The so-called Russian theater of operations is actually a general term. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 infoAll Ming armies fighting in Russia can be called units of the Russian theater of operations. But in reality they are made up of two main parts. One part was the main combat group under the command of He Ziqiu, while the other part was the Ming army in southern Russia.

The troops in the southern region of Russia are the troops left behind after Zhang Cheng commanded the Caucasian campaign, and these are all Zhang Cheng's descendants. After this period of deployment and adjustment, the Ming troops in the Russian theater have been redivided into two new combat clusters.

The troops controlled by He Ziqiu before were called the strongest military group in the Ming Dynasty, not to brag, but because they really had great power. If you don't have the ability, you can't fight against tens of millions of allies for such a long time and still be able to gain the upper hand.

This large military group has a total of two heavy artillery divisions directly under the army group, 11 local garrison divisions, one armored division, and a large number of combined arms units. Under the army group there were four formations of armored armies and six infantry armies. Under the establishment of these armies, there were as many as 37 armored divisions, 11 artillery divisions, 133 mechanized infantry divisions, and a large number of combined units of various arms.

Because of the strength of the Ming Army, their basic combat units were divided. And each division is composed of large formations. It is definitely not the kind of three infantry regiments and one artillery battalion that dares to say that they are the elite of a divisional unit. The total strength of the entire army group, not counting the reserve and supplementary personnel, is as high as 3.5 million!

This is also due to the lack of transport capacity in the Siberian region to support larger troop operations. Otherwise, the military strength of the Ming Army is definitely more than that.

After the redeployment, this large army group was renamed the Central Army Group, with Zhang Cheng personally serving as the commander, and the chief of staff of the group army group was Lu Zhiyuan. With a realignment of the battle plan, the force will soon launch a new summer offensive targeting Moscow.

And in the south of Russia, too, there was a large group of heavy troops. With Zhang Cheng's previous troops left over from the Caucasus Campaign as the core, after this period of supplementation and adjustment, this heavy army group, renamed the Southern Army Group, has three armored armies and four infantry armies, and the total strength is nearly 2.5 million after adding the combined forces of all arms!

For Zhang Cheng, Army Group South was more in line with his command, because it was his descendant troops as the core before. However, starting from the overall situation of the operation, the role of the central army group is even more important. Zhang Cheng's order to Army Group South was to sweep Turkey and accumulate strength to prepare for the next battle. Until then, Zhang Cheng's main attention was on Moscow.

Moscow was chosen not only because it is an important big city in Russia and has strong political implications. The most important thing is that the main railway traffic in Russia basically meets in Moscow, which is in the center of the country and is a real transportation hub.

Once Moscow can be taken, the Ming army can directly threaten the Russian capital St. Petersburg in the north, and in the south, it can go straight to the important town of Tsaritsyn on the Volga River, so as to sweep the Black Sea coast and enter Ukraine. And if the army goes west, it will penetrate into the heart of Russia through Smolinsk, and then it will be the Central European plain.

It can be said that this is one of the most important towns for Russia. As long as Zhang Cheng can occupy this place, he will completely grasp the initiative on the battlefield, thus forcing Russia into a desperate situation step by step.

The pre-war preparations were carried out in an intense and orderly manner. The officers and men of the Central Army Group, who had been suppressed by He Ziqiu for a long time and were unable to fight with all their might, finally had a chance to vent the anger they had held back in their hearts for the past few years, and their morale was extremely high. Combat readiness is proceeding very well.

Zhang Cheng did not hide his intention to fight. In fact, the war has been fought until now, and it is impossible to hide a campaign operation of this scale. Zhang Cheng doesn't mind using stratagem, but he prefers to use his dignified strength to crush his enemies.

Some time ago, Army Group South swept through Turkey, opened the Black Sea passage and constantly launched attacks on the Caucasus, which greatly involved the energy of the Allied forces. They were forced to transfer a large number of troops and technical weapons to the southern battlefield to support operations and stabilize the front. This weakens their support in the direction of Moscow.

Monday, June 22, 1942, summer solstice.

A super-large-scale offensive operation codenamed 'Wukong' has officially begun. From Luza in the north to Barakov in the south. On this thousand-kilometer-long front, nearly three million Ming troops rushed out of their own line like a tide and killed the Allied positions.

