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The Iron-blooded Republic Volume 2: The Art of Power Chapter 891: The Red Tank¡¯s Final Song Part 2

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    It was exactly 1:30 in the morning on August 6, 1936.

    The artillery belonging to the Eastern Front Group of the Moscow Front, located in the eastern part of the Soviet Moscow Defense Line, was the first to recover from the chaos and shock after the nuclear explosion in Moscow. Heavy artillery was retreated into the gun positions by Soviet officers and soldiers, and the artillery received the signal corps  The order he brought was aimed at the Chinese army's attack position.  "For the motherland, for Russia, fire!"

    With roars coming from deep within, more than 3,000 heavy artillery pieces belonging to the Eastern Front Group, densely deployed behind the more than 100-kilometer-long front line, fired one after another (due to the interruption of communications, the Soviet artillery was unable to fire at the same time).  The Chinese army's forward position in the night was instantly ignited by artillery shells piercing the air!  The entire Great Plains was filled with dense exploding fireballs, but the impact point of the artillery shells was not accurate - because the Soviet artillery observers on the front line had no way to communicate with the artillery groups in the rear.  However, countless artillery shells hit the ground at the same time, and the deafening sound still frightened the officers and soldiers of the Chinese Second Armored Group Army who were gathering to launch an armored assault.  Su Yi, who had been promoted to the commander of the armored division at that time, recalled after the war: "The enemy's artillery shells were so close to us! It seemed that they would fall on our heads at any time, although the armored tanks and armored vehicles were not very afraid of this.  It is a high-explosive artillery shell, but after all, the armored cluster will suffer certain losses when it is covered by enemy artillery fire, especially with that kind of intensive artillery fire."

    The overwhelming rain of artillery shells did not scare away the Chinese armored soldiers who were preparing to launch an assault, most of them.  They were all veterans who had been fighting for several years and quickly regained their composure.  Continue to form an assault formation despite the Soviet artillery shells falling on your head from time to time.

    "Cheetahs go to the first and second rows, all cheetahs go to the first and second rows! Quick, quick, quick. Must be in place within 10 minutes!"

    In previous battles, the Cheetah tank destroyer huddled behind the Stalker and used its 71-caliber 88mm cannon to fire long-range shots. This time, it was unprecedented to rush to the front line.  Among the 1,174 tanks/tank destroyers and self-propelled artillery that Liao Lei invested in the first wave of armored assaults, there were four and two battalions of Cheetah tank destroyers and two battalions of Panther tanks respectively. Among them, there were 268 Cheetah tank destroyers.  There are 134 Panther tanks.  Now 268 Cheetahs have opened an 8-kilometer-long snake formation.  Behind them are four battalions of stalker tank destroyers, also 268 vehicles.  We also built a long snake formation 8 kilometers long.  The Panther tanks of the two battalions formed two small square formations on both sides of the horizontal formation composed of tanks and destroyers to cover the flanks of the tanks and destroyers.

    Behind the tank-annihilation horizontal formation is a huge self-propelled artillery group.  Since the Chinese armored forces have few opponents on the Eastern Front battlefield, their organization is constantly being adjusted.  The proportion of self-propelled artillery used to deal with infantry is increasing.  Each armored division now has 108 self-propelled artillery pieces, excluding self-propelled anti-aircraft guns, including 72 105mm self-propelled howitzers and 36 150mm self-propelled infantry guns.  There are as many as 72 self-propelled artillery pieces in the Panzergrenadier Division.  These self-propelled guns are still the domain of the Stalker tank destroyer.  The total number of self-propelled artillery vehicles following the tank-destroying horizontal array now reaches 504!

    In addition, there are nearly 60,000 people riding in tracked armored personnel carriers, equipped with Type 31 automatic rifles and Type 34 general-purpose machine guns.  Armored group attacks were accompanied by armored grenadiers and infantry armed with a 75mm recoilless rifle and Panzergrenadier 100 anti-tank grenade launcher with a range of 100 meters.

    Finally, General Liao Lei, commander of the Second Tank Army, also has an armored corps as a reserve for this attack.

    And elsewhere on Moscow¡¯s eastern front.  The Chinese army also deployed the 6th Army, the 7th Army, and the 8th Army that had just arrived on the European battlefield to conduct diversionary attacks.

    While the Chinese armored group was busy preparing for the assault, the Soviet tank troops also deployed under the Chinese artillery fire.  After studying and discussing with Marshal Frunze and General Vasilevsky, General Baranov decided to adopt an "oblique combat formation" to deal with the Chinese army's "armored horizontal formation."

