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Chapter 1587 The first wave of engagement

At the urging of Kulik, at 7 a.m. on the 25th, Chuikov launched a fierce attack on the Schokpal Pass, which was guarded by Xiao Wu's corps. Pen, fun, and www.biquge.info

Chuikov gathered all the artillery he could muster, and the artillery position composed of more than 900 guns of various sizes and calibers, as well as the scene of the subsequent cannon firing in unison, was extremely spectacular.

Shells dragged a sharp whistling sound and flew towards the intended target, and the position of the Shawkpal Pass, which was four kilometers wide, resembled a huge erupting crater, and soon the entire position was in ruins, a large number of trenches were filled, fortifications were destroyed, and bunkers collapsed.

The entire Saukpal Pass, 20 kilometers deep and about 4 kilometers wide, is flanked by steep mountains, through which the railway and road pass through the middle of the valley, and along the road there are four villages, of course, the inhabitants of which have long since disappeared, and these villages have become temporary garrisons for the Anjia army.

At this time, the commander of the Almaty Corps, Chuikov, stood at the Otar forward command headquarters six kilometers away from the mountain pass, and watched the artillery bombardment on an unprecedented scale for them together with the generals and colonels of the five group armies under his command and the staff officers of the corps headquarters.

In the nearly hour-long artillery bombardment, the Soviet troops fired a total of about 30,000 shells at the positions of the Anjia Army, and almost every inch of the mountain pass suffered the baptism of shells.

The heavy shelling gradually became sparse, and the Soviet artillery changed to the attack method of Xu Jin's barrage to suppress the counterattack that the An Jiajun might launch at any time.

And the ground forces of the Soviet army, under the leadership of grassroots commanders and political cadres, began to attack the mountain pass position.

The 32nd Tank Regiment of the Ninth Army, the 28th Division of the 10th Army, and the 32nd Division of the 11th Army of the Soviet Red Army, with nearly 30,000 troops, rushed out of their own defensive line under the guidance of the fluttering red flag, and rushed towards the position guarded by the Anjia Army like a tide.

In just half an hour, the first layer of defense set up by the An Jiajun army, consisting of barbed wire and minefields, plus trenches on both sides, was broken through by the Soviet troops. The few machine-gun fires that survived the artillery fire of the front-line officers and soldiers of the Anjia Army weakly blocked the attackers, but this only slightly slowed down the movement of the Soviet troops, and more Soviet troops broke through the gap and continued to move forward.

Since the launch of the offensive, the Anjia army has hardly returned fire, and apart from sporadic firefights, the Soviet army has not encountered a large number of opponents, which makes the Soviet generals who are watching the battle in the rear very satisfied, because in their opinion, the Chinese on the opposite position have been wiped out by their sudden and resolute artillery.

At 10 o'clock in the morning, the Soviet army broke through to the position of the Anjia Army to a depth of two kilometers, but the Soviet army's advance speed was not very fast, because many Red Army officers and men were fighting hungry, even on the battlefield, they could not keep up their spirits, in addition, they launched an upward attack from the bottom up, which required more energy, and at the same time, the railways, highways and countless craters created by the just round of shelling were completely destroyed, which hindered the way of the advance of the tank troops in the lead.

Colonel Alexander, commander of the 32nd Tank Regiment, reported through the on-board radio that because the road was too badly damaged, nearly half of the T26 tanks had problems with their tracks, and asked to send engineers to repair the road.

At 12 o'clock in the afternoon, the commander of the 28th Division, Colonel Alexa, who had broken through to the tanks, had advanced four kilometers deep into the pass, occupied the village fifteen kilometers east of the city of Saukpal, and was continuing to advance in order to completely penetrate the defense line of the Anjia army. Colonel Alexey asked the follow-up troops to follow immediately to secure the flank of the assault force.

