The Rise of the Third Reich

In the early morning of May 1st, International Labor Day.

The assault gun with a 150mm short-barreled cannon that Comrade Solzhenitsyn encountered during the day yesterday is now rumbling past Major Schwarzenegger and heading towards a collective farm where the Soviet army is stationed ahead—— They were coming to bombard the Soviet positions.

This assault gun is called "Grizzly" and is also a derivative of the No. 4 tank. A fixed gun bay that cannot rotate was installed directly on the site of the No. 4 tank, and a 150mm caliber StuH43/1L/12 howitzer was also installed.

Moreover, this "Grizzly" assault gun has thick armor on the front of the gun cabin and car body. The front of the gun cabin is 100mm thick and has an inclination of 40 degrees. Its defensive capability is equivalent to a 130mm steel plate placed at right angles. The steel plate on the front of the car body is 80mm thick and is divided into upper and lower parts. The upper part has an inclination angle of more than 70 degrees and is an "impenetrable" part; the lower part has an inclination angle of 12 degrees and has the weakest defense capability, but it often breaks down in actual combat. With the installation of additional armor that can withstand armor-piercing projectiles, the actual protection capability (equivalent to a vertical steel plate) is also above 90mm.

In addition, although the armor on both sides of the "Grizzly" assault gun body is not very thick, it is equipped with skirt armor that can protect against armor-piercing projectiles (including anti-tank rockets/grenades such as Panzerfaust). In actual combat, as long as there is the cover of No. 4 tanks and grenadiers, it is extremely difficult to destroy.

The short-barreled 150mm gun equipped with this "Grizzly Bear" assault gun is much more powerful when dealing with enemy positions than the 75mm gun of the No. 3 assault gun.

Therefore, in the German armored divisions and panzergrenadier divisions that do not need to use the No. 3 assault gun for anti-tank purposes, the "Grizzly" assault gun has completely replaced the No. 3 assault gun and became an assault gun battalion and an assault gun company ( Standard equipment attached to Panzer Grenadier Regiment).

By the way, in the six months from last autumn to now, the focus of the construction of the German Wehrmacht Army, in addition to artillery (mainly units equipped with towed artillery and rocket launchers), has been the Panzergrenadier Division.

After six months of reinforcement, the number of German Panzergrenadier divisions has now increased to 22, of which 15 are Wehrmacht and 7 are SS.

And each Panzergrenadier division received a sufficient amount of mechanized equipment. Including 1 tank battalion (66 Panzer IV H tanks), 1 tank destroyer battalion (45 "Rhinoceros" tank destroyers equipped with 71-caliber 88mm guns), 1 assault gun battalion plus 3 assault gun batteries (A total of 36 "Grizzly" assault guns are equipped), 2 self-propelled artillery battalions (equipped with 105mm Wasp self-propelled artillery and 150mm Wasp self-propelled artillery, each with 18 pieces), 1 tracked self-propelled rocket launcher battalion, in addition Large unit equipped with half-track vehicles and wheeled armored vehicles.

The armor combat power of such a Panzergrenadier division is probably much stronger than that of a German armored division at the same time in history!

Precisely because these armored grenadier divisions have very strong combat capabilities, in the "Purple Plan", they fully replaced the armored divisions and became the sharp knives for breakthroughs.

As for the prestigious German armored divisions, the current number is also 22 (only 1 more than last year), but now each armored division can usually bring a heavy armor equipped with 44 (full strength) Tiger tanks. The battalion went to war.

The number of heavy armor battalions has doubled in the past six months, reaching 36, and the total number of Tiger heavy tanks equipped (number of establishments) has reached 1,584. However, these "Tiger" heavy tanks are not the "Tiger" E tanks initially equipped, but the "Tiger" G tanks with appropriately reduced protection.

Without the installation of additional armor such as skirts, the total combat weight of this "Tiger" G tank is only 48 tons, which is almost the same as the "Panther" tank - in fact, this tank is also slimmer in appearance. Like the historical "Panther" instead of the Tiger, it can also be seen as a "Panther" body with a Tiger turret added. In this time and space, the Tiger tank absorbed many technologies and advantages of the Panther tank during the improvement process, and the two tanks gradually merged into one. The E-50 tank developed on the basis of this shrunken Tiger or water-injected Panther will become Germany's new generation of main battle tank!

"Attention, 5th SS Destroyer Tank Battalion, follow the 5th SS Assault Artillery Battalion into the position."

The voice of a division staff officer who was "directing traffic" came from the radio station. Now that the "Grizzly Bears" were in place, it was the "Rhino"'s turn to follow up - with the help of the "Grizzly Bear", "Rhino" is no longer as hard as last year. Most of the errands of bombardment positions are taken care of by the "Grizzly Bear", and the "Rhinoceros" follows up to escort, deal with the Soviet tanks that risk their lives to counterattack, or blast the reinforced concrete that the short-barreled artillery of the "Grizzly Bear" cannot hit. fortifications.

