Before the rise of armored forces and their domination of the battlefield, the most powerful military force of the Ming army was neither the cavalry units that had been eliminated from history, nor the large infantry units, but their artillery units. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

The reputation of the Lord of War is not something that comes easily. The power of artillery is enough to play a decisive role on the battlefield. As the world's most powerful military country, the Ming Dynasty has always attached great importance to artillery, because they rely on the strength of ships and artillery to be able to run rampant in the world. The artillery unit of the Ming army is also the most powerful in the world.

In this super-large-scale campaign promoted by Zhang Cheng, the entire Central Army Group gathered a total of more than 33,000 barreled artillery pieces with a caliber of more than 100 millimeters and put them into battle. With so many artillery pieces deployed on the battle line, when they began to fire fiercely, the terrifying might was enough to destroy the world!

The artillery units of the Ming army used Du. Artillery units, howitzers and cannons of various calibers and even 88 mm caliber high-level dual-purpose guns of group armies, corps, divisions and regiments were inclined to rain bullets towards the Allied positions. Millions of shells were fired in a very short time.

The Allied front was almost completely destroyed by hours of heavy bombardment and shelling. Because the air power was suppressed, the ferocious Ming army and aviation almost completely destroyed the artillery positions deployed by the Allied forces on the front line with overwhelming heavy bombardment. After losing artillery countermeasures and air support, the Allied front quickly became crumbling under heavy onslaught.

By 10 a.m., more than 20,000 tanks and armored vehicles with a large number of infantry rushed out of the starting position like a tidal wave, launching a frantic attack on the long Allied front.

In the area of Schumellia, which was the main direction of the assault, the Ming army amassed more than 1,500 tanks in a gap no more than a few tens of kilometers wide. With the cooperation of tens of thousands of infantry, they overwhelmingly pounced on the Allied positions. Defending in a line manner, the Allies were scattered across the fronts, but they could only use infantry divisions and some artillery to desperately resist the terrifying torrent of armor in the positions dug in the field.

At a time when heavy artillery fire and thousands of bombers were fiercely attacking Allied airfields and assembly positions within three hundred kilometers of the rear of the front. The armored units of the Ming army began to attack.

Outside fuel tanks were placed near the cooling tanks behind the attacking tanks, and supply bags and additional oil drums were hung in the armor plates next to them. After refueling as much fuel as possible, thousands of tanks slowly drove towards the Allied positions.

The Allied outposts on the front line were quickly cleared. These individual positions of squad platoons, armed only with heavy machine guns and anti-tank guns, were quickly drowned in the steel torrent of the Ming army. Even though these armies put up the most desperate resistance, they could not stop the fierce offensive of the Ming army.

As for the trenches, barbed wire, minefields, etc., all of them lost their effectiveness under absolute power.

By the afternoon of June 24, the Allies had lost nearly 4,000 aircraft of all types! Huge losses and the unavailability of a large number of front-line airfields directly led to the loss of control of the airspace over the battlefield by the Allies. And the Ming army, supported by strong air power, began to fully break through the defensive positions of the Allied forces. In particular, on the main point of attack in Schumelia, more than 1,000 tanks of five armored divisions crushed the defensive lines of three Russian infantry divisions, successfully crossed the Sura River, and successfully established a strong bridgehead position on the other side of the river.

Although after the offensive was launched, the Allies had already destroyed all the bridges on the Ming offensive route. However, the engineering units of the Ming army still withstood the ferocious night attack launched by the Allies, and successfully erected a number of steel pontoon bridges on the Sura River west of Shumellia on the night of the 24th, which could pass heavy tanks.

In order to resist the ferocious offensive of the Ming army. On the night of the 24th, the Russian army launched a decisive assault on the bridgehead position of the Ming army on the west bank of the Sura River. The troops of a whole infantry division, under the cover of more than forty tanks, fiercely attacked the bridgehead of the Ming army. But in the end, it ended in defeat under the rain of machine guns and shells of the Ming army and the artillery bombardment on the opposite bank. When the Russian army was routed and scattered, the Ming army in the bridgehead position launched a counterattack and captured more than 3,000 Russian soldiers.

By the time the time came June 30, the forward troops of the Ming army, which had been killed from the Shumelia breach, had quickly advanced to the area near Arzamas.

The reason why Zhang Cheng chose the main target of attack was Shumellia as a breakthrough. The main reason for this is that the area north of Šumería is a large area of primeval forest and marshland. These terrains are places where it is difficult to pass mechanized corps on a large scale. Only the railway line along the line of Shumelia, Arzamas, Sasovo on the wide plain was able to quickly advance to the area near Ryazan.