In the wee hours of the morning, before dawn, tens of thousands of artillery pieces of artillery fire were drawn out on a long front, and the furious shelling caused the Allied soldiers who had been prepared for it to howl in horror. Endless smoke of gunpowder filled the entire front. The flash of the cannonballs illuminated the night sky, which had just turned white, as bright as day.

In fact, before the Ming army launched the attack, the Allies had already received accurate information that they were about to launch a large-scale attack. It's just that the allies have always maintained a strange mode of engagement with He Ziqiu before. And the sudden collapse of He Ziqiu made it difficult for the Allies to adjust their deployment in a short period of time. In particular, the Russians, who launched a large-scale summer offensive every summer in the summer to try to regain their territory.

The Russian army had just begun its summer offensive, but with the end of the chaos within the Ming army, the Russian offensive had to be stopped immediately. Then the Allies began to frantically build defensive offensives in an attempt to block the Ming attack. It's just that although the number of the Ming army is not as good as that of the allies, its strong combat effectiveness is difficult for the allies to match.

Now in the course of the war, it is basically impossible to carry out a sneak attack in the middle of a campaign of this magnitude. Therefore, Zhang Cheng did not think that he could rely on the attack to break the resistance of the Allied forces. He opted for a hard-hitting offensive.

With Zhang Cheng's strong support, the Ming army has invested a lot of money and human resources in the research and development of radar very early. Coupled with the technical direction guidance provided by Zhang Cheng, the radar technology of the Ming army was far ahead of the Allied countries. By 1942, the Ming army had developed and produced a radar that could be installed on the aircraft, providing the basic conditions for the aircraft to conduct night battles.

The Russian theater has always been deployed with the most powerful air force of the Ming Army Aviation. Before launching this campaign, Zhang Cheng also sent all the night planes produced here. Before the early hours of the morning, more than 1,000 Ming fighters with night combat capabilities took off from various airfields behind the battle line and entered the night in a mighty manner.

Radar-equipped twin-engine night fighters escorted numerous bomber units, flooding airfields behind the Allied front. Even if the fighters of the allied countries already knew that the Ming fighters were attacking at night through the radar warning, they could only watch their airfields be destroyed because they did not have the ability to fight at night.

Unless it is a field airport, a regular airport will build a hangar to store aircraft. The scene in the drama of touching into a regular airport at night and blowing up the plane parked on the runway is difficult to appear in reality. Generally, regular airports will store aircraft in hangars at night, especially military airports will also build a strong underground hangar to store aircraft.

Although the underground hangars on the military airfield were difficult to destroy, the main target of the Ming army was the runway. As the performance of aircraft becomes more advanced, the requirements for airports are also increasing. Once the runway is destroyed, the plane will not be able to rise into the sky. An airplane that can't fly into the sky is no different from a lump of scrap metal.

After daybreak, the Allied front-line airfields were largely unusable. Daming Army Aviation not only blew up the runway, but they also threw submunitions to delay the repair of the runway. However, the Ming army's calculation this time was a little miscalculated.

The Russian army did not care about human life, and they forced soldiers to go to runways full of submunitions to clear unexploded ordnance. In exchange for human life, there was time to repair the runway. By the time the Ming army came to bomb again after dawn, many Allied fighters had already taken off to meet the battle.

Daming's advantages in aviation are all-encompassing. After continuous research and a lot of manpower and material investment, plus Zhang Cheng's help. The technological level of Daming Aviation Force has actually reached the limit state that piston engines can reach. If you want to improve performance again, you have to get into a jet engine.

In terms of production capacity, another crucial factor, Daming's production capacity is also the best in the world. In 1942, the estimated production capacity of various types of fighters was close to 100,000 aircraft. This is still in the absence of a full-scale burst of production capacity.

Moreover, the planes produced by Daming are basically new aircraft with advanced performance and high level of science and technology. Its practical value is far greater than that of rudimentary fighter jets produced in Russia from wood without turbocharging, radios and other important equipment.

In addition, the Ming pilots are all elite divisions fed with ammunition and fuel, and their combat capabilities are not at all comparable to those of the Allies.

On the first day of the battle, the number of Allied fighters destroyed at the airfield quickly climbed to more than 1,500 planes after being shot down by the Ming army's fighter units! By the next day, as the Allied forces had sent reinforcements from deep in the rear, the fierce fighting between the two sides continued to climb. By sunset the next day, the Allies had lost more than 2,400 warplanes of all types in less than two days!

Such heavy casualties are only the beginning of the battlefield on the ground. (To be continued.) )