Chapter 622 Heavy Thunderstorm 10

"Ura! Ura!"

On a road not far from where Lieutenant Graf shot down an enemy plane for the first time (finally shot down an enemy plane), the soldiers of the 205th Division of the Soviet Red Army who were taking a break for lunch cheered loudly. They all saw the air battle from afar, so they cheered for the victory of the Soviet Red Air Force - of course the plane shot down was a Nazi German plane. The Soviet Red Air Force was invincible, how could it be shot down by the enemy?

"Damn it, stop shouting Ura, the plane shot down was our plane!"

A middle-aged officer who looked like a reactionary suddenly shouted loudly, and everyone looked at him, and then looked at several comrades from the army's counterintelligence department not far away. But the "Cheka fighters" were very calm, and there was no move to arrest anyone. It seemed that they wanted to play the long game to catch big fish.

Everyone knew it in their hearts, and said nothing, but stared at Comrade Yakov Djugashvili, the artillery director of the 9th Mechanized Army, who was passing by with contempt.

"Comrade Oktyabriski!" The next words of the "enemy agent" with the rank of captain surprised every Red Army soldier who was eating nearby. A captain officer actually spoke to a regimental political commissar in an imperative tone, "One of our pilots parachuted, send someone to rescue them!"

This is a rebellion!

Everyone was stunned and stopped eating black bread, just waiting to see the show.

"Okay, Comrade Djugashvili." Oktyabriski and Yakov Djugashvili were in the same army group, so of course he knew that the father of this great god was Stalin! Not to mention that he was a regimental political commissar, even the military commissar of the front, Ponomarenko, was smiling and acting cute when he saw him.

He immediately assigned a lieutenant who was eating black bread nearby to take half a company of soldiers to rescue people - he had to take so many people because there were guerrillas of Polish reactionaries and German SS cavalry near the road.

By the way, these SS cavalry belonged to the SS Polish Volunteer Cavalry Division and the SS Israeli Cavalry Division. The former were Polish Nazis, and the latter were mainly composed of Polish Jews. Because supporting Zionism to replace concentration camps became the core of the Third Reich's "anti-Jewish" policy, many Polish Jews were deceived into thinking Hitler was a good person. Therefore, there was the SS Israel Division...

The Polish Nazis and the Jews who had not yet immigrated to Israel have become the most opposed to Soviet liberation. The commander of the Central Army Group, Marshal Rundstedt, did not let them defend the ring fortress to death, but dispersed and maneuvered to delay the attack of the Soviet Red Army.

The rescue troops had just set out, and the air battle had already decided the final outcome. 6 of the 8 Yak-1 fighters were shot down, and 2 escaped. And 2 of the 12 Il-2 attack aircraft were shot down by the Fokker Zero, and the remaining 10 dropped their bombs and fled the battlefield.

Yakov Dzhugashvili, who witnessed the battle with a telescope, got on his GAZ-61 light off-road vehicle in a depressed mood and staggered back to the headquarters of the 9th Mechanized Army along the severely blocked and uneven road.

"Yakov, how is the situation?" Rokossovsky saw the depressed Yakov Dzhugashvili and asked with a smile, "Did the army headquarters agree to our request?"

"Agreed, the independent mortar battalion is on its way." Yakov Dzhugashvili replied.

His purpose of going to the army headquarters was to ask the army artillery director for an independent mortar battalion. The mortar battalion that could work Captain Dzhugashvili certainly would not really use mortars. In fact, this battalion was equipped with BM-13 rocket launchers, also known as Katyusha rocket launchers.

Although the German Wehrmacht knew that the Soviets had rocket launchers (the Germans also had them, and gave the rocket launcher unit a strange name of the smoke launcher regiment), the Soviet Red Army still regarded the Katyusha rocket launcher as a highly confidential secret weapon. The troops using rocket launchers were all named "independent mortar battalions", and there were no rocket launcher units at the division, brigade, and regiment levels. Even the number of rocket launcher battalions was not large. Only a few main army groups of the Western Front had a precious rocket launcher battalion, which was personally controlled by the army artillery director and could only be used at critical times. But Yakov Dzhugashvili had a big face, so of course he asked for 18 rocket launchers as soon as he asked.

However, Dzhugashvili's request was not unreasonable, because a BM-13 rocket launcher vehicle could only launch 1 rocket at a time, and a battalion usually had 18 rocket launchers, which could fire 288 132mm rockets in one salvo. However, it was more troublesome to reload, and the noise of launching rockets was very loud, which made it easy for the opponent to discover and be counterattacked by artillery, and basically they would run away after firing. Therefore, the power of a rocket launcher battalion is not much greater than that of a howitzer battalion, but rocket launchers are mounted on trucks and are more mobile, so they can replace self-propelled artillery.

