Chapter 167 Retreat

"These cunning and despicable Russians!" Admiral Schweppenburg gritted his teeth and cursed.

In his view, it was a dishonorable act for these Russians not to fight his troops face to face.

But of course Admiral Schweppenburg would not have thought that if this logic is used... then the German army's penetration, encirclement, and even a sneak attack with Branfenburg troops are also a dishonorable act.

"What shall we do, General?" the adjutant asked.

"Continue to attack!" Admiral Schweppenburg said: "Clean up those tanks, their anti-tank artillery positions have been destroyed by us, which means they have no more tricks to use!"

"Yes, General!"

Admiral Schweppenburg's idea is right. Tank ambushes can only be used once on a certain road section. After the anti-tank gun positions are destroyed, it is difficult to deploy anti-tank gun positions in front of the enemy whose location they do not know.

Unless the enemy has no artillery, these anti-tank artillery positions will be blown to the sky without accident.

but……

"The enemy has retreated, General!" The adjutant reported to Admiral Schweppenburg more than half an hour later: "After we cleared the wreckage of those tanks!"

Admiral Schweppenburg, who was looking at the map, raised his head in surprise: "What? Retreat?"

"Yes, they retreated three hundred meters!" The adjutant replied: "We lost more than two hundred soldiers and five tanks in order to clean up the wreckage!"

Cleaning up the wreckage is not something that can be done by just sending a few people up and tossing around. Those are all "No. 3" and "No. 4" tanks, and they weigh more than ten tons at every turn.

So it has to let the infantry cover the two wings, and then send engineers with steel ropes to brave bullets and artillery shells, tie the steel ropes to the wreckage of the tank and drag them away one by one... Sometimes the tanks have to cover the infantry Advance to carry out clean-up work, because the location of the wreckage has penetrated into the enemy's line of defense and it is difficult to enter.

As a result, more than two hundred soldiers and five tanks were lost.

This made Admiral Schweppenburg so angry that he had nowhere to go.

He originally thought that he could teach these Russians a lesson just by cleaning up the wreckage of the tanks... But unexpectedly,

They only need to retreat three hundred meters.

Yes, the Soviets really only needed to retreat.

Because the retreat means that there will be a new position next, that is, a position with anti-tank guns hidden in it, so the German tanks still cannot rest assured that the tanks will be interspersed along the railway, otherwise the same result will appear before. .

At this time, Admiral Schweppenburg really understood the strategy of the Russians in front of him: this is an infinite loop of ambushes, and the German army needs to pay a staggering price every few hundred meters it advances, whether it is tanks or soldiers.

Therefore, as long as you are not a fool, you can figure this out: Although the German army has an absolute advantage in equipment and strength, it does not mean that they can defeat the Russian army in front of them.

Although this Russian army is retreating layer by layer.

However... If the fight continues like this, when the German army hits the urban area of ​​Tula, I'm afraid the entire mechanized army will be finished!

After thinking about it, Admiral Schweppenburg gave an order to his adjutant: "This time...we will blow up both sides of the railroad tracks with artillery fire!"

"Yes, General!"

That's exactly what the German army did. A round of shells hit the railway tracks within a range of 200 to 1,000 meters densely, plowing it like a field.

200 to 1000 meters is exactly the range of anti-tank artillery firepower deployment.

The layout of anti-tank guns is also particular. If it is too close, it is easy to be spotted by enemy tanks and become its target. If it is far away, the hit rate will drop. Even in this rain, it is difficult to find the target, even though the target is a huge tank. .

This method seems to have worked, because the Soviet army resisted a little and retreated two hundred meters.

Admiral Schweppenburg certainly didn't know that the position was empty this time, that is, there was no anti-tank gun.

In this regard, Major Gavrilov was astonished by Shulka.

"Comrade Shulka, I know why you are always suspected of being a spy?"

"Why?" Shulka asked.

He was really terrified about this.

"Because you seem to know what they're thinking!" said Major Gavrilov. "How do you know they're going to bomb them again?"

Shulka didn't answer, he asked back with a bitter face: "Comrade Major, you won't report me for this!"

Major Gavrilov was amused and laughed.

In fact, it is not difficult to guess. In Sun Tzu's Art of War, "what is imaginary is real, and what is real is imaginary", this is a small thing for the Chinese.

What's more, even if the Germans are not fooled, there is no loss to the Soviet army, and they can also retreat a certain distance.

At this time, Admiral Schweppenburg was in trouble.

This is of course not a problem if the German army has enough artillery shells.

The problem is that the German army is interspersed with troops, and the logistics are tense because of the Kyiv guerrillas attacking everywhere...

This can be said to have slapped Hitler severely.

Because when he decided to attack Moscow, he said impassionedly in his mobilization speech to front-line soldiers through the radio: "Since the war began, our troops have built 2,000 road bridges, more than 400 railway bridges, and repaired 29,000 kilometers The railways are now fully open to traffic. Now, I can tell all the soldiers fighting on the front lines that our transportation difficulties in Russia no longer exist! We must work together to completely wipe out the enemy before winter comes!"

Part of what Hitler said was true. The German army did build many roads, railways and bridges, many of which were even built by local people spontaneously and voluntarily for the Germans.

The problem is that after the guerrilla war launched in Kyiv, these railways, roads and bridges have all become targets of attack, and the German logistics is not as "difficulties no longer exist" as Hitler said.

This also prevented Admiral Schweppenburg from pushing all the way forward with shells.

In fact, even if, as Hitler said, "the difficulty of resupply ceased to exist", no army on the battlefield had the luxury of being propelled forward by shells...except the US military.

Therefore, Admiral Schweppenburg hesitated for a while, and then ordered to the adjutant: "Let the artillery observers come up, observe both sides of the railroad tracks, bomb suspicious areas, and then be ready to suppress at any time!"

This is a method of saving shells, and it is also a very clever method: let experienced artillery observers look for it first, and blow it up when they find it.

There are still some that have not been found, and the moment they fire shells at the tank to expose the position, they immediately suppress it.