August 6, 1936 at 1:30 a.m. sharp.

The artillery of the Eastern Front Group of the Moscow Front, located in the eastern part of the Soviet defense line in Moscow, was the first to recover from the chaos and shock after the nuclear explosion in Moscow. "For the sake of the Motherland, for the sake of Russia, open fire!"

With a roar from the bottom of his heart, more than 3,000 heavy artillery pieces belonging to the Eastern Front cluster were fired one after another in the rear of the 100-kilometer-long battle line, which was densely deployed (due to the interruption of communications, the Soviet artillery could not fire at the same time). The forward positions of the Chinese army in the night were instantly ignited by the shells that broke through the air! The whole Great Plains was littered with fireballs, but the shells were not accurately landed - because the Soviet artillery observers on the front line had no way to make contact with the artillery groups in the rear. However, the deafening sound of countless shells smashing on the ground at the same time still made the officers and men of the 2nd Armored Group Army of the Chinese Army, who were assembling to launch an armored assault, feel terrified and frightened. Su Y, who had already been promoted to the commander of the armored division at that time, recalled after the war: "The enemy's shells fell so close to us! It seems that it will fall on us at any time, although armored tanks and armored vehicles with armor are not very afraid of such high-explosive shells, but the armored cluster covered by enemy artillery fire will after all have certain losses, especially the kind of dense artillery fire. ”

The overwhelming rain of shells did not deter the Chinese armored troops, most of whom were preparing for a surprise attack. They were veterans of the war for several years, and they quickly regained their composure. Continue to brave the Soviet artillery shells that fall on the head from time to time in a commando formation.

"Cheetahs go up to the first row, the second row, all the cheetahs go to the first row, the second row! Hurry, hurry, hurry. Must be in place within 10 minutes! ”

In previous battles, the Cheetah tank destroyer was shrinking behind the pursuer and firing long-range shots with its 71 times caliber 88mm cannon, which was an unprecedented rush to the front line. Among the 1,174 tanks/tanks and self-propelled guns that Liao Lei invested for the first wave of armored assaults, there were four battalions of Cheetah tank destroyers and two battalions of Panther tanks, of which 268 were Cheetah tank destroyers and 134 Panther tanks. Now 268 Cheetahs have opened an 8-kilometer-long snake formation. Behind them were four battalions of Stalker tank destroyers, also 268 vehicles. It also pulled an 8-kilometer-long snake formation. The two battalions of Panthers formed two small phalanxes on both flanks of the horizontal formation formed by the Tan J to cover the flanks of the Tan J.

In the rear of the Tan-annihilation horizontal formation, there was a huge group of self-propelled guns. Since the armored forces of the Chinese army had few opponents on the battlefield of the Eastern Front, their establishment was constantly adjusted. The proportion of self-propelled guns used against infantry is increasing. Now each armored division has 108 self-propelled guns, excluding self-propelled anti-aircraft guns, of which 72 are 105mm self-propelled howitzers and 36 are 150mm self-propelled infantry guns. The Panzergrenadier Division had as many as 72 self-propelled guns. These self-propelled guns are still on the territory of the Stalker tank destroyers. Now the total number of self-propelled guns following behind the Tan-Annihilation Formation has reached 504!

In addition, there are nearly 60,000 people riding in tracked armored personnel carriers, armed with Type 31 automatic rifles, Type 34 general-purpose machine guns. Panzergrenadiers and infantry with 75mm recoilless guns and Iron Fist 100 anti-tank grenade launchers with a range of up to 100 meters accompanied the attack of armored clusters.

Finally, the commander of the Second Tank Army, General Liao Lei, still had an armored corps in his hands as a reserve for this attack.

And elsewhere on the Eastern Front in Moscow. The Chinese army also engaged the 6th Army, the 7th Army, and the 8th Army, which had just arrived in the European theater, to carry out diversionary attacks.

While the Chinese armored group was busy preparing for a surprise attack, the Soviet tank units also braved the fire of the Chinese army to deploy. After studying and discussing with Marshal Frunze and General Vasilevsky, General Baranov decided to adopt an "oblique battle formation" to deal with the "armored horizontal formation" of the Chinese army.

330 T-28/1935 equipped with 73 times the caliber of the 57mm anti-tank gun to serve as a frontal lure mission, this tank is based on the T-28/1932 model of improvement, the original 76.2mm infantry gun with weak firepower, replaced by a 57mm anti-tank gun, but unfortunately this 73 times the caliber of the anti-tank gun is difficult to manufacture, and the life is too short, at most a hundred shells, will be scrapped because of the strict rifling wear. However, the 3.14 kg BR-271 armor-piercing projectile with an initial velocity of nearly 1,000 m/s has extremely strong armor-piercing performance, and can penetrate 105mm of homogeneous armor steel at a distance of 1,000 meters. However, it is not enough to see the Cheetah tank destroyer that can penetrate 153mm homogeneous steel plates at a distance of 2,000 meters.

