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"Brakes! Brake quickly! ”

"Back off, back off!"

There are no words to describe the chaos of that moment, Zhukov's armored pig cluster was like a swarm of moths to a fire. The 12 searchlights were bright, but they were still too weak in the face of the 47-kilometer-long battlefield. The tank in front of it braked backwards, and the unsuspecting tank behind rushed up again. The whole cluster, like a heavy truck on a highway without brakes, rushed under the mound of dirt one after another, and then crushed the wooden planks and plunged headlong into a trench up to nine meters deep. Chaos, chaos or chaos! According to later statistics, a full 97 tanks got stuck in the trenches and did not climb out until the end of the battle.

This number was not even expected by Liu Mingzhao, who arranged the trenches, he thought that it would be enough to encircle twenty or thirty vehicles at most, and it was not until the later Soviet prisoners that he said his true thoughts. It turned out that Zhukov's tank cluster still did not have radios, and all tanks and vehicles were given the order that "they must rush under the mound as fast as possible." "Because there was no radio, the tanks in front could not call for evasion, and the three T34 command vehicles that should have been commanded with signal flares were probably too brave, and they all fell into the trenches at the first time, and there was no way to send a retreat signal flare. Since there was no warning, all the Soviet tanks, tractors and trucks rushed forward at full speed.

A classic tank hunt that has gone down in history began by accident.

"Roll call and fire! Free Fire, Free Fire! ”

"Mortar!"

"Commando, come on! Get on it! ”

The Soviets were in disarray, more than a hundred anti-tank weapons hidden behind semi-buried reinforced bunkers were firing at full fire, and the infantry in large groups hiding in strong bunkers rushed to the mound. In an instant, countless fireballs erupted from behind the mounds of the trenches. "Distance 430 meters, T34, armor-piercing shells, open fire!" Inside the Tiger Hunter B Tank No. 133. The commander stood on the roof of the car, held the rangefinder in his hand, and reported the coordinates according to the scale above, and the L55 105-mm sub-assembly cannon immediately erupted a fireball. At the same time as the body of the car shook, the targeted T34/76 suddenly exploded and cracked like brilliant fireworks.

The power of the 105-mm armor-piercing shell is too great, not to mention that this gun was originally a high-power sub-assembly gun tailored for the navy, which can be used against the fire of destroyers. Hitting on a T34 with a thickness of only 80 mm is the same as an adult bullying a child. And after analyzing the seized T34 steel plates, it was learned. Due to the lack of industrial capacity, with the exception of a few T34/57s, the armor of other tanks abandoned case-hardened steel plates and directly used the simplest nickel steel rolled steel plates. It is important to know that if the nickel steel is case-hardened. A Type 36 main battle tank takes two weeks to process the armor alone, which is why the Soviet Union was able to mass-produce the T34 despite insufficient industrial capacity.

Of course, while saving time and effort, the consequences of doing so are very serious! As the time-consuming case hardening process was eliminated, most of the T34's actual protection capability was reduced by 20 percent. This means that the original Type 31 70mm/L50 gun needed 800 meters to absolutely penetrate. And now it is possible to penetrate any unit directly at a distance of 1000 meters.

"Left third degree, distance 870 meters, T34, armor-piercing shell." In the commander's calm words, the muzzle of the gun turned slightly, and the second armor-piercing shell was fired again.

Explosions, fireballs. The turret lifted ten meters and fell.

"Comrade Commander, Comrade Commander!" The staff officer rushed into the command post with an anxious face, and pulled Zhukov, who was studying the battle situation with Golikov, up: "Comrade commander, go and have a look." Something went wrong! ”

Zhukov's face froze, and Golikov next to him was even faster. Grabbed the staff officer and shouted, "What is it?" ”

"There are trenches! In front of the mound, there was a covered concealed anti-tank trench. The staff officer was sweating profusely, and he pulled the two of them and ran out. Golikov was not satisfied at first, muttering that it was not just a trench, just let the infantry fill it. But after picking up the Zeiss telescope and seeing the scene in the distance, he also gasped fiercely.

No matter which direction you look, there are tanks and vehicles crammed together in front of the mound. Some are reversing, some are spinning, and some have already begun to push their comrades who have been hit into the trench. But such a tank several meters high did not even show the barrel after being pushed into the trench. How deep this should be! To make matters worse, behind the eastern slopes and mounds of dirt in Ultau Mountain, hundreds of lights are lit up like the flash of a camera, and a dense mass of anti-tank weapons and mortars are firing wildly at their own armored units and infantry!

