With the roar of thousands of engines, the largest Kurgasen tank battle since the beginning of the war broke out.

Baranov was indeed very cautious, and even though the troops turned and contracted to cross the river, they still laid defensive lines in several directions. Although the northern flank was the least defended, there was still a full infantry regiment and 31 T26 tanks. In addition to six 76-mm anti-tank guns, there were four 122-mm howitzers in the infantry regiment. When Zhao Dengyu's 510th regiment rolled up the mud and appeared ten kilometers away, the sentry discovered the sneak attack from the back in time. The infantry, who did not have time to dig bunkers, immediately borrowed large trees and rocks to deploy anti-tank fire, and also flattened the 122-mm howitzers, ready to withstand the impact of the tanks by caliber.

Of course, Zhao Dengyu does not look down on this firepower, and the Type 36 main battle tank can resist the attack of 122 mm grenades within 500 meters. But what made him depressed was that the first shot of this long-awaited tank battle was still preempted by the Air Force.

Fourteen H-10 planes arrived at the battlefield first, and Captain Luo Jun in the driver's seat of the long plane scolded this new plane that had just been prepared. For pilots accustomed to elegant appearances, the H-10 is an unsightly and difficult aircraft to operate. The shape is short and thick, the nose is large, the wing is wide, the two engines are embedded in the reinforced narrow wing inside, and the increased armor makes it only 470 kilometers per hour at a maximum speed, and in order to meet the large bomb load and armor protection, almost all the internal space is used to strengthen and increase the ammunition load, which leads to the four-person crew must be squeezed into a narrow space, the maximum range is less than 1600 kilometers, and the maximum combat radius of a full load is only 380 kilometers. The reason that really made the Air Force decide to purchase it was that the army was very critical of the Snake B combat attack plane, which had insufficient bomb load and could not stay in the air for a long time to provide support, and so on. It was only when the Snake fighter had no potential to be improved that the Air Force procured this twin-engine short-range front-line support aircraft.

Although the H-10 is not taken seriously by the Air Force, it satisfies short-distance front-line support for the Army. And it has requirements such as long air stagnation and large bomb load. In particular, its twin composite pylons are considered the biggest technological innovation of the Air Force after the start of the war. After arriving at the war zone, Luo Jun received a guidance signal from Fan Shaobo asking to blow up the bridge and pontoon equipment first, so he stopped complaining, and after making a big turn over the river, he lowered his altitude and rushed along the river towards Kulgasen.

"Fire! Fire! "The political commissar who personally supervised the construction of the bridge rushed to the air defense truck in person and directed the anti-aircraft artillery to fire into the air.

Before he could wake up from the shock of the sudden appearance of an enemy tank in his back, Major General Baranov had to deal with the air threat first, and the vehicle-mounted 7.62-mm anti-aircraft machine gun and 37-mm anti-aircraft gun immediately rained down a dense rain of bullets. But in addition to being careful of direct hits from 37-mm anti-aircraft guns, the H-10 bottom armor was completely immune to 7.62-mm anti-aircraft machine guns. So Luo Jun quickly lowered to 800 meters and aimed at the first pontoon bridge being erected. When the thin line-like pontoon and into the crosshair, the finger is lightly snapped.

Rockets in groups of two and two were sprayed out from under the wings, and although the accuracy of the ground-to-ground rockets was not very high, the probability of hitting the target was increased by relying on the H-10, which was reduced by the thickness of the skin and flesh. When Luo Jun pulled the trigger for the fifth time, several fireballs broke out on the pontoon bridge that was being erected, and the entire bridge body was broken into two from the middle. After blowing up the first pontoon bridge, Luo Jun had already lost altitude, so he did not continue to be greedy for merit but pulled up the plane first. After turning a corner, he went to deal with the main forces of the Soviet army in Kurgasen, and handed over the bombing mission behind to his comrades.

The H-10 squadron took turns to pass low over the river, quickly damaging the three pontoon bridges being laid, and repeatedly strafing the Soviet engineer regiment on the shore with rockets. Booming explosion. The Soviet Engineer Regiment suffered heavy casualties, and a large number of trucks and bridge-building equipment were destroyed by rockets. At this time, the returning Luo army had already reached the sky over Kulgasen and began to attack ground air defense and armored targets with twin 40-mm guns in the nose. Even the top armor of the T34 could not withstand armor-piercing shells fired by 40-mm guns. If it weren't for the fact that the planes couldn't get the best armor-piercing angle when fighting tanks, and his own speed was too fast and the hit rate was low, his squadron alone would have been able to take out half of the Fifth Tank Army.

