During World War II, Germany, the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union all had large paratrooper units, and the German army and the United States and Britain were the most representative in actual combat. The German paratroopers had two crucial airborne battles, the attack on the Low Countries in 1940 and the landing operation on the Greek island of Crete in 1941, the former being a classic of airborne warfare, and the latter although victorious, the result of which completely changed the fate of the German airborne forces; The paratroopers of the United States and Britain also had two crucial airborne operations, the Normandy landings in 1944, and Operation Market Garden in the same year, the former making a historic leap in the scale of the airborne operation and achieving great success, and the latter reduced to an outright failure. However, in the summer of 1946, when the luxurious lineup composed of Eisenhower, Montgomery, Ridgway, and Ted made a decision at the Allied Supreme Operational Command in Danzig, Poland, to launch a large-scale air raid on the deep zone of the Soviet army, they seemed to have forgotten the lessons of the past. Forget that in addition to being good at encirclement and counter-encirclement operations, the Soviet army also has a non-negligible attainment in tactics such as positional defense and rapid attack, and the Soviet army formed a paratrooper unit on a large scale earlier than the American-British allies and even the German ** team.

During World War II, they also organized an airborne operation with a scale of 10,000 people -- the night airborne operation on the Dnieper River, although it suffered a disastrous defeat due to poor organization, complex environment, insufficient support, and other reasons, but it gave the Soviet generals a more practical understanding and reflection on paratrooper operations......

Orsha, Belarus.

When another dawn came, in the woods and fields east of Orsha City, a long armored column was flat like a grass-brown python, and tank crews wearing Soviet-made tank caps, short sleeves or vests were busy refueling their vehicles and replenishing cooling water, their faces covered in stains and their bodies greasy and sweaty. These Soviet officers and men, who had just completed the feat of marching more than 200 kilometers at night, had not yet reached their real destination, but many of them had simple and relaxed smiles on their faces. You must know that the iron guys they serve with all their hearts - the T-worm, the SU76 and a small number of T70 light tanks used for reconnaissance - are known for their lack of humane design, and the continuous march of more than ten hours almost turns the human skeleton upside down. In the bright morning light, the Red Banner bearer waved the flagpole vigorously on a T34 turret in front of him, and the stretched flag showed a wave-like ripple in the wind, and the number of this unit was embroidered with gold thread: "The 10th Guards Red Banner Ural-Lviv Volunteer Tank Army."

Since World War II, friends and foes have known that the Soviet Red Army has several Guards tank units with strong combat effectiveness, and the Guards Red Banner Stalingrad-Kiev 5th Tank Army, the Guards Red Banner Kiev-Berlin 6th Tank Army, and the Guards Red Banner Kiev-Berlin 7th Tank Army are among the best. At present, these well-equipped and high-morale units are fighting on the southern front, and the defense line of the Allied troops on the southern route is scattered under the courageous rush of the Soviet tank crews, but this does not mean that there are no units in the hinterland of the Soviet Union that are worthy of heavy tasks, and the 9th Guards Red Banner Uman Tank Army, the 10th Guards Red Banner Ural-Lviv Volunteer Tank Army, and the 11th Guards Red Banner Carpathian Berlin Tank Army are all elite units with outstanding merits. The 0th Ural-Lviv Volunteer Tank Army was formed from February to April 1943 at the initiative of Ural laborers, and its weapons and military-technical equipment were manufactured with donations from the working people of the Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk and Perm regions. A large number of battle heroes have emerged. After receiving the combat order, this armored unit deployed north of Bryansk decisively abandoned the transportation convenience of the main Moscow-Kiev railway line, and directly set out from the assembly area and advanced along the road to the Allied airborne area - here there were more Allied troops parachuted and airborne than expected, and the counterattack organized by the garrisons around Orsha at the first time failed to win, and many units temporarily lost their combat effectiveness due to heavy casualties, while the Allied ground forces besieged Minsk, On the one hand, the armored corps bypassed the Belarusian capital and advanced along the railway line, many Soviet troops were caught in the front and rear and there was confusion, and the Allies took advantage of the situation to break through the two lines of defense and occupy Borisov, and the seam troops had advanced to less than 100 kilometers southwest of Orsha to join up with the paratrooper troops, and it seemed that it was only in this day or two. …,

The bright red flag drew cheers from the young soldiers, many of whom were no longer the laborers who volunteered to join the army in the Ural industrial zone, but regular soldiers who had been declared, selected, and trained. The war has not been over for a long time, and some of the heroes of the Great Patriotic War have retired, disarmed and returned to the field, and some continue to serve in the army.

