John Schettler - Grand Alliance

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.”

The driver inside accommodated him, and the deep low rumble of the big engine filled the air, thrumming with an expression of sheer power. O’Connor closed his eyes, listening to it, an almost frightening sound with overtones of doom in the lower registers. If Troyak had been there, he would have known it at once, a sound not unlike that deep, bone penetrating vibration they had heard in Siberia, only clearly audible this time. It had the same effect, and spoke of one word that it would put into the soul of any enemy it faced-fear.

O’Connor turned to the other men, and smiled. “It’s the bloody Hammer of God,” he said, and that was not too far from the mark. “This is… well its quite extraordinary! I had no idea a tank like this was even in development.”

Now he realized why this unit might be here, far from spying eyes, a new secret weapon, perhaps sent here to a remote proving ground for training. But Lord, he could only imagine these tanks in action now, thundering in at 40 kilometers per hour and firing as they went. There was no way they would ever hit anything, he thought, until they showed him how the tank could rotate its main body while the turret maintained a rigid and stable position aimed at a potential distant target.

“That’s what a stabilized gun system can do,” said Kinlan. “We can hit like lightning, move like a wildcat, and we’ve very sharp teeth. General,” he put his hand on O’Connor’s shoulder now. “This tank is all but invulnerable to anti-tank weaponry of this day. You could roll up one of your Matildas, park it right there and fire, and you might do nothing more than disturb the paint job on that armor. I have sixty of them sitting here, and woe betide anyone who gets in my way when I turn them loose. Now… What were you saying earlier about us having trouble holding off that Italian Infantry heading for Siwa?”

“Gentlemen,” said O’Connor. “I’m not much of a drinking man, but I’ll have a nip of anything you’ve got, just so I can stay on my feet.” He turned to them now, his astonishment becoming a broad smile. “Bloody marvelous!”

It was marvelous, and yet incomprehensible. O’Connor just kept staring at the tank, not one, but sixty of them! Behind the dazzle, a strange feeling came over him. The tank was extraordinary, its size and design astounding but, more than anything, he was flabbergasted at the things he had seen in the interior compartment. The whole space was immaculate, and looked like the dash board of an aircraft in places. Yet there were no typical needle gauges and dials. In their place the interior of the tank glowed softly with a strange light. Colored panels were lit up with numbers and symbols, and in one place he saw what looked to be a map glowing softly on a glass pane! The driver merely touched it with a finger and the whole image expanded and changed! He was so taken with it that he was almost mesmerized. He was seeing things here that boggled the mind. Look at that armor! The Lieutenant had said something about it that stuck in his mind.

“What did you call this armor, Lieutenant?”

“Third generation Dorchester Chobham, sir.”

“Dorchester?”

O’Connor knew the place. It was a small market town on the southern coast, just above Weymouth, with a population of about 10,000 people who chiefly traded local produce three or four days a week. The ladies there had taken to organizing for the coming war early on, setting up the local “Women’s Voluntary Service” or WVS, which was soon called the Widows, Virgins and Spinsters. The town, like many others after Dunkirk, had also set up the LDV troops, or “Local Defense Volunteers,” many armed with little more than broomsticks. After the people took to calling them the “Look, Duck and Vanish” squads, they changed the name to the “Home Guard” last July. He had a relative there, and she had written some time ago to say they were all busy making concrete anti-invasion blocks to drag off to the beaches, “Dragon’s Teeth” as they were called. Yet here this man was telling him they had also been hard at work on Dragon’s scales for this monstrous tank!

“Dorchester Chobham…” O’Connor repeated the words, an unaccountable feeling rising in him now. We could barely equip the troops that struggled home after Dunkirk. There weren’t even enough simple rifles in the country to re-arm the men! How in the world did we go from broomstick militias and concrete blocks to this?

“Third generation?”

“Yes sir, the process is hush, hush, but I understand that they’re using more exotic materials now in the composites-carbon nanotubes and all.”

O’Connor heard the words, but was oblivious to their meaning. He suddenly felt daft as a brush. Third generation? That implied two earlier models or versions of this armor. He suddenly felt something was very odd here. Secrecy was one thing, but hiding the design, development and testing of a weapon this sophisticated was quite another. There was simply no way these new vehicles could have been built and deployed in a fully combat ready status without thousands of men knowing about it, people in the factories, testing sites, dockyards, merchant marine, and anyone at Alexandria when they arrived. And he simply could not imagine that Wavell, with his back to the wall at Sidi Barani, would have blithely ordered a unit of this size and obvious value south into the heart of nowhere like this. It simply made no military sense. He turned to General Kinlan with a strange look in his eye.