"The whole company is free to hunt and shoot ......"

Half a minute after Michelle Wittman gave this order, he used the Tiger 2 tank to knock out a Sherman who poked out his head at a distance of 1,800 meters, and the huge power of 88mm/L 71 times directly exploded the opponent, and the entire tank quickly burned into a fireball. Pen ~ fun ~ Pavilion www.biquge.info Although the US imperialists provided the Red Army with a diesel conscience version, the chance of death was much smaller than that of the Langson lighter (gasoline version of Sherman), but the diesel fuel under the high temperature operation of the engine will still deflagrate.

He was a year older than Piper, but with the rank of SS captain, he served as a company commander in the 3rd Company of the 101st SS Heavy Panzer Battalion. Since the Wehrmacht formed 12 heavy armoured battalions with good results, the SS also set up its own system of heavy armoured battalions, starting with 6 from the 101st, and Wittmann was selected as an experienced Tiger tank commander in the first batch, all the way up to company commander. In today's armored breakthrough, open the way for the entire offensive cluster on the right flank.

However, this standard tactical coordination did not play to Wittman's strengths, and after the deep pursuit and the disbandment of the queue, the time for his best free hunt finally arrived.

Although he was a little lower in rank, he was not a small reputation, and Otto Karius of the 502nd Heavy Armored Battalion of the Wehrmacht was the most famous junior armored commander on the Eastern Front, and both were awarded the Knight's Cross with two swords and silver oak leaves and received by the Führer.

Although the number of tanks, tanks, self-propelled guns, and anti-tank guns destroyed by the two people's crews was not the highest, they all had brilliant and legendary records: Karius's crew met seven Red Army T-43 tanks in a narrow way, and at a distance of less than 200 meters, he destroyed all the enemy troops with his superb psychological quality and effective tactical use without being scathed; Although Wittman did not have the Battle of Pokaki in this time and space, when he attacked on a large scale in the summer of 1943, he was still a platoon commander at the time, and he led three tanks to attack from a long distance, and reimbursed 70% of a newly equipped Red Army tank brigade in one go.

These two stories were absorbed by Goebbels into the "Legend of the Tiger" feature film, and the two immediately became household names as war heroes. Hoffman, out of the idea of protecting the war heroes, ordered the two to be summoned back to China as tactical instructors, but Karius refused, and although Weitmann was ordered to be an instructor for three months, everyone could see that his mind and aura were not in teaching - just as Marseilleu returned to China as an instructor for less than four months, and began to hold back and finally went to the front line again, some people were destined to belong to the battlefield.

"At 1 o'clock, a T-43 with a big head, uh, 2400 meters."

"Full speed ahead! Tungsten core bullet ready! ”

With a "clang", a shell was pushed into the chamber.

The other side seemed to notice the approaching Tiger 2 tank, but did not choose to open fire - he had no chance to penetrate his opponent at this distance, and he met the enemy with frontal armor while trying to find a reliable shelter - such as a volcanic hill that stood out from the landmark.

"2200 meters! Shoot! Wittman noticed his opponent's attempt, and just as his opponent was about to adjust the angle and retract his body, he decisively ordered to fire.

"Boom!" The shell was quickly fired, and then the next moment it pierced the T-43's head, which was the German tanker's figurative name for the T-43/85, and as the Red Army tanker crawled out in disarray, Wittmann nodded in satisfaction and turned to the next target, he had little interest in slaughtering the opponent's crew.

What satisfied Wittmann the most about the Tiger 2 tank was not only the thicker armor, sharper guns and more powerful engines, but also an inconspicuous small accessory - the gun vertical stabilizer.

German tanks originally did not have stabilizers, and had always fired with short pauses, using their accuracy and the world's strongest sighting system to kill the enemy, but after capturing a large number of Sherman tanks, the designers became interested in the vertical stabilizer on the Sherman - a system that could help the tank keep the muzzle pitch angle stable when passing over uneven ground, in other words, it could fire on the move, which greatly enhanced the strike capability.

Of course, the system on Sherman cannot be used directly, because Sherman's main gun is very light, and the strength and adjustment angle required are not comparable to those of the Tiger. The Tiger requires more force, but the adjustment is smaller - not only is the shock angle smaller because of the heavy turret of the Tiger, but the Tiger characteristic staggered overlapping load wheels themselves reduce road bumps by an order of magnitude.

After repeated verification, the vertical stabilization system suitable for the Tiger was finally developed, and the first batch was used on the Tiger 2 tank. In order to take care of the experienced gunners, who will make corrections in advance according to experience and feel, the system is also thoughtfully equipped with a shut-off function, but after practice, it turns out that although the machine is not always the best, most of the time it is better than manual work, especially for novices with average experience, it is greatly superior.

