The air battle that broke out over Kyakhta was the largest air battle since the start of the Sino-Soviet war, and although the total number of planes dispatched by the two sides was far less than 1,000, it opened the prelude to the Sino-Soviet air war.

Because the radar detected the sneak attack of the Soviet aircraft group, the garrison of Kyakhta was also put on high alert. Half of the city was in ruins after a war, and the other half was better preserved.

While the vanguard continued its offensive, a division of the 2nd Panzer Army and an infantry division of the 7th Army had just been stationed here. On the entire Siberian front, due to the rapid advance of the armored forces, in the huge Siberia, the Soviet army's defensive strength was too weak to form a large corps in a short time, and it was unable to resist the attack of the Chinese armored corps. In the vast expanse of the Siberian snowfields, the troops at the front were marching towards the North Sea (Lake Belga) - Ulan-Ude.

At the beginning, the troops began to prepare for air defense of key areas with special combat readiness, anti-aircraft guns and anti-aircraft machine guns were arranged on the rooftops or among the ruins, and even the self-propelled anti-aircraft guns of the Third Panzer Division of the Second Panzer Army entered firing bunkers, preparing to deal with the first large-scale bombardment by the Soviets since the beginning of the war. The soldiers even entered the ruins and bunkers, and improvised sewers to prepare for air defense.

As a result, although the Soviets' aircraft group once approached the line of sight of Kyakhta, they finally failed to break through the powerful blocking force composed of more than 180 Jian-2 fighters and Jian-3 fighters.

In the hall of a church, three tanks were surprisingly parked, and it turned out that the tanks of the tank division had to be temporarily dispersed into these intact buildings for air defense. The soldiers, who did not believe in any religion, directly opened the priest, drove the tank open the door of the church, and parked the tank in the middle of the church.

With nothing to do, the soldiers took turns using the captain's telescope to observe the air battle in the sky.

"At three o'clock, another one was shot down, deputy company commander, let's see, whose plane it is."

The soldiers divided into several groups and crowded next to the officers, scrambling to see the binoculars. The highest-ranking officer in the room was a deputy company commander, who was holding a telescope to observe the direction of the crash that had just occurred, and in the shot, a bomber much larger than a fighter plane was spinning and falling rapidly, "It's a Soviet bomber again, and it's been beaten into a flaming turkey." ”

"Han Sheng, how are you doing? The company commander asked me to come over and have a look. ”

"Commissar Tan, why are you here?" Chen Hansheng put down his binoculars and looked back to see the political commissar of the second armored company, who was looking forward to the falling plane in the distance, and couldn't help laughing, "Don't you take the brothers to see the excitement of the Soviets." ”

Chen Hansheng was the deputy company commander of the second company, in charge of commanding six tanks, three of which were parked in the church and three in the courtyard, covered with camouflage cloth, and the soldiers all entered the house.

"It's not easy for you, a top student of the Armored Command Academy, to get along with the soldiers so quickly." Commissar Tan patted him on the shoulder, and pointed to the sky in the distance, and he could still see a lot of entangled planes, obviously the air battle was far from over, "How is the situation?" I was at the underground command post just now, and I almost missed the show. ”

Chen Hansheng signaled to Political Commissar Tan, pointed to the chalk word 'Zheng' on the tank, and said happily, "The brothers counted no less than 15 Soviet planes, some of which were hit by volleys and exploded, and some of which were planted headlong. ”

"Huh? The results are so good? And what about our planes, how many fell? Although Political Commissar Tan knew early on that the equipment of the Wehrmacht was very advantageous over the Soviet Army, he still couldn't help but worry.

"There were two planes waddling and had just flown back from the airfield. The injury was very serious, but I didn't expect to be able to continue to swing and fly back. ”

Looking at the fierce air battle scene, Chen Hansheng was slightly touched, but he couldn't talk about regrets. He is only 234 years old this year, and his initial dream was to become a pilot, but because of the coercion of his father, General Chen Jun, who is also the commander of the Mongolian Front, he finally joined the armored corps, graduated from the armored command college with very good results, and after several months of running-in, he had excellent skills and outstanding performance, and was successfully appointed as a deputy company commander.

When the war began, as a commander, he was soon appointed deputy company commander with real authority to command six tanks for the courageous charge of the tanks he commanded when breaking through the border defense.

"Then I'll have to look outside for a while to make up for it, haha. Just as the military affairs are over. Political Commissar Tan was not polite, he sat directly on the placket of the tank, took the telescope handed to him by Chen Hansheng, and looked at the air battle in the distant sky.

After looking at it for a while, Political Commissar Tan gasped, put down the binoculars, and said, "Han Sheng, have you noticed that the Air Force's fighting style is very ferocious and fierce." ”

"Yes, commissar, you see, the two chasing fighters at nine o'clock are obviously our planes chasing the Soviet fighters. With his superior speed and ability to turn, no matter how maneuvering the Soviet pilot was, he could not escape, and there were seconds left at the latest, and there would be victory or defeat. ”

With his naked eye, Chen Hansheng had been looking at the pair of fighting planes that had just appeared for a while, and the superb flying skills of the Wehrmacht pilots were not inferior to the tank piloting skills he was proud of, but were much higher.

The terrain where the church is located is relatively high, and you can just see a relatively wide airspace, and this air battle that took place within a sight distance of Kyakhta is obviously the end of a normal air battle.

