Inside the city of Lochvica, flares swayed one after another and soared into the sky, casting a layer of silver light on the earth. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ

Inside and outside the city, large and small electric lights came and went, the flames of the muzzles and muzzles of the guns of the warring sides as they opened fire.

Tracer bullets trail through the night sky with a bright trail, bringing the threat of death to the other side.

Cannonballs whizzed across the middle of the battlefield, bursting into flames across the battlefield.

The battle group led by Colonel Gaski, after passing through the battle-torn town of Covalli, made its way unhindered to its destination, Lochvica.

After the troops arrived in Lochvica, Colonel Gaski launched an attack overnight to test the defenders of Lochvica and see if there was any possibility of capturing Lochvica while they were on the move.

Soon after the attack was launched, countless flares and tracer grenades flew out of the town of Lochvica, stubbornly suppressing the momentum of the German offensive.

The capture of Lochvica was thwarted during the march, but Colonel Gaski was not discouraged, after all, he launched a tentative attack.

With a new order from Colonel Gaski, the battle group's attack on Lokhvica was changed to a harassing one, and the battle between the two sides quickly turned into a cold-gun-cold battle in the night.

The Soviet defense line was incoherent, and the troops were scattered in villages and towns on the Ukrainian plain, and the vast open space between villages and towns gave the Germans a wide space to operate.

Nightfall provided the best cover for the Germans' movements.

The rolling wheels brought more reinforcements to Colonel Gaski, along with orders from Major Generals Rommel and Holren.

In the order, Rommel and Holren first praised the progress of the Gasky battle group, and then advised him to take Lokhvica by noon tomorrow, without giving the Soviets time to mobilize reinforcements.

In order to better accomplish this mission, Holrenne sent a strong force to Colonel Gaski.

Southwest of the city of Lochvica, on the north side of the road, Colonel Gaski, with his adjutant, walked into an artillery position that was being deployed.

The artillery on this position was so small compared to the tall Wasp and Hornet self-propelled howitzers.

Colonel Gaski looked at the barrel of the cannon, barely as high as his chin.

The cannon is not very tall and does not look very good, it looks like an inferior product cobbled together with two rubber tires, a gun carriage and six hollow steel pipes.

In front of Colonel Gaski, the artillery that was neither tall nor mighty nor in the wind was the Type 41 150-mm rocket launcher.

This rocket launcher was officially equipped with German artillery units in 1941, and six launch tubes were arranged in a six-angle shape, assembled together, and mounted on a towable two-wheeled trolley.

The length of the rocket launch tube is 1.3 meters, the outer diameter is 160 mm, the launch tube is not rifled, and in order to stabilize the rocket inside the launch tube, there are three 17 mm guides inside the launch tube.

There is an inverted bracket on the two-wheeled traction trolley, which should be put down and fixed when shooting, and play a stabilizing role, and the rocket launch tube can have a pitch angle of 5~15 on the launch frame, and it can rotate 27 degrees left and right. The total combat weight of the entire system is 536 kg, which is generally towed by a small tractor called Sdkfz.11.

After a few words with the artillery officers around him, Colonel Gaski learned that the entire artillery battalion had three companies and six platoons, each platoon was equipped with three rocket launchers, and the whole battalion had a total of eighteen rocket launchers.

Having learned some data on rocket artillery, Colonel Gasky threw down a sentence.

"Tomorrow morning's battle will depend on your performance."

Time flies by to the sound of gunfire, and a new day descends on the battlefield.

The eastern sky had just turned white, and before the sun could appear, the fatal blow to Lochvica had begun.

When the strange howl resounded on the battlefield, all the officers and soldiers on the battlefield, whether it was the Soviet army or the German army, all eyes converged in one direction.

In less than thirty seconds, 108 150-mm rockets flew out of the barrels and into the sky.

Unlike artillery shells, rockets emit long gray-black smoke trails at the tail end, which are hundreds of meters long.

The trail of 108 rockets dragged as they climbed, creating a wall of smoke that connected the sky to the earth.

The German infantrymen, preparing for the attack, turned their heads en masse, their eyes moving with the movement of the rockets.

First in the rear, then overhead, and then the eyes of hundreds of German soldiers followed the rockets to the town of Lochvica.

To the west of the town of Lokhvica, the sight of the Soviet soldiers waiting for a different scene was different.

Their eyes gradually rose as the rockets climbed, and their faces slowly lifted from facing forward to facing the sky until they were facing the sky.

In the process, the Soviet officers and men collectively evolved their face tricks, from shock to horror.

"Hidden, hidden・・・・・・"

Heart-rending shouts echoed through the city of Lochvica.

As the rockets rained down, the western part of the city of Lochvica, facing the Germans, was surrounded by a storm of flames.

Houses crumbled like building blocks, rubble and masonry were projected into the air, shrubs were uprooted, sturdy tree trunks were severed by sharp shrapnel, and the west of the city was in shambles shrouded in smoke and dust.

On the north and south sides of the road, the E-40 heavy armored company and the No. 4 tank company each led two companies of infantry to charge towards Lokhvica.

Behind them, on the positions of the 1st Artillery Battalion, a battalion of 105-mm howitzers was also pouring shells into Soviet positions as much as they could.

The Soviets expected a large-scale German attack at dawn, but they did not guess that the battle would begin in such a ferocious way, and the soldiers who survived the shelling also suffered psychological losses under the cover of dense rocket artillery.

"Hurry, hurry, harder, great, they're rushing in."

Colonel Gaski climbed into the bed of a truck, looked at the battlefield in the distance and muttered to himself.

Seeing the infantry following the tank, a charge rushed into Lokhvica, and the Grizzly Assault Gun and the No. 3 Assault Howitzer also shook the barrels, ran over the crater-ridden positions, and followed the infantry into the city to provide fire support for the infantry in street fighting.

About twenty minutes later, in the command of the Soviet steppe front, Rokossovsky held a telegram from the headquarters of the 63rd Army, and his right hand was shaking.

The telegram was written that the troops of the German Grodeutsche Division had entered Lochvica, street fighting had broken out in the city, and it was hoped that the Front Command would send reinforcements, preferably armored reinforcements.

Looking at this telegram, two thoughts crossed Rokossovsky's mind.

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The first thought was that he had a front army in his hands, and he had no troops to adjust at the critical moment of the battle;

The second thought was that the Central Front was finished.