"Don't stop, you can't stop there! Fools, these fools! Let the infantry rush up, let the infantry rush up! Zhukov was furious. But he didn't know that what Liu Mingzhao had arranged this time was the Golan trench that Yang Qiu had explained on the spot during a certain exercise. Such trenches are very limited, sand and loose land do not work well, because bulldozers can easily fill it, but now? Except for the northernmost sandy land, the entire eastern slope of the Ultau Mountains is covered with hard rocks, and the Soviets could not even find a few handfuls of sand to fill in. The 6-meter-wide trench and the 9-meter-deep bottom of the trench were mistaken to think that the mound of earth was only a temporary shelter and was not destroyed by heavy artillery fire, so it was difficult for even infantry to pass through. Even a few that passed were quickly wiped out with machine guns and mortars by the assault teams that rushed up.

Twelve snow-white searchlight lampposts are witnessing not victory but a one-sided massacre of their own tank clusters! Hundreds of tank vehicles crowded in front of the trenches like headless flies, one by one by anti-tank fire. Clusters of fireballs, like torches, illuminated the entire defense line of the Ultau Mountains.

Everything is like a well-directed fake show, even the soldiers of the First Army feel that the picture is extremely unreal. The Soviet armored clusters, which were still aggressive just now, gathering several times the heavy artillery, melted away like a hot knife inserting cream in front of the anti-tank fire of the side. And it all happened so fast that as soon as the first platoon of tanks crushed the planks and fell into the trench, countless anti-tank fire erupted from behind the mound. So much so that most of the soldiers on both sides didn't understand what was going on, and the tanks that rushed frantically were killed by the "platoon of guns"! Even worse was the Soviet infantry, mortars, anti-aircraft artillery, and K16 long-range cannons deployed on the hills, constantly raining bullets among them. Exposed in the open, the unprotected infantry was torn apart like wheat by artillery fire.

"Remove the truck bucket! Infantry. Infantry attack! Concentrate your fire on the mound! Drive up, drive up, don't stop, damn it! You're going to be killed! "Finally, a Soviet officer came to his senses and shouted loudly for the tank to fire at the mound.

With the command, the Soviet infantry lying on the ground finally had a clear goal. Elite combat sappers took the lead, first dismantling the bodies of trucks and tractors (most of the bodies of Soviet trucks and tractors at that time were made of wooden planks), and then forming a commando team to carry the planks to the trenches.

See this scene. Liu Mingzhao also quickly made adjustments, ordering the K16 cannon artillery to deal with the searchlight tanks, while the infantry moved forward to sweep. The old and sturdy K16 has been in service with the Wehrmacht for more than 25 years, and the artillerymen are already familiar with its performance. Having received the order, the 16 K16 was immediately aimed at holding a searchlight. T26 tank with obvious targets. After two rounds of killings, all 12 searchlights were extinguished, and only the flames of burning and exploding remained on the entire battlefield.

"Quick, reload." Ma Houcai, a grenadier of the 34th Motor Infantry Division, carried an 84-mm recoilless gun and rushed to the mound with three loaders and other comrades. While the piles of Soviet infantry were swept down the trenches with machine guns and rifles, he deliberately left a narrow window from the mound. Aimed at the Soviet tanks that crashed into the trenches.

Colonel Sinenko finally got out of the tank with a big roof, and as soon as he pulled out his flare gun and was about to give the order to retreat, he saw a smiling face appear ten meters away, and then a black hole in the muzzle of the gun stretched out. "Eat grandpa!" An 84-mm recoilless gun modelled after the famous Gustav. Accurately with an armor-piercing bullet made a large hole in the belly of Colonel Sinenko, and then drilled into the thin steel plate in the abdomen of the T34/57 behind. "Boom!" With a loud bang, the entire tank burst into flames.

"Come again!" The exploding fireball aroused Ma Houcai's wildness. Wait for the shells to be loaded. It was aimed at another T34 next to it. "Boom, boom, boom." Like a dozen other anti-tank squads, Ma Houcai was also excited. Where have you ever seen such a tank? In the past, it was the job of tying the head to the waistband of the trousers to let the infantry hit the tank with recoilless guns, but now? "Come again, come again, cool, it's the same as playing rabbits. What are you still doing? Find a target. Ma Houcai became more and more excited, and in the blink of an eye, all seven Soviet tanks that fell into the trenches were killed by him, so that after finding that there was no target, he was so angry that he stomped his feet: "Why don't you drop a few more?" ”

"Squad leader, do you want to fight the infantry on the other side of the trench?"

