The "Gonggong" super heavy mortar is a special siege cannon mounted on a tracked chassis, which can fire 6 concrete-destroying shells at the target within 1 hour, and each giant shell can penetrate two and a half meters of reinforced concrete when falling vertically, which can be described as indestructible. In addition to this, the Chinese 2nd Air Force will also provide the necessary air support to the 45th Infantry Division.

The garrison of the Soviet fortress against the 45th Infantry Division consisted mainly of the 4th Infantry Division of the 42nd Infantry Division and the 6th Infantry Division of the 7th Infantry Division, 1 reconnaissance battalion, 2 artillery battalions. The 17th NKVD Border Corps, as well as a number of engineering troops. The total strength is about 8,000 people. Even without taking into account the reinforced subordinate units of the Chinese army, the strength of the Soviet army was only half that of the 45th Infantry Division. In terms of firepower, the Soviet army, which mainly relied on light weapons to fight, was at an absolute disadvantage. On the first day of the war, the four main fortresses of the Tyumen fortress were divided and surrounded by the infiltrated Chinese troops, and almost all the senior commanders were not in the fortress at this time, so that there was almost no contact between these Red Army garrisons, which were encircled by the Chinese army and subjected to the heaviest artillery bombardment every day, and the higher commands, who had withdrawn hundreds of kilometers away, were not aware of their existence at all.

But in the absence of ammunition, food and water (the water supply system was destroyed on the first day), these units remained alone and constantly launched counter-attacks. Their actions not only pinned down a large number of Chinese troops, but also blocked the important supply routes of the Chinese army's armored clusters, and inflicted great casualties on the Chinese army.

In order to occupy this fortress, which had been under siege for a long time, the Chinese side began to use heavy artillery groups, including 460-mm "Gonggong" super-powerful mortars, to carry out a heavy artillery bombardment of the fortress for two days from April 7. A giant cannonball weighing one and a half tons whizzed towards the fortress, piercing the 2-meter-thick side walls of the fortress, and then threw the massive stones that make up the fortress into the sky with an earth-shattering explosion. This was arguably the most intense artillery bombardment of the Sino-Soviet War.

At the same time as the ground bombardment, the 3rd Bombardment Wing of the 2nd Air Force of China also dispatched seven "Kuaidao" twin-engine medium bombers on 9 April to carry out horizontal bombardment of the Tyumen fortress with special heavy bombs weighing 1,800 kilograms, and one of the super-heavy bombs directly hit the main fortress of the fortress. Under heavy artillery bombardment and the explosion of huge shells, the fortified fortress of Tyumen was reduced to a pile of broken walls.

After the shelling and indiscriminate bombardment stopped, the Chinese infantry, under the cover of flamethrowers, began to search the ruins for the last defenders of the fortress. On 9 April, the Chinese announced the fall of the Tyumen fortress, which the Soviets had held for nine days, but the 45th Chinese Infantry Division did not submit a report to Army Group Center Command on 8 May that the fortress had been occupied, and at the end of April, individual Soviet personnel were still fighting in the ruins of the fortress.

Kulen, the capital of Mongolia, "Eagle's Nest".

In the command hall, there are busy men and women everywhere, in front of the radio stations, the staff are constantly sending and receiving information and various orders, and on the huge map table in the center of the hall, several female officers are using long poles to place models of tanks, planes and infantry on the map to the corresponding positions.

"Where is Dongfang Bai now?"

"Yesterday's report that he has stormed Sverdlovsk. The status of the battle is currently unknown. ”

Yang Shuoming looked at the map and frowned.

"That means he's surrounded by enemy forces." Marshal Xu Yuanjin pointed to the location in the direction of Sverdlovsk on the map with some dissatisfaction, and nodded, "This is the hinterland of the Soviet army, and there are many heavy troops, so he broke into it without a head or a brain, and he was too bold." ”

"Yes! What's even worse is that many troops do not know where they are, and they also blindly rush forward to cooperate with his actions. Jiang Baili smiled bitterly and said.

