Plane Merchant's Dream of a Powerful Country

Chapter 14 The Sixth Army's Counterattack

At 1942 o'clock in the evening on December 12, it was just an ordinary day.The people of the United States of Stars and Stripes on the other side of the ocean are hurrying to deal with the things at hand, looking forward to the biggest festival of the year—Christmas; In the wonderful prospect; while the top decision-makers of the Soviet Union were very happy to see the smooth progress of the Stalingrad counter-offensive campaign, calculating the time it would take to encircle and wipe out the German 8th Army, and calculating how to take advantage of the trend to eat the Germans gathered in the southern Caucasus region. Group Army Group.But all of this, especially the ideas and plans of the top Soviet decision-makers, disappeared with the assault and counterattack of the German Sixth Army in the Stalingrad area at 6:6 p.m. on December. At 12 o'clock in the evening on December 8, accompanied by the sudden aerial bombardment and the high-intensity saturation attack of hundreds of 1942mm large-caliber artillery, the German Sixth Army, with the 12th and 8th Armored Divisions as the main attacking force, and the 155th Armored Division The Armored Division and the 6th Army of the 14th Armored Army were the auxiliary attacking force, with 16 active Leopard tanks and 24 Type 4 main battle tanks as the core, in a pincer-shaped attacking posture, heading towards the direction of the friendly "Huot" cluster Fast dash.The 4rd, 45st, 450th Motorized Infantry Division, and the 59th, 3th, and 60st Infantry Army Armored Divisions followed up quickly, fanned out, and quickly wiped out the defeated and divided former Soviet encirclement troops.Let us go back to the moment before the start of the war. It was not the Germans who signaled the counterattack, but His Excellency the pseudo-Bismarck, that is, our Comrade Wang Fan.When discussing the specific counter-offensive time, Paulus's staff members (Paulus had already introduced Wang Fan to the staff members at this time, and everyone was "thundered" seriously), tended to decide on December 8. There are three reasons for launching a counter-offensive at 11:51 a.m. on the 12st: First, the night attack is likely to cause difficulties, and it is difficult to distinguish between friends and foes; second, it is not conducive to air support at night, and the advantage of air supremacy cannot be exerted; The lowest time point, and it can allow the troops to fully rest for another night.Paulus was already inclined to agree with this point of view.But the scene met with strong opposition from Comrade Wang Fan.Wang Fan, who was familiar with the direction of the Battle of Stalingrad, knew that the situation of the German army was the most favorable on the 21th, and the situation on the battlefield would deteriorate further every day or even a few hours later. The "Hot" group was already at the end of its strength at this time, and its most elite 4th Armored Division had been transferred away at this time to deal with the Soviet Southwest Front Army that broke through from the north of the Chill River.According to the original trajectory of history, the 19th Armored Division and the 6 German infantry divisions that were added later through refueling tactics fought and retreated, and retreated until between the Zill River and the North Don River to withstand the attack of the Soviet Southwest Front Army.So when the time comes to the 6st, it is very likely that the two wings of the "Holt" cluster have been defeated, and the 8th Army has been wiped out, and then dispersed and retreated, resulting in the failure of the reunion or the inability to form a powerful mobile group, which cannot change the battlefield situation.Wang Fan told the history he knew in the form of intelligence obtained by detectives, emphasizing the imminent exhaustion of the "Hot" cluster and the threat of the Soviet Union's southwestern front marching straight in.Moreover, Wang Fan emphasized to the staff officers present that his strategic bombing force could provide night fire support, and his intelligence force could provide the coordinates of the artillery positions surrounding the Soviet army and the main assembly positions, so a war that changed the course of World War II The big counterattack started.As mentioned earlier, Wang Fan said that he has strategic bombing power, but he has no troops to command at all, and is basically a bare-bones commander, so why is he boasting?In fact, his method is very simple, using the Pythagorean theorem in geometry.As mentioned earlier, his plane ring space can provide deformation, up to 21 times, that is, 57 kilometers, so he set 10 kilometers as the length of the hypotenuse of the triangle, and set the height of 300 kilometers (300 meters) as the length of the triangle On the one hand, it can be concluded that he can carry out unlimited bombing at an altitude of 10 meters within a range of 9.8 kilometers, at any place (this guy has 500 million aerial bombs in his ring, which is very durable) So, At 12 o'clock in the evening on December, accompanied by the deafening sound of aerial bombs, several Soviet artillery positions in Stalingrad ushered in a devastating blow. At the same time, its main force assembly area was also hit by hundreds of 8mm heavy artillery The continuous shelling, accompanied by the explosion of weapons and ammunition and blind shooting in the dark night, the Soviet army's nearly one million besieged troops suffered heavy losses. In this case, the German