By April 3, on the right flank of the Eastern Front, only the 6th Mechanized Army had departed from Bialystok, marched 60 kilometers to the area of departure of the offensive, and then launched a counterattack with the support of the 3rd Army of the Front Aviation and Long-Range Aviation. However, due to the lack of coordination between the ground forces and the aviation forces in the offensive, the aviation units failed to provide air cover for the ground forces, and as a result, the Soviet troops suffered heavy losses under the powerful air raids of the 2nd Air Force of the Chinese Army, and the offensive was completely defeated. It was not until noon that day that the two mechanized armies of the Soviet army paid heavy sacrifices and barely blocked the attack of the 9th Army of the Chinese army.

In the 10th Army zone, the only Soviet victory was the 6th Cavalry Corps (commander Major General Nijin), which was part of the army, recaptured Lomcha, a city occupied by the Chinese and then voluntarily abandoned. As a price, the 36th Cavalry Division, to which the corps belonged, was subjected to heavy air strikes by Chinese aircraft near Volkovysk and suffered heavy losses. On the same day, in the same area, Major General Mikhalin, deputy commander in charge of the fortified area of the Siberian Special Military District, was killed on the spot by an incoming Chinese plane.

General Pavlov, who had returned to the headquarters, was undoubtedly frustrated by the extremely unfavorable situation, but the general, who had used a pistol in Spain to stop the soldiers from retreating, still had to make an effort. At 20:05 that night, Pavlov sent a sternly worded and hurried coded telegram to the 10th Army (within which the 6th Mechanized Army was organized): "The mechanized corps should act immediately, not panic, but command." There should be an organized attack on the enemy, not a commanded run. ”

According to the new instructions of the Eastern Front, the Borgin group was supposed to recapture Omsk with the cooperation of the 3rd Army, and the rest of the troops were to make every effort to stop the advance of the Chinese army. To this end, Pavlov threw the 2nd Army of the 13th echelon of the Front into the battles in this area. This army group (commander Lieutenant General Filatov) was in the formation stage at the time of the outbreak of the war, and its units were temporarily drawn from the reserves of the Eastern Front. What Pavlov did not realize was that this decision of his would lead to the emptiness of forces in the deep zone of the Eastern Front, thereby creating conditions for the long-term advance of the Chinese armored forces.

Despite the stern orders of the Eastern Front and the sending of reinforcements, by April 4, the mechanized 11th and 6th armies under the command of Major General Borkin were still unable to successfully counterattack. These 2 mechanized corps had 1258 tanks at the beginning of the war, but lacked artillery and transport vehicles. In the assault on the positions of the 20th Infantry Army of the 9th Army of the Chinese Army, the Soviet tanks, without artillery support and infantry cover, suffered huge losses and consumed a small amount of ammunition and fuel. However, the 13th Infantry Corps of the 21st Army, which came to reinforce it, collided with the armored 12th Division of the 3rd Armored Group of the Chinese Army, and as a result, it retreated step by step under the attack of the Chinese tank troops. Misfortunes followed, the troops were scattered, and of course, there was no counter-assault now.

The reality was that the counterattack of the right flank of the Eastern Front, on which great hopes had been pinned upon, had by this time achieved almost no results except for heavy losses due to a huge blow.

On the left flank of the Eastern Front, from April 3, the mechanized 14th Army of the Soviet 4th Army and the 28th Infantry Army, retreating from the border area, also counterattacked the attacking 2nd Panzer Group of the Chinese Army. In this corps there were 520 old tanks (by this time a lot had been lost), there were no new tanks such as the "T-34" and "KV", and the whole army was already in disarray in terms of organization. In comparison, the Chinese 2nd Panzer Group at the beginning of the war had 955 tanks, including 135 Walker tanks with 85 mm guns, 381 Walker tanks with 100 mm guns, and 216 tank destroyers and command tanks with 100 mm guns. The squadron has a great advantage in terms of the number and quality of tanks, not to mention that they still have a firm grip on air supremacy.