"This guy! Is war child's play? How dare he do this......" Marshal Zhang Xiaozhun, who had just come to Kulun, coughed violently as soon as he said a word, "It's all ...... It's my godson who has no way! ”

Zhang Xiaozhun, who had previously held the post of chief of the Chinese General Staff, was seriously injured in the terrorist attack in Yanjing, and despite his serious illness, he went to the front line despite his serious illness.

Dongfang Bai, as his adopted son who spent the most effort and effort, has always been his pride, and he never thought that Dongfang Bai, who had just been promoted to lieutenant general, would make his own decisions and have been breaking into the hinterland of the Soviet Union.

"Such a style of play is too dangerous, even if it wins, it is not worth celebrating." Xu Yuanjin said.

"The military order is like a mountain, he dares to disobey it, the crime is unforgivable!" Zhang Xiaozhun gasped and said.

"Zhang Gong is angry, in fact, he is not violating the order." Jiang Baili smiled and said, "It should be said that this surprise attack he made was not completely arbitrary, but that he played a little too much after receiving the relevant assault order." ”

"Overplayed?" Zhang Xiaozhun asked with some surprise.

"At the beginning of the plan, the order issued was originally vaguely defined, and the original intention was to be a short assault of one or two hundred kilometers. Dongfang Bai took the opportunity to expand this order and launched a medium-level campaign-level assault. He should have had this idea a long time ago, otherwise he would not have been able to explain how he requisitioned so many war materials and supplies with just a division commander. Moreover, this operation also requires the cooperation of some mechanized infantry units with strong assault capabilities, and those troops also cooperate very well, which is not something that can be explained by a self-asserted opinion. Jiang Baili explained.

"This is tantamount to a collective violation of the order, and the sin is even greater." When Zhang Xiaozhun heard this, his face became even more ugly.

"Let's put the sin aside for a while, and then we'll talk about it after this battle." Xu Yuanjin understood what Jiang Baili meant, and said, "The top priority is whether he can help achieve our predetermined goal of annihilating the main force of the Soviet army by doing this." ”

"Can't Xu Gong see it?" Jiang Baili smiled, "The Soviet army has attracted Dongfang Bai, and we will definitely fight a big war of annihilation this time." ”

Listening to Jiang Baili's words, Xu Yuanjin and Zhang Xiaozhun were all shocked.

At this time, in Yang Shuoming's eyes, the "supercomputer eye" quickly analyzed the data obtained from the summary, and quickly told Yang Shuoming the analysis results.

Yang Shuoming already understood what Dongfang Bai wanted to do this time.

"He's snowballing." Yang Shuoming came to the map table, looked at the situation of the enemy and us on the map, and said.

"Hanzhi's metaphor is very vivid." Xu Yuanjin looked at the map and nodded.

Indeed, the fierce assault of the armored instructor commanded by Dongfang Bai attracted a huge number of Soviet troops. The armored instructor dragged the hundreds of thousands of elite Soviet troops surrounding it, wrapped the Soviet army up, and rolled it into a huge snowball, which became bigger and bigger, and the armored instructor was the center of the snowball.

"This snowball is big enough." Xu Yuanjin studied carefully for a while, and said to Yang Shuoming and the others, "Why don't you let Dongfang Bai rush farther?" Let the snowball roll a little bigger. ”

"What does Xu Gong mean is to annihilate the Soviet army in Ufa?" Jiang Baili looked at the map and asked.

"Yes." Xu Yuanjin nodded, and when he heard their discussion, Zhang Xiaozhun also became excited, and he motioned to the female officer pushing the wheelchair to push himself to the map table.

Zhang Xiaozhun looked at it for a while, and shook his head, as if he was worried about Dongfang Bai, "Ufa is too close to Kazan, and the terrain is not suitable for the armored instructor to break out of the encirclement, nor is it conducive to the encirclement of our army." ”

"What Zhang Gong said is reasonable." Xu Yuanjin looked at this white-haired old comrade-in-arms and understood that he was worried about Dongfang Bai, so he smiled and nodded, "Where is it better for Gong Zhang?" ”

"Fortunately, the air supremacy is mine, and the armored instructor has provided cover through the air force along the way, so it is best to find a plain area for a decisive battle." Although Zhang Xiaozhun was very worried about the safety of Dongfang Bai and his troops, he still did not know much about the situation on the front line since he was injured and left office, so he did not want to point fingers here.

