Chapter 86:
Chapter 86
“Really… a great general for a season. Isn’t that right?”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
The generals froze at my sudden comment. I enjoyed seeing them tense up and react quickly.
“No, I mean what Dongjanggun said. Honestly, isn’t he the one who has defeated more enemies than anyone else here?”
“Ah! Hahaha, Comrade Secretary General has a great sense of humor.”
“Hahaha! My belly!”
The unusually harsh winter of 1941 was finally coming to an end.
Russia’s winter was famous for being cold and brutal, but the winter of 1941 was several degrees lower than normal.
According to later observations, it was the coldest in the 20th century.
The German army, intoxicated by crushing the French and British armies in just six weeks, thought that the Soviet Union would also collapse easily.
<In ten weeks, the weak Soviet army will tremble and surrender!>
That’s what Walter von Brauchitsch, the former commander-in-chief of the German army, said.
Based on this groundless confidence, they did not produce enough winter equipment.
When the war dragged on, they had trouble supplying other essential materials and hundreds of thousands of German soldiers froze to death.
On the other hand, the Soviet Union had produced some winter equipment after being beaten by Finland in the Winter War of 1939-40.
They did not suffer from the cold as much as Germany.
In addition to what we produced ourselves, the huge supplier America sent us millions of pairs of thick gloves and socks, warm boots with fur, cozy military coats, and so on.
The soldiers endured the cold winter with the goods brought by ‘the good friends Americans’.
“That’s true, Comrade Secretary General. According to the intelligence department’s investigation, the estimated losses of the enemy army are almost one million.”
“That much? Hahahahaha!”
Beria, who had a rival relationship with the military leaders, fiddled with his glasses and revealed the information he had brought.
I could feel his sinister emotion that he wanted to belittle the military’s achievements. But what could I do?
The truth was the truth.
“Now it’s time for Rasputitsa again and the front line will enter a stalemate, but after that point their counterattack will begin. According to weather analysis, around April? By mid-May, the ground will be completely hardened.”
“Yes! Comrade Secretary General! We will keep that in mind!”
***
The snowstorm from the Arctic subsiding might seem good for the soldiers who needed a nap.
But it wasn’t always like that.
“Air raid! Air raid!”
“Damn it! Anti-aircraft guns! Anti-aircraft gunners to your positions!”
The activity of the German air force, which could not fly properly due to the harsh weather conditions, became more active as the weather cleared up.
The Soviet air force was still overwhelmingly inferior in both skill and performance.
The Luftwaffe enjoyed their last season in the sky of Russia.
Tutatata! Bang!
A German Bf109 scraped off the canopy of a Soviet MiG-1 that was desperately turning with its machine gun.
The pilot could not survive in a situation where his cockpit was baptized by lead bullets.
The MiG eventually crashed into the ground and exploded.
“Shit… Stukas!”
Whiiiiik! Peeeek!
As soon as the sky was empty, steel birds dived down and attacked the soldiers who were scrambling to escape.
The soldiers fired their machine guns or rifles at them, but small-caliber bullets did not inflict effective damage on the planes.
‘Small-caliber bullets’ did not.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The anti-aircraft gunners who quickly entered a counterattack mode began to spit fire.
Now it was time for the German aircrafts to panic. The new 100mm anti-aircraft gun was powerful enough.
[Chichichik… ]
“Hans? Hans! Damn it! ‘That anti-aircraft gun’!”
When his fellow pilot’s communication was cut off, the squadron leader clenched his teeth.
If you were hit by that new large-caliber anti-aircraft gun, most small aircrafts were literally disassembled.
The Stuka that was destroyed with colorful fragments on that side seemed to be his wingman.
“Shit, why are there so many anti-aircraft machine guns here? Are those bastards in intelligence not doing their job?”
[I’m hit too! I’m going back to base!]
In an instant, medium-caliber machine guns began to rain down from the Soviet base.
Anti-aircraft combat vehicles that modified light tanks and mounted four machine guns each came out and fired their machine guns at the sky.
One by one, fighters and bombers that were damaged in vital parts screamed like screams on radio waves.
[Engine hit! I can’t maintain speed!]
[Aaaah! I’m bleeding!]
“Damn it, go back! Go back!”
As an ace squadron leader, he barely avoided the Soviet’s concentrated fire, but he did not achieve his goal.
The tanks that should have been ‘easy prey’ were hardly visible, and even if they did, they were chased by anti-aircraft guns or machine guns and could not aim and shoot properly.
The 3.7cm cannon mounted on the Stuka was enough to penetrate and destroy the upper armor of the T-34, but there was no prey and only hunters.
[From the northeast… a squadron of enemy aircraft approaching!]
“What? We’re screwed…”
He had to take comfort in the fact that he had shot down some Soviet fighters.
They had improved a lot since last summer, but they were still inexperienced rookies.
They came with wooden canvas planes and were slaughtered.
Some of them showed amazing skills after surviving and growing through those times.
But he couldn’t relax. Despite having overwhelmingly superior performance, the Luftwaffe’s kills were gradually decreasing.
Someday, those inferior races will be able to make aircrafts comparable to Germany’s.
They are in cahoots with those damn Yankees.
If that happens, the strategy that the German air force has used so far will collapse.
The squadron leader shot down another Soviet plane with his machine gun and thought so.
