Because of the extremely impressive performance of Chen Feng's subordinates, the command of the First Red Banner Army in charge of the Saiyin Shanda front line attached great importance to the Eighth Theater Guard Division, an infantry division that dared to go deep alone. Therefore, Lieutenant General Vasilyev, commander-in-chief of the First Red Banner Army, directly deployed 2 infantry divisions and 2 tank divisions on the first line of defense, and also mobilized 4 artillery brigades for fire reinforcement.

On 9 June, shortly after the Eighth Theater Guard Division arrived at Saiyinshanda, the Soviet-Mongolian coalition forces, with two tank divisions as the lead and one infantry division as the follow-up force, launched an attack on the guard division that had not yet gained a firm foothold, with the cooperation of the four artillery brigades.

However, to the horror of the Mongolian allied army leaders, from the very beginning of the battle, they found that things were not as simple as they imagined, and that the Chinese division, although it was only the name of a division, had a terrifying number of troops. Looking at the Chinese soldiers all over the mountains and the reserves that had not yet been put into battle in the distance, Lieutenant General Vasilyev was furious. Nima's, which is what the intelligence department said is a Chinese division with only more than 10,000 troops, although it is impossible to accurately count how many Chinese troops there are on the front line, but it is conservatively estimated that it will not be less than 30,000 people.

Do not blame Lieutenant General Vasilyev for his anger, he also had no way at all, who made the troops dissatisfied is the biggest feature of the Soviet Red Army. Don't think that the front line has invested so many divisions and brigade-level troops at one time, just think how many troops the Soviet-Mongolian coalition army has invested, as far as this battle is concerned, the Soviet army has more than ten divisions and six or seven brigades on the front line, and then there are several divisions and brigade-level troops of the Mongolian People's Army participating in the battle, but in fact there are less than 70,000 people.

Even in the middle and late stages of the Great Patriotic War. The Soviet Red Army basically withstood the attack of the German army and had seized the initiative in the local theater, but the full strength of the Red Army was still very low. At the end of the Battle of Stalingrad, the Don Front, which was responsible for annihilating the besieged German army, had six elite army groups and a large number of reinforced weapons, but the total number was only 210,000 men, and each army group averaged about 35,000 men.

If we talk about China, a group army must have at least two armies, and each army should have two infantry divisions, even if it is the smallest type B division, plus the troops directly under it. An army group has at least about 40,000 troops. As far as the 40 group armies formed by the Nationalist Government during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression are concerned, few have less than 40,000 troops.

Therefore, even if a group army of 35,000 people is put on the battlefield in China, it can only be said to be barely passable, but it is important to know that the Soviet Red Army is a European army, and the number of divisions and brigades under the jurisdiction of one of its group armies is far more than that of China. Take the Red Banner First Army, the main force of this campaign, for example. The First Red Banner Army had 4 infantry divisions (22nd, 39th, 59th, 231st), 3 tank brigades and 1 regiment (75th, 77th and 257th brigades, and the 48th Independent Tank Regiment). And then there were artillery, anti-aircraft artillery, engineering troops, baggage troops, and other units. In this way, it can be seen that the Soviet Red Army of several divisions and brigades was actually a meat-filled dumpling with a tiger skin, with a thin skin and a large filling.

For example, in the Far Eastern campaign in the later part of the war, the 1st Far Eastern Front was greatly strengthened infantry corps, the 72nd Army. After strengthening 8 artillery brigades (including 2 heavy artillery brigades), 4 artillery regiments, 3 artillery batteries (including 2 super heavy artillery batteries), 2 rocket artillery brigades, 2 rocket artillery regiments, 2 mortar brigades, 2 tank brigades, 2 self-propelled artillery brigades, and 1 engineer brigade, there are only 14,380 people in total! Marshal Chuikov once proudly recalled that in 1944, when the 8th Guards Army, the main force of the whole army, finished its recuperation, it had four Guards Infantry Corps (12 divisions) and a large number of reinforced weapons, and these units were all considered by the Red Army to have a fairly high full force rate. But when you do the math, there are only 76,000 people in total.

According to the information obtained in advance, the vanguard of this trip to the north was an infantry division under Chen Feng's department, numbered the Eighth Theater Guard Division, and the division commander was called Ma Cao, a young man who had not received formal military education and had been in the army for less than five years. Regarding the strength of this mechanized infantry division, intelligence gave a conservative figure of 12,000 people, so the commander-in-chief of the 1st Red Banner Army, Lieutenant General Vasilyev, used the figure of 12,000 as a reference.

After learning that Chen Feng's infantry division had only 12,000 men, Lieutenant General Vasilyev, for the sake of insurance, deployed 30,000 people on the first line of defense at one time, and in Lieutenant General Vasilyev's opinion, 2.5 times the strength of Chen Feng's division was enough to win the battle.

However, when the war began, it was discovered that the strength of the Chinese army was only 12,000, not counting those strange fighters flying in the sky, and the strength of the ground forces alone was not much less than theirs. But now that it's a tiger, there's no better way than to go up.

On the one hand, Lieutenant General Vasilyev ordered the troops on the front line to attack according to the original plan, and on the other hand, he ordered the transfer of troops from the rear lines, which completely destroyed the previous strategic deployment.