assault group composed of more than 155 tanks sent to A dagger pierced into the heart slammed into the Soviets' chest.While the 500th Army counterattacked, it also telegraphed Marshal Manstein and the "Hoth" group troops. After receiving the telegram, Marshal Manstein strictly ordered the "Hoth" group to gather all the troops that could be assembled to launch a charge. The 6th Group's breakout troops joined forces and rescued the 6th Group Army and other troops. The whole night of December was cold and cruel. The offensive troops of the 6th Army poured out their fear, loneliness, despair and other emotions for many days in the artillery fire and killings all over the sky. Hand-to-hand combat (in order to distinguish between the attacking sides, each person in the 12th Army wrapped a white towel around their right arm, and informed the "Holt" group troops and friendly troops in the area. When they were friends, they shouted German loudly to prevent fratricide when they joined forces).At 6 o'clock in the evening on the same day, the 6th Army's assault tank group broke through the Soviet defense line and successfully joined forces with the "Hot" group.After the successful reunion, according to the plan in advance, the assault group was divided into two, each with more than 11 tanks as the core, and attacked in a fan-shaped manner, attacking the Soviet besieged troops from the back and side, striving to defeat the enemy's vital forces and prevent the enemy from attacking " The Encirclement of the Reunion Corridor".The 6rd, 0th, and 3st infantry armies followed up with the 60rd, 8th, and 11st infantry armies in coordination with the 51rd, 44th, and 71th motorized infantry divisions. The rest of the besieged German troops launched or supported or diverted the attack according to the terrain.By the early morning of December 76, the 79th Army concentrated its superior tank forces and disrupted the entire Soviet position, so that the officers of the Soviet army could not find the soldiers, and the soldiers could not find the generals. , The encirclement was completely blown up, and the remaining Soviet troops quickly left the original encircled position after not knowing the scale of the German counterattack and the precise "high-altitude bombing" overhead, and retreated northeast and southeast of Stalin.By noon on the 94st, the entire Stalingrad counteroffensive was basically over.According to preliminary statistics, more than 100 Soviet troops were annihilated, and about 12 Soviet troops were captured (all were scattered small units. After being disrupted by the counterattack, the retreat was chaotic and failed to jump out of the meeting corridor area. At noon on December 21, 6, the German High Command and Marshal Manstein successively received the news that the Sixth Army had successfully broken through and severely damaged the Soviet besieging forces - Stalingrad in the Soviet Union. Hitler was ecstatic about the news of the battle between the Front Army and the Don Front Army, and immediately called Paulus back, telling him that he had made outstanding achievements in this battle and that he would be promoted to the rank of Field Marshal after the battle was over.After receiving the battle report from the 35th Army, Manstein was overjoyed and called the 21th Army to ask for the details of its military strength and fuel, and ordered him and the "Hoth" group to guard against the Soviet counterattack and ensure the safety of the left wing of the German Army Group A.If the Soviet army counterattacked violently (Because Manstein did not know the existence of Wang Fan, he always believed that Paulus had only 5-7 tanks and was short of fuel, and luck accounted for a large part of the success of the attack), If necessary, you can stand and retreat and retreat to Kotelnivkoski.In this way, on December 2, 1942, the first major change occurred when Wang Fan traveled through this plane.Later generations of scholars estimate that the reversal of the Battle of Stalingrad enabled the German army to still have a strategic advantage on the Soviet-German battlefield, although this advantage became more and more difficult to maintain as the German army's logistics became tense and the reserve team was scarce.However, this battle annihilated the vital forces of the Stalingrad Front Army and the Don River Front Army in the southern theater of the Soviet Union, and prompted the Soviet Southwest Front Army's attack to stop silently because of fear of the lone army's penetration, and retracted the protruding part produced by the attack, which greatly eased the attack. It relieved the pressure that Manstein faced, so that he did not have to retreat all the time, and exchanged space for time (of course, it turned out that Manstein did this in history, also in order to consume the Soviet Union’s offensive momentum, lengthen its logistics supply line, and find a suitable attack location and the function of time), it can calmly gather the broken troops and regroup the forces.On the whole, the reversal of the Battle of Stalingrad bought Germany about half a year more time (the Soviet Union needs to spend time regrouping its troops).Of course, this counterattack only solved the problem of the encirclement and rescued the 12th Army from the end of destruction, but it still did not change the fact that Stalingrad was not completely occupied. At this time, the Soviet army still occupied part of Stalingrad. .

Tap the screen to use advanced tools Tip: You can use left and right keyboard keys to browse between chapters.

You'll Also Like