    330 T-28/1935 tanks equipped with 57mm anti-tank guns of 73 times the caliber were used for frontal luring tasks. This tank was improved on the basis of the T-28/1932 tank. The original firepower was  The weak 76.2mm infantry gun was replaced by a 57mm anti-tank gun. Unfortunately, this 73-caliber anti-tank gun is difficult to manufacture, and its lifespan is too short. After firing hundreds of rounds at most, it will be scrapped due to severe wear of the rifling.  .  However, the 3.14-kilogram BR-271 armor-piercing projectile fired with a muzzle velocity of nearly 1,000 meters per second has extremely strong armor-piercing performance and can penetrate 105mm homogeneous armor steel at a distance of 1,000 meters.  However, it is not enough to compare with the Jaguar tank destroyer that can penetrate 153mm homogeneous steel plate at a distance of 2000 meters.

    Fortunately, these T-28/1935 tanks can rely on the Soviet defensive positions and anti-tank firepower points to fight, so they should be able to last for a while to cover more than 1,500 Su-76 and Su-85 assault artillery and others.  More than 320 T-28/1935 tanks advanced north from behind the Soviet first line of defense.In a roundabout way, the plan is to break through the Chinese army's front near Losino-Petrovsky, and then attack the Chinese armored group from the flank.  Moreover, these more than 1,800 Soviet tanks and assault artillery did not act alone. Frunze also mobilized more than 100,000 infantry and 20,000 cavalry to coordinate the operation, trying to use a sea of ??people + a sea of ??tanks to break through the Chinese front in one fell swoop to help the roundabout  The Soviet tank group quickly cut into the flank of the Chinese armored group.

    In addition, the threat of the German Air Force was also fully taken into account by Frunze, Baranov and others.  To this end, they did their best to collect more than 1,000 anti-aircraft guns/anti-aircraft machine guns from various parts of the Eastern Front Group, and urgently deployed them to the line from Losino-Petrovsky to Elekt to cover the actions of the Soviet tank group.

    "Armored troops! Advance! Armored troops! Advance!"

    It was just dawn when the deafening roar of motors rang out on the plain east of Losino-Petrovsky. The Chinese armored assault group consisting of nearly 1,200 tanks and assault artillery rumbled forward, along the  The road cleared by the artillery was pressing towards the Soviet defense line!

    ¡­¡­

    "The enemy's tank! Comrade Chief of Staff, the enemy's tank is coming!"

    At this time, the 330 T-29/1936 tanks responsible for luring the enemy had also been deployed. In order to deploy these tanks, Vasilevskiy also had several tank corps commanders temporarily under his command, but it took a lot of effort.  After a lot of effort, the main problem they encountered was communication.  Since the nuclear bomb exploded at a relatively high altitude last night, the electromagnetic pulse generated had a larger range. The unprepared Soviet tank cluster was also hit, and almost all the radio stations mounted on the tanks were damaged!  Therefore, how to command these tanks has become a problem. In addition, telegraph and telephone communications between the Soviet Eastern Front Group Headquarters and its subordinate units have been basically interrupted. Nearly 1 million troops and thousands of artillery pieces are scattered over hundreds of kilometers of fronts.  We can only rely on horse-mounted messengers to communicate.  However, using this primitive communication method to command a million-strong army in the era of mechanized warfare is indeed extremely troublesome.  As a last resort, Frunze had to divide the entire front into several large sections. He, Vasilevsky and Baranov, as well as several other chief officers of the Eastern Front Group Headquarters, also personally went down.  The first-line "section-by-section contract" each directs one of the sections. Even so, it still seems very inconvenient.

    And Vasilevsky is responsible for the section from Losino-Petrovsky to Elekt, which is the most likely main attack direction of the Chinese army.  But the most likely thing may not happen. Only when he saw the Chinese tank cluster through the telescope with his own eyes, Vasilevsky took a deep breath and turned back to the staff: "Has the telephone communication been restored?"

    "Not yet." The staff officer replied.  It was not an easy task for the communications troops to brave the constant falling bombs and artillery shells to lay telephone lines on a front line with a radius of hundreds of kilometers. How could it be completed so quickly?

    Vasilevsky sighed softly and added: "Send the cavalry to Comrade Baranov and tell him that he can start taking action."

    "yes."

    Looking at the back of the staff officer who ran away quickly, Vasilevsky suddenly felt an ominous premonition in his heart.  The previous deployment ignored an important issue, which is the communication and command of millions of troops!  In an era without modern communication methods, the battlefield that frontline commanders could control was no more than a dozen kilometers in radius. No matter how large it was, command failure would inevitably occur. Moreover, there were no artillery indirect sights or tank group assaults at that time.  There is no such complex tactics as ground and air coordination.  But now, I am using communication methods similar to those in the era of Julius Caesar to direct mechanized warfare in the 1930s Is this really possible?

    ¡°Boom, boom, boom¡­¡±

    A series of roaring sounds of artillery fire rang out, awakening Vasilevsky from his thoughts. He quickly used a short-term telescope to observe the battlefield.  I saw a group of Chinese tanks parked outside the anti-tank trench, firing to suppress the Soviet frontline fire points.  The Soviet army did not wait for its own orders and started firing artillery fire. In fact, there was no way to wait. It would take more than an hour to ride a fast horse back and forth on the 20-kilometer battlefield around it!  (To be continued)
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