.“ Red Eagle 2, Red Eagle 2, have you found anything? ”

"Not yet! Everything is fine on my side, but what about yours? ”

"Same!"

"Fly back in 10 minutes! Fly back in 10 minutes! ”

"Understood!"

Two silver-gray warhawks roared low, and the swarthy, round bombs under the belly of the plane could be seen on the ground.

In the woods they had just flown over, a pair of wary eyes finally looked away.

"Sleep during the day and act at night, are we rats? Oh, poor mouse! ”

The Russian soldiers sitting under the big tree were full of disappointment and helplessness, they were wearing khaki uniforms, but they had no backpacks on their bodies, no guns next to them, and a very strange kind of leather felt hat in their hands, without brim and edges, which seemed to be more used to protect their heads from impact.

At this moment, a low conversation came from behind a large tree not far from the Russian soldier, and if you listened closely, it was actually the two of them talking in Japanese:

"Aoyama-kun, what are they talking about?"

"He felt so depressed that he could not march openly, and that he had to hide like a mouse!"

"Stupid, isn't marching under the noses of German fighters and bombers asking for your own death?"

"What Shao Zuo said is that there seems to be no suspense in this battlefield, the terrible Germans!"

"No, the war can't end like this, the Germans have to pay the price in Russia, preferably with a lot of vitality, so that they don't have the strength to interfere in the Greater East Asia strategy of our Great Japanese Empire!"

"How soon do you think we will be able to defeat the Shina army? Half a year or a year? ”

"Oh no, no, no, three months, three months at most!"

"But our army and navy have been fighting in Australia for more than a year before ......"

"Aoyama-kun, please don't confuse Australians with Shina people! Most of the Australians are of British descent, and they received great assistance from the British during the war, so the war lasted so long, but it was only a stubborn resistance! With the great strength of our Imperial Japanese Army and Navy, that war was doomed from the beginning! ”

"Shaozo thinks the same is true of the China War?"

"As long as the damned Germans don't meddle, of course. Aoyama-kun, believe me, three months of the imperial army is enough to occupy the entire China! ”

When a low humming sound came from the air, the sound of Japanese conversation stopped abruptly, and not only this sound, but the sound of the wind could almost be heard in the entire woods, and in a few moments, two silver-gray warplanes flew over the woods again. Then fly farther and farther until it disappears completely.

Out of the big tree came two men, two very short men compared to the Russians, one with two pieces of cross-cutting flesh on his face, and a very unkind expression, and the other a little taller than him, with a long, thin face, and a pair of round-rimmed glasses that did not match the shape of his face.

"Qingshan-kun, a fierce battle is coming in the near future, I wish you good luck!" It was the guy with the flesh on his face who spoke.

"Akashi Shaoza...... "The glasses stood upright, and he bowed very movingly." I wish you the glory of the empire in this land of Europe! ”

The horizontal meat man is the Akashi Shaozo in his mouth. Holding the war knife at his waist, he also bowed back.

Not far behind the two of them, there was a large creature that covered the top half with branches and leaves, and from here you could see the dark tracks on the bottom half. Look around. There are many, many such things in places that are difficult to observe in the air, and they are painted with the logo of the Russian Army, but this does not prevent them from having the "heart" of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

All the tanks in this so-called Russian 4th Separate Tank Brigade were assembled at the Vladivostok Heavy Machinery Factory in the Far East, and this machine factory, which was established in 1927, was actually a secret Russian-Japanese cooperation project, that is, Russia and Japan jointly funded it, and the Japanese side provided technicians, drawings, engines, artillery and armor steel plates, and the main materials were transported from Japan, and then assembled by Russian workers, and the ownership of the tanks belonged to Russia. However, the production technology belonged to Japan, and in addition, the Japanese Army also sent a group of "volunteers" to drive some of the tanks, and after the outbreak of the German-Russian War, these people were transferred to the front line with the Russian army, and Akashi Kuka Shozo was the commander of these Japanese "volunteers".