"Brothers, I am Major Schwarzenegger. I order all vehicles to move! Move forward!"

When Major Schwarzenegger issued orders to all vehicles over the radio, it was almost noon on May 1, 1943.

The German 1st Armored Army, which broke through the Soviet Pripyat River defense line in the Morizy-Yelsky area near the root of the southern line of the Belarusian salient, led by the 5th SS Armored Division, The progress was smooth, and in less than 20 hours it advanced more than 70 kilometers eastward and approached the Dnieper River.

At the root of the northern line of the Belarusian salient, the 3rd Panzergrenadier Division, the vanguard of the German 4th Panzer Army, also broke through the Velikaya River in Velizh, and occupied the city of Velizh abandoned by the Soviet 4th Infantry Army around 10 a.m. on May 1.

However, the subsequent progress was not as smooth as the southern line - because Smolensk was 100 kilometers southeast of Velizh City, and the Soviet resistance in this area must be tenacious.

Therefore, the German army that broke through the Velikaya River encountered the stubborn resistance of the Red Army's 3rd Army again in the Demidov area more than 70 kilometers away from Smolensk, and the battle was extremely fierce.

Major General Ilya Oktyabriski, commander of the Red Army's 3rd Army, had arrived in Demidov with the army headquarters at this time. The army headquarters was located in the "Red May 1st" collective farm in the north of the city, occupying a large area of ​​very neatly built and very solid bungalows. Antennas disguised as trees were erected on the roofs, and telephone lines were quickly laid. The beeping sounds of telegraphs and telephone ringings rang out, and the staff hurriedly passed on various orders and messages. From time to time, there were bursts of thunderous muffled sounds, which were the artillery of both sides bombarding each other!

Because the front line of the Red Army's 3rd Army retreated 30-40 kilometers, the German heavy artillery cluster could not move up for the time being. Therefore, the artillery group of the Red Army's 3rd Army temporarily had room to play, and was no longer suppressed by the Germans.

However, the situation was still very unfavorable, because most of the sky now belonged to the Germans! The Soviet army's movement and combat during the day were severely restricted. Even with the cover of Yak-1 aircraft and P-51 fighters, the Red Army's artillery group had to be transferred in time, otherwise it would be bombed!

At noon on May 1, Lieutenant Hermann Graf, who had become a squadron leader and had a blue Max medal on his neck (which meant at least 25 kills), was leading his squadron (a total of 16 Fw-190A-9 fighters) to patrol the sky in the western part of Kalinin Oblast, Soviet Union.

Soaring in the blue sky above 5,000 meters, Lieutenant Hermann Graf felt that he was the king of the sky and the god who dominated everything! Any enemy plane that encountered the squadron he led was doomed to be doomed.

This feeling was not without reason. Since he shot down a Soviet fighter with the help of his wingman Erich Hartmann (who now has more than 70 victories) in June last year, Graf found the feeling of an ace pilot, and he has been unstoppable since then. He has now shot down more than 60 enemy planes and is a real air killer.

After replacing his seat with the Fw-190A-9, Lieutenant Graf felt even better. The performance of this aircraft is so good that it can not only suppress the P51 (most of these P51 are A and B models, not the most advanced) at medium and high altitudes, but also use the overwhelming advantages of speed and firepower to beat the Yak-1 fighter at low altitudes.

It can be said that with the Fw-190A-9, the Fokker Zero D can be retired - in fact, in the internal competition of the German Air Force/Navy Aviation, the Fw-190A-9 equipped with a 2400 horsepower BMW801F engine can easily defeat the Fokker Zero D with the "one-hit-and-leave" tactic even at low altitudes.

The good engine of this aircraft is indeed more important than anything else!

"Lieutenant, at 10 o'clock ahead, at an altitude of 5,500 meters, there is an unidentified enemy aircraft, which seems to be a Soviet P51."

At this time, Lieutenant Graf's headset came with the report of Lieutenant Zumbach, a Polish pilot who was leading the way.

"Great, someone else is here to die!" Lieutenant Graf smiled and immediately gave the order, "Now, four-finger formation, immediately pull up... Let's fly over those P51s."

"Okay, Lieutenant!"

"Let's go shoot them all down!"

"God protect Germany!"

A cheer came from the headset immediately. The morale of these German air force fighters was extremely high because they had an absolute advantage. If the Soviet Red Army still had the power to resist on land, they had already reached the point where they had no power to fight back in the air. Although the Soviet Air Force still had an advantage in quantity on the Eastern Front, the huge gap in quality swallowed up their small advantage in quantity, putting the Red Air Force in an extremely unfavorable disadvantage.