readx;

Chapter 1604: Bloody Battle

The battle for Kirov began in Krasnoye, and the two sides engaged in fierce offensive and defensive attacks in this small town more than 20 kilometers south of Kirov. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 With the orderly retreat of the Soviet troops, by July 22, the city of Kirov was surrounded on three sides by the Far Eastern Army under the command of Yegorov, and the entire front was moved to a distance of ten kilometers from the outskirts of the city. On this day, the Far Eastern Army Air Force dropped more than 3,000 bombs on the city of Kirov, killing thousands of Soviet soldiers.

The city of Kirov was riddled with bullets and was in flames, and a large number of residents were relocated, but many young and middle-aged people remained to support the Soviet army in the fight. In general, the Far Eastern Army had absolute superiority in artillery, tanks and aircraft, and the only thing the Soviets could rely on was familiarity with the fortifications of the city.

On July 23, after the preparation of aviation fire and artillery fire, the Far Eastern Army launched the first wave of assault on the city of Kirov, with a strategic group of three infantry divisions and two tank divisions taking up the task of the main attack due south. By noon, the Far Eastern Army advanced the front to the southern outskirts of Kirov, and large-scale street fighting broke out.

At the same time, the assault corps of the Far Eastern Army, consisting of two motorized infantry and tank divisions, fought from west to east, occupied the Kirov West railway station and threatened the city of Kirov.

On the 23rd, the Soviet Army's Southern Front Headquarters was originally located in the south of the city center, but on the 23rd, due to the heavy artillery fire of the Far Eastern Army, several places in the shelter were damaged, and more than 10 personnel of the headquarters were killed or wounded.

As a last resort, Tyulenev, who was the commander-in-chief of the Southern Front, transferred his headquarters to the front line tunnels on the west bank of the Checha River, where the corps command posts of the two corps under his command and the division command posts of the four divisions responsible for the defense of the perimeter were all within a kilometer, and any urgent order to send signal troops could be delivered.

That night, after receiving Zhukov's radio command to counterattack, Tyulenev organized troops to attack and made some progress in individual sections. But after dawn the next day, the Far Eastern Army threw a lot of air power into the Soviet army that was attacking from the ground, crushing it to the ground and unable to raise its head.

At one o'clock at noon, the Far Eastern Army dispatched a large number of tanks and infantry to attack the battle formation of the Soviet army, and the two sides formed a tug-of-war, each with its own victory or defeat.

On 25 July, Yegorov, who was worried about the situation in Siberia, threw five more infantry divisions, 300 tanks, and more than 700 planes into the city of Kirov to attack from the northwest, west, southwest, and south of the city, and concentrated 1,100 artillery pieces to bombard the central and southern parts of the city of Kirov, preparing to cut through the Soviet army's defenses and eat them one by one.

The battle unfolded throughout the city of Kirov, and in the afternoon of the same day, two divisions of the Far Eastern Army and one tank division, which had been fighting from west to east, made a surprise attack from the railway line that crossed the city, miraculously hitting the Chepcha River, cutting off the southern front combat cluster from other Soviet units in the city center for the first time.

Tyulenev quickly organized his troops for a counterattack, but in the face of superior artillery fire from the Far Eastern Army, he looked somewhat powerless. After occupying several buildings on the riverbank, the Far Eastern Army began to strafe the surface and banks of the Checha River with light and heavy machine guns, trying to prevent Soviet reinforcements from reaching the west bank through the river. However, the Soviets raised heavy smoke on the right bank of the Checha River, covering the banks and the river surface tightly, and speedboats and ferries, under the cover of anti-aircraft artillery, continued to drive on the river.

The commander-in-chief of the front-line troops of the Far Eastern Army did not know at this time that they were actually less than 500 meters away from the headquarters of the Soviet army's southern front, and if the commander was smart enough, he could draw troops at any time to quickly capture the command center of the southern front cluster, and if they were broken through, they could take the southern crossing of the Chepu River at the worst, and really cut off the connection between the Soviet army and its main force in the encirclement. It is a pity that the front commanders of the Far Eastern Army did not have this awareness, and after the successful attack, they were a little at a loss, and simply consolidated their defensive positions in an attempt to stabilize the front.

In this case, Zhukov ordered the troops of the northern front to transfer two divisions to cooperate with the troops of the southern front to launch a counterattack, and Tyulenev also used the only T35 heavy tank regiment in his hand to attack, and at the same time sent a division in his hand as a reserve to flank the north and south to carry out a strong breakthrough.

The T35 weighs 50 tons, has a crew of 11 people, and its main armament is one M27/32 76.2mm tank gun, two 45mm guns, and a 7.62mm DT machine gun, with a maximum armor thickness of 50mm, which has tenacious resistance to ordinary anti-tank weapons. The Soviets launched a frantic offensive under the cover of the almost invulnerable T35 tanks, and the Far Eastern Army's unstable front quickly collapsed and had to retreat four kilometers to the west.

Yegorov quickly sensed the Soviet army's operational intentions, and once again increased his troops to the center line, and used 88-mm anti-aircraft guns against the Soviet T35 tanks.

As the clumsy T35s exploded and burned, the Soviets quickly retreated, and then the Far Eastern Army once again reached the west bank of the Checha River, cutting off the connection between the two Soviet armies in the encirclement and their main forces for the second time.

However, although the troops were divided and surrounded, the Soviets showed tenacity, making full use of their familiarity with the city and the streets to deliver merciless blows to the Far Eastern Army. In the days that followed, the battle for the city continued day and night, and the streets and squares of the city became the main battleground for the exchange of fire.

