Zhukov regained Gomel, and from the point of view of those who came after him, this battle was of great significance. From the beginning of the battle in Gomel, the Reds completely reversed the passivity caused by Tukhachevsky's mistakes in the early stage, and switched from defense to attack. To be precise, it is to move from defense to attack.

As the Germans carried out the Führer's supreme instructions on the Eastern Front and began to use fortress and fortress tactics against the superior corps of the Red Army, the German army on the Eastern Front had fallen into a situation of passive attack. Of course, this situation was not obvious at first, and Hitler tried to counterattack every once in a while, but as the Red Army's superiority became greater and greater, the frequency and intensity of the German counterattack became lower and lower, and it became less and less able to cause trouble for the Red Army.

That is to say, from the beginning of the battle in Gomel, the defeat of the German army was already doomed, and when the weapons, equipment and personnel they produced and replenished could not keep up with the attrition of the front, there was only a dead end.

And the Red Army. The Venezuelan also recognized this trend, so in addition to ordering Zhukov, Rokossovsky, Konev and Vasilevsky at the front to cut the Germans to death, it once again intensified its strategic bombardment of the German hinterland. Army. Venezuela found that strategic bombing was enough to neutralize more than 25 percent of the German army's production capacity, and that the cost of destroying these 25 percent of the enemy on the front line was undoubtedly much higher.

So from May 1943, the Army. Venezuela adjusted the proportion of weapons produced by the Air Force, and the long-range aviation unit increased from only 20 percent of the Air Force to 30 percent, and once again asked Tupolev to come up with a new long-range bomber with a larger bomb load and longer range as quickly as possible.

As the Red Army intensified its strategic bombing, a major offensive and defensive battle around long-range bombers began. In order to resist the strategic bombardment of the Red Army, the German army constantly increased its interceptor and anti-aircraft firepower. Strive to lay down more heavy bombers. The Red Air Force, on the other hand, made a big fuss about escorting and reducing losses. It was against that background that the escort system and guided weapons, which later proved to be very effective, were constantly improved.

Of course. In addition to hard killing, the Germans were constantly trying to disintegrate and weaken the strategic bombing threat of the Red Army with soft-kill means. And that's the main story to be told today - electronic warfare!

Comrades should be no strangers to electronic warfare, in fact, the Red Army used electronic warfare methods before in order to bomb Ploiesti, and the most successful electronic warfare in history did not belong to the Soviet Union, but to the masterpiece of the Soviet Union's dead land, American imperialism. Comrades may be more familiar with electronic warfare in Operation Desert Storm, but let's start with Vietnam.

Historically, on July 24, 1965, the U.S. Air Force's losses in bombing North Vietnam skyrocketed as the Soviet Union delivered a large number of S75M (also known as Sam-2) surface-to-air missiles to North Vietnam. By the end of 1965. The 5 squadrons of 90 fighters at the US Air Force base in Thailand lost almost a third.

After several months of reconnaissance and figuring out the technical performance and tactical application of the S75M, the US military urgently improved the QRC-160A-1 electronic jamming pod on the basis of the QRC-160 electronic jamming pod that had just been developed.

It stands to reason that the pilots of the U.S. Air Force should welcome this new equipment, because after testing, this pod can indeed greatly reduce the threat of the S75M. But puzzling enough, the American pilots refused to install the QRC-160A-1 electronic jamming pod on their planes on the grounds that "we don't have time to learn this new thing." We're going to have to throw the steel to the end! ”

Yes, the US Air Force pilots refused this new equipment under the pretext of busy tasks and the occupation of valuable bomb pylons by electronic jamming pods. The pilots were fundamentally skeptical about the actual role of such interference pods. They do not understand the importance of electronic warfare, and are afraid that after installing the pod, it will affect maneuverability and reduce the number of bombs. As a direct result, the QRC-160A-1 electronic jamming pods assigned to the front line were locked in the warehouse and moldy, and almost no pilot was willing to take it into the air.

However, the American pilots were soon taught their lesson, and in July and August 1966, as the number of anti-aircraft missiles in Vietnam increased, the 355th Tactical Fighter Wing's battle loss rate peaked. In these disastrous two months, the wing lost a total of 27 F105s, or half of its total aircraft.

The harsh combat environment changed the minds of the front-line pilots, who were finally willing to install the QRC-160A-1 electronic jamming pod in accordance with the regulations. So how does it work? It's amazingly good. On October 8, U.S. forces attacked the oil storage area of Nguyen Khi in Vietnam. In this extremely dangerous combat operation, Vietnam's surface-to-air missile units never attacked aircraft with pods attached to them and engaged in jamming, but concentrated their firepower on formations that had no jamming capability.

After this battle, the American pilots had an epiphany, that is, they rushed to install their planes with jamming pods, but did not interfere with the pods and even refused to take off to carry out the mission. There is one statistic that also illustrates the success of the electronic jamming pod, in the six months before the QRC-160A-1 electronic jamming pod, the US military was shot down 72 F105s, and in the six months after the use of the pod, even though the number of anti-aircraft missiles in North Vietnam skyrocketed, the US military still lost only 23 F105s.