A series of unimaginable and smooth breakthroughs surprised Chuikov and the generals around him. Chuikov had a deep doubt in his heart, ignored the cheers from the generals and colonels around him, and did not give the order to increase the troops, but returned to the headquarters to check the map, thinking about why An Jiajun behaved so vulnerable?

The staff officers of the Corps Headquarters and more than a dozen generals of the group army looked at each other, not knowing why Chuikov was sullen, in their opinion, it was extremely correct to concentrate superior artillery fire to carry out a frontal hard-to-hard assault tactic, and even the strongest fortresses and fortifications could not survive such a large-scale artillery bombardment.

You must know that the artillery of the Soviet army, not only howitzers, but also a large number of 107mm, 122mm cannons and 152mm howitzers, especially 152mm howitzers, when they fire armor-piercing shells, can penetrate 124mm thick steel armor at a firing distance of one thousand meters, and how much damage to civil fortifications can be imagined. Is there anything to doubt about the enemy's retreat under artillery fire of such a scale?

However, soon the urgent report from the front made everyone understand that Chuikov's worries were not superfluous.

Less than a quarter of an hour after the Soviet tanks entered the village, fifteen kilometers east of the city of Soukpal, the artillery of the Anjia Army, which had not opened fire, began to perform.

Large-caliber howitzers and mortars carried out cover bombardment on the roads and villages of the Soviet army, at which time the Soviet infantry and a large number of tanks, in dense formation, crowded in the villages and on the nearby roads unhurriedly. To make matters worse, due to the continuous shelling, the Soviet artillery was already running out of shells, and the command was chaotic, and at this time the Soviet heavy artillery fire had stopped, so they could not suppress the artillery of the An Jia army.

As the shells fell like hailstones, almost in the blink of an eye, all the Soviet soldiers were in chaos, no matter how the grassroots commanders and political cadres shouted, they could not stop the troops from bombing the camp, and the entire valley was full of Soviet soldiers running around in panic to avoid the shelling. The artillery fire of the An Jiajun was too dense, especially the large number of rocket artillery mixed in the middle, and the Soviet troops who were squeezed in the valley suffered heavy casualties and were unable to form an army.

Just when the Soviet troops were scrambling to avoid artillery attacks, directly in front of them, the tank unit of the Xiao Wu Corps of the Anjia Army appeared. One hundred and eighty T28 and BT7 tanks of the 1st Tank Brigade of the First Mechanized Army swooped down fiercely on the Soviet troops. At the same time, on the high hills on both sides, the trumpets of the charge sounded loudly, and a large number of soldiers of the Anjia Army wearing camouflage uniforms rushed down the mountain under the cover of anti-aircraft machine guns and anti-aircraft guns of various calibers, and rushed towards the chaotic Soviet troops.

This infantry unit that suddenly appeared was the Third Army of Pei Yannian, the Central Front of the Mongolian Military Region, which was urgently transferred west from the Mongolian Military Region at the beginning of the withdrawal of the Far Eastern Army. Since the situation was relatively chaotic when the Far Eastern Army was evacuated, even most of the officers and men in the Far East did not know that the empty carriages of the Nanzhu people were actually full of officers and soldiers of the Anjia Army, and after the train arrived at the station, it was pulled away by the trucks and troop carriers of Xiao Wubing's Corps, which did not alarm anyone, so it is not surprising that the Soviet intelligence department did not know.

Pei Yannian was the chief of staff of the mountain army of the Southern Yunnan Military Region, and when the Mongolian Military Region was expanded, it was in urgent need of personnel, so he transferred personnel from Jiao Guangxu's men. In the face of the old man's elevation, both Jiao Guangxu and Dai Zhengliang, commander of the military region, were sincerely happy and did not come forward to stop it.

The Third Army of the Mongolian Military Region has three divisions, the seventh, eighth, and ninth divisions, as well as guard divisions directly under the group army, each of which has three infantry regiments, one motorized infantry regiment, and one artillery regiment, in addition to an antitank battalion, a reconnaissance battalion, an engineer battalion, a communications battalion, and a field reserve battalion directly under the division headquarters, with a full strength of 15,000 men.

