Chapter 180: Battle

The weather was clear, and the field airfield was full of busy ground crews, clearing stagnant water, leveling the ground, and the equipment ready for construction was also pulled out for maintenance. The airport in this part of Siberia must be repaired with cement, this is the consensus of the entire air force, otherwise a rain and snow will fall, and it will not be able to take off for several days.

Ground troops also came out of the tents, which were going to get moldy in damn weather these days, sappers were busy resting the roads, infantry were helping to wipe down equipment, and tankmen were busy inspecting combat vehicles. On the surface, it seems that everything is normal, but in fact, everyone knows in their hearts that a war is inevitable, and the target is naturally Novosibirsk, thirty kilometers away.

Chuikov is the last person who wants to see the weather improve, but nature does not change by the will of the individual. The sun after continuous rain shone very comfortably on his body, but Chuikov's heart did not feel too much warmth. The Chinese are about to attack Novosibirsk. The two heavy military groups formed a pincer type, a big war was inevitable, and as the gateway to the entire Siberia, Novosibirsk must not simply give up, and must consume the sharp energy of the Chinese in this place. Lay the groundwork for a counteroffensive in winter.

War is not only a contest of combat effectiveness, but also a contest of will, and a contest of wisdom among commanders. Since the start of the war, Chuikov felt that he had done a good job, but the Chinese did not mean to be impatient at all, and despite being constantly delayed, they still pushed forward one by one.

During this time, Chuikov, who had received some reinforcements one after another, still did not have the idea of a decisive battle in Novosibirsk, his mechanized troops continued to retreat, forty infantry divisions held the defensive line about thirty kilometers deep in Novosibirsk, and the rest of the troops were fortified in turn, and the main force was waiting for winter in Omsk. What Chuikov wants to see most is that the squadron will drive straight after occupying Novosibirsk, so that his resistance tactics can achieve the greatest effect, and it depends on whether the Chinese are fooled.

Novosibirsk has a complete defense system, thanks to the fortifications left behind by the Chinese when they supported Kolchak. After Chuikov became commander of the Siberian Front, he repeatedly strengthened the defense of Novosibirsk. Despite leaving only the infantry, Chuikov was confident that he would hold out for more than a month.

In any case, this battle must be fought, otherwise the fighting spirit of the entire front army will be exhausted in the constant retreat. If he doesn't fight this battle, let alone Moscow, even within the front army, it will be difficult for him to suppress the generals below. The tenacious Soviets will give Chinese imperialism a taste of what it means to be iron-blooded!

In the early morning of October 28, 24 hours later, a dense roar sounded over calm Siberia. For the first time, Soviet fighters appeared in the sky over Novosibirsk, and more than 100 I-15 and I-16 bravely met the formation of Chinese fighters.

The Central Asian campaign has proved that the performance of Soviet fighters is strictly backward, and the attitude of the air force in the Siberian theater is very clear, that is, to rush to the bombers. However, the Soviet fighters were soon disappointed, and the bombers of the Chinese Air Force were at least above eight thousand meters. At an altitude of almost six thousand meters, the Soviet fighter group was attacked by Mustang fighters. Because the Air Force is expanding too fast, most fighter pilots do not have much experience in flying Mustang fighters, and the training planes in school are all Eagle Three, so the tactics in actual combat are very simple, just one move, dive, attack, pull up, dive again, and attack again.

This trick was very effective against the Soviet I-15 and I-16, and the Mustang fighter could easily bite the tail of the Soviet fighter and use six 12 and 7 mm machine gun bullets to turn the Soviet fighter into a ball of fire.

The whole air battle lasted for more than two hours, and in the encounter between the prepared Soviet fighter formation and the equally well-prepared Chinese fighter formation, the Soviet fighter plane was again heavily damaged, 88 planes were shot down, and only three Mustang on the Chinese side were damaged, two of which insisted on flying back to the airport, and one lost control of the plane on the return journey, and the pilot was forced to parachute.

The weather on this day was very good, the sky was cloudless, and the soldiers of the two armies watching the battle on the ground were very addicted. In contrast, the mood on the two sides is very different, on the one hand, they are frightened to watch, and they hide in the air-raid shelter as soon as the air battle is over, and on the other hand, they are enjoying watching and shouting and cheering one after another.

After clearing the Soviet fighters, the high-altitude B-17 lowered its altitude and began to drop bombs with anti-aircraft artillery at about 3,000 meters, while the Mustang fighters divided into a part to look for anti-aircraft bombardment on the ground and dive and strafe. A group of thirty dive bombers finally appeared and dropped bombs on Soviet anti-aircraft artillery positions with precision.

The whole day was a show of the Air Force, and the battle over Novosibirsk was just one of the scenes, more of a battle in depth behind enemy lines. About 500 Mustang fighters and 200 dive bombers successively attacked all the discovered military airfields of the Soviet army at a depth of about 300 kilometers.

