Chapter 1293: Twists and turns

The standard of the Huaxia Armored Division is 2 armored regiments and 4 armored battalions under a division, plus 2 mechanized infantry regiments and 6 mechanized infantry battalions. The standard of the Huaxia Mechanized Infantry Division is one armored regiment and three mechanized infantry regiments under one division, and the proportion of tanks and tank destroyers owned by the armored regiment will be relatively high in terms of vehicle allocation, while the infantry division has a relatively sufficient number of infantry fighting vehicles and assault guns. And the total number of various tanks is about the same. This was something that the Austrians did not expect. In accordance with the size of the Austro-Hungarian industry and troops, the Austro-Hungarian Army preferred to concentrate a limited number of tanks in armored divisions rather than disperse them into infantry units. Both sides knew each other well, but at the same time there were some mistakes, so a battle that could be called a sandwich for reconnaissance broke out in a blur.

This is the first appearance of the Chinese mechanized infantry division, and the opponent facing is not a strong German elite troops, Tian Yong feels that the external defense line is very good to break through, and it can be carried out according to the predetermined plan, especially after learning that the Turkish anti-aircraft artillery regiment is equipped with 75MM anti-aircraft guns, Tian Yong is even more relaxed, because the Germans' 75MM artillery is very difficult to deal with the Type 29 tank, although the defense of the Type 29 assault gun is not as good as the Type 29 tank destroyer known as the rhinoceros, However, after attaching additional armor, it is still stronger than the Type 29 tank. TIAN YONG COUNTED WITH HIS FINGERS, IT SEEMS THAT THE ONLY THING THAT CAN POSE SOME THREAT TO HIS ARMORED FORCES IS SOME 88MM ANTI-AIRCRAFT GUNS OR 105MM CANNONS LEFT BY THE GERMANS TO AUTRO-HUNGARIAN, THE FORMER WILL NOT BE MANY, AND THE LATTER CAN BE DESCRIBED AS SCARCE!

One qiē is carried out according to the pre-war setting. The design of heavy howitzers and rocket artillery kicked off the attack, and Tian Yong's troops chose two directions for a breakthrough. It is like a giant pincer that pinches at the opponent. The dust kicked up by long-range artillery strikes shrouded the entire attack position in a cloud of smoke. Clusters of flames shone in the dim dust, and the deafening whistling of the cannons was like the cry of an ancient beast. Spouting a deadly hail of bullets. In the selected area of breakthrough, the dense rocket and grenade directly hit the surface of the moon in the first line of defense, such a high-density attack was absolutely fatal for most of the non-permanent fortifications, the violent explosions and the sound of the fortifications collapsing were buried by the sound of artillery shells, and after passing the frontal line of defense several times with shells, the Type 29 minesweeper tank with the minesweeper nicknamed the Crab took the lead and began to clear the remaining minefields. Groups of tanks, assault guns and armoured personnel carriers then began to attack.

"The opponent's attack formation feels much wider than the normal tank formation, if the German attack formation is a sharp spear, then the attack formation of the Chinese troops is a broad axe blade. The breadth of their attacks was beyond our expectations. And through the smoke screen, you can see a large number of vehicles looming in the smoke screen, and the number of tanks on the other side is very large, which is beyond our imagination. "When Tian Yong's mechanized infantry division attacked, the commander of the defending force immediately noticed that the other party was different from what he imagined, they had a large attack surface, and they seemed to be equipped with a large number of tanks! (Well, actually, these are assault guns, but who can not make mistakes in the midst of a chaotic battle?) )

A wider attack surface is also something that can't be helped. Who made the range of fire of the assault gun too narrow, and the angle of adjustment of the gun was only 30 degrees. If you want to hit something outside of range, you have to turn the body. Moreover, Huaxia believed that Austria-Hungary lacked sufficient anti-armor firepower, so they would use support points to strengthen the defense of key areas, and a wide strike surface could always find gaps between support points. Not to mention that in order to deal with these support points with reinforced bunkers. The flat-fire fire of the Type 29MML122 gun of the Type 35 assault gun was enough to destroy these fortifications. In order to ensure the strength of the attack, Tian Yong even received some support from the Air Force, if necessary. The Flying Bat bomber will blow up all the obstacles in its path to pieces with 500KG of high-explosive and semi-armor-piercing shells!