With the mechanical level of the 40s, the tank vehicles would be severely worn out after a long march, and the Germans suffered in this regard, and the Soviet equipment with a simple design and even a little rough design had a clear advantage in this regard, and after less than an hour's rest, the armored column moved forward with a rumbling roar, leaving only those vehicles that really had to be repaired because of mechanical failures to stay in place. The long queue "diverted" after crossing the hillside, one after the other in different directions, reminiscent of the joke about earthworms slicing themselves apart and playing games, but the armoured forces that exist as a whole do not die out because they are scattered, and if they are properly configured, they may be more powerful than if they were combined in one place. According to the disarmament plan of the Soviet army, the 10th Guards Tank Army was to be reduced to the size of a tank division, but the renewed fighting delayed this reduction indefinitely, and at present this army still has the 61st, 62nd, and 63rd Guards Tank Brigades and the 29th Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade, which were not temporarily separated from the 4th Guards Red Banner Stalingrad Mechanized Army and the 5th Guards Zimovniki Mechanized Army to fight on different fronts, but remained in the rear as the general reserve of the Soviet Army. I'm recuperating for a while, and I'm worried that I can't find a place to show my skills!

A bright red morning sun rose from the east, and there was a faint rumbling of artillery in front of the road, urging the Soviet armored troops to hurry up, and the humming roar also came from the rear, and in a short time, a group of fighters flew overhead, some of them occupied an altitude of several thousand meters, some flew at a medium altitude of about 3,000 meters, and some were only a few hundred meters above the ground, which looked quite layered. Although the overall livery is color-differentiated, these aircraft have red five-star logos on the wings. In a head-to-head battle, the Soviet Army, whether it is the Lahr or the Yak series fighters, lacks an advantage in comprehensive performance compared with the Allied Spitfire, Mustang and Jet fighters, and they are all recognized as "short legs" -- their combat radius is basically at the same level as the German Messerschmitt 1091 Woolf 190, so that since the outbreak of the Great War, the Soviet Air Force has always fallen behind in the struggle for air supremacy, but the situation is different in northeastern Belarus. The nearest Allied airfield is also more than 300 kilometers away in Lithuania, and there are more than 20 field airfields in an area of 150 kilometers around Orsha, and Smolensk, which is more than 100 kilometers away, is the location of the Soviet army's air defense operational command in southern Russia.

The battle echelons of the La-5, La-7, Yak-3, Yak-1, and MiG-3 flew by one after another, and the morale of the Soviet officers and men who drove tanks and self-propelled guns to the designated area was greatly boosted, and these soldiers did not feel that their air force would affect their overall combat effectiveness because of the complexity of the aircraft they participated in. In fact, the most well-equipped and well-staffed Guards fighter aviation regiments were sent to the southern front to participate in the encirclement of the Allied forces, and in order to support their army brothers to the greatest extent, they had to fight the Allied air forces with all their might, so it is not surprising that the air forces left behind were not first-class.

When the 61st Guards Tank Brigade, which was mainly equipped with T34 and supported by friendly infantry, arrived at the field airfield south of Orsha, which is also marked as "Orsha No. 4 Airfield" on the Allied map, the Allied officers and soldiers who arrived here by parachute and plane landing had reached a large number of people, and received air-dropped ammunition, jeeps, and anti-tank guns. If the Allied airborne troops, which totaled 330,000, succeed in occupying Orsha, which was held by the Soviets, it will set a new record in the history of airborne warfare! …,

"Soviet tanks are coming!"

When the screams of the lookouts penetrated the ears again, many of the British paratroopers, including Young, were no longer amazed and frightened. Last night's two defensive counterattacks were extremely beautiful, and the more than 1,000 Allied paratroopers made full use of their usual level of training, they used anti-tank rocket launchers and rocket launchers to take out all the Soviet tanks that were engaged in the attack, and then used their numerical advantage to repel the brave but dazed Soviet infantry and successfully hold the airfield. After dawn, the Allies airdropped follow-up troops and combat equipment with their strong air power, and some large gliders also taxied near the runway of the airport, although they were repeatedly obstructed by Soviet fighters on the way, the Allied escort fighters tried hard to protect their own transport aircraft to minimize the losses, such airlifts brought heavy combat equipment to the ground combat forces, including a team of "Titraci" tanks, so that the situation of the battle seemed to be developing in an optimistic direction. However, the dense and ferocious sound of artillery soon woke up the overly optimistic Allied soldiers, and Yang turned out his binoculars and looked into the distance, and the rising smoke appeared at the edge of the woods at the end of the line of sight, and after ten minutes or so, the figure of the Soviet tank was clearly visible in the sun. At a distance of several kilometres, they looked like children's plasticine toys, but the flickering flames were not festive fireworks, and the anti-aircraft artillery positions in the eastern part of the airport were gradually shrouded in exploding flames and smoke.

"There are tanks over there, too! The woods of the southeast! The shouting in his ears was so alarming that Jan felt uncomfortable to listen to, and it seemed to frighten the paratroopers around him, and Jan realized that his men, especially the two recruits who had only joined the 1st Airborne Division this year, had a melancholy look on their faces - if only melancholy, which often led to sluggish or even wrong reactions at critical moments.

