing and hearing.
“Shall we have a look inside?” Kinlan smiled.
“By all means!” O’Connor was up onto the tank and, when his hand touched the heavy turret armor, he was stunned by its sheer mass. “Heavy as a block house!” he exclaimed.
“Third Generation Dorchester Chobham Armor, sir. The best protected tank in the world.” The Lieutenant was not making an idle boast.
O’Connor had put his hand firmly on the elephant’s mighty flanks, and seen its awesome trunk, yet when he finally lowered himself through the entry hatch his amazement was complete. He was shown the commander’s position, the periscope view and thermal imaging system, and then, to his utter astonishment, the digital electronics, and all within a cool, air conditioned and relatively spacious compartment. Tankers in the desert might endure temperatures north of 130 degrees in the hot sun, but not the men in these tanks, and this simple physical comfort improved their efficiency by 100 %. They could think faster, react quicker, and fight longer in the controlled interior environment of the tank.
The General stared in utter amazement when the driver and gunner spoke of their respective duties.
“We’ve 25 of these at the ready,” the gunner explained, pointing the ammunition. “Another 25 stowed within easy reach.”
It was as if O’Connor had been swallowed by a behemoth, and when he emerged, he had a dazed, bedraggled expression on his face, Jonah expelled from the whale, senseless at what he had experienced. He got down from the tank, then stood there in complete silence, just looking at it.
“Start the engine,” he said at last. “Let me hear it.”
