In just a few hours, the Soviet defense line in front of Uritsk was severely torn open with a wide hole! The German infantry, which was continuously attacking like a tidal wave, stepped on the smoke of heavy artillery bombardment and continued to invest in the battle for the trenches. They fought their way through the trenches with close combat. They suffered tens of thousands of casualties, but the result they achieved was that they A height that the city had not reached even after months of siege!
Manstein was extremely shocked. When he heard the latest news reported by observers from the front, he simply ignored the casualty figures and stared at the thick curve marked with a red line on the military map. That represents The Soviet army's stubborn bunker fortifications are now continuously marked with piles of black marks!
All the fortresses were torn out, all the enemy troops were eliminated, all the obstacles were cleared, the infantry rolling forward one after another, surrounded by armored spearheads headed by dozens of heavy Tiger tanks, kept moving all the time. Push forward bravely!
Excited! surprise! joy! All kinds of long-lost emotions lingered in the German command headquarters. The faces that had been darkened for half a year began to clear up. Many people couldn't help but come up to express their congratulations: "General! We finally won!"
Manstein waved his hands reservedly, without showing any gaffe, and even reminded calmly: "It is too early to say victory now! We have just opened the situation, we cannot relax at all! Tell the generals in front to maintain the current situation State, continue fighting until Leningrad is completely captured!"
¡°Hi Hitler!¡±
The officer who came from the SS gave a very powerful hand-raising salute, and then rushed out happily, rushing to the front to observe and coordinate operations on the spot.
In this battle, it was the elite strikers of their SS who were the first to open the defense line, and they deserved the credit. The rationality and necessity of their existence and the superiority of the organization are fully affirmed. After the head of state knows about it, he will be happy to deliver a wonderful speech for four or five hours in a row and call on the entire army to study across the country, right?
? Merit! All for merit and glory!
Of course, these guys will never thank you for reminding them. The Chinese Observer Group is the one that provides certain tactical support. It is better to just make a fortune in silence.
Manstein was different. He was a general who paid great attention to honor. In his heart, he always maintained the chivalrous spirit of the German Junker nobles. He was proud of himself, but he would never engage in the kind of cheating for the sake of vanity. , not embarrassing enough!
therefore. He solemnly expressed his gratitude to Luo Zhendong and other representatives of the Chinese observation group. Luo Zhendong simply smiled: "It's nothing. In addition, I must remind the general that the sudden tactic in the early stage worked because the Soviet army was not mentally prepared. Once they calmed down, they would definitely counterattack with all their strength! That's when This is the most intense and dangerous moment of the battle! The key depends on whether your warriors can continue this aggressive attack and continue to maintain their advantage and decisiveness in the subsequent street fighting!"
Manstein nodded vigorously: "Please believe that German soldiers are the bravest and most professional. The situation you are worried about will never happen!"
This is actually a bit too full. It's really as good as he said. When the Soviet army launched its offensive last year, it was quite possible to break through the defense by seizing the advantage of taking the initiative to attack with equal forces. It's just that most of the Germans' tactics are rigid and they have reached the point of urban defense battles. They still stubbornly insist on the main attack of armored groups.
If it is replaced by Chinese heavy armored troops. There is no problem in playing this way. With the powerful and irresistible "Tianqing Chariot" as the main attacker, assisted by a group of Tiger main battle tanks, it is enough to tear a crack several kilometers wide. Use attack aircraft, heavy rocket launchers, missiles and precision artillery as suppressive forces to seal off the opponent's heavy weapons. The rest is to use tank fleets to directly destroy the city.
That would render the opponent's artillery completely useless. As the attacking armored forces did not care about anti-tank artillery and anti-tank weapons, they used joint street cleaning tactics, and most of them used tanks to directly demolish buildings to clear the way. After the attack, basically only a pile of ruins remained.
Do the Germans have that ability? It is said that there is. If Hitler is willing to send two P1000 Giant Rats, six E-types, plus a bunch of Tigers and assault guns, and move forward by demolishing buildings, the efficiency may be low, but with air superiority, the chance of winning is extremely high.