As the sun approached, the summer heat finally dissipated, and the wind blowing by the trees gradually regained the coolness of the early morning. After a comfortable nap, there are more people walking around the woods. When dinner time came, people took out the dry food in their backpacks and ate it with cold water. The two Japanese who had sent them were no exception, and they sat around fifty of their own small counterparts. These people ate not only bread, dried buns and other Russian military food, but also a number of oily canned meat brought from their own country, although it was not heated, the faint smell of oily meat still attracted many Russian soldiers.

The Japanese didn't care so much, they ate deliciously one by one, and a low-ranking soldier looked like he was holding a large kettle and pouring "water" for the officers one by one, and the aroma of sake wafted in the wind, and the Russian soldiers couldn't help but salivate with envy.

However, the sound of galloping horses' hooves disturbed their meal, and a Cossack on a white horse came nervously from outside the woods, and did not turn over and dismount until he reached a small tent in the woods, which drew the eyes of all the people around him.

Half a minute later, a bearded Russian man in a major general's uniform came out of the tent, looked left and right, and whispered an explanation to the adjutant who was on standby, and the adjutant nodded and shouted:

"Assemble, get ready for battle!"

After learning the meaning of the Russians from his companions, Akashi Shaosa, who had two pieces of horizontal meat, threw down the bread in his hand and stood up, drew his sword, muttered for a long time, and then took the lead and ran to a "big haystack" not far away, climbed to it like a monkey, lifted off the branches that covered it, opened an iron lid, and slipped into it. After a while, a puff of smoke erupted from behind the "haystack", and then began to move, and after the branches and leaves fell, what was shown in front of people was a tracked combat vehicle about the size of an ordinary truck, although the details were very different from the German tank, but it can be seen that the designer's thinking was largely influenced by the German Stone series tanks and the American Christie series tanks, the small and round double turret, the barrel caliber and length are moderate, but the distance from the bottom of the car to the ground is obviously higher. This design is conducive to cross-country travel, but the biggest disadvantage is that it increases the overall height of the tank, the height of 2.6 meters is almost the same as the German Type IV tank, but the medium tank named "Type 86" is only 15 tons as a whole, which is 8 tons less than the German IV tank, and nearly 3 tons less than the German Improved Type III currently used.

Seeing that their leaders were moving quickly, the Japanese soldiers who were still surrounding just now were not far behind, and they rushed to their tanks one by one. Needless to say, there was no need to clean up the leftover food on the ground, and the cans printed in Japanese were discarded under the trees.

It didn't take long for the Russian 4th Separate Tank Brigade, commanded by General Nikita, to prepare for departure, when the sun was just setting and the light was fading, but the Russians, who had suffered so much from the Luftwaffe, waited patiently for it to get completely dark before driving the tanks out of the woods one by one.

About 10 kilometers south of this wood, an armored advance force belonging to the German Central Cluster was planning to quickly penetrate from the west to the rear of Smolensk in order to cut off the rear of the Russian 5th Army, which was used by the Germans in Riga, Brest, Chisinau and Kiev. And won one encirclement battle after another. Only the Russian defenders in Minsk slipped relatively quickly, allowing the German Northern Cluster to pounce there.

After dark, the role of aerial reconnaissance and cover of the Luftwaffe was greatly weakened. Under these circumstances, Colonel Waltermoder cautiously ordered his troops to slow down slightly and advance in battle formation—a tank battalion of 25 tanks and 15 assault guns at the front of the force, two armoured combat battalions and four tanlian mixed in the center, followed by a motorized infantry regiment, a mechanized infantry regiment on trucks, and a logistics truck on baggage, with a standard tank battalion at the rear.

Born in 1891 in East Prussia, Jerihof, Kent, Hindi, Walter Moder, he had a father who was the conductor of the Royal Prussian Orchestra. After graduating from high school, Moder Jr. joined the army in 1909 and was assigned to the famous East Prussian Army Group, where he fought in the 1914 world war with the rank of second lieutenant, during which he was wounded twice, and by the end of the war he had been promoted to captain. After that, he continued to serve in the German 8th Army, successively serving as an infantry battalion commander and a mechanized infantry regiment commander. In 1923, he was transferred to the 2nd Panzer Corps of the German Panzer Group as Chief of Staff of the 9th Mechanized Brigade, and in 1924 he accompanied the troops on an expedition to the United States, where his talents were appreciated by his superiors, and after the war he was promoted to colonel of the Panzer Corps and served as a brigade commander of the 2nd Panzer Division of the Panzer Corps.