Therefore, once it entered the state of free hunting, the advantages of the Tiger 2 were quickly stimulated, and in less than 15 minutes, Wittmann had achieved the success of 3 tanks and 2 tanks, and he was only hit by 2 shells, and the hard and thick cold-rolled forged nickel alloy steel armor easily blocked these two attacks - Germany now not only has sufficient nickel resources, but also the production line of the whole Europe has been started at full speed, plus there is no threat of strategic air raids, so he is not bothered by that bit of armored steel at all.

On the evening of May 25, the command of the Red Army received information that the Germans had successively broken through their three lines of defense at Dontsk on the Volga River, tore a gap more than 10 kilometers wide, cut off the supply lines of the two armies besieging Rostov, and were forced to move closer to Chernyakhovsky's attacking forces, which were still separated by 100 kilometers and interspersed with troops from the Kleist cluster - at least five infantry divisions.

"How did Comrade Rotmistrov fight? The 5th Guards Tank Army, which is known as the most elite, was defeated by the enemy in one day? Zhukov was furious, "No, they must be allowed to plug the gap immediately, otherwise the consequences will be unimaginable." ”

"Comrade Rotmistrov sacrificed ......" Vatutin was speechless for a long time, and finally answered.

"Sacrificed?" Everyone looked at each other, what was going on? Even Zhukov was surprised: how could a commander of an army group, or the commander of the most elite tank army, die so quickly?

After the Germans broke through the preset positions of the 5th Guards Army, General Rotmistrov mobilized 6 tank brigades to block and fight against the Germans.

He thought that the German tanks were more than 300 during the attack, and the German army lost more than 70 tanks (60% can be recovered) for various reasons after passing through the front two lines of defense, and the number was reduced to less than 300, which was less than the opponent's, and the German army had fought a bloody battle, and the energy of the fuel, ammunition and armored troops was at a low point, so he wanted to take this opportunity to fight a winning situation.

But he never expected that Piper and Meyer still had 2 Leopard armored battalions in their hands, and after all these troops swarmed in, the situation suddenly reversed, and what made the Red Army feel even more tricky was that they found that the Germans were equipped with new tanks, a similar appearance to the tiger, but the defense was obviously better than the tiger, and the artillery was sharper, and the distance of about 2000 meters was to destroy the T-43/85 at will, and the latter had to rush to within 1000 meters to have a chance to kill the opponent, as for the leopard, although the defense was worse than the tiger, but the maneuverability is better than that of the T-43, the artillery is not bad, and the ability to circle around the Red Army is stunned.

In the fierce fighting in the afternoon, the Germans lost more than 50 tanks (half of which could be repaired), but the Red Army was killed more than 200 tanks, and more than 40 were sniped by 88mm/L71 tungsten core armor-piercing shells at a long distance. Seeing that the momentum was not good, Rotmistrov beckoned to retreat, but he did not expect that the tank lineups of the two sides that had just been entangled had just separated, and the German Fw-190F ground attack aircraft roared towards and impartially killed Rotmistrov's armored vehicle with a 250-kilogram bomb.

In fact, blame him for his bad luck, if he escaped in a tank, maybe his luck was not so careful, but he took an armored car - after such a fierce steel collision, even the tank did not dare to guarantee survival, and an armored car with a bright antenna, wouldn't it be clear to tell the opponent that this was a command vehicle? Who do you bomb if you don't bomb?

"The 5th Guards Army, having lost half of its tanks, is currently retreating in the direction of Liteniakovo, the situation is not optimistic, and I have asked Comrade Moskalenko (General) to take command of the 38th Army and the command." Vatutin's head was full of sweat, and the dignified 5th Guards Army was repulsed in one afternoon, and Comrade Stalin knew that it had been returned? Therefore, he didn't care about other aspects, and directly sent the vanguard of the 38th Group Army. Originally, he wanted Rokossovsky to send troops to meet him, but the latter still had 2 armies isolated on the periphery, and he was anxious to get ready to open up contacts, so how could he have any spare strength?

The bad news followed: Army Group South's 4th Panzer Army, which, like the 1st Panzer Army, had a powerful assault force including the 3rd, 10th, 16th, 17th, and 4th Panzergrenadier Divisions, and the Red Army's mechanized corps and an infantry corps were surrounded, with destruction expected within imminent end.

As if there was not enough bad news, news came from the direction of Orenburg at night, the main force of the German Army Group Eastern turned south, and the 5th and 8th armies besieged Orenburg, and the rest of the armored forces passed around the city, and the Orenburg defenders were only 40,000. Once the place is lost, the Ural River will be cut off, which means that the southern flank theater will not be able to replenish the Ural industrial zone in the short term.

Zhukov's face suddenly turned pale......