Fortunately, these T-28/1935 tanks could rely on Soviet defensive positions and anti-tank fire points, so they should be able to hold out for a while to cover the more than 1,500 Su-76 and Su-85 attack guns and another 320 T-28/1935 tanks from the rear of the first line of Soviet defense, making a detour to the north, planning to break through from the Chinese front near Losino-Petrovsky, and then storm the Chinese armored cluster from the flank. Moreover, the more than 1,800 Soviet tanks and strong artillery did not act alone, and Frunze also mobilized more than 100,000 infantry and 20,000 cavalry to cooperate in the operation, trying to break through the Chinese front line with a sea of people + a sea of tanks, so as to help the roundabout Soviet tank cluster quickly cut into the flank of the Chinese armored cluster.

In addition, the threat of the Luftwaffe was also fully taken into account by Frunze, Baranov and others. To this end, they did their best to collect more than 1,000 anti-aircraft guns/anti-aircraft machine guns from various units of the Eastern Front cluster, and urgently deployed them to the Losino-Petrovsky to Elekt line to cover the movement of the Soviet tank cluster.

"Panzers! Advance! Panzers! Advance! ”

As soon as the sky was dark, a deafening roar of motors sounded on the plain east of Losino-Petrovsky, and the Chinese armored assault group, composed of nearly 1,200 tanks and assault artillery, rumbled forward along the road cleared by the artillery and pressed towards the Soviet defense line!

……

"Enemy tanks! Comrade Chief of Staff, the enemy's tanks are coming! ”

At this time, the 330 T-29/1936 tanks responsible for luring the enemy were also in place, and in order to deploy these tanks, Vasilevsky and several tank commanders who were temporarily under his command had a lot of effort, and the main problem they encountered was communication links. Due to the relatively high altitude of the nuclear bomb explosion last night, the electromagnetic pulse generated also had a large range, and the Soviet tank cluster that had not been prepared in advance was also on the road, and almost all the radio stations installed on the tank were damaged! In addition, telegraph and telephone communication between the Soviet Army's Eastern Front Cluster Command and its subordinate units was basically cut off, and nearly 1 million troops and thousands of artillery pieces scattered on hundreds of kilometers of the front could only rely on communications troops on horseback to communicate. However, using this primitive means of communication and liaison to command a million-strong army in the era of mechanized warfare is indeed extremely troublesome. As a last resort, Frunze had no choice but to divide the entire front into several large sections, and himself, Vasilevsky and Baranov, as well as several other commanders of the Eastern Front Cluster Command, also personally went down to the front line to "take charge of each section" and command one of them, which is still very inconvenient.

Vasilevsky was in charge of the section from Losino-Petrovsky to Elekt, that is, the most likely direction of the Chinese army's main attack. But the most likely thing did not necessarily happen, and it was only when he found the figure of the Chinese army's tank cluster through the telescope that Vasilevsky let out a long breath and turned back to the staff officer: "Have telephone communications been restored?" ”

"Not yet." The staff officer replied. It is not an easy task for the communications troops to lay telephone lines on a front with a radius of 100 kilometers in the face of constantly falling bombs and shells.

Vasilevsky sighed softly and added: "Send the cavalry to Comrade Baranov and tell him that he can start the operation." ”

"Yes."

Looking at the back of the staff officer who quickly ran away, Vasilevsky's heart suddenly flooded with an ominous premonition. The previous deployment ignored an important issue, which was the communication command of millions of armies! In the era when there were no modern means of communication, the battlefield that front-line commanders could control was only a dozen kilometers in radius, and no matter how big it was, it was inevitable that there would be ineffective command, and at that time there was no artillery sight, no tank group assault, and no complex tactics such as ground-air coordination. But now, on his side, he is using the same means of communication as in the time of Julius Caesar, directing the mechanized warfare of the 30s of the 20th century...... Is this really possible?

"Boom, boom, boom......"

The sound of a series of artillery fire rang out, waking Vasilevsky from his thoughts, and he hurriedly began to observe the battlefield with a short telescope. I saw that the tank cluster of the Chinese army was parked outside the anti-tank trench and was firing artillery to suppress the firing points of the Soviet army's front. And the Soviets did not wait for their own orders, and began to fire in a volley of artillery - in fact, there was no way to wait, and it would take more than an hour to run back and forth on fast horses on a 20-kilometer battlefield! (To be continued......)