“An irrelevance at first glance, Comrade General Secretary… but the woman seems to think it important.”
“She’s rarely wrong.”
Beria smarted at the words, even though he knew them to be true.
“I will have my men work to discover the truth of this but… my first thoughts are maskirovka, nothing more.”
“Explain, Lavrentiy?”
“He is an icon for the British, but he was badly wounded, and, according to my last reports, had not recovered enough to even walk unassisted.”
Stalin lit a cigarette, not taking his eyes of the NKVD boss.
“Recent information?”
“Two weeks old, no more, Comrade General Secretary.”
“So… probably maskirovka… a cheap move for them… no assets needed to try and make us move resources to the southern borders.”
He accepted the tea that Beria had poured and greedily consumed it.
“None the less… watch the situation closely, Lavrentiy. Liaise with Comrade Nazarbayeva too.”
Even though the cup was raised to Beria’s lips, it didn’t mask the automatic snarl that formed at the mention of the GRU general’s name.
Stalin changed tack pouncing on something he had noticed earlier.
“So, what do you have to tell me about Toplitz, Lavrentiy?”
Beria had made the right noises for the rest of the briefing, but his mind had still remained firmly on the Toplitzsee, for reasons presently known only to him and Serov.
Stalin had spotted the change in his man, and now gave him no way out.
He bought himself a moment by carefully placing the bone china cup and saucer back on the table.
“Comrade General Secretary, I did not wish to proceed further in front of the others. The matter of Toplitz will require some… err… delicacy of thought, so I felt I should inform you… and only you… in the first instance.”
From behind his raised cup, Stalin managed a strangled ‘go on’.
“Comrade General Secretary, the printed material so far recovered reportedly equates to roughly five hundred million pounds of counterfeit British currency…”
The conversation continued well into the evening.
A large number of dignitaries had gathered to witness the demonstration, and many were already suffering in the relentless heat, the sun beating down on all, regardless of status or rank.
After a briefing in Westdown, a convoy of vehicles had taken the entourage to the firing range, where they waited for the short display to begin.
A small fire had been quickly extinguished, probably started by the sun’s rays striking some long abandoned glass fragments.
Those with an experienced eye had spotted the targets and the intended killers, successfully identifying all but the sleekest of the enemy vehicles placed downrange.
These consisted of captured tanks; an IS-II, IS-III, the huge ISU-152, and the mystery beast.
At the firing line sat two more familiar types; an Archer SPAT and a Centurion.
The latter was the very latest effort from the British Tank industry, a revised mark III, armed with the 20-pounder main gun and improvements to the Meteor engine.
But today, it was all about the gun…
… or rather, the shell.
Charles Burney had developed his shell in the 1940s, initially as an anti-concrete shell that was intended to be effective against the legendary German fortifications of the West Wall and Siegfried Line.
Lieutenant General Sir Sidney Chevalier Kirkman, GOC Southern Command, was the senior military man on parade, supported by a plethora of officers and experts from the Tank Corps and Cavalry regiments, all men who had ridden the steel beasts into battle.
A handful of politicians were there to be suitably impressed and sign off on the project, if the military men thought it was the resolution to the problems the armoured force was starting to encounter.
As per the briefing, the Archer kicked off proceedings, speeding an APDS shell downrange.
The gunners had been picked for their skill, and the shell struck true, penetrating the IS-II.
This was no surprise to the tankers amongst the observers, the capabilities of the shell being widely understood.
The Archer next took on the IS-III, successfully hitting the stationary tank three times and, as expected by the veterans, had no effect whatsoever at that range.
The ISU-152 succumbed first shot, the APDS core easily slicing through its armour.
Finally, the Archer took on the mystery tank, revealed now as one of the latest T-54 Soviet battle tanks, captured in Poland.
The shell failed to have any effect.
Two more hits produced the same result.
There was a twenty-minute break whilst a small group of tank officers rode out to the targets and quickly inspected them.
On return, they hastily passed on their findings. The tanks that had been hit and penetrated might not have been knocked out by the small shell, something that was a known problem, and another reason that the 17-pdr was starting to fail to measure up to the modern battlefield.
The new Centurion Mk III took on the IS-II with its 20-pdr gun… then the IS-III… ISU-152… and finally the T-54.
One shot each.
One hit on each.
The whole group travelled out to the targets.
The excitement at what they found made normal conversation impossible.
Each vehicle showed the signs of an external explosion but there was no evidence of penetration.
Mainly because the armour had not been penetrated.
However, to a man, the experienced tank officers concluded that each vehicle would have been knocked out of the fight and its crew killed or wounded as a result.
Burney explained the principle as easily as he could.
HESH.
High-explosive squash head.
The shell struck the armour plate and squashed, spreading wider as it flattened itself.
The base fuse set off the charge once the shell had spread itself over the target’s defences.
A simple concept that had been found to work extremely well against all sorts and thicknesses of armour, relying not on penetrative capability, but on shockwaves hammering through the metal and spalding pieces of the tank’s armour off on the inside, sending whirling lethal pieces through the interior, pieces that were particularly unforgiving to soft objects like tank crew.
Inside each tank, wooden dummies had been placed to perform crew functions.
No dummy was without severe damage from flying debris, and some were simply matchwood.
By using a shell already developed and adding a few refinements, Burney had given most British tanks the capacity to kill the latest enemy tanks anywhere they could be found on the modern battlefield.
HEAT ammunition, a hollow-charge shell using the Monroe Effect, was becoming more commonplace in vehicle ammunition inventories, but the rifled main guns meant that its performance declined, the effect lessened by the spinning effect of the rifling.
HESH did not suffer any problems with rifled weapons; indeed, it was enhanced as the spin enabled the shell to squash further, and more effectively, increasing the area it affected.
Burney remained behind with two of his technicians, waiting for the old Bedford truck to arrive.
Moving down to the eight hundred yard marker, the civilian engineers set up the 3.45” RCL.
The recoilless rifle went through its paces, although it missed its target twice, earning the firing technician considerable harassment at the hands of his friends.
Burney and his men knew the weapon worked, but they were there to examine the new changes to the gas venting system, a problem that had delayed the weapons inclusion in matters in the Far East.
Twenty shots later, eyes examined the breech, precise measurements were taken, and calculations made.