‘If that bastard survived, who knows what he would become later…’
It was an unwritten rule of the sky that if a plane fell to the ground, even the enemy would not attack it. But the Germans no longer had that luxury.
There were too many Soviet pilots. Among them, there must be many who were lucky and talented.
So they had to nip them in the bud before they grew into aces and slaughtered the Germans!
Germany was suffering from an inevitable attrition.
The supply of chrome was cut off, and the production of aircraft began to falter.
The aces who had grown through Poland, France, North Africa, and Britain died trying to protect the rookies, having mechanical failures, or just being unlucky and hit by anti-aircraft fire.
There were many aces who were born by slaughtering the shoddy Soviet planes, but the basic skills themselves were getting worse and worse, the ‘real deal’ aces complained.
They needed time to grow through combat, but the high command threw the pilots into dense anti-aircraft fire indiscriminately to plug the holes in the army’s defense line.
“I’ll turn those bastards upside down when I get there…”
The squadron leader gritted his teeth, recalling his dead comrades.
The heavy medal on his chest could cause serious injury to someone’s face if thrown at them, thanks to the sharp ornaments.
There had been cases where some air force commanders had been disciplined for throwing medals at someone else’s face.
‘It’s their last farewell on their way…’
He shot down a Soviet plane with his machine gun and muttered to himself.
***
“Everyone knows their mission, right?”
“Yes! Comrade regimental commander!”
Even though the Soviet army was harsh and merciless, they did not assign suicidal missions to anyone but the penal battalions.
“Let’s come back alive. Ura!”
“Ura! Ura!”
The high command, who accurately recognized the qualitative inferiority of the air force, did not assign them missions to confront the Germans head-on.
The case of the 46th Guards Night Bomber Regiment was exactly like that.
They took advantage of the night when the German air defense network was bound to be weak and hit targets in the rear.
The secretary-general called this tactic ‘deep air support’.
“We don’t order our pilots to fight blindly with the Germans and die. There’s no need to kill them directly. Isn’t it the same whether you shoot down one plane or make one plane unusable by destroying their support system?”
War is a fight of supply.
They had to deliver supplies from the rear to the front in order to maintain their strength on the front line.
If they had no fuel, no ammunition, they could not fight. Isn’t it better to starve them to death with minimal damage than to fight and kill each other with great damage?
“2nd Battalion will bomb bridges 1 through 4 as designated. 3rd Battalion will bomb railway lines, and 1st Battalion under my direct command will bomb transport columns.”
[Yes!!!]
Motherland was too vast to lay dense railways.
Many stations were connected by single-track railways, and if they accurately identified and blew up parts with high traffic volume, they could cause severe supply shortages for the front-line units.
Similarly, they could not afford to build bridges every few kilometers along the many river streams.
There were bridges that they had to pass through.
Spetsnaz special forces or partisans who infiltrated behind enemy lines ambushed and identified key bridges and railway points for supply and reported them to the high command.
If they could accurately poke at their weaknesses, they could make the Germans scream.
“Night witches, take off!”
Regimental commander Marina Raskova ordered her subordinates.
The pilots who were going on a mission that might kill them laughed like girls for once.
The 46th Guards Night Bomber Regiment, composed entirely of women, was called ‘night witches’ by the Germans.
On Raskova’s plane, Rodina (Motherland), there was a picture of Baba Yaga (a witch in Russian folklore) with a wicked face in honor of that nickname.
Like a witch who flew around on a broomstick and ate children, the ‘night witches’ flew on Sturmoviks and ate German supplies.
Towards the darkening twilight, dozens of planes rose in unison.
***
“There, there it is!”
[Ah… confirmed!]
The agents who had infiltrated behind enemy lines reported through radio where and where the Germans were passing by.
The night bombers mostly identified and attacked their targets through their guidance.
Of course, the Germans were not fools. They also deployed anti-aircraft guns to defend their important points and transport columns.
But the ‘night witches’ had developed their own defensive tactics.
The Il-2 Sturmoviks they flew were sturdy and had high defense power, but they could only be torn apart by anti-aircraft fire in no time.
Then they just had to avoid being detected by the anti-aircraft guns, right?
“Everyone, turn off the engine! Glide in!”
[Yep!]
In the dark night, flying on a plane painted black, and approaching the target by gliding without the engine? It was hard to notice them easily.
The anti-aircraft gunners who were exhausted from not knowing when the enemy planes would appear were unable to function properly when they needed to.
The bombers who spotted the two protruding anti-aircraft guns with their sharp night eyes aligned the gunsights with the battery and waited for the shooting to start.
Tatatatatatatatang!
Raskova’s plane, Rodina, was the first to spit fire, and the other witches also took it as a signal of attack and fired at their targets.
The battered anti-aircraft battery began to fall silent without even firing.
Even in the darkness, they could see the transport truck columns below panicking and swerving.
“Attack from the prepared planes!”
[Yeap!]
The members were all enjoying this situation.
Punishing those ruthless humans who dared to trample on Motherland.
The gasoline engines were torn by incendiary bullets and burned up, swallowing up the supplies.
On the road that was no different from an ice rink, the trucks crashed into the roadside, and the bombers did not miss such targets.
After tearing up dozens of valuable trucks, the witches disappeared gracefully.
Looking forward to tomorrow night again.
“Soviet Ura!”
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