"Manchurian Tigers. It's the Manchurian Tiger! Retreat, retreat! When the H-10 group repeatedly attacked the ground targets of Kulgarsen, Zhao Dengyu finally rushed to 15 kilometers to the north. Seeing the Type 36 main battle tank rushing in, the screams of the "Manchurian Tigers" sounded again in the Soviet tank regiment. There is really no way, in the entire Central Asian theater, the Type 36 main battle tank has almost become synonymous with death. In order to deal with it, the Soviet army used all the firepower except for the 57-mm tank guns that had just been prepared, and even the 152 howitzers were pulled in for flat fire, but it was still difficult to destroy the other side, so that the heavy losses made many front-line troops dare not write the damage figures caused by the "Manchurian Tigers" into the report. This alone shows how much of a deterrent the Type 36 main battle tank created for the Soviet tank crew. Many commanders of the front-line armored divisions of the Wehrmacht privately communicated that if it were not for the poor road conditions and logistics in Central Asia, if the position of China and Germany was changed, they would have been seventy percent sure of advancing to the city of Moscow by relying only on the six Type 36 and eight Type 31 armored divisions equipped before the war.

The bigger problem for the Soviet army is that the Wehrmacht's strict secrecy and the means of complete destruction after damage, and the policy of concentrating superior forces to retrieve even the corpses have made it impossible for the Soviets to accurately obtain data on this tank. Based on the analysis of the appearance and the performance of all the guns of the defense side, the Soviet General Staff even came to the conclusion that the thickness of its frontal armor exceeded 130 mm and was tilted 40 degrees. This conclusion means that, in addition to the 130 naval guns of the Navy with hooded armor-piercing shells, the "Manchurian Tigers" within 1000 meters can be immune to all the firepower of the Soviet army! In view of this conclusion, the T26 tank regiment, which knew that the 45-mm tank guns were completely incapacitated, immediately retreated, preparing to attack from both flanks with speed. 130mm on the front, the sides won't be that strong, right?

Hearing the shouts of the tank men full of "Manchurian Tigers", the infantry regiment became even more chaotic, and poured out all its firepower regardless of 3721. "T26, 1700 meters, a battalion of armor fragments! The second battalion and the third battalion pincer impact, don't stop! At the same time as the shells exploded around the 510 Armored Regiment, Zhao Dengyu, who had a hot temper but was not lacking in delicacy, immediately realized that the Soviet tanks were fleeing. He didn't have the confidence to catch up with the strange speed of the T26, so he picked up the microphone as soon as he entered the 1700 meters, and chose the armor shattering bullet.

The Wehrmacht's armored divisions have a lot of leeway in the choice of ammunition, not only the ordinary hood armor-piercing bullets and high-speed tungsten bullets are complete, but also the armor-fragmenting and armor-piercing shells are also fully equipped. But it has to be mentioned, except for the armor-piercing shells under development. At present, the most powerful armor-piercing shells, which are three times the thickness of armor at the caliber of the piercing muzzle, are not distributed to the Central Asian troops. This was because the General Staff was worried that this kind of low-tech, easy-to-manufacture but highly destructive shell would be reversely copied by the Soviet Union after it was captured. You must know that the armor-piercing shells currently developed by various countries can only penetrate the armor of the caliber of 1:1 cannons, that is to say, even if the 152-mm howitzer breaks the armor, it cannot deal with the frontal of the Type 36 main battle tank. And the armor-piercing shells equipped by the Wehrmacht are post-war models with modified charges and meditated hoods from drawings, and the 85-mm armor-piercing shells penetrate to a depth of up to 250 mm! This power means that once captured, the Soviet Union can copy it in batches, plus the Soviet army likes large calibers. If it is equipped with a 122-mm howitzer, it can directly disintegrate the technical superiority of the Type 36 main battle tank.

Don't look at Zhao Dengyu's usual hanging knife, he looks like he is swaying, but he is actually careful. He is actually very particular about choosing armor-piercing shells, because the armor-piercing bullets are lightweight, and the hit rate will drop when they exceed 1500 meters, and they cannot be guaranteed to be destroyed in the face of the fast T26. But armor-fragmentation shells are comparable to anti-personnel grenades, and the shells are heavier and have a higher hit rate than armor-piercing shells at long distances. When the sound of the gunner finishing loading was heard in the headset, the rushing tank had quickly stopped. "Free fire!" Zhao Dengyu shouted. His tank was the first to fire the first armor-fragmenting round.