As a German officer who experienced the Battle of Bialystok in 1914, Moder will not forget the amazing move of the Russians to avoid the Luftwaffe reconnaissance and attack on Kimon for a long time, let alone the tragic loss of tens of thousands of people in one day by the Walbeck Division. The best lessons learned from Kimon and Walbeck were the best examples.

Good vigilance saved the German panzer from a catastrophe, and 15 kilometers northwest of Smolensk, the ambush-ready Russian tank brigade met its target, the German Rapid Panzer Brigade, which was still at a loss for the enemy.

At almost the same time, hundreds of Russian tank guns smashed 47 mm, 57 mm and 75 mm armor-piercing shells at the forefront of the German tank battalion, it can be said that the lessons of the German-American war gave the Japanese many important hints after all, the destruction of the US armored forces let them see the strength of German tank firepower and protection, so the Japanese government commissioned Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Fujita Ordnance Research Institute to develop tanks and anti-tank weapons that can compete with the main German tanks in terms of firepower and defense, in the case of limited funds, Fujita Ordnance Research Institute developed a 47 mm gun with a diameter of 40 times, a 57 mm gun with a diameter of 38 times and a 75 mm gun with a diameter of 35 times, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries also used the original aviation gasoline engine to improve into a 200 horsepower tank engine, the main body of the tank was also designed by the designers of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, a turret with 30 mm frontal armor is located on the right side of the longitudinal center of the hull, divided into a type equipped with a 57 mm gun and a B type equipped with a 75 mm gun, The Type A can penetrate 50 mm of steel armor at a distance of 1,000 meters, and the B Type can penetrate 80 mm of steel armor at the same distance.

Regardless of the performance of the weapons of both sides, the first collision between the main tanks of Japan and Germany took place! The first round of shelling by the Russian army at a distance of 800 meters was very strong, although the light was not too good, but the dense shells still fell near the road, and those German tanks and assault guns that were moving along the road ate a lot of shells on the spot, and at the first time, a tank III was pierced by the Russian army's 75mm armor-piercing shells through the hull armor, and the chain explosion turned the new tank into a fireball, and the situation of the other few vehicles walking in the forefront of the third was not very good, after the track was blown up, They had to fire at the positions where the Russian tanks were hiding, but they were completely destroyed by the powerful fire of the opponent in a short time.

In contrast, the thickly armored tank IV suffered slightly less losses in the face of the enemy's first wave of strikes, only two were damaged tracks, and the rest left the road to shoot while retreating, and more than a dozen assault guns were originally low-hulled, and they were behind tanks III and IV, so most of them were safe and sound in the first wave of Russian fire, but the commanders did not dare to slack off, braking, turning left, reversing, and pushing one by one into the field on the other side of the road.

Faced with this sudden blow, Moder also chuckled in his heart, and seeing that his vanguard had suffered a lot of losses under the heavy artillery fire of the Russian army, he quickly ordered:

"Tank 1 battalion, each vehicle keeps its head facing the enemy and retreats in an orderly manner in reverse gear! The 2nd Tank Battalion quickly left the road and entered the wilderness on the left, and the soldiers of the armored combat regiment and the mechanized infantry regiment immediately got out of the car and dispersed! The 3rd Tank Battalion spread out in battle formation, take care to protect the rear of the convoy! Signal Corps, send a report to the military headquarters! ”

The well-trained German soldiers did not panic too much in this sudden situation, especially the vanguard tank units that were shelled consciously took some actions that were conducive to avoiding the expansion of losses before Moder gave the order, but the Russian army occupied favorable terrain and the firepower was relatively concentrated, and several German tanks exploded in just a few minutes.