But the Soviet counterattack was extremely resolute. In the fierce battle, several Soviet tanks even broke through to the field command post of the 17th Panzer Division of the Chinese Army. At that time, in this command post, there were not only Lieutenant General Du Yuming, commander of the 17th Armored Division, but also Army General Lin Yuying, commander of the 2nd Armored Group, and General Dai Anlan, commander of the 47th Motorized Army, who came to inspect the battlefield. Fortunately, these people are rich in combat experience and can lie down in time at the moment when the Soviet tank fires, otherwise the head of the 2nd armored group of the Chinese army may really be annihilated in one fell swoop. On the same day, Lin Yuying encountered a total of two Soviet tanks, but both of them survived.

While the ground battles were going on, the Soviet Aerospace Forces fought tenaciously as best they could in unfavorable conditions. Even Lin Yuying's headquarters was attacked by them, but as mentioned above, fortunately Lin Yuying himself was not in his command at that time, so he escaped again. But for some reason, the Soviets announced on the radio at the time that they had killed Lin Yuying. During the same period, the 1st Cavalry Division within the 2nd Panzer Group (which was actually only an infantry division moving on horseback and had little ability to fight on horseback) also suffered considerable losses in the air raids of the Red Army.

In addition to tanks and aviation, the infantry units of the Soviet Red Army were extremely active and tenacious in striking at the marching 2nd Panzer Group. According to the German account, the Red Army infantry, lacking artillery cover, always lined up in a straggler line in waves, holding rifles and braving the fierce fire of Chinese machine guns and mortars, launching a heroic but ineffective counterattack. In front of the positions of the Chinese troops, they were covered with the corpses of Soviet troops, while the onslaught of new infantry continued. After paying an extremely heavy price, the onslaught of the Soviet army seemed to have had a little effect. The 47th Army of the 13th Army, which had set out for engagement on April 4, even repelled the vanguard of the 2nd Panzer Group, but they only stopped the Chinese offensive for a short time, which was not enough to save the Soviet defeat on all fronts.

From the night of 3 April, the Eastern Front command was almost completely cut off from its subordinate armies, and the commander of the Front, Pavlov, sometimes had to determine the location of his units only through aerial reconnaissance and Chinese broadcasts, and the units of the Front were in a desperate situation of fighting on their own, some of which fled into the forest to escape the constant air raids. The 4th Army of the Red Army, which was fighting on the left flank of the Eastern Front, lost its effective command of the troops on 4 April and collapsed. On the same day, the 14th Tank Division of the 22nd Mechanized Army was completely wiped out in a fierce battle with the powerful Chinese armored forces, and the commander of the division, Major General Puganov, was killed by fragments of Chinese artillery shells. The 13th Army and the 47th Army of the 13th Army, which were blocking the path of the Chinese army's advance, were also surrounded by the Chinese army. The counterattack of the Eastern Front on the left flank ultimately failed to stop the advance of Lin Yuying's armored group.

Just after Lin Yuying's 2nd Armored Group on the left flank repelled the Soviet counter-assault, while advancing at high speed, the Chinese army stretched from the right flank to another armored iron pincer in the depth of the Eastern Front, the Chinese army's armored instructor commanded by Lieutenant General Dongfang Bai, also began to converge.