Following the sound, another group of tanks soon appeared in the telescope, and the group of Soviet armored troops outflanked from the flank was also led by T34s, which seemed to number no less than thirty, and there were more tanks and self-propelled guns behind the woods to advance towards the airfield. Jan was astonished, he heard that only the northern suburbs of Orsha were stationed in Soviet tank units within a radius of 200 kilometers, and that they had been bombed intensively by their own side yesterday evening, and that the railway line from Minsk to Moscow had also been damaged by the bombing of several railway bridges and the attacks of Allied paratroopers, and it was impossible for the Soviet army to use this railway line to withdraw tank units from Minsk or send new reinforcements from the direction of Moscow in a short time. If all this information is true, how can a Soviet tank of this scale appear in sight?

Unlike the suspicious formations that Rommel laid in North Africa back then, these Soviet tanks in front of them quickly proved their authenticity with artillery fire.

The superior officers quickly gave the battle order, and they hoped that the paratroopers would be able to use ambush tactics to contain those Soviet tanks as they had done last night, but people with rich combat experience like Jan knew very well that that tactic was only suitable for attacking the enemy's scattered or small group of armored targets at night or in complex woodland, and in the event of an enemy tank unit carrying out a group charge in an open area, especially equipped with T34 level, unless there were enough tanks, anti-tank guns or air suppression, Otherwise, a retreat would be a wise choice for the commanders.

In the expectation of the Allied officers and soldiers, a group of Spitfire fighters appeared in the sky with a savior halo, and the rockets they carried were powerful enough to penetrate the weak roof and engine compartment of the Soviet tanks, which had been fully verified in the attack on the German army during World War II, but the American and British paratroopers did not have time to rejoice, and a group of Soviet fighters swooped down from the sky like ghosts to challenge them, and the British Spitfire fighters had to change their targets to meet them. After a dazzling round of rocket fire, the fighters of both sides were mixed up. In the Battle of Britain, the Spitfire suffered the Luftwaffe, and its improved version was called "the pinnacle of the piston fighter", and the Soviet Yak-3 was also called the most agile fighter of the Second World War, with the highest air superiority. The best fighters are piloted by well-trained and experienced pilots, and the direct dialogue between the two is intense and exciting from the start. The Soviet fighters fighting at home had a slight numerical advantage, the pilots gritted their teeth in the gritted teeth in the grapple of killing 1,000 enemies and losing 800 themselves, and the elite of the British Royal Air Force did not fall behind in skill and field, but they also had no way to support the ground warfare. The Soviet tanks that passed through the fields and around the woods advanced so fast that from a distance they looked like a cavalry charge, and the accompanying Su-76s raised their muzzles and cheered the cavalry with artillery fire. The T34 at the head of the platoon did not carry infantry, but this did not mean that the Allied paratroopers would be able to take advantage of the battle, in such a frontal assault, the tanks in the rear row could completely cover the side and rear positions of the front vehicle with machine guns, and the accompanying Soviet infantry closely protected the T-34 in the rear row with flesh and blood, in addition, there were some T70 light tanks that were discontinued but still equipped with dozens of tank regiments and tracked armored vehicles that were gradually increasing the weight of the battlefield, All this left the Allied paratroopers who were trying to stop the Soviet offensive in a helpless situation

As another fighter dragged the black smoke down, the fierce battle in the sky has gradually divided the winner and loser, the British Spitfire fighter with a range similar to the Yak-3 took the initiative to turn around and withdraw from the battlefield, the Soviet fighters did not chase and fight, most of them climbed back to the high altitude in order to provide air cover for the attack of their ground forces in the time that the fuel could be maintained, some of them probably had little ammunition and fuel left, they swooped down and strafed the Allied airborne positions around the airport, and then pulled up the nose and drove away in a northeast direction. On the ground, the light tanks of the "Titrachi", nicknamed "Lord", which provided fire support to the paratroopers with 762-mm guns, made a final effort together with the captured Soviet anti-aircraft guns of the paratroopers. The miracle did not come, the T34 relied on the strong frontal armor to avoid most of the attacks, they began to use short-stop fire at medium and close range to pull out the large and small "nails" on the Allied positions, the light and nimble little lord could not resist the opponent's 85mm tank guns at all, and the Soviet anti-aircraft guns with good performance were finally reduced to the target of the enemy's shelling one by one in the hands of a group of non-professional artillerymen. But in the final struggle from 1944 to 1945, the German officers and soldiers who were at a disadvantage also tried to use these two conventional means to block the torrent of Soviet troops in many battles, at a high cost of their lives, they only slowed down the opponent's offensive at most, and could not stop the offensive frenzy of the red chariots at all! 1