Chapter 210: Choice! The will of the empire! (Thirteen)

On June 22, 1916, on the first day when the curtain of the "Bear Slaughter" combat of the Chinese army was unveiled, Chelyabinsk, the front headquarters of the Northern Front of the Chinese Army.

Through the window holes in the tent, the sky was already lit up in the east, while the west was still shrouded in the boundless darkness. From time to time, the sound of cannons that were vaguely difficult to distinguish and almost auditory hallucinated.

Under the dim kerosene light, Marshal Wang Zhi, the commander-in-chief of the Front Army, sat at the map table in the center of the tent without saying a word, and took out his pocket watch from time to time and glanced at it. The expression on his face was between anxiety and numbness, as if what was about to come was not the battle report on the front line, but the bloodthirsty poisonous monster.

On this day, on the front line from Keshtum in the north and Kundravi in ​​the south, the Northern Front Army only launched seven infantry divisions, four cavalry brigades and one brigade-level armored detachment, with a total force of less than 180,000, and equipped with 550 artillery pieces of brigade or above - of which there are only 40 heavy artillery pieces of more than 150 mm, and less than 100 armored combat vehicles and self-propelled artillery pieces available. The number of aircraft that the first aviation group can invest in the front line is less than 100.

At the northernmost end of the front line, between the foothills and the plains north of the town of Kritum on the Chelyabinsk-Yakaterinburg Railway, the 3rd Cavalry Army (the 12th, 13th, and 14th Cavalry Brigades) belonging to the 3rd Army was launched, responsible for monitoring and alerting the enemies in Yekaterinburg and covering the right wing of the main attacking troops.

In the north of the front, Kritum, 80 kilometers away from Chelyabinsk, was used as the advance base. General Chu Qing, commander of the 4th Army, directly commanded the 2nd Infantry Division of the 4th Army and the 14th Infantry Division of the 3rd Army. The task of the first phase was to capture the frontier stronghold on the left wing of the enemy's main defense line, the town of Kalabash at the foot of the Mount Jurma.

In the middle of the front, Chebalkur, 70 kilometers west of Chelyabinsk, was used as the advance base. General Zhao Minhe, commander of the 3rd Army, directly commanded the 7th, 10th and 12th infantry divisions of the 3rd Army. With the support of five chariot companies and one self-propelled artillery company, the task of launching three frontier strongholds in the center of the enemy, from north to south: Turgoyak, Mias, and Heixi Town.

In the south of the front, Kundravi, 85 kilometers southwest of Chelyabinsk, as the advance base, the 20th and 22nd infantry divisions under the jurisdiction of the 1st Army Commander General Zhao Feixue, focused on attacking Ustinovo, at the foot of the right wing of the enemy's main defense line.

At the southernmost end of the front line, in the vast area south of Chelyabinsk and to the Kazakh prairie, only the 4th Cavalry Brigade belonging to the 4th Army was guarded to cover the left wing of the main attacking troops.

At first glance, this seems to be a full-line flat push, lacking a key attack, but in fact, the Mias, located on the southern Ural railway line from Chelyabinsk to Samara, is the key point of this general attack. For this reason, Zhao Minhe's central army will invest 60% of infantry, 80% of artillery and chariots, and plan to break through the defensive stronghold group east of Mias and capture the Mias town within 48 hours.

Wang Zhi, who had patrolled the entire battlefield on the plane, knew very well that the war zone was filled with forests, undulating mountains, winding canyons, and crisscrossing rivers and lakes, and it was difficult for the large corps to perform their maneuvers. Only by investing in small groups of troops on the entire front in batches and in batches, patiently looking for weaknesses on the opponent's defense line, and then investing in a powerful reserve team in one fell swoop, can a breakthrough be achieved