It was the officers and men of the 7th Division who assisted the 1st Tank Brigade in its attack.

Under the threat of death, the quality of the Soviet troops was still relatively high, and under the leadership of the grassroots commanders and political work cadres, they used bomb craters, mountain forests, and some protruding mountains to resist, while the officers and men of Anjia attacked in a three-dimensional way -- the snipers covered in the rear, the infantry sprinted with semi-automatic rifles with bayonets, the non-commissioned officers with submachine guns, the officers followed closely with box guns, the firefighters held automatic rifles to strafe, and the bazooka fighters aimed at the Soviet army's firing points to carry out precision strikes. The whole offense can be said to be mercury and invulnerable.

At this time, in the village in the west, the officers and men of the Seventh Division, who had already been killed one step ahead of the tank troops, quickly dispersed and penetrated rapidly. At the same time, the officers and soldiers of Anjia, who had been ambushed in the village in advance, came out of the cellars and ruins one after another and launched a fierce attack on the Soviet troops occupying the village. In the face of the officers and men who came out of nowhere, the Soviet army was very shocked, their morale was severely hit, and at the same time, they were affected by hunger, and even 10% of their combat effectiveness in peacetime could not be brought into full play until now.

At this time, the sound of "buzzing" sounded above the battlefield, and the aircraft group of the Anjia Army appeared in the sky in the north, almost in the blink of an eye, it flew over the battlefield, but due to the staggered teeth of the two sides of the battle, the aviation of the Anjia Army could not participate in this thrilling battle, three squadrons of a total of sixty B2 bombers, quickly turned the nose of the aircraft, and flew towards the Soviet artillery position under the mountain, seeing that the Soviet army was hurriedly transferring the artillery, he immediately dived down and elegantly threw down a string of bombs, It made Chuikov, who saw all this from the telescope in the bunker, feel half cold.

As the bombs fell in the Soviet artillery group, various types of artillery of different calibers turned into scrap metal and rotten iron, gun barrels and wheels flew in the air in all directions, and the torn corpses of the artillerymen were constantly rubbed in the fierce air current, turning into a mass of flesh and mud, and spilling in all directions. It was only at this time that the Soviet anti-aircraft machine gun and anti-aircraft gun positions woke up from a dream and roared angrily, but by this time the B2 bombers had completed dropping bombs and returned to an altitude of one or two thousand meters.

The battle ahead has entered a white-hot stage, tens of thousands of people are blocked in a narrow area in the scuffle, the light weapons of the Anjia army are obviously much stronger than the Soviet army, the general-purpose machine gun improved from the MG34 machine gun, compared with the Soviet army's Degegarev light machine gun and Tokarev light machine gun, both the rate of fire and the sustained firepower are much stronger, and a large number of Anjia troops equipped with submachine guns, automatic rifles, and bazookas have almost completely defeated the opponent.

Finally, as the tanks of the Anjia Army entered the village, taking advantage of the advantages of armor and artillery fire, they turned the poor T26 tanks of the Soviet Army into piles of burning iron coffins one by one, and uprooted the firepower points temporarily set up by the Soviet Army, and the offensive of the Anjia Army finally changed from quantitative to qualitative.

The Soviet army in the village collapsed first, and under the impact of the rout, the Soviet army on the rear road also collapsed, but at this time the back road has been cut off by the officers and soldiers of the Seventh Division, and tens of thousands of Soviet troops rushed around in the valley, under the pressure of the tank step by step, there were fewer and fewer people, and by five o'clock in the afternoon, the remaining more than 8,000 Soviet troops fell to the ground and raised their hands to surrender, and the first wave of the Soviet offensive ended with the loss of two infantry divisions and a tank regiment, and the An Jiajun paid, It was just three platoons of soldiers arranged in the front-line positions to lure the enemy and more than 600 soldiers who died after the general offensive was launched.

In the first round of the competition, An Jiajun won!