A Soviet soldier standing on the east bank of the Volga River, rubbing his sour eyes, continued to look boredly at the distant sky, an anti-air lookout post of the Soviet air defense forces, providing early air defense warning for the long Volga defense line.

After all, the radar aided by the Americans is a sophisticated and expensive thing, and although the Soviet Union is seizing the time to copy it, there is really no way to spread this kind of thing throughout the Soviet-German defense line. In most areas, the Soviet air defense early warning still relied on manpower, using equipment derived from the First World War era to provide a relatively vague early warning.

In some places, loud horns are used in the sky to collect the sound of the plane's engine, which is used to determine whether the enemy is attacking or not. In some places, air defense guard posts are arranged to provide such information by means of lookouts. These artificial posts were located throughout the Soviet-German front, providing passive Soviet troops with information on early German aircraft sorties.

Unfortunately, with the rapid rout of the Soviet ground forces, this similar early warning system also collapsed, too many temporary lines of defense did not have such air defense posts, and the Soviet army became more and more indifferent to the movements of German aircraft. After all, sometimes if a person can't even eat enough, he doesn't have the heart to care about whether there are new sheets at home - the same is true for the Soviet army now: they can't even stop the German ground forces, so they don't have the heart and energy to care about where the German bombers are flying.

The role of the Luftwaffe's strategic bomber units on the Eastern Front is actually very limited, because even when German planes can take off from Ukraine and fly through countless mountains and rivers along the way to the hinterland of the Soviet Union, it is estimated that they have been surrounded and killed by Soviet anti-aircraft artillery units. They had no cover from the sea, so they could not afford to suffer more casualties and higher bombardment costs.

So even if Hitler had given the Germans strategic bombers in another time and space, it was unlikely that the Germans would have gone to the Eastern Front to find trouble with the Soviet Union. After all, the bomber price paid by the Allies was unbearable for the Luftwaffe, which had a shallow background, and if it had lost hundreds of pilots a day, it would not have been until the beginning of 1945, and it was estimated that by the end of 1940, the Luftwaffe would have existed in name only.

However, the current Accardo, and the Third Reich Air Force under his command, are in a completely different situation than they faced in another time and space. They had crude oil extracted from Libya as a reserve for consumption, and their outposts in the Caucasus and St. Rudolph – they could attack the Soviet Union's vital rear industrial base without having to fly long land routes.

So the Soviet lookout, who rubbed his eyes and looked at the horizon again, saw some small blurred black dots above the clouds on the horizon. He frowned, then continued to stare at the distant place. His lookout post was not equipped with binoculars, so he had to use his own eyes to observe suspicious targets in the distance.

It didn't take long for him to see the black shadows become clearer and clearer, turning little by little into small black dots. Now the Soviet lookout soldier could confirm that it was a German plane, but he was still staring at it, trying to identify the exact number of German planes.

One after another, German planes flew rapidly at an altitude of 10,000 meters, and they had begun to take off in formation in the early morning, and now they had finally crossed the Volga River and flew towards their distant target. The sound of the engines roared, causing a buzzing sound to echo in the space above the clouds, and the German planes trembled slightly with the air currents, like eagles, proudly patrolling their territory.

"Oh my God, what's going to happen this time?" The soldier at the Soviet lookout post finally saw the number of German planes in the distant sky, he couldn't count the exact number of planes, but he knew that there were definitely many, many of them. So he hurriedly began to shake the manual anti-aircraft sirens in his observation post, reminding the Soviet positions around him to pay attention to concealment and evacuation.

"Woo...... Woo woo ......" The mournful sirens echoed over the Soviet positions again, and many soldiers who were still washing their faces came out of their hidden barracks and looked up at the sky as small black dots as flying insects. It was a German plane, and it looked like a flying insect surrounded by lights on a summer day, so dense that it made your hair stand on end.

"It's not to bomb us, if it's to deal with us, there should be countless Stuka 2 bombers howling and diving down to drop bombs. An officer comforted the somewhat nervous soldiers around him, and analyzed in a very calm tone: "It's a large German bomber, and it seems that it is going to bomb the rear city." ”

As he spoke, he was not eager to put on his shirt, and his beard shook as he spoke, looking a little like Stalin. This style of beard was popular in the Soviet Union, just like a certain hairstyle of a pop star now. The officer was obviously very reasonable, so everyone no longer tensed their expressions, but with a sense of schadenfreude, looked up at the enemy's strategic bombers flying in the sky.

