Chapter 189: withdrawal

Chapter 189 Retreat

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

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

But Admiral Schweppenburg certainly would not have thought that if this logic is used...then the German army's interspersed, encircled, and even sneaked attacks with Branfenburg troops are also a dishonorable act.

"What should 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 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 those tank wreckage!"

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

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

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. Cleanup work was carried out, because the wreckage was located deep into the enemy's line of defense and it was 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 he didn't expect that they only needed to retreat 300 meters.

Yes, the Soviets really just need 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 for every few hundred meters it advances, whether it is tanks or soldiers.

So, 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 am afraid that the entire mechanized army will be finished!

After thinking for a while, Admiral Schweppenburg ordered to his adjutant: "This time...we will use artillery fire to blow up both sides of the railroad tracks!"

"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 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 shocked by Shulka.

"Comrade Shulka, I know why people always suspect that you are a spy?"

"Why?" Shulka asked.

He is really afraid of this aspect.

"Because you seem to know what they are thinking!" Major Gavrilov said: "How do you know they will bomb again?"

Shuerka 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.

It’s actually not hard to guess. In Sun Tzu’s Art of War, “what is imaginary is real, and what is real is false”, 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.

If the German army has enough shells, this is of course not a problem.

The problem is that the German army is interspersed with troops, and the logistics are being attacked by Kyiv guerrillas 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!"

Some 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 it were true that "supply difficulties no longer exist", as Hitler said, no army on the battlefield has the luxury of being pushed forward by artillery 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 railway 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 fired shells at the tank to expose the position, they immediately suppressed it.

(end of this chapter)