The regimental commander's crew, of course, is the most elite. With thousands of hours of motorcycle experience, the number one gunner in the regiment accurately hit the front of a T26 that was reversing and preparing to hide behind a tree with the first shot. High-velocity armor splinter projectiles hit the steel plate. The softer warhead was quickly squeezed and shattered, and the plasticity of the inner filling instantly attached to the surface of the armor, and finally under the action of the delayed fuse, it exploded like a heavy hammer on the surface of the steel plate. Forms a washbasin-sized lesion on the surface. It seems that the markings have not caused damage, but the shock wave has shattered the inner wall of the steel plate of this T26, and dozens of sharp fragments have suddenly burst like a celestial maiden. Fragments flew around the tank compartment. Not only did they hang all three Soviet tank crews, but they also wantonly destroyed the internal equipment.

Although there is no internal performance in sight, the sudden stop of this T26 undoubtedly tells outsiders that it is finished!

As the T26 came to an end, the other tanks of the first battalion followed suit and opened fire on their respective targets. For every damage spot, a T26 has been destroyed. In just ten minutes, a full 23 T26s were destroyed in a row, and several of them even formed a secondary detonation due to internal fragmentation impact shells. While the 1st Battalion was constantly destroying the Soviet tank regiment blocking the way with armor fragmentation shells, the 2nd and 3rd Battalions had already rushed to a point of less than 1,200 meters. "Boom." A series of Soviet armor-piercing shells hit the front of the Type 36 main battle tank, but the Soviet infantry again despaired, the 76-mm anti-tank gun, which was equipped with the largest number of weapons, was completely weak, and the shells constantly ricocheted on the front of the tank, even if the heavy 122-mm grenade hit the surface, it could only make the opponent pause slightly, and after a few minutes it regained its ability to move.

"Grenade!"

After the 2nd and 3rd Battalions joined in and quickly killed all the T26s, Zhao Dengyu once again issued a concise and clear order. The 36 tanks, replaced with grenades, became mobile batteries, and more than a hundred artillery pieces were blown to pieces by the Soviet troops, who were too late to build positions, and the anti-tank guns exposed to the surface simply could not block such strong firepower. "Machine gun ready, rush over!"

After only four instructions, Zhao Dengyu successfully interpreted all the abilities of a good regiment leader. From the selection of ammunition, to the acceleration of two battalions into a pincer formation. From the priority attack on the tanks to the fire destruction of the infantry in the rear, and then to the final machine gun strafing, the strength and command skills of the front-line armored forces were fully demonstrated. In just half an hour, he broke through Baranov's rearguard deployed in the north at the cost of two tanks being hit in the side and causing damage to the transmission. By the time the half-tracks came up with the infantry, there was only a group of pure infantry in the position who had lost all their heavy weapons and were demoralized.

The speed of the 510 regiment was too fast and completely unexpected by Baranov. By the time the Romanian army left with one shot down, destroying three pontoon bridges, 122 trucks, 21 tanks, and more than a dozen anti-aircraft weapons, Zhao Dengyu had already appeared less than 8 kilometers north of Kurgasen. To the despair of the Soviet troops, Zhao Dengyu, who was advancing frantically like a red-hot short knife inserted into butter, had not been blocked, and two more armored regiments appeared in a row along the north bank and northeast of the river.

Baranov already has no choice, either cross the river or retreat! For the sake of Zhukov in the Ultau Mountains, he decided to take a gamble and organize resistance first. Then let all the soldiers who could swim go into the water to piece together the parts of the blown up pontoon, and when it was barely ready for traffic, he asked the commissar to take the 17th Tank Division, which consisted entirely of T26 fast tanks, the Cossack Reconnaissance Cavalry Regiment and two infantry divisions to cross the river first, and he himself took two tank divisions and one infantry division to break behind. It should be said that Baranov was very decisive and heroic, and in order to complete the task, he knew that he could not block the impact of the Type 36 main battle tank, but he still chose to cut off the rear himself.

But this general, who participated in the Soviet-Finnish war and personally led a tank regiment to launch a surprise attack to bury Finland, ignored the south bank, which he considered absolutely safe. When a battalion of the 17th Tank Division had just come ashore, it ran parallel to the northwest along the river. And there was a lot of dust again. The 4th Panzer Regiment and the Kazakh Cavalry Division led by Zhou Yawei stunned Baranov and the soldiers of the 5th Tank Army. The tank battalion that crossed the river tried to return in a panic, but because the tank crew at the head was too nervous, they drove directly into the river, and the tracks and gun barrels also tore off the pontoon bridge, which was not strong in itself, again.