"This battle was the first battle I commanded, and it was also the most tortuous battle I fought before the outbreak of World War 2. The elite Austro-Hungarian units were at least defensive, and they skillfully formed a whole with the help of fortifications, various artillery pieces and mobile units. Their resistance was fierce in the early stages of the battle, but due to equipment or the will of the commander himself, their defenses lacked resilience, and it was difficult to organize enough resistance when their carefully constructed defenses collapsed. This was our later experience, but this time, the first large-scale engagement I commanded, the response was exemplary in defensive warfare. Tian Yong wrote in his post-war memoirs, while speaking highly of his first opponent, Major General Liola of Austria-Hungary

"They were in no hurry to tear the gaps, unlike the Germans, who emphasized the speed and penetration of armored forces. The opponent's attack is slow and steady, like a huge grinding plate, they may advance slowly, but they can overwhelm the one on the road, they are not afraid of the arrival of reinforcements, but immediately turn to the defense after the breakthrough, as much as possible to use favorable conditions to fight a wave of counterattacks, they pay more attention to the consumption of the opponent's combat power to achieve the purpose of the campaign, rather than piercing the opponent's defense line and causing the collapse of the battle line to achieve the same goal. Major General Liao La commented on the attack of the Huaxia Mechanized Infantry Division, of course, when he was on the battlefield, and even after he was captured, he always thought that he was facing an armored division, not a mechanized infantry division.

DIFFERENT FROM ORDINARY ATTACKS, THE TANK BATTALION RESPONSIBLE FOR THE FRONTAL ATTACK LAUNCHED AN ARTILLERY BOMBARDMENT AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, AND EVEN LAUNCHED AN ARTILLERY ATTACK WHEN IT WAS ABOUT 1400 METERS AWAY FROM THE BATTLE LINE, THE WEDGE-SHAPED FORMATION WAS FURTHER DISPERSED, AND THEN BEGAN TO SHOOT ON THE MOVE, THE SLENDER 75MM GUN SPEWED OUT TONGUES OF FIRE, AND AFTER A FEW SECONDS, COLUMNS OF SMOKE ROSE FROM THE DISTANT POSITIONS, AND FROM TIME TO TIME MACHINE GUN NESTS OR MORTAR POSITIONS WERE OVERTURNED BY DENSE FIRE. Although the attack was blind, the constant fire suppression overwhelmed the opponent's machine guns and other front-line support fire, while the infantry behind dismounted from the transports under the cover of infantry fighting vehicles and then divided into battle groups. Attack like a scattered pack of wolves.

Rumble! A 75MM shell hit the surface of a bunker, after the smoke cleared. The gunner found that the bunker did not collapse as he had imagined, but only left a not-so-deep hole outside. "Solid bunker found at 3 o'clock." However, the tanker's report was not yet complete. Less than 600 meters away from him, a smoke screen suddenly rose, and a slender 88MM armor-piercing shell flew out at a speed of more than 800 meters per second, and hit the connection between the turret and the hull of the Type 29 tank, and the powerful armor-piercing projectile tore through the gun mount like a hot knife cutting butter. Rumble! With a loud bang, the turret of the Type 29 tank, which had been detonated by the shell in the aft compartment of the turret, was blown away, leaving only a large black hole in the huge turret burned by flames. And this was like blowing the horn of the Austro-Hungarian Army's counterattack, and the fire points that had not been destroyed were activated one after another, and the shells and machine gun bullets like flying locusts swept towards the attacking Chinese troops!

The sound of various shells and bullets smashing on the armor and the vibrations produced made the Chinese tankers who participated in the actual combat for the first time feel a little uneasy, and the hull of the car continued to shake and tremble in the violent impact and explosion. Occasionally, there was the sound of the armor being torn, which should have been a tank destroyed by one of the few heavy artillery pieces of the opponent, but even in the worst situation, the Chinese officers and soldiers still overcame the fear in their hearts and maneuvered, fired, and evaded the shelling step by step. However, the calm response did not necessarily have an effect, and the continuous blows did not weaken the opponent's counterattack firepower, and after a few minutes of firing, the Chinese tankers who were on the front line of the enemy suddenly found themselves at a disadvantage, and there were opportunities for tanks to be attacked from time to time. And the opponent's counterattack firepower has not decreased much, even if it is replaced with armor-piercing shells!

"The other party actually equipped the gun emplacements of the core support point with concrete guns with a thickness of about 0.8 meters! It is difficult for a 75MM grenade to penetrate this turtle shell, while an armor-piercing projectile has a chance to penetrate, but it is difficult to cause enough damage to the personnel and weapons inside because the internal charge is too small (after the tank was penetrated in World War II). There are also cases where it is still possible to fight. "After the war, the Chinese Army Investigation Team also studied the core support points of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which were 0.8 meters of concrete on the front and 0.4 meters of turtle shells with a protective layer on the top of the walls, but the Huaxia Type 29 tanks suffered a lot. If the strong defense of Austria-Hungary was against the German armored forces, then the Germans had no choice but to temporarily avoid the front. Because there are no guys in the front-line combat vehicles of the German Army who can do anything with this thing. But alas, they ran into the Chinese mechanized infantry. The 122MML35 plus howitzer is already hungry! THE 122MM GUN WITH CAP-PIERCING SHELLS HAS A HIGHER ARMOR-PIERCING ABILITY THAN THE 75MM GUN. And the internal charge is several times more than the latter!