The Chinese Army's Armored Instructors are the elite of the Chinese Army, equipped with the best weapons, assembled with the best non-commissioned officers and officers, and equipped with a readable logistics unit. This unit has 960 new "Gray Wolf" main battle tanks, 408 "Jackal" infantry fighting vehicles, 192 120-mm self-propelled mortars, and 144 105-mm self-propelled guns, of which the Reading Super Heavy Tank Battalion has 56 "Xuanwu" X.26 reconnaissance light tanks, 82 armored reconnaissance vehicles, 76 off-road jeeps, and the Super Heavy Special Artillery Regiment has 48 "Xuanwu" X4003 (P) experimental 280-mm special heavy guns, 144 ammunition vehicles, and 70 special trailers. 50 special emergency repair vehicles. The tactical self-propelled rocket artillery regiment has 116 S-10 22-pack 180-mm self-propelled rocket launchers, 36 A-7 "Sirius" campaignal/tactical missile launchers, the army's "Ranger" special forces brigade is equipped with 70 K-1 general-purpose helicopters, 50 K-2 "Kuafu" large transport helicopters, in addition to an off-road fleet equipped with 60 120-mm recoilless guns, a 105-mm ultralight howitzer battalion (helicopter airlift), and 64 N3 "Sky Strike" tactical attack aircraft, the K-84 "Cuckoo" school firing / liaison aircraft of the Army Aviation Regiment of 18 aircraft. The total number of armored instructors is 51,532, and the front-line combat strength is 34,226. In fact, the instructors of armored armor are comparable to a mechanized corps in all respects, except that the infantry unit is smaller than the mechanized corps, and the artillery is missing 5 to 10 regiments. The armored strength of the armored instructor is stronger than that of the mechanized army, because the mechanized army does not necessarily have super-heavy tanks and super-heavy tank destroyers, and the mechanized army does not have the establishment of army special forces, so in fact, the armored instructor is a strategic assault force with a strong offensive surname. A cluster of heavy armor.

Since from the very beginning of the war, the Eastern and Northeast Fronts of the Red Army did not pay enough attention to this Chinese armored cluster interspersed from the junction of the two fronts, so only the 5th Tank Division of the 3rd Mechanized Army of the Northeast Front of the Soviet Army, and the 21st Infantry Army of the 13th Army of the Eastern Front counterattacked this armored group.

The first to stop this armored cluster was the 5th tank division of the Red Army. The division was violently attacked by Chinese planes at 4:20 a.m. on 2 April, and suffered great losses in strength. However, 27 "T-28" medium multi-turret tanks and some "BT" fast tanks of the 9th Tank Regiment of the division fought a fierce battle with the 265 tanks of the vanguard of the armored instructor on the iron bridge over the Tara River, which the Chinese army must pass. In the face of a strong enemy, the Red Army first used the exposed turrets of some tanks buried in the ground to surprise the moving Chinese tank groups, and then put the moving tanks into battle, inflicting certain losses on the Chinese army. The battle with the 5th Tank Division of the Red Army made a deep impression on the commander of the 101st Tank Regiment of the Chinese Armored Instructor, Colonel Zhang Zongchuan, who declared in his report to his superiors that it was the most brutal battle he had ever experienced in his tank career.

However, the 5th Tank Division of the Red Army suffered even heavier losses under the counterattack of elite Chinese armored instructors. From April 2 to April 3 alone, 90 tanks (including 24 "T-28" medium multi-turret tanks) were destroyed by the Chinese army. The division ultimately failed to stop the advance of the Chinese army.

After overcoming the resistance of the Soviet army, the armored instructor with nearly 1,000 tanks was able to successfully divide the two fronts of the Soviet army in the east and northeast on April 4. On the same day, the 1st Panzer Brigade of the Panzer Group also repelled a counterattack by the Soviet 21st Infantry Corps, drawn from the reserves of the Eastern Front. At this time, since Pavlov used the 13th Infantry Corps of the 44th Army in this direction to defend against the Chinese Army attacking south of the 3rd Panzer Group, a huge vacuum appeared between the Chinese armored forces and Sverdlovsk. Despite the sparse and congested roads, the Armored Instructor under the command of Dongfang Bai was able to drive straight from here.

On this very day, the vanguard of the Panzer Instructor was already under the city of Sverdlovsk.

At 15 o'clock in the afternoon of that day, the Chinese, desperate to occupy Sverdlovsk, launched an assault on the city named after Stalin's "closest comrade-in-arms" in an attempt to seize it in one fell swoop. Unexpected resistance occurred when hundreds of Chinese tanks, under the cover of motorized infantry equipped with off-road trucks and half-track carriers, rushed straight to Soviet positions.