And Rokossovsky wanted this "mortar battalion" to use it as a self-propelled artillery. Because although there are many tanks in his mechanized army, there is not a single self-propelled artillery to kill soft targets.

All the artillery in the hands of Yakov Dzhugashvili, the artillery director, are towed by trucks. Once an emergency occurs, it will take a long time to deploy artillery positions.

So after crossing the Bug River, the 9th Mechanized Army was blocked in front of a forest for several hours by a SS Polish Cavalry Battalion towing 50mm anti-tank guns and 75mm mountain guns, and several tanks were destroyed.

The same situation also occurred to the tank armies/mechanized armies advancing in other directions. Although the German army and the Polish Defense Forces did not build a long line of defense, they adopted a combination of stronghold defense and mobile defense. 38 brigade-level circular positions were deployed on the front battlefield of the Polish-Soviet border, which was nearly 400 kilometers long and 150 kilometers wide, and 16 SS Cavalry Regiments and 3 Wehrmacht Cavalry Regiments (the Wehrmacht Cavalry Regiment belonged to the 1st Cavalry Division of the Wehrmacht) were also deployed.

"Comrade Commander, the 4th Infantry Army reported that they have completed the encirclement of the Terespol Ring Fortress." Major General Rimoskik, Chief of Staff of the Western Front, brought good news to General Pavlov, who was frowning. "Comrade Kosobutzki (Commander of the 4th Infantry Army) reports that the troops will be ready for the attack by tomorrow morning."

The Terespol Ring Fortress is the most uncomfortable one for the Soviet Red Army among all the ring defense fortresses, because it is stuck on the throat of the road from Brest to Warsaw. Although Poland is a large plain, people can go anywhere. But the Soviet Red Army is a heavy force, with a large amount of heavy equipment and supplies that need to be transported by rail and truck. The Terespol Ring Fortress blocked the most important railway and a key highway, and the three important bridges across the Bug River were all covered by the fortress artillery.

If the fortress is not captured, the Soviet Red Army can also take a detour, but because the road conditions in Poland are relatively poor, and there are other ring fortresses blocking the way, it is always not smooth, as if someone is holding the throat to go to the battlefield.

So in the "Big Thunderstorm Plan", the Western Front still has to remove several ring fortresses to make the traffic to Warsaw unimpeded. Only in this way can Pavlov be sure to launch a decisive battle with the German army under the city of Warsaw to determine the future and fate of Poland.

"Tell Comrade Kosobutzki," Pavlov said, "He has 72 hours to take Terespol, starting from 8 o'clock tomorrow morning."

It should be possible for an infantry army to take a brigade-level position in 72 hours. So after giving the order, Pavlov did not think about the Terespol Fortress anymore, but asked about the situation of the Air Force again.

"Has the report of the Air Force been delivered?" Pavlov asked, "How much results did the air raid this morning achieve? What about the losses?"

Although Pavlov was unlucky in history, it does not mean that his military quality is low. It is normal for him to be unlucky because he met the German Superman who was cheating. General Pavlov, who has a good military quality and has studied the situation on the European battlefield, knows very well that air superiority is the key to the success of the "Great Thunderstorm Plan"!

If the Nazis could not be defeated in the sky, then the huge Soviet mechanized cluster on the ground would be a live target for German aircraft, and it would be impossible to win.

"Comrade Commander, the air strike was very effective." Major General Rimoskik replied with a smile, "51 of the 65 military airports and field military airports that have been identified in Poland have been devastated and have lost the ability to take off and land aircraft."

Due to the active withdrawal of the German Air Force, the airports in Poland suffered heavy losses in the air strikes launched by the Soviet Red Air Force on the morning of June 1! At least 1,000 aircraft models were blown up on the ground, and the runways and facilities of 51 less important airports were also blown up. Only 14 important airports were guarded by the German Air Force Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment (now the German Army, Navy and Air Force all have their own ground anti-aircraft artillery units, and the anti-aircraft artillery units responsible for the air defense of air force airports and rear facilities belong to the air force's anti-aircraft troops), so the losses were not too great.

"But the Red Air Force under the command of the front also suffered heavy losses," Major General Rimoskik said in a heavy tone, "According to preliminary statistics, more than 260 of the planes dispatched this morning did not return, accounting for about 8% of the total number of sorties."

"260..." Pavlov nodded and said nothing. This number is okay, within an acceptable range, but I don't know the losses of the other fronts.