However, the combat effectiveness of this guard division under Chen Feng's command is too strong, especially the power of that strange small fighter with a tank is too great. In the battle on June 9, Chen Feng's division only invested one tank regiment and one army aviation brigade, and also dispatched an infantry regiment, but the offensive composed of 15,000 Soviet-Mongolian troops collapsed.

On 10 June, the fighting on the Sainshanda front continued, and after the first line of defense had reached 50,000 men, Lieutenant General Vasilyev ordered his troops to attack the guard division, but today's battle was still extremely frustrating for Lieutenant General Vasilyev. After a day of hard fighting, the Soviet-Mongolian coalition army suffered heavy losses, but the casualties caused to Chen Feng's troops were very limited, and Chen Feng's guard division was not completely annihilated or defeated.

On the 11th, after finding out the reality of the Soviet-Mongolian coalition forces on the front line, Ma Cao formulated an offensive plan and launched a fierce attack on the first line of defense of the Soviet-Mongolian coalition forces on the morning of June 11. This time, the guard division changed its previous "good temper" and all tanks, artillery, and helicopters were dispatched, and the whole army was thrown into battle except for the reserve unit of an infantry brigade.

The battle lasted from morning to afternoon, and the fighting was unusually fierce, during which the two sides engaged in artillery battles, armored battles, and even more brutal and bloody white-knuckle battles. At three o'clock in the afternoon, the Soviet-Mongolian coalition army completely collapsed, and more than 20,000 troops of more than 50,000 troops arranged in the first line of defense were wiped out, and all the rest retreated to the fourth line of defense before stopping.

In this battle, the Soviet-Mongolian coalition army not only lost more than 20,000 people, but more importantly, the two tank divisions were almost completely annihilated, and more than 700 tanks only escaped back to more than 180. Troops such as infantry and artillery suffered even more heavy losses.

From the night of the 11th, he launched an attack on the fourth line of defense of the Soviet-Mongolian army, and it took only four hours to crush the line of defense that Lieutenant General Vasiliev had high hopes for, and then the army approached the city of Saiyinshanda.

On the 12th, the horse drill headquarters attacked the city, and with the cooperation of the northern air force and the army aviation unit, the guard division successfully entered the city. However, what made Ma Cao feel depressed was that the Soviet-Mongolian coalition army did not retreat, but relied on the houses and commanding heights in Saiyin Shanda City to engage in street battles with the guard division.

Lieutenant General Vasilyev is a general with a high command level, through these two days of fighting, he found that the powerful firepower that the Soviet army is proud of is nothing in front of the Chinese troops on the opposite side, especially after the loss of more than 100 tanks arranged on the front line of Sainshanda, Lieutenant General Vasilyev knew that fighting a field battle with Chen Feng's troops would only make the troops perish faster, and if he wanted to achieve the final victory in the war, he absolutely could not let the advanced weapons and equipment of Chen Feng's department play an effective role. And the only thing that can provide such a battlefield environment is street fighting.

Sure enough, the Chinese troops who broke into the city were taken by surprise and were driven out of Saiyin Shanda after dropping a large number of corpses, which was also the first victory of the Soviet-Mongolian coalition army in a local battle since the outbreak of the war, and this street battle annihilated more than 1,300 Chinese troops.

But before Lieutenant General Vasilyev could rejoice, the Guards Division attacked again, and this time the Soviet-Mongolian coalition was not so lucky, and the prepared Guards Division only sent less than two regiments into the city to fight, these two regiments had 2 battalions all armed with submachine guns in addition to 4 infantry battalions equipped with AK assault rifles, and Ma Cao also lost the only special forces in his hands, the Sword Reconnaissance Company, to the city of Saiyinshanda.

At 3 o'clock in the morning of the 13th, the Battle of Saiyinshanda came to an end, except for a few units of the Soviet-Mongolian coalition army that broke through the encirclement, the rest were completely annihilated, and the commander-in-chief of the First Red Banner Army, Lieutenant General Vasilyev, together with the entire headquarters, was terminated by the sword reconnaissance company, and 5 generals and 16 colonels below Lieutenant General Vasilyev became prisoners.

The Battle of Sainshanda lasted four days and five nights, and ended with a crushing defeat for the Soviet-Mongolian forces, which lost more than 60,000 men and, more importantly, threw half of the armored forces in the hands of the Far Eastern Front. Chen Feng's troops also suffered extremely heavy losses this time, with a total of 2,769 killed and 7,611 wounded, a casualty rate of one-third.

Although the previous battles did not annihilate the Soviet-Mongolian coalition army, the losses of Chen Feng's division were minimal, and this time due to the stubborn resistance of the Soviet-Mongolian coalition army and the excellent command of Lieutenant General Vasilyev, the loss of the horse drill department was unprecedentedly serious.

The most important thing is that after the Battle of Saiyinshanda, the horse drill department had no choice but to stop the offensive due to heavy casualties. The large army was stationed in Saiyin Shanda to wait for Chen Feng's follow-up reinforcements, which gave the bitter Soviet-Mongolian army more time to mobilize troops. (To be continued......)