The Soviet aircraft group failed to break through the blockade of the Wehrmacht Air Force in any case, strangled all the way, clumsy bombers and attack planes were shot down one after another, and the Soviet fighters were not much stronger, when the Chinese planes stared at the bombers or attack planes, they could still follow the sneak attack, but when the Chinese planes fired a cannon or machine gun bullet and hit the target, a large-angle air combat maneuver quickly turned passive into active, biting the guy behind the butt who wanted to sneak attack, and then cleanly hit it with a volley explosion.

"Did the company commander say when it would be pulled? Commissar. Chen Hansheng looked at the sky where he was fighting, and couldn't help but look back at the three tanks parked in the church, and his belligerent heart came naturally.

"It should be soon, maybe we can't wait for the end of this air war." Political Commissar Tan looked in the direction of the hinterland of Siberia, and the air force was fighting for air supremacy, so the mission of the army was to occupy and occupy again.

...... "Chairman, the results of the Kyakhta air battle have been counted. ”

Mao Yun handed over a report he had just received to Zhang Shusheng and closed the door casually.

Zhang Shusheng opened the file and began to look through this medium-sized air battle.

The Soviets stationed a large number of planes at the airport in the huge Lake Berga north of Kyakhta, and only the airfield in Ulan-Ude remained, and the reason why Zhang Shusheng was concerned about the air battle in Kyakhta was actually to attack Ulan-Ude next.

Although the main offensive force in the Siberian direction was the 2nd Panzer Army, as a killer of tanks, whether it was bombers or attack aircraft, the Soviets learned from the Germans a set of very lethal tactics for destroying tanks.

Both in history and now, the Soviets and Germans have been doing the same thing, sending thousands of tanks to attack and counterattack frantically, and sending hundreds of them to bombard these armored units repeatedly.

This bombing was very effective, and in the Soviet and German armies, where the air defense was clearly insufficient, as soon as the armored units were detected by enemy aircraft groups, it would have suffered heavy losses.

For example, the Soviet Union and the Germans could easily have 100,000 or hundreds of thousands of casualties, the number of prisoners, hundreds of tanks blown up, or even thousands of tanks, and they would not feel heartache at all.

They only want to win the battle, anyway, there is a steady stream of recruits in the rear, and even if there are no high-quality recruits, there are farmers all over the country who can be armed and sent to the battlefield.

Therefore, they can ignore these casualties for the sake of victory, but Zhang Shusheng cannot.

The reason why the Sino-Soviet War did not blindly pursue speed and frenzied advance like the German blitzkrieg was to reduce casualties while achieving huge results.

If the Soviets had not been restrained by the Germans and themselves, this idea could only have been a dream, but now, the Soviets are too busy to take care of themselves, even if they realize that China's attack is in danger of destroying the country and destroying the species, but they are also unable to fight back with all their national strength.

In this way, relying on a strong army and advancing quickly, China can achieve both huge results and victory with small casualties.

Compared with the Wehrmacht, the weapons of the Soviets are indeed not advanced, and some of them even look old because of the huge war losses.

However, the huge air force that the Soviets had gathered in the Siberian region really posed a great threat to the infantry and armored units of the Wehrmacht.

Even though the armored units of the Wehrmacht had already equipped self-propelled anti-aircraft guns to the battalion level, and field air defense was the focus of the exercise, Zhang Shusheng still did not have the confidence that he could rely on ground air defense firepower to deal with hundreds, if not thousands, of planes that might be attacked by the Soviets.

It would be difficult for the Soviet air force to seize the opportunity when the armored forces were attacking and marching over a vast area, but once the Wehrmacht needed to come together and take Ulan-Ude, the gateway to Belga, it was very likely to encounter cluster bombardment.

At that time, the Second Panzer Army was likely to face heavy casualties.

The best weapon for solving aircraft will never be ground-based anti-aircraft fire, but aircraft that are more advanced and more numerous than the enemy.

Therefore, the entire Siberian air battle plan, Zhang Shusheng is laid out in two steps.

It would be best if the Soviets could not stand the pressure of the Wehrmacht Air Force, or even the full-scale bombing of Ulan-Ude, and had to take the initiative.

And if the Soviets retreat step by step and refuse to fight a decisive battle in the air, then the Wehrmacht Air Force can only push through the airspace piece by piece.

With absolute air superiority, the Soviet Air Force, which refused to fight a decisive battle, was driven north of Lake Belga.

"188 enemy planes were shot down, more than 70 enemy planes were damaged, and less than 100 Soviet planes were able to escape safely.

When Zhang Shusheng carefully read this report on the results of the battle, a person instantly appeared in his mind: Stalin.

For some reason, he was sure that when this report of the Kyakhta air battle reached Stalin, the commander-in-chief, who had never suffered such a huge air defeat, would have ordered the acceleration of the southward movement of the Siberian Air Force.

At that time, whether it was Zhang Shusheng or Stalin, whether it was the Wehrmacht or the Soviet Red Army, they urgently needed a large-scale air battle to determine the trend of Siberia.

The Soviet Union was defeated, and Siberia would be completely occupied by the mighty [***] team. If the Chinese Air Force is defeated, the Soviets will be able to hold half of Siberia.

"Germany's previous tactics of slow refueling may also play out in the skies over Siberia. It would be a grand air battle. ”

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(To be continued)