The problem is that Hitler¡¯s ambitions are too big and his heavy weapons are too dispersed. When attacking such a huge city, his troops are almost the same as the opponent¡¯s! What's more terrible is that Mao Zibing is fighting with his back against the wall, and his home is behind him. If he doesn't fight hard, he will be killed by the machine guns behind him. He has no way out but to fight hard!
?? Modern warfare is not afraid of sacrifices. The practice of gold mining in the sand is to directly train veterans from new recruits through actual combat. After paying hundreds of thousands of casualties, those who survive can fight with guns. ForAttacking one side is a big trouble!
It¡¯s not surprising that the German army¡¯s tactics were too crude and lacked clear priorities. It was blocked at every step!
Manstein also knew that this was a perfect opportunity for him to make a comeback. Whether he could seize it or not would determine the rest of his life. Therefore, no matter how calm he said, he did not dare to relax his focus on the battle at all!
He first focused on the navy and asked them to stay in the bay and not waver no matter what. Once the enemy troops were cleared, they would immediately advance to the shore and bombard the Soviet communication lines and key targets with heavy artillery. To this end, they would not hesitate to lose money. Some light ships went to clear mines with all their might!
In the Air Force, that damn fat guy Goering still hasn't handed over power. He just turned his nose and invested more in it under the pressure of Hitler. The key is to determine the intensity of the war situation and the intensity of the attack, which cannot be done by themselves. Otherwise, these bastards would most likely see a cloud of smoke rising from the sky and think that they have destroyed the enemy's key targets. However, the most terrible thing would be to trap the infantry in the middle of the road and ruin the entire attack plan. !
Manstein knew how the generals of the Chinese Observation Group evaluated the German Air Force. In one word - clumsy! The tactics are so clumsy that it¡¯s appalling! To put it bluntly, the German Air Force has not actually learned how to exert its air power, nor has it truly realized that in modern warfare, the importance of the Air Force is at the forefront! Only with air superiority can victory be guaranteed!
With a country¡¯s air force in the hands of a greedy fat man, the flexibility of frontline operations cannot be guaranteed. The use of fighter planes has to be mobilized at will by a bastard in the rear, completely regardless of the needs of the front battle. This kind of thing sounds very fucked up.
Having personally experienced the sharpness of the integrated air-ground strike, Manstein sincerely envied his Chinese counterparts. All the main attacking forces could call for air support at any time and destroy them accurately. Continuously remove obstacles for the infantry, provide guidance for the artillery, and form an organic combination of light and heavy, rather than just throwing bombs randomly to create panic. The difference is really indescribable!
In the front, the Soviet army with dispersed defenses really cannot withstand such a crazy attack! The trenches one after another were concentrated and the tactics of advancing in the air and on the ground stifled the ability to resist, facing the elite German soldiers who were armed to the teeth. It was useless to use life-changing tactics to block the attack. I watched helplessly as they flattened the trenches one after another, pushed aside the obstacles, and reached the city!
At this time, in Leningrad, after half a year of brutal fighting, the buildings in the outer towns have basically collapsed, forming large areas of rubble and ruins, submerged in the white snow. The Soviet army relied on it and transformed it into numerous relatively concealed fortifications, with millions of defense troops hiding among them. Combat defense artillery, direct-fire artillery, heavy machine gun positions, and sniper positions are scattered everywhere. It is difficult to destroy them all at once with concentrated artillery fire!
They are following Zhukov's careful deployment. The entire city has turned into a terrifying jungle of death. From any angle or any road, if you want to rush through, you have to face obstacles everywhere, so to speak. For attackers who cannot deploy a large number of infantry, it is enough to cause heavy mental pressure! It is more cruel and difficult to deal with than a face-to-face attack!
Last year, during the three months when the offensive was most intense, the German army actually rushed here many times, but they were all limited by the terrain and dispersed their forces, and were driven back by the Soviet army's tenacious fortifications. The German heavy artillery and aerial bombing were unable to do anything to them. Such successful tactics were also applied to the Moscow front, and the effect was equally obvious!