Why tell this story? In addition to explaining the importance of electronic warfare, it is more important to clarify the point of view that advanced tactical thinking and advanced weapons are equally important, and it is useless for the former to fail to keep up with the latter.

You must know that the United States conducted excellent electronic warfare as early as the Second World War and compiled a number of corresponding tactics. In the strategic bombing of Germany and Japan, the US Air Force can be said to have experienced all-round and high-intensity electronic warfare. However, against this premise, the US Air Force pilots' understanding of the importance of electronic warfare during the Vietnam War was still very weak, and their concepts were staggeringly outdated.

Alfred Brown, author of "A History of Electronic Warfare in the United States". "No matter how great the role of electronic warfare may be at any critical moment, within a decade there will be a new generation of foolish pilots who believe that aircraft performance and piloting skills can ensure the survival of aircraft," Price concluded. He added, "After a certain amount of time." There will be major changes in the composition of the army, navy, and air force. The older generation with experience has retired or moved to other jobs. There was no longer a chance to use the knowledge he had gained in battle. And those who replace them will not have this experience at all unless they participate in battles! Everything has to start from scratch again! ”

Note that this is still the US imperialism, which represents the world's advanced level, and what is the state of the Soviet Union? To tell the truth, except for a group of high-level leaders led by Li Xiaofeng who attach importance to the development of electronic technology, most of the middle and low-level pilots, especially those grassroots pilots. There is no concept of electronic warfare at all, and it is not even considered useful and necessary!

In fact, electronic warfare is not cold, nor did it appear in World War II, as early as the advent of radio, the earliest "electronic warfare" was born. However, this earliest form of "electronic warfare" was first applied to commercial competition (and sure enough, money was the first driving force).

In September 1901, the American Cup was held in the United States, where the public was interested, and whoever was the first to report the race would reap huge financial benefits. Both Marconi and Radio America have contracts with the relevant units to report on the game on the radio.

In order to seize business opportunities, American Radio came up with crooked tricks. The company has developed a transmitter that is much more powerful than other competitors. Every once in a while, a ten-second "long stroke" is sent, which indicates that the American Columbia is ahead. The launch of two such "long strokes" would indicate that the British sailing ship Shamrock was ahead, and the sending of three "long strokes" would indicate that the two sides were neck-and-neck.

It seems that some comrades say that this has nothing to do with electronic warfare! Don't worry, didn't you say at the beginning that the American Radio Corporation has developed a transmitter with a higher power? The secret of electronic warfare has to do with this transmitter. It is important to know that radio spark transmitters transmit a wide spectrum of signals, and it is quickly discovered that when transmitting messages, the signals interfere with each other in the various receivers.

Transmitters with high power naturally have an advantage over transmitters with low power, so in order to maintain the lead in reporting, the American Radio Corporation deliberately continued to hold down the power supply of the transmitter after sending the message itself, and continued to transmit radio waves, which directly led to the suspension of all other wireless receivers.

And the application of electronic warfare in warfare for the first time in history is actually closely related to Russia. During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904, the Japanese armored cruisers Kasuga and Nisshin prepared to shell Russian warships in the port of Arthur. However, the Russian ships were hiding in the harbor, and it was difficult for the Kasuga and Nisshin to observe, so they could only send a small destroyer close to the military port to observe and guide the shelling.

The first time the Japanese destroyer radioed its cruiser, it was intercepted by a Russian radio operator, who immediately realized the importance of this signal and immediately turned on the radio transmitter to interfere with it. The Japanese cruisers could only shoot blindly because they could not obtain target designation, and the result was naturally no success.

By World War II, with the great military value of radio equipment, electronic warfare became more and more necessary. Electronic warfare in World War II was first carried out between Britain and Germany, and in July 1940, when the bombing of London began, the Germans quickly realized that they had to destroy Britain's home-chain radar network first.

The tall, bulky and conspicuous native chain radar was soon severely damaged in the German lightning air raids, and seeing that the Germans were about to succeed and the British would pay a heavy price, the British came up with a clever trick. The British let the radar's transmitter continue to work, so that the Germans mistakenly believed that the air raids did not work, and after several successive times, the Germans gave up on continuing the massive bombing of the native chain radar.

Actually?

In fact, this is a hoax, a considerable part of the local chain radar only has the transmitter intact, and the receiver was destroyed in the bombing, which means that these radars can emit radio waves and cannot receive them, so naturally they cannot detect any targets.

Of course, the Germans were not two hundred and five, and after finding that the use of hard killing methods "did not work", they began to look for soft killing methods. In September 1940, they set up a ground-based radar jamming station on Mount Pukul overlooking the city of Calais, with several Brelaus jammers.

