PS: Thank you for the book friend "Wangyun Mountain People" for your re-reward, and continue to ask for recommendation votes ^_^

In addition to the number of enemies destroyed, the Germans also recaptured Kharkov in the Battle of Kharkov and took advantage of the victory to capture Kursk, the largest iron ore mine on Shijie, and Orel, the southern gate of Moscow, which opened the road to Moscow, the capital of the Soviet Union, and the 6th Army went north to capture Rostov-on-Don and effectively ensured the security of the flank of the German Army Group South

However, at this critical time, the weakness of the German army's continuous combat capability was once again exposed, and Manstein's Army Group South took too long to repair after the victory in the two major battles, so that Guderian's Army Group Center, which was responsible for the main attack on Moscow, did not dare to go deep alone. This gave the Soviets plenty of time to gather forces to defend the capital, and even had time to build three lines of defense on the outskirts of Moscow, and the field fortifications, although relatively poorly defended, could weaken the effect of cloudburst bombs, which could be the key to victory in the defense of Moscow in the eyes of the Soviet leadership, who already had a psychological shadow on it.

However, the German army's use of cloudburst shells exceeded the expectations of the Soviets, it is true that the killing radius of cloudburst shells is worse than ordinary grenades in relatively open field battlefields, but the absolute killing radius is far from the latter, because grenades kill and injure the enemy mainly by splashing shrapnel, and there will always be people who are lucky to escape, while cloudburst bombs use high temperature, high pressure and suffocation without dead angles to kill, and all enemies within its killing range. Even if you don't die, you will fall into a coma and lose the ability to fight back.

That is to say, if the artillery group covers the enemy's position with high-explosive grenades, perhaps the killing efficiency of a single shell is higher, but it is almost impossible to kill all the enemies in the shelling area, and as long as there are still a few people on the position who survive, it can more or less delay the infantry attack after that, if the troops in the rear are fast enough, it is entirely possible to give timely reinforcements to the position, and let this attack be futile, and the positional war is easy to form a tug of war because of this. That's exactly what happened. Many experienced generals in the face of the enemy's superior heavy firepower. Troops are often deployed in a "light front and heavy behind" deployment to reduce casualties under rapid enemy artillery fire.

However, the advent of Cloudburst Bombs has changed this, although its lethal effectiveness is greatly reduced when used in the wild. But it was easy to use it to tear a hole in the enemy's position. Due to the total destruction of the enemy in the area under attack. This allowed the German mobile units to penetrate the gap before the enemy's reinforcements at a very high speed close to marching, thus breaking down the Soviet defense system and forming a flank Soviet army. If they retreated slowly, the Germans would even be able to make a few dumplings

Under the tactical advantage of the cloudburst bombs, the Soviet army's self-reliant defensive positions were lost and the number of casualties was increasing, but just when Guderian, the commander of the German Army Group Center, was looking forward to storming Moscow to carry out a massacre, the German army's hard-to-accumulate cloudburst bombs had almost been exhausted, although the rear was desperately producing and constantly transporting to the front, but because of the limited production capacity (the production of cloudburst bombs clashed with the vital synthetic rubber, and oil was consumed). Coupled with the lack of capacity, it was difficult for the Germans to maintain as much of the previous volume.

And at this time, the commander of the Soviet army, Zhukov, also found a way to deal with the German army, "The flank attack cannot be cracked, but the German fascists are afraid of the flank attack, they have cloudburst shells to break through the position, and our Red Army also has it, and more and better!" ”

After Stalin gritted his teeth and agreed to put into use a large number of cloudburst bombs that he had bought at a large price, Guderian was also helpless about this, and was soon forced to return all the positions he had previously captured to the Soviet Red Army, but because the German army's tactics were not as rigid as the Soviet army, their retreat was much more resolute when the situation was bad than that of the Soviet army when they attacked before, so they were less surrounded and annihilated, and the losses were much smaller.

At this time, Manstein, who was not involved in the war for the time being because he was in charge of covering, took the lead in grasping the key to Moscow's victory and defeat -- "air supremacy" because of the bystander Qing: "As long as the Soviet planes cannot rise into the air, their cloudburst bombs cannot be thrown, and the artillery group is also just the prey of our bombers"

The mustache immediately asked Goering to send as many planes and good pilots as possible to the front line, and to tilt the limited capacity towards aviation gasoline to the maximum. But Stalin also saw the significance of air supremacy, and in order to hold Moscow, he even risked another large-scale bombing of Baku, which currently provided almost all of the Soviet Union's oil production, and personally ordered the elite air force of the Caucasus Military District to be urgently transferred to the Moscow area, while the American transport fleet also shuttled back and forth on the Arctic Ocean route, transporting barrels of precious aviation gasoline to the Soviet Union at any cost. The same judgment and all-out devotion of the decision-makers of the two camps made the Battle of Moscow not only a tragic land battle as in history, but also a super air battle called "the death of the trump card" by later historians

During the Battle of Moscow, most of the aces of the air forces of the two countries, except for the ace pilots of the German Navy, participated in the battle, and even Pokryshkin, who was strictly ordered by Stalin not to take to the air in person, went to battle many times due to the great pressure of air defense (Note 1), and was even shot down by the enemy once. When Stalin learned of this, he was furious, and not only cut Pokryshkin's military rank, but also sent one of his own guards to watch over him, so that Pokryshkin completely lost the opportunity to fly the plane to fight in person

Although he was shot down once, Pokryshkin's performance was still worthy of the title of Shijie's top ace in air combat, shooting down 19 enemy planes 15 times and killing (killed or captured by Soviet ground forces) 6 (9 if you count successful parachute escapes) The amazing record of the German ace pilot made his reputation as an "ace killer" fly out of the Soviet Union and spread throughout Shijie.

Note 1: Due to the more tense war situation in the Soviet Union during this time and space, those ace pilots could not retreat to the rear to train rookies as they did in history, and often had to continue to fight on the front line, which led to most of them not surviving to the end of the war, but on the other hand, the Soviet pilots' crash record was much higher than in history. (To be continued......)