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Text Chapter 180 A tough battle

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    Chapter 180: A tough battle

    The weather has cleared up, and the field airport is full of busy ground crews, clearing water, leveling the ground, and machines and equipment preparing for construction have also been pulled out for maintenance.  .The airport in Siberia must be repaired with cement. This is the consensus of the entire Air Force. Otherwise, if it rains or snows, we will not be able to take off for several days.

    Ground troops also came out of various tents. It's getting moldy in the damn weather these days. Engineers are busy repairing roads, infantry help wiping equipment, and tank troops are busy inspecting tanks.  On the surface everything seemed normal, but in fact everyone knew in their hearts that a war was inevitable, and the target was naturally Novosibirsk, thirty kilometers away.

    Chuikov is the last person who wants to see the weather improve, but nature will not change due to personal will.  The sun after the continuous rain felt very comfortable on him, but Chuikov didn't feel much warmth in his heart.  The Chinese are about to attack Novosibirsk.  The two heavily armed groups formed a pincer, and a war was inevitable. As the key gateway to the entire Siberia, Novosibirsk must not simply give up. It must consume the Chinese people's energy here.  Lay the foundation for winter counterattack.

    War is not only a contest of combat effectiveness, but also a contest of wills and a contest of wisdom among commanders.  Since the beginning of the war, Chuikov felt that he had done a good job, but the Chinese were not impatient at all. Although they were constantly delayed, they still pushed forward steadily.

    During this period, Chuikov, who received some reinforcements one after another, still had no idea of ??a decisive battle in Novosibirsk. His mechanized troops continued to retreat. Forty infantry divisions held fast to the defense line about 30 kilometers deep in Novosibirsk. The remaining troops set up defenses in sequence.  , the main force is waiting for winter in Omsk.  What Chuikov hopes to see most is for the Chinese [***] squadron to march straight in after occupying Novosibirsk. Only in this way can his successive resistance tactics have the greatest effect. It depends on whether the Chinese will be fooled or not.

    Novosibirsk has a complete defense system. This is thanks to the fortifications left behind when the Chinese supported Kolchak.  After Chuikov took office as the commander of the Siberian Front, he repeatedly strengthened the defense of Novosibirsk.  Although only the infantry remained, Chuikov was confident of holding on for more than a month.

    No matter what, this battle must be fought, otherwise the fighting spirit of the entire front army will be exhausted in the continuous retreat.  Without fighting this battle, let alone Moscow, even within the front army, it would be difficult for him to convince the generals below.  The tenacious Soviets will let Chinese imperialism understand what iron blood means!

    Twenty-four hours after the weather cleared, that is, in the early morning of October 28, a dense roar rang out over the calm Siberia.  For the first time, Soviet fighter jets appeared in the sky over Novosibirsk. More than a hundred I-15s and I-16s bravely approached the formation of Chinese fighter jets.

    The Central Asian campaign has proven that the capabilities of Soviet fighter aircraft are seriously lagging behind. This has led to a clear attitude of the air force in the Siberian theater, which is to go for bombers.  However, the Soviet fighter jets were soon disappointed. The Chinese Air Force bombers were at least at an altitude of more than 8,000 meters.  At almost an altitude of six thousand meters, the Soviet fighter group was attacked by a diving Mustang fighter.  Because the Air Force is expanding too fast, most fighter pilots do not have much experience flying Mustang fighters. The trainer aircraft in school are Eagle IIIs, so the tactics in actual combat are very simple, just one move, dive,  Attack, pull up, dive again, attack again.

    This move is very effective when facing the Soviet I-15 and I-16. The Mustang fighter can easily bite the tail of the Soviet fighter plane and use six 12 and 7 mm machine gun bullets to reach a target of the Soviet fighter plane.  A ball of fire.

    The entire air battle lasted for more than two hours. In the encounter between the well-prepared Soviet fighter formation and the equally well-prepared Chinese fighter formation, the Soviet fighter planes were severely damaged again. 88 aircraft were shot down, while the Chinese side only had 3  Two Mustangs were damaged, and two of them insisted on flying back to the airport. One lost control of the plane on the way back and the pilot was forced to parachute.

    The weather on this day was very good and cloudless. The soldiers of both armies who were watching the battle on the ground had a great time.  In contrast, the moods of the two sides were very different. One side was frightened and hid in the air-raid shelter as soon as the air battle ended. The other side was enjoying watching it, and cheers and cheers came one after another.

    After clearing the Soviet fighter planes, the high-altitude B-17 lowered its altitude and started to drop bombs against the anti-aircraft artillery at about 3,000 meters. The Mustang fighters separated part of the way to search for ground anti-aircraft artillery and dive and strafe.  A group of thirty dive bombers finally appeared, accurately dropping bombs on the Soviet anti-aircraft artillery positions.

    The Air Force was performing a whole day, and the battle over Novosibirsk was just one of the scenes, and more of them were battles deep behind enemy lines.  Approximately five hundred Mustang fighter jets and two hundredThe bombers successively attacked all the discovered military airports of the Soviet Army at a depth of about 300 kilometers.