The chaotic scene made Baranov know that it was impossible to complete the mission, so he immediately ordered to retreat to the east, and concentrated the most elite T34/57 regiment to the front, trying to use 44 T34/57 assembled armored regiments to open the bureau and break through to the Ultau Mountains.

The T34/57 tank regiment was Baranov's last hope. All of these tank crews who participated in the Finnish isthmus assault with him were few veterans with more than 500 hours of motorized experience, but this time they encountered a group of red-eyed madmen! "For Katyn! For Poland, boys, rush! "Major General Odezinsky, who had served in the cavalry division, had just arrived at the intended position. It ran head-on into the T34/57 tank regiment that broke through to the east. Since it was not known at the time that the T34 defense strength had been greatly reduced after the simplified process, the Type 31 tank could penetrate the opponent from a distance of 1,000 meters, and the Polish army did not have expensive high-speed tungsten bullets and armor fragmentation shells, so he immediately ordered a charge. Actively close to 700 meters and then open fire.

At this distance, the T34/57 can likewise penetrate the main armor of the 31.

One of the most tragic scenes of the entire Kurgasen tank battle broke out between the Soviet and Polish armies, and Major General Odezinski, who was bent on revenge, and the Polish tank men went on a rampage like madmen. In addition, many tank crews took over for a short time and were not familiar with the performance, so in order to ensure destruction, they did not fire until within 500 or even 300 meters. There was a Type 70142 tank with the number 31, which even rushed to the opponent's side less than 30 meters! The two tanks with their muzzles facing their muzzles were killed at once!

"Rush in!"

Seeing that the Polish army, which was not familiar with the equipment, was about to be dispersed, the 11th ** Armored Regiment led by Wu Qiwen inserted it from the rear waist of the T34/57 Regiment. Compared with the Polish armored corps, which was in a hurry, the 11th ** Regiment, although it was formed late, was more familiar with the weapons in the opponent than them, so it quickly formed an encirclement of the Soviet tank regiment.

Under the red sunset, on the 300-square-kilometer plain centered on Kurgasen, a total of 1,676 steel beasts fought against each other, shells of various calibers frantically rushed out of the muzzles, explosions and fireballs continued one after another. The worst were the Soviet infantry, who had lost the protection of their tanks, which were constantly outflanked and eliminated, making them a living target. In particular, the Fury anti-aircraft artillery battalion ordered by Zhuo Fan to shoot flat, under the condition that the air force always controls air supremacy, 64 35mm chain anti-aircraft guns with 230 rounds per minute have simply become the infantry nemesis of chasing for life, not only countless infantry died under the muzzle, but even the armored vehicles of the Soviet army could not stop this crazy firepower.

The front was blocked by the crazy Major General Odezinsky and the 11th ** Panzer Regiment, behind which were three whole Panzer Regiments, plus the encircled seven infantry regiments and the Kazakh ** Cavalry Division, Baranov completely lost control of the troops before nightfall. The fleeing Soviet troops panicked, and many tanks and soldiers fell into the river and drowned. However, this is not their biggest killer, it is the two Polish armored regiments that are really cold-blooded! These crazy Polish tank soldiers completely ignored any surrender action, and after destroying the tank, they directly chased after the Soviet infantry with dozens of tons of steel and crushed them, and finally Zhuo Fan stopped and reluctantly stopped.

According to post-war statistics, the total number of Soviet troops considered by Zhuo Fan to be as high as 80,000 was actually only 46,000, of which 5,000 drowned while fleeing, 15,000 were killed by the Polish army, and more than 3,200 were missing. Zhukov sent the outflanked 5th Tank Army and three infantry divisions, and as many as 574 tanks were directly destroyed, only 5 BT7s and less than 2,000 infantry took advantage of the chaos to escape, and only two days later joined Zhukov's main forces.

And Zhuo Fan, who established the future star throne through this battle, only 77 tanks and 22 half-track armored vehicles were destroyed, including 37 tank regiments of Major General Odezinsky alone, and a slight price of 3,300 casualties.

At noon on May 4, with Baranov killed, the last Soviet positions were breached, and the Kurgasen tank battle was declared over.

The Wehrmacht's Spring Offensive of 1940 ushered in a turning point...... (To be continued......)