"That's right! Stinky boy, clever enough. Come on, load the grenade, and eat one more shot from grandpa! Ma Houcai was completely excited, and kept urging the back to send shells up, whether it was infantry or trucks across the trenches, as long as he saw that there was no fire, no matter what was 3721, it was a sentence: "Eat grandpa." ”

In contrast to the recoilless guns of the anti-tank squads, the real kills actually came from the anti-tank guns and hundreds of light and heavy machine guns. Anti-tank guns smashed steel plates, groups of elite combat engineers were swept to death by machine guns, and the infantry were even more miserable, with stumps and broken arms and bloody stomachs forming small blood-red puddles in front of the trenches. The bloody scene is reminiscent of the British offensive on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916, but the Soviets were worse than the British, with many units wiped out in a matter of minutes.

This battle can't be fought!

The Soviet tank crews had to defend themselves against armor-piercing shells and shells fired from all directions, and on the other hand, they were really powerless to find a way to fill the trenches. One tank finally built a bridge after pushing four damaged vehicles into the same place in the trench in a row. But when the tank drove onto the "bridge", the vehicle below could not bear the pressure and overturned, so he himself practiced driving and led people into it. Seeing that the infantry suffered heavy casualties and did not open the gap, the Soviet tank crews turned around and ran. When the infantry saw that the tanks had run away, they hated their parents even more for giving them two legs.

"Turn on the searchlight and give our Soviet friends the right direction. The troops without a task were withdrawn, and it was time for Zhukov's shells to come. ”

Liu Mingzhao was the first to make changes, and with his orders, a dramatic scene suddenly appeared on the battlefield. The vanished snow-white pillar of light suddenly swept across the battlefield again, and the 20 high-power searchlights placed by the Wehrmacht on the hilltop lit up. But the Soviet armored troops and infantry didn't know, and when they saw the pillar of light, they thought it was behind them guiding the retreat route, so they followed the pillar of light all the way. Soon, there was a peculiar scene on the battlefield, hundreds of tanks that survived by luck followed the pillar of light on the hill back and forth, and the anti-tank gunners on the mountain, like an air defense plane, focused fire several times on the spot.

After the Soviets realized that something was wrong, many Soviet tankers realized that they were actually spinning in place, and finally gritted their teeth and broke away from the pillar of light. However, the darkness of the battlefield made them even more confused, and many people finally made a circle to find that they had actually returned to the trench and became the target of anti-tank fire.

"Fire! Open fire, blow up the trenches! Seeing that the tank group and 30,000 infantry were overwhelmed by artillery fire, Zhukov almost lost his reason, and despite the fact that there were still a large number of square soldiers pressed to the surface in front of the trench, he ordered the artillery to open fire, and asked the tractor to drag up the six M1939 280-mm howitzers (BR5 type) he had brought to try to fill the trench with artillery fire.

Dense shells exploded around the trenches, and the air force finally arrived when the mounds of earth were blown to pieces and a large amount of dirt was swept into the trenches.

The 16 double-headed Jiao night combat type took the lead in kicking off the air raid, like a vulture that smelled blood, swooping down and tearing the flesh and blood of the Soviet army. While the machine guns swept through the artillery positions, they did not forget to drop flares to guide the group behind them. The Soviet anti-aircraft artillery opened fire, and dense fire points rushed into the sky, but even in the city, the ground air defense network did not take much advantage in the ground-air contest, let alone such an empty field.

Hordes of Snake B fighter-attack planes repeatedly ravaged the dense anti-aircraft artillery with rockets in groups of two, and when they left, the H-5 took over the battlefield. 82 H-5s braved intensive artillery fire and dropped 226 tons of high-explosive submunitions 200 meters above the Soviet artillery cluster. The mother bomb exploded, and after the shell split, 32,544 5-kilogram submunitions were released, forming an extremely terrible rain of steel, which swept through Zhukov's artillery positions over and over again, and grinded a large number of Soviet artillery into pulp.

When the group left, the searchlights on Mount Ultau 20 kilometers away were quietly extinguished, and in the silence of the night, only hundreds of piles of broken steel were still burning. 220 T34, 362 T26 and other fast tanks, 120 tractors, 400 trucks, 28,154 veterans, of which there are 3 regiments of elite combat engineers alone The infantry cluster is such an elite combat cluster that can make the enemy bleed anywhere, but it was blocked by a trench and was unilaterally slaughtered for nearly three hours! By three o'clock in the morning, only 196 trucks, 51 tractors, 47 tanks and 5,711 wounded soldiers had returned