    At the end of the day, Chuikov's originally good mood suffered a heavy blow. The Siberian Front had more than 1,500 air force fighters, including 1,000 fighter jets. However, after a day's aerial decisive battle, the Soviet army lost more than 1,500 fighter jets.  The astonishing number is 380.  This does not include the 55 bombers destroyed on the ground.  In just one day, one-third of the air power was lost, which made Chuikov feel better.

    The answer from the Air Force is very clear. The performance gap between fighter jets is too big.  Whether it is the flexibility of climbing, turning, or the ability to withstand dive speeds, Soviet fighters simply cannot compare with new Chinese fighters.  In the end, it boils down to a very cruel sentence: Our planes are like targets!  The enemy's planes look like they're here for target practice!

    Because of this sentence, Chuikov ordered a strict ban on fighter planes taking off for combat, and required all airports to do concealment work. Chuikov decided to use the remaining fighter planes for ground attacks.  The hope of fighting for air supremacy seems to be dead, and the next battle will be difficult, but Chuikov has no choice. He must fight a decent defensive battle in Novosibirsk to buy time for the defense line behind him.

    Chuikov carefully managed Novosibirsk as a fortress, which the two armies participating in the attack did not realize.  Subjectively, the top brass of the Front Army were very optimistic about capturing Novosibirsk in a short time, believing that the trend of the Soviet army's repeated retreats would not change.  On October 29, after the peripheral battle started, everything was not as expected. A large amount of evidence from aerial reconnaissance showed that the Soviet army had a heavy troop group stationed in Novosibirsk.

    This news made the entire Chinese Far East Front rejoice!  Finally caught a big one!  The General Staff requested that Novosibirsk be captured before November 5. This was based on the premise that the Soviet army was unwilling to use its main force to resist. Now that this situation was suddenly discovered, the whole army became excited.

    The first to start the battle was naturally Liu Mianyue's LM Army Group, which had a total strength of more than 500,000 and was equipped with a thousand 100-caliber or above cannons. At the beginning of the battle, they prepared for two hours with ferocious artillery fire.  Five infantry divisions were immediately deployed as attack troops to look for weak points in the Soviet defense line along the ten-kilometer-long defense line. Once discovered, elite commandos were immediately deployed.  This is a tough battle, destined to be a battle with huge casualties.

    The Soviet army, which repeatedly retreated and held its breath, showed high fighting spirit and a firm spirit of not giving up an inch of ground in the peripheral offensive and defensive battles.  The two armies invested 150,000 troops on the first day and stormed the Soviet defense line.

    The Soviet army was extremely tenacious, and the [***] squadron attacking one side also had the belief that it would die. This battle became anxious as soon as it started.

    On the first day of the battle, during the daytime, under the cover of fierce firepower, the [***] team advanced the front line for about 1.5 kilometers. One of them even advanced to two kilometers, and was later ordered to retreat.  The battle lines are leveled.  That night, the Soviet army launched a counterattack. Although night fighting was also an important item of the Chinese [***] team, more than ten small positions were recaptured by the Soviet army.  Generally speaking, the Soviet army has a favorable geographical location as the defensive side, and China has equipment advantages, especially absolute air superiority.  This was fully verified in the daytime battle. Fighter planes were constantly circling over the battlefield. Once called by the ground, planes would swoop down at any time to kill the Soviet firepower.  Because of the loss of air superiority, the Soviet artillery had no room to fully exert itself. In order to avoid air strikes, the Soviet artillery had to suppress it briefly and then move its position.  Despite this, the Soviet artillery suffered huge losses on the first day of the battle, and the Chinese suffered more than 10,000 casualties.  The Soviet casualties were around 30,000. This was not due to the Soviet army's lack of combat effectiveness, but to the equipment gap.  The Soviet army's basic equipment is still the Mosin-Nagant. In front of the Chinese soldiers who are fully equipped with semi-automatic rifles, the firepower density is far from enough.

    The difficulty of the battle exceeded the imagination of the commanders on both sides of the war.  What Chuikov did not expect was the disparity in the number of casualties caused by the equipment gap between the two armies. The Chinese did not expect that the Soviet army was so tenacious, especially the meticulous preparation of as many as five anti-tank trenches, which restricted the movement of mechanized troops.  After the peripheral battle started, tanks could only appear as a cover for the infantry, and it was difficult to concentrate on using tanks for assault again.

    Of course, tanks can also be used to bypass Novosibirsk, but this tactic is difficult to implement in the poor road environment in Siberia.  Fang Jianxiong, who was far away in Yanjing, actually did not expect to fight such a battle in Novosibirsk. It can be said that Chuikov once again exceeded China's expectations.  But from Fang Jianxiong's perspective, the advantages of fighting this battle outweigh the disadvantages.

    Chuikov is also helpless, because Novosibirsk has a ready-made defense system foundation. Without using it and retreating, it will be difficult to find a suitable battlefield.  Of course, the Soviet army could also withdraw across the Ob River, but based on the last Siberian battle, Chuikov did not think that the Ob River could play a big role.The effect is worse than fighting against the odds. If it lasts for a month, winter will come.
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