At the end of the day, Chuikov's originally good mood was dealt a heavy blow, and the air force under the Siberian Front had more than 1,500 fighters, including 1,000 fighters, but after a day's decisive battle in the air, the Soviet army lost an astonishing 380 fighters. And that's not counting the 55 bombers that were destroyed on the ground. In just one day, a third of the air power was lost, which made Chuikov's mood better.

The answer from the Air Force is clear: the gap in fighter performance is too large. Whether it is the ability to climb, the flexibility of turning, or the ability to withstand the speed of dive, the Soviet fighters simply cannot be compared with the new Chinese fighters. In the end, it boils down to a very cruel sentence: our planes are like targets! It's like the enemy planes are here to shoot at the target!

Because of this sentence, Chuikov ordered that the fighters were strictly forbidden to take to the air for battle, and asked the airfields to do a good job of concealment, and the remaining fighters Chuikov decided to use them for ground attacks. The hope of air supremacy seems to be dying, and the next battle will be difficult, but Chuikov has no choice and must fight a decent defensive battle in Novosibirsk to buy time for the line behind him.

Chuikov painstakingly managed Novosibirsk as a fortress, which the two armies involved in the offensive did not realize. Subjectively, the top brass of the front army is very optimistic about taking Novosibirsk in a short time, believing that the trend of repeated retreats of the Soviet army will not change. On October 29, after the outbreak of the peripheral war, not a single qiē was as expected, and there was a lot of evidence from aerial reconnaissance that the Soviet army was stationed in Novosibirsk with heavy military groups.

This news made the entire Chinese Far Eastern Front rejoice! Finally caught a big vote! The General Staff demanded the capture of Novosibirsk by November 5, which was based on the premise that the Soviet army refused to resist with the main force, and now this situation was suddenly discovered, and the whole army became excited.

The LM Army Group, with a total strength of more than 500,000 troops and equipped with 1,000 cannons of more than 100 calibers, prepared for two hours with ferocious artillery fire at the very beginning of the battle. Five infantry divisions were then deployed as attacking troops, along a ten-kilometer-long line of defense, looking for weak points in the Soviet line, and once discovered, they immediately engaged elite assault teams. It was a tough battle, and it was destined to be a battle with huge casualties.

The Soviet army, which had repeatedly retreated, was holding its breath and showed its high fighting spirit and firm spirit of not giving up an inch of territory in the offensive and defensive battles on the periphery. On the first day, the two armies invested 150,000 heavy troops to storm the Soviet defensive line.

The Soviet army was extremely tenacious, and the squadron on the attacking side also had the belief that they would die, and the battle fell into anxiety as soon as it came up.

On the first day of the battle, under the cover of heavy firepower, the first squadron advanced about 1.5 kilometers forward during the day, and one of them even advanced to 2 kilometers, and then was ordered to retreat, and the entire front was flattened. On the night of the same day, the Soviet army launched a counterattack, and although the night battle was also an important item for the squadron, there were still more than ten small positions recaptured by the Soviet army. On the whole, the Soviet army occupied a geographical advantage as the defensive side, and the Chinese side had an advantage in equipment, especially absolute air supremacy. This was fully verified in the daytime battles, where fighter planes were constantly circling over the battlefield, and once the ground called, planes could dive at any time to take out the Soviet firepower. Because of the loss of air supremacy, the Soviet artillery did not get full play of the room, in order to avoid the air attack, the Soviet artillery had to be suppressed for a short time and then moved to the position. Despite this, on the first day of the engagement, the Soviet artillery suffered huge losses, and the Chinese side suffered more than 10,000 casualties. The Soviet casualties were about 30,000, not because the Soviet army was not good at fighting power, but because of the gap in equipment. The Soviet army, which was still equipped with Mosin Nagant, had far less firepower density in front of the Chinese soldiers, who were fully equipped with semi-automatic rifles.

The difficulty of the campaign was beyond the imagination of the commanders of both warring sides. What Chuikov didn't expect was the difference in casualty numbers caused by the gap in equipment between the two armies, and the Chinese did not expect that the Soviet army was so tenacious, especially the carefully prepared anti-tank trenches of up to five lanes, which limited the movement of mechanized troops. After the start of the perimeter war, tanks can only appear as a cover for infantry, and it is difficult to concentrate on tank assault again.

Of course, it is also possible to bypass Novosibirsk with tanks, but this tactic is difficult to implement in the poor road conditions in Siberia. Fang Jianxiong, who was far away in Beijing, actually did not expect to be able to fight such a battle in Novosibirsk, and it can be said that Chuikov once again exceeded the expectations of the Chinese side. However, from Fang Jianxiong's point of view, the advantages of fighting this battle outweigh the disadvantages.

Chuikov also had a helpless place, because Novosibirsk had a ready-made defense system foundation, and it would be difficult to find a suitable battlefield if he did not take advantage of it and then retreated. Of course, the Soviet army can also withdraw across the Ob River, but referring to the last Siberian campaign, Chuikov does not think that the Ob River can play much of a role, it is better to fight against the water, drag on for a month, and winter will come. (To be continued)