"How is Izhevsk?" Xu Yuanjin thought about it, pointed to the map and asked Yang Shuoming and Jiang Baili.

"No, it's in Sverdlovsk." Yang Shuoming said.

This was a dispute between the generals of the General Headquarters of the Chinese Army and the Command of Army Group Center at a time when the fierce fighting for the Tyumen fortress was still going on, and the rapidly advancing armored group of the Eastern White was about to enter Sverdlovsk.

The generals of the Chinese Army, including the Chief of the General Staff Jiang Baili, the commander of Army Group Center, Marshal Xu Yuanjin, and some army generals were now not satisfied with closing the encirclement at Sverdlovsk, and they advocated advancing to Izhevsk to form an encirclement in order to encircle more Soviet troops and at the same time approach Moscow.

But Yang Shuoming did not approve of this overly bold idea. He was soberly aware that because the Chinese army's armored group advanced too fast, the Chinese army's infantry group army was left behind, and the two wings of the tank unit lost their cover, and the Chinese army's armored group itself was not like the armored instructor, which had formed support troops, and still needed to rely on the infantry army in terms of logistics. Therefore, this situation actually lurks a huge crisis. It was with this in mind that the cautious Yang Shuoming even ordered Army Group Center to close the encirclement almost 100 kilometers from Sverdlovsk in his order on April 5. In the face of the fierce opposition of Marshal Xu Yuanjin, commander of Army Group Center, Yang Shuoming finally abandoned this overly conservative plan, but the generals of the Chinese Army no longer stubbornly took risks. According to the compromise reached between Yang Shuoming and them, the final encirclement will still be closed in the Sverdlovsk region.

Convinced that the Chinese had broken through the defense line of the Eastern Front and were advancing towards Sverdlovsk, the Soviet high command finally understood the intentions of the Chinese army. In order to prevent the troops from being surrounded, on April 5, at the request of the Deputy People's Commissar of Defense Marshal Shaposhnikov, the representative sent to the Eastern Front, the Soviet High Command agreed to the withdrawal of the Front. The Military Council of the Eastern Front issued a general retreat order on the same day. The order stipulated that the 13th, 10th, 3rd, and 4th armies must begin to retreat from the night of April 5 and 6, and no later than 21 o'clock. The impatient General Pavlov also ordered the troops to throw off the enemy on a wide front. But his orders were in fact impossible to execute. The units of the Eastern Front, which had not been effectively commanded from the beginning of the war, had lost their organization in the retreat, their already small number of vehicles had almost been lost, and their fuel had run out. In addition, the Chinese army occupied the warehouses of the Soviet troops, so they could not expect to be replenished at all. And with only these two legs, the Soviet army simply could not escape the rapid outflanking of the Chinese rapid armored clusters. Moreover, by this time, the only way they could retreat was a passage less than 60 kilometers wide, consisting of a few shoddy country roads, which had been blocked by heavy shelling and air raids by the Chinese army. Under intensive heavy artillery and mortar shelling, the Soviet troops retreating from this narrow passage in the direction of Sverdlovsk suffered heavy casualties and became a mess. On 6 April, Major General Borisov, commander of the 21st Reserve Infantry Corps of the 13th Army of the Eastern Front, was killed in a tank by a Chinese heavy artillery shell while organizing the retreat of the 37th Infantry Division under him. Among the Soviet generals who died on that day was Major General Savnov, commander of the 47th Infantry Division of the 143rd Army of the Eastern Front. The division under his command was surrounded and annihilated by the Chinese army, and he himself was killed in the process of leading his men to break through.

At this time, the 1st Armored Brigade, the vanguard of the Eastern White Armored Teaching Group of the Chinese Army, was already approaching Sverdlovsk. Although the brigade commander, Lieutenant General Hu Lian, was seriously wounded in a battle with the Red Army on 6 April, the next day his panzer division joined up with the motorized 57th Army of the 3rd Panzer Group in the Sverdlovsk area. The two most powerful armored iron pincers of the Chinese army were closed here. On the same day, the Chinese motorized 24th Army occupied Soviet positions southeast of Sverdlovsk.