And Ryazan, to the northwest of the city is Moscow. The exact geographical description of Ryazan is like the location of Tongzhou. Although the Ming army advanced along the railway line and the road next to the railway line, although there were some detours and did not take a straight line to lengthen the marching distance, it was able to keep the mechanized corps marching in the plain area, so as to give full play to its combat capability.

As for the forest swamp area to the north, it was naturally left to the infantry to clean up. The goal of the armored forces was to make a quick assault and reach the vicinity of Ryazan so that they could advance into Moscow.

It was clear that the Allies would not place their main point of attack near Ryazan. It was an important railway junction heading south from Moscow to Tsaritsyn. If the Ming army can get close to Ryazan, it means that the Ming army has been able to directly threaten the main communication artery from Moscow to the south. This enormous risk was something that the Allies were unwilling to take.

It has been seen that this time the Ming army's fierce attack is not simple, and after urgent consultations, the countries decided to put aside their prejudices and no longer continue to let their troops fight soy sauce in order to preserve their strength. The time has come for us to be in this together. Once the Ming army really broke through the Russians, then it would be their turn.

As long as you think of the flaunting power of these Orientals in Europe for hundreds of years, and the Orientals who have been on their heads for so many years, they will once again come back with tens of millions of troops. No European country will remain indifferent to this. The truth of dead lips and cold teeth is now!

The last terrible **** struck from the sea caused Europe to live in darkness for hundreds of years. And now they are fighting in Europe again, only this time by land. For European countries, once they failed to resist the offensive of the Ming army on the Russian battlefield with wide terrain, who else could resist when the steel torrent of the Ming army rushed to the steppes of Central Europe?

After the chaos of the early stages of the campaign, the Allies, who had been fighting fiercely with the Ming army for several years, quickly recovered their senses. After some urgent discussions, the German staff officers came up with a practical plan. Concentrated forces to resist in Sarova, an important city between Arzamas and Sassovo. They were not required to be able to completely block the powerful Ming army, and the purpose of the attack here was to provide time for the rear troops to assemble and build positions.

The traffic situation in Russia is very bad. It is very difficult to mobilize even the Russian troops who are fighting on their own soil, let alone the allied forces who have always made a living from soy sauce.

The main forces of the Russian army are now almost all pinned down on the front lines, and most of the rear are urban garrisons and recruits from training camps. If you want to resist the offensive of millions of Ming troops, you must have to resist the Allied forces stationed in Russia. The various transport equipment equipped by these Allied forces was extremely unsuitable for the poor terrain of the Russian battlefield, and the most obvious thing was that most of the Allied tracked vehicles used narrow tracks.

The narrower track has better maneuverability in places with good road conditions, because the Ming Dynasty made a lot of investment in various countries in order to plunder more profits when colonizing various parts of Europe, and established a very complete transportation route in each country. As a result, countries have mostly chosen narrow tracks when developing their own models of vehicles.

And because Russia does not have much profit point, and Russia has always been in dispute with the Ming Dynasty, Russia has not received investment from the Ming Dynasty to improve its transportation situation. The worst path was too bad for the Allies to accept. On the side of the Ming army, there was no such problem.

Zhang Cheng had already considered this aspect when designing tanks, armored vehicles and other equipment. In fact, armored forces basically did not have the time to fight in cities with good transportation. The vast majority of the battlefield is in the wilderness with poor terrain. Narrow tracks were used only in countries with small land areas in the early days of armored tactics. And all the tracked vehicles of Daming are wide tracks.

In order to gain time, the Allies decided to resist the Ming offensive at Sarova, which was geographically located.

Sarova, located between Arzamas and Sassovo. Railroads and roads connect the two cities through the city, and outside the city is surrounded by the Sato River. The northern and southern parts of Sarova were vast swamps and forests, which topographically limited the Ming army to capture this narrow corridor in order to continue their assault on Sassovo. The Allies, on the other hand, threw all the troops they could gather nearby into this area to resist the Ming offensive.

The time came on the 3rd of July, when the forward search force of the Ming Army's Sixth Panzer Army entered the outer area of Sarova. The number of Russian troops stationed in and around the city of Sarova was close to 150,000. Most of these armies were defeated from the front line, demoralized and lacking in all kinds of weapons and supplies. But their retreat can only end there. (To be continued.) )