The Soviets held on to every building, inflicting huge casualties on the Far Eastern Army.

The geographical location of the city of Kirov was too important, and if it was not taken, it would not be possible to attack westward, so Yegorov could only continue to send more troops, gather a large number of tanks, infantry and aircraft, and launch an all-round attack from the ground to the air.

The Kirov garrison, fighting on the streets of the city, was supported by Soviet artillery on the right bank of the Chepcha River, where 12 Soviet artillery regiments and six mortar regiments were assembled, as well as 8 regiments of anti-aircraft artillery units of the Territorial Defense Forces. The artillery of the Soviet Army, several times routed the strategic reserves of the Far Eastern Army and extended artillery fire to the most dangerous directions of the Far Eastern Army's offensive.

At the same time, the river defense flotilla transferred from the Volga, with its own powerful artillery fire, gave strong fire support to the troops operating on the left bank of the river, and carried out continuous artillery bombardment of the Far Eastern Army rushing towards the city of Kirov.

In the battle around the city of Kirov, the Soviets also used reserve air forces for the first time.

After a short period of surprise research and development by aircraft designers such as Mikoyan, Yaklev, and Lavockin, the Soviet army abandoned the backward I-15 and I-16 fighters and replaced them with the MiG-1, Yak-1, and Lager-1, three fighters that were hastily launched after simply undergoing wind tunnel tests.

Before the war, the Soviet army hoarded more than 1,300 brand-new fighters, and this time they were all put into the Kirov battlefield to fight with the Far Eastern Army Air Force. Although the Soviet fighters continued to have problems and disintegrated or spontaneously combusted and exploded in time and space, compared with the I-15 and I-16, because these three fighters all adopted more powerful liquid-cooled engines and upgraded weapons and equipment, they posed a great threat to the air force of the Far Eastern Army.

In a short air battle of seven or eight days, the Far Eastern Army lost 421 fighters, and although the Soviet Air Force lost as many as 783 planes, almost double that of the other side, due to the strong industrial base of the Soviet Union, and at the same time, the reserve air force under the leadership of Zhukov had a rich reserve of pilots, and new pilots were constantly being used to replenish the losses, while the experienced pilots of the Far Eastern Army were losing one less and one less, and the production capacity lagged behind the other side, so the strength of the air forces of the two sides began to gradually become balanced.

In order to strengthen the strength of the Soviet army in the encirclement, Zhukov mobilized a steady stream of reserve troops, and took advantage of the darkness to launch a forced crossing from the east bank of the Chepcha River to replenish the loss of the Kirov defenders.

The Far Eastern Army aviation and long-range artillery dropped a large number of bombs and shells on the river, and under the skyrocketing fire, many half-sunken and half-floating barges were burning, and on the banks of the Kirov city, large trees soaked in oil spat tongues of fire, illuminating hundreds of meters. The barges that caught fire and the burning trees became the reference point for the artillery of the Far Eastern Army, and as soon as the Soviet speedboats approached the river bank, they would be heavily shelled. However, the Soviet army did not have any fear and continued to advance.

No, more than a dozen speedboats had just crossed the middle of the river and were immediately subjected to heavy fire, and shells and mortar shells exploded around the speedboats from time to time, setting off huge columns of water, and the water of the Chepu River seemed to be boiling. One by one, the speedboats dodged left and right, and stubbornly drove forward. Closer to the river bank, artillery fire became more and more intensive, tracer shells kept hitting the speedboat, rifles and light and heavy machine guns fired almost simultaneously.

The speedboat slowed down and began to turn around, and a large number of Soviet troops jumped into the water, quickly waded through the shallow water, and landed into battle. The fighting was fierce, and from time to time scenes of white-knuckle battles could be seen, and with the increasing number of landing troops, the Far Eastern Army was driven out of the coastal area, and the Soviet troops occupied nearly two square kilometers of the landing ground.

The Far Eastern Army, unwilling to suffer defeat, again used two divisions to strengthen the offensive, and the Soviet reinforcements were attacked immediately before they had time to familiarize themselves with the environment and build fortifications. The aviation of the Far Eastern Army incessantly dropped bombs on the city of Kirov, as if trying to blow everything in the streets into the ground.

On 29 July, the fighting heated up, and the Far Eastern Army continued to attack the Soviets in an attempt to capture the center of Kirov. The flank units of the Soviet troops acted actively, conducting counter-assaults both frontal and flank. After a day of fierce fighting, although all the positions of the Soviet troops were held, their forces were pinned down in the center of the city.

After that, the fighting in the center of the city remained fierce, and the attacks of the Far Eastern Army were repulsed again and again, with heavy casualties on both sides. Since the Soviets could be supported by the east bank of the Chipcha River at any time, they not only defended strongly, but also often launched counterattacks, and the entire battlefield fell into a stalemate.

The Far Eastern Army and the Soviet Army fought to the death in the city of Kirov, and under the skillful command of Zhukov, the advantages of the Far Eastern Army could not be brought into play, and they could only consume their forces in the siege of the city. Zhukov made a genius arrangement around the entire city of Kirov, relying on the Chepcha River, maneuvering with the Far Eastern Army, overcoming rigidity with softness, and gradually consuming the sharpness of the Far Eastern Army. At the same time, Zhukov gathered forces in the rear and immediately threw himself into a counteroffensive as soon as the offensive of the Far Eastern Army appeared to be exhausted,

The scales of war, unconsciously tilted in favor of the Soviet troops!