On April 8, the Chinese army launched an offensive against the city with the strength of three armored divisions, and the Soviet troops defending the city were forced to retreat. On the same day, Sverdlovsk fell into the hands of the Chinese army. The loss of the city also meant that the retreat of the Red Army units of the Eastern Front was cut off by the Chinese army. Most of the 3rd and 10th armies of the front army and the first part of the 13th army had a total of more than 20 divisions, of which 11 were full divisions, including 6 divisions of the 3rd and 10th armies, 3 divisions of the 13th army, and 2 divisions directly under the Eastern Front, with a total of nearly 400,000 troops surrounded.

However, just when the Chinese troops occupying Sverdlovsk were jubilating at this victory, on April 9, on the street of this city that had just been lost for a day, a Soviet "T-28" medium tank suddenly rushed out and opened heavy fire on the Chinese marching column, resulting in the destruction of several trucks and artillery tractors. The tank was quickly hit by Chinese tank shells, and the seriously wounded driver, Sergeant Malek, committed suicide. Although his actions could not change the outcome of the total annihilation of the main force of the Red Army, as a soldier, his brave spirit made the Chinese officers and soldiers feel awe.

On the night of the fall of Sverdlovsk, the 4th and 9th Chinese armies met in the Chelyabinsk area. In this way, the Soviet troops in the encirclement were further divided into two areas. Immediately after that, the Chinese army began to set out to destroy the besieged Red Army. To this end, they used the 9th Army and the 2nd Army, which received the strength of the 4th Army (the headquarters of this army was originally part of the reserve of the General Headquarters of the Chinese Army), with a total strength of 25 divisions, supported by a part of tanks and motorized units.

The encircled Soviet troops, although in a desperate situation, still insisted on fighting. A Chinese tanker described it in his diary as follows: "There was a fierce battle in the forest southeast of the city,...... The Russians fought hard everywhere, even if only the last man remained...... What we see is that on the captured artillery positions, only a few people were captured. The Russians either fought to the end, or disguised themselves as peasants and managed to escape from the encirclement......"

In the encirclement, many Red Army soldiers gathered together with rifles that had run out of ammunition (which was often their only weapon), braving the heavy fire of Chinese machine guns, mortars, and even tanks, and shouted a decisive charge. On the section of the 29th motorized division of the Chinese army, the Soviet soldiers, who would rather die than surrender, even held hands and shouted while advancing towards the flaming Chinese machine guns. The main breakthrough of the Soviet troops was chosen in the forest near a small town called Solov, where they used cavalry clusters to launch an assault, and later armored trains. However, under the fierce fire of the Chinese army, the Red Army, which left behind a large number of corpses, was unable to make the main force of the encirclement break the encirclement of the Chinese army.

The Soviets then made several more attempts to break out. Many of them were killed, and only some of them escaped from the encirclement and returned to their own people under the cover of night. The largest unit of the breakthrough was the 13th Infantry Corps of the 45th Army.

Those who remained in the encirclement were in a difficult situation. After the failure of the breakout, a number of troops were scattered, and the remnants entered the forest. The already small amount of ammunition and supplies was quickly exhausted, and it was difficult to organize effective resistance in the encirclement because of the lack of preset positions and effective command. In actual warfare, a soldier's bravery can often be brought into full play under the premise of sufficient ammunition, solid position support, and effective command, and they will fight to the death at all costs. And if these conditions are lost, the soldiers' resistance at the cost of their own lives will become meaningless, and their will to resist will undoubtedly be greatly reduced. The same was true for the vast majority of the hundreds of thousands of besieged Soviet troops. The 25 fully manned and well-equipped Chinese Army divisions surrounding them, with the strong cooperation of the 2nd Air Force (the N5 Dragonfly tactical attack aircraft of the 2nd Teaching Wing of the Chinese Air Force were particularly active in this battle), were constantly dividing and compressing the encirclement. In such a harsh and desperate situation, the besieged Soviet troops began to be captured in large numbers, and most of the soldiers of the 12th, 89th and 103rd Infantry Divisions of the Soviet Army surrendered to the Chinese army. At such a life-and-death moment, nothing "ism" or "ideal" is of use, and what remains is only the desire for life.

(To be continued)