These jammers, with antennas facing across the strait, transmit up to kilowatts of power and operate in the 22 to 50 MHz frequency bands used by local-chain radars to jam local-chain radars. Of course, the Germans' job is still a bit rough, because they don't know much about the performance of the native chain radar. It is even less clear that the British tested how to jam native chain radars back in 1938. And anti-jamming devices have long been installed. So the Germans did not have much success in their interference operations at the beginning.

It wasn't until a year later, after a large number of wireless reconnaissance and a basic understanding of the performance of the local chain, that Germany created a useful jammer that successfully helped Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Prinz Eugen cross the Strait of Dover and return to the German mainland.

Having said all this historical story, let's now return to the main topic, which is electronic warfare between the Red Army and the German army. At the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War, the Red Army had already established radar stations capable of basically covering the borders of the Western Front. These radars provided great support for air operations in 1941, without which the losses of the Red Army would have been even greater.

But by 1942, as German troops advanced deep into Belarus and Ukraine, these radar stations were either diverted or forced to self-destroy. Let's put it this way, in the first half of 1942, a big hole was opened in the sky defense line of the Red Army, but fortunately the Germans did not have much strategic bombing capabilities, otherwise the consequences would be unimaginable.

By the second half of 1942. With the establishment of new radar stations on the Russian front, the Red Army basically plugged the holes on the Western Front. It's just that this hole is not tightly blocked. Because Germany had learned from the experience of electronic warfare with Great Britain, and this relevant experience was also used against the Red Army's air defense early warning radars.

The Soviet Union was fortunate to have a time-traveling immortal, and Li Xiaofeng instructed Nokia to strengthen the research and development of radar and radio equipment before the war. So, in the second half of 1942, a new type of maneuverable early warning radar P12 was offered. This new radar made up for the shortcomings of the old one, so that the German jamming did not succeed.

At the same time, the Red Army was not blindly beaten passively, in order to thwart the German air defense system and protect its own attack aircraft and bombers. The Red Army also took targeted measures.

In order to deal with the German Freya anti-aircraft warning radar, Nokia is producing a special jamming device "Julang". This is an on-board pulse transponder that operates at the 125 MHz frequency where Freya is located. When the "Great Wave" receives Freya's radio waves, it immediately responds with a wide pulse signal. This signal is displayed on the radar display as a rhythmic beating waveform with amplitude modulation at a depth of seven kilometers. Anyway, it looks like a large wave of fighters flying in dense formation.

To put it bluntly, this is a tactical deception, and electronic warfare aircraft equipped with the Julang system can lure German fighters in the wrong direction, thereby reducing the losses of real bomber groups.

And that's not all, because it's not enough to jam the alert radar. When the bombers flew over the target, they had to face the German ground air defense network. The German anti-aircraft artillery units were equipped with Würzburg gun-sighting radars that were not on the 125 MHz frequency, and the Julang system was useless against them. This meant that bombers would still be tracked and targeted by enemy radar, and the Germans would still be able to use them to guide fighter jets and anti-aircraft guns to attack bomber groups.

At first, the Red Army did not have much to do with the Würzburg radar, and the problem was not solved until the KGB sent a special force to send a signal flag to snatch a Würzburg radar from a German radar station.

Nokia also urgently developed a jammer specially designed to interfere with Würzburg, the Lightning. Not only did the lightning be developed, Nokia also suggested that the Red Army produce large quantities of jamming chaff, which would work best with the lightning.

At first, the Red Army was very resistant to this, not so much against the lightning system, but against the use of jamming chaff, because the Red Army felt that now was not the time to use such a "big killer". Yes, you read that right, the Red Army did jamming chaff as a weapon of mass destruction, storing it in warehouses as a secret weapon with a high level of secrecy, and it could be put into use only at the most critical moment.

The reason, of course, was that the jamming chaff was so effective that the Red Army was worried that once such a mass killer weapon was used, it would soon be copied by the Germans, who in turn would be able to use it against Soviet radars. To be honest, this idea made Li Xiaofeng cry and laugh, because he knew very well that jamming chaff was no secret to the Germans at all, and in history, Germany, Britain and the United States developed passive jamming chaff almost at the same time, and the big guys were unexpectedly consistent in treating this weapon - that is, to hide it as a killer weapon, and never use it lightly.

Historically, it was not until the end of July 1943 that the Allies were the first to use this weapon, with Churchill's approval. Of course, there is no need to wait so long in this time and space, during the bombing of Ploiesti, at the suggestion of Li Xiaofeng, the Red Army first used jamming chaff, and the effect was very good.

Ironically, when Ploiesti was bombed into ruins, no one from the most ordinary soldiers to high-ranking generals knew what this dangling metal strip was, and even ordered: "Don't touch those things, they are likely to be poisonous!" ”

Poor Hans, I really don't know what to say about them, but as the strategic bombardment of the Red Army became more and more intense, and the use of jamming chaff became more and more intense, the Germans began to find a way to solve this thorny problem...... (To be continued.) )