The massive concrete fortress complex stood in the way of the attack like a roadblock. If you want to bypass it, you will obviously need to replan the offensive plan, and there is no guarantee that other places will not encounter similar support points. After a brief hesitation, Tian Yong ordered the tank troops to cover the infantry to retreat somewhat, and the Type 29 heavy assault guns located on the flanks and rear were finally on the field! AFTER LOADING A HEAVY 24KG ARMOR-PIERCING ROUND INTO THE CHAMBER, ONE LOADER TURNED AROUND TO GIVE WAY TO THE SECOND LOADER TO FEED THE PROPELLANT INTO THE CHAMBER AND THEN LOCKED IT. THE STUBBY 122MM GUN WAS FLATTENED, AND THE MUZZLE OF THE BLACK HOLE WAS AIMED AT THE BUNKER IN THE DISTANCE, WHICH WAS STILL SPITTING TONGUES OF FIRE.

More than a dozen Type 29 assault guns lined up in a row and then approached about 800 meters from the target. Shells hit the heavy sloping armor, but most of them were ricocheted. After the first few hits, the Huaxia armorers, who realized that their armor was more reliable, also began to relax their tense nerves. "Fire!" WITH THE ORDER TO OPEN FIRE, A COMPANY OF TYPE 29 ASSAULT GUNS FIRED AT THE SELECTED TARGET AT THE SAME TIME, AND THE DULL ROAR OF THE LARGE-CALIBER ARTILLERY INSTANTLY OVERWHELMED THE OTHER SOUNDS ON THE BATTLEFIELD, WHETHER IT WAS THE SOUND OF THE MACHINE GUN TEARING AN OILCLOTH OR THE ROAR OF THE 88MM ANTI-AIRCRAFT GUN, WHICH WAS BROKEN BY THIS SALVO THAT SHOOK THE ENTIRE BATTLEFIELD!

A heavy armor-piercing projectile weighing 24KG smashed on a square gun wall like a battering ram, at the moment of impact, a huge armor-piercing projectile directly penetrated the concrete wall from the junction of the front and the top cover, and the violent impact threw a large number of concrete fragments into the air, and then this shell exploded inside the gun wall, under the action of the charge, the entire projectile body was shattered into countless shrapnel, and an indiscriminate coverage was carried out in the entire gun wall, they tore apart the gun shield and destroyed the artillery, Turn the soldiers inside into a cloud of snow mist and minced meat.

Not every cannon can achieve a fatal result, but it doesn't matter, the Huaxia assault artillery unit has patience and shells, under the continuous blow, a bunker can resist 1 cannon, and luck can block the second bubble, but the continuous medium and close range strikes are not something that any bunker can resist! After a large number of assault artillery units entered the battle, bunkers were reduced to piles of rubble under the rumbling sound of cannons. Although THE 29MM ASSAULT GUN WAS DESTROYED BY THE OPPONENT'S 88MM ANTI-AIRCRAFT GUN OR EVEN THE 105MM CANNON, IN THIS CONFRONTATION, THE POWER OF THE HUAXIA LARGE-CALIBER HOWITZER EXCEEDED THE IMAGINATION OF BOTH THE ENEMY AND US. Under the constant attack, the Austro-Hungarian defenses were peeled away layer by layer like a potato peeled. The whole line of defense has become precarious!

Static defenses are ultimately vulnerable to attacks from a large number of mobile armored assault artillery. Under the fire of 29 lines of assault guns, the first line of defense, carefully prepared by the Austrians, finally collapsed. "Let's replenish the ammunition, you tanks go on." It is an irony that the officers and men of the assault artillery unit, who are enjoying the fighting, said in the communication frequency band that the tanks originally used to break through the defense line gave way to the assault artillery units with stronger firepower and protection. HOWEVER, THIS SENTENCE ALSO EXPOSES THE WEAKNESS OF THE ASSAULT ARTILLERY UNIT, THAT IS, THE AMMUNITION CARRYING IS TOO SMALL, LOOK AT THE HUGE 122MM GRENADE AND THE PROJECTILE CARTRIDGE, AND THEN LOOK AT THE INTERNAL SPACE OF THE TYPE 29 TANK, YOU WILL KNOW THAT THE LOADING CAPACITY OF THIS ASSAULT GUN WILL NOT BE VERY LARGE, ONE CAN ONLY HOLD 24 ROUNDS! SO MUCH SO THAT AFTER THE WAR, THE ARMY STRONGLY DEMANDED THAT THE COMBAT VEHICLES EQUIPPED WITH 122MM GUNS BE EQUIPPED WITH LARGER CHASSIS!

Thank you to the book friend zhouyu1976, while you are still young for reward~~~, and the book friend is free @ sea, scanning through is boring, 艨艟, I kill me, benvy's monthly pass support ~~~. (To be continued......)