But today, things are completely different!
The German army frantically gathered thousands of aircraft and thousands of heavy artillery, but they used them to destroy the ten-kilometer frontal front. They patiently destroyed every building with a height of more than two stories with heavy bombs, at least A terrifying big thing weighing 500 pounds and carrying at least 100 kilograms of explosives. If it hits any part, it is enough to kill and injure the defenders of the entire building!
When the German infantry broke through the first line of defense, aerial bombardment and long-range precision artillery fire completed the destruction of the first-line buildings. At first, the Soviet commanders did not take it seriously. They thought it was a boring repetition. The soldiers in the fortifications were even optimistic about killing the German fascist soldiers. The slogans were shouted loudly, but the bombs fell and wiped them out!
When a wall of smoke and fire shot up from the front and the buildings along the entire defense line were damaged, the leaders felt something was wrong! There is no such thing! Especially when it was confirmed that other places around Leningrad had not been severely attacked, General Konev first realized that the German army's tactics had changed!
In terms of level, he was second only to Zhukov among the Soviet army, or about the same. His judgment of the battle situation was very keen and precise. He immediately ordered the east and south defense lines to be transferred to the southwest, and dispersed them layer by layer. The soldiers on the defensive line behind immediately rushed toPush forward, thicken the troops at the front, and stop the German army's crazy attack!
But it¡¯s still too late to wake up! The Baltic Fleet was destroyed first, and more than half of the defensive heavy firepower on the flanks was paralyzed! The remaining artillerymen were brutally killed as soon as they showed up, and an unprecedented and terrifying attack was quickly advancing!
Flank attack, failed! Frontal attack, failure! Heavy artillery from the rear covered the strike, but it still failed! He even dispatched a group of precious Katyusha rocket launchers and launched a wave of carpet bombing on the German attack array, hoping to intimidate and destroy their attack. However, after the explosion, the German soldiers still moved forward on a large scale like ants. rush!
It¡¯s too late for Konev to take action! He did not expect that the wave-like attacks adopted by the German army kept an excellent distance between each other, and the division of labor was clear. The key was proper control! And Manstein's tactical change of using infantry as the main attacker from his original mechanized armored group made his previous series of deployments ineffective!
The originally stalemate position of 20 kilometers was broken through one after another. German tanks and heavy engineering vehicles, surrounded by tens of thousands of infantry, reached the edge of the city!
The large number of buildings that appeared in front of them all collapsed and smoke billowed out - the flammable materials had been burned out in the bombing for half a year. The tenacious Soviet soldiers were scattered among the collapsed walls. Behind piles of rubble, makeshift machine gun nests and combat artillery fortresses, they continued to fire and intercept.
The thick-skinned Tiger tank and the heavy-duty engineering vehicle carrying a large push shovel stood alone in the front, stumbling and crushing the ground filled with craters. The front armor and composite armor were rattled by bullets, and sparks flew everywhere, but they were unable to do any damage. The thick muzzle slowly rotated, firing mercilessly at every place where flames were sprayed, one after another, all of them. Blast and kill!
There are too many accompanying infantry! Moreover, the weapon combination is very precise. The 10-round continuous fire of the semi-automatic rifle forms a non-stop line of fire, quickly blocking every fire point. Sniper auxiliary suppression, heavy machine guns and "Iron Fist" rocket-propelled grenades are at least one per squad, and as many as two, pricking every enemy like a hedgehog!
What worries the Soviet army most is that the German artillery pushed the line of fire behind the building complex and did not continue to bombard the enemy in an orderly manner. The self-propelled artillery immediately accelerated to catch up and joined the ranks of approaching direct fire. Crowd around the tank and act as a clearing assistant. Any building that is not completely destroyed will be patiently blown to pieces with large-caliber artillery at all costs!