"What's going to happen again?" the officer got dressed and muttered back to his officer's bunker: "The Germans haven't used strategic bombers on such a large scale for a long time, and it seems that this time, those cities in our rear still have factories, and they are going to be in trouble." ”

This time, the Germans took off a full 400 butcher bombers, carrying a large number of bombs and incendiary bombs, and went straight to Ulyanovsk, an important transportation hub and industrial base in the Soviet rear. There was a Soviet plant for the production of tanks, as well as an important area for the production of SU-76 self-propelled anti-tank guns.

Of course, it was also an important metal smelting and processing plant in the Soviet Union, although it did not directly produce other military products, but it provided non-ferrous metals and other raw materials for a large number of military enterprises in the Soviet Union. Once the German army destroyed this production link, it would inevitably make the Soviet industrial system, which had already begun to reduce production, even worse.

After reconnaissance and analysis, the Luftwaffe top brass found that the direct bombing of Cheryabinsk had too long a range and could easily allow the Soviet Union to pose a threat to the German bomber forces. Both Catherine and Dick felt that it was too risky to bomb Cheryabinsk now, so they directly selected a more important bombing target, but the Soviet Union did not have a strong and fortified area. These planes took off from more than a dozen airfields near St. Rudolph, bypassed the heavily guarded central theater of operations of the Soviet army, cut behind Moscow from the south, and flew directly to Ulyanovsk.

The scale of this bombing completely exceeded the scale of German aircraft sorties at the time of the bombing of London, and at that time the Luftwaffe did not have the same wealth as it does now, and even if the DO-217 bombers were counted, the German bombing of London could not be compared with this time.

The purpose of dispatching so many planes at once was also to destroy the chain of industrial production in the Soviet rear as much as possible and to relieve the pressure on the increasingly strained German front-line troops. The appearance of a large number of cheap Soviet self-propelled guns had already begun to threaten the German tank forces, and this was not a situation that the German commanders wanted to see.

"Suzu...... "In a bright room, the phone suddenly rang, but there seemed to be no one in the room, so the phone kept ringing, but no one answered. So the bell rang stubbornly, ringing, until finally a hand lifted the receiver from the telephone body: "Hey, this is the duty room of the air defense command of the Supreme Command, do you have any important things to report?"

The officer on duty slowly asked the caller in a long voice, the work here has been so desperate lately, the Germans are shelling the west of Moscow not far away, and they are here to ask about a German air raid hundreds of kilometers away - this is meaningless, is it?

“...... Um? You can make it clear? Are you saying that you confirmed that you saw a large German bomber, not that DO-217, but a larger Butcher strategic bomber?" After hearing the report on the other side of the phone, the officer suddenly asked in a shrill voice: "In the Volga Valley? 40 minutes ago? Hell, don't hang up the phone, wait for me." ”

He dropped the receiver in his hand, pushed open the office door, and rushed to the end of the hallway. While running desperately in the empty corridors, he shouted loudly the information he had just received: "The German strategic bombers are in Stalingrad! They are dispatched! Dispatched!"

"Hey, I'm ...... What? Need to evacuate the factory immediately and the employees? They are working, and this is probably not an easy thing to do. A Soviet general in Ulyanovsk carried a microphone and said to General Vatutin, who was on the other side of the phone: "There are raw materials and factories everywhere...... I can't move everything here in ten minutes! ”

Before he could finish what he wanted to say, the air defense sirens in the city echoed, apparently some distant guard posts spotted the German plane and sounded the alarm to alert the people in the city.

"Comrade General, you have informed too late...... Theoretically, we should have gotten the news 30 minutes ago, but now that the air raid sirens have sounded, I know that the Germans have arrived. The general reluctantly continued: "If it is true, as you say, that there are more than 200 German aircraft, then Ulyanovsk is now over. ”

After saying this, the general in charge of the production and defense of Ulyanovsk closed his eyes and allowed the sound of explosions to drift from a distant place.