On the defensive side of their path were the 13th and 161st Infantry Divisions of the 100th Soviet Army. The two divisions had been heavily bombarded by Chinese aircraft before entering the position, and there was no artillery support (their artillery was redeployed), but they stubbornly resisted the Chinese tanks with cluster grenades and Molotov cocktails. Although Chinese tanks and motorcycles rushed into Soviet positions several times. But under the command of the commander of the 100th Infantry Division, Rusiyanov, and the commander of the 161st Infantry Division, Mikhainov, the Soviet troops still repelled the Chinese attack. At the end of the day-long battle, the Chinese left the wreckage of 15 tanks on Soviet positions.

Since the beginning of the war, Soviet troops have mostly encountered clusters of Chinese tanks as they advanced into defensive positions. Due to the lack of anti-tank weapons and positions to rely on, as well as the lack of experience in resisting tank attacks, once the Red Army soldiers encountered a large group of tanks and motorized vehicles that were marching rapidly and rumbling with an unstoppable momentum in the formation of a Chinese army, they would often fall into a state of panic or even collapse, and naturally they would not be able to organize an effective defense. And under the city of Sverdlovsk, the two infantry divisions of the Soviet army, although they did not have enough heavy weapons, had relatively solid defensive positions. Among them, the 161st Infantry Division had a defensive front of 9 km, and the only two infantry regiments were deployed in the 1st and 2nd echelons respectively, with a defensive depth of 5 km. The 161st Infantry Division has a defensive front of 18 kilometers and a depth of 6 kilometers, and its 1st echelon has 2 infantry regiments and 1 regiment in the 2nd echelon. This positional configuration ensured a large defensive density and a certain depth, and coupled with the stubborn fighting of the Soviet army, these two infantry divisions held their positions until April 8, when the Chinese armored instructors committed overwhelming superior forces.

At the same time that the Chinese armored instructor group was approaching the city of Sverdlovsk, the Chinese 2nd armored group, which was attacking on the left flank of the Eastern Front, was also advancing in depth after overcoming the Soviet counterattack. After the capture of Tobolsk, the Chinese army was divided into two routes: the 47th and 46th motorized armies on the left, whose goal was to rendezvous with the armored instructor cluster at Sverdlovsk, and the motorized 24th army on the right, which aimed at the more far-reaching Nizhny Tagil. In this process, the four infantry divisions under the 47th Infantry Corps of the 13th Infantry Army of the Red Army, which were encircled, continued to counterattack the armored columns of the Chinese army, but these attacks were very scattered and failed to play much role except for increasing casualties. The real trouble for the armored teaching cluster of the Chinese army came from the city of Tyumen, which had already been thrown far behind the Chinese tank units.

From the first moment of the war to the fall of Sverdlovsk, the brutal battle never ended in this ancient border fortress, which was built in 1586.

In order to occupy the fortress, the Central Army Group of the Chinese Army invested the 12th Army under the command of Army General Zhao Dongsheng, with the 31st, 34th, and 45th Infantry Divisions, of which the 31st and 34th Infantry Divisions were responsible for operating on both flanks of the fortress, while the 45th Infantry Division was ordered to directly capture the fortress. The 45th Chinese Infantry Division commanded by Major General Ba Hai, formerly known as the 4th Infantry Division of the Northeast Army, marched 400 kilometers in 13 days in the Battle of the Sangye River, an average of 30 kilometers a day, and successfully crossed the Sangye River in one fell swoop despite the heavy artillery fire of the Yue Army and heavy casualties. At the time of the war against the Soviet Union, the division consisted of the 130th, 133rd, and 135th infantry regiments, the 98th artillery regiment, the 45th reconnaissance battalion, the 45th anti-tank battalion, the 81st engineer battalion, and the 65th communications battalion. The division has about 17,000 soldiers.

In addition, the division's assault on the Tyumen fortress was supported by reinforced units of the 12th Infantry Army, including the 192nd and 201st assault artillery battalions, 2 150-mm howitzer battalions, 6 210-mm howitzer battalions, and 2 105-mm cannon battalions.

(To be continued)