???????????????????????????????????????????????????????? It can seal almost every inch of space. The rest of the heavy artillery, after advancing forward, joined the ranks of accurately removing key targets discovered one after another in the city, neatly and orderly, and the bullets were fired accurately!
Enter the battle in the streets!
The streets outside Leningrad. In fact, it is almost blocked by the rubbish of collapsed buildings. Apart from the winding and bumpy passage that has been cleared out and can barely pass through for small trucks, there is no way to find a place where a large number of armed forces can move in parallel. On the contrary, there were barricades everywhere, and positions were stacked on top of each other. There might be Soviet fire points distributed behind any window or behind a pile of stones.
It¡¯s just that under the blow of the heavy bomb, most of them have been lost. The reinforcements came up. Before they could take a breath, the German army had already rushed forward!
Konev was still thinking that if the German army continued to attack like that, the trouble would not be too big. It's not like the street fight was over, they will definitely be unable to follow up!
What is more worrying is that after entering the street, the powerful Soviet artillery fire cannot be effective. It can only extend forward to intercept the German army's retreat, preventing it from forming a continuous input of troops and replenishment of ammunition and supplies. As long as it can be delayed until With the recovery of the Baltic Fleet's firepower, a successful blocking battle can be expected!
But his plan only lasted for a short while before it was severely shattered by reality!
The Germans attacked not just a small group of scattered infantry, but an organized force of 300,000 infantry, almost filling every trench that belonged to them before! There are between 30,000 and 50,000 people scattered on the front line! Enough to form an absolutely solid and lasting investment of troops!
not only that! Soon after hundreds of self-propelled artillery were demolished, the Tiger tank groups that had been guarding the two wings also gathered one after another. Two horn-like arc trajectories fiercely scraped past the front lines of the Soviet flanks to outflank the counterattack forces, and headed towards the center line. They gathered together and staggered behind the first wave of offensive forces, immediately turning the first-level joint attack into a three-level attack!
This means that the German army's previously weak armored heavy shield has become three layers, and it is useless to just rely on tenacious blocking to break the first layer!
Instead of expanding, the Ten Kilometer Front has a tendency to shrink! Along the crumbling city on one side of the bay, more than two hundred tanks walked along theTen guides, assisted by heavy engineering vehicles to clear obstacles, are advancing slowly and steadily! They resisted the intercepting firepower of the Soviet army and continued to pull out every nail. The infantry that followed immediately started cleaning up every collapsed ruin like mercury pouring down the ground.
After they evacuated, the armored accompanying area was immediately filled by the infantry that continued to pour in from behind. They rushed in and continued to disperse and disappear among the collapsed buildings and fortifications that originally belonged to the Soviet army!
This move is simply a blow to the bottom of the pot!
Before, the Soviet army relied on its ubiquitous troops to exhaust the strength of the German army, forcing them to be unable to continue the attack. The German army's previous attacks were as sharp as before, but they were disjointed. The front broke through, and the rear was immediately besieged by the outflanking or lurking Soviet troops. They were exhausted, ran out of ammunition, and had their armor continuously broken. They suffered serious injuries and had to retreat. It happens again and again.
But this time it¡¯s completely different! After the heavy weapons were destroyed, before the Soviet army could raise its head, the German soldiers carried a handful of automatic and semi-automatic weapons in their hands. Grenades and rocket launchers opened the way, and they fired at close range. They were covered by body armor and were not afraid of bayonets and pistols. They had obvious firepower advantages and troop strength. Never fall behind and clean every building!
Three hundred thousand people plunged into a battlefield, rushing in all at once. Such boldness, madness, meticulousness, fine control and clear rhythm were unprecedented! When the German army completely occupied the five-kilometer-wide front of the coastline, they broke through the two-kilometer urban area forward, and the armored troops formed a U-shaped defense arc from the right wing. They built their own lane defense line mainly against the enemy and opened up a stable coastal supply. Passage, Konev finally realized that they were in big trouble this time! (To be continued, please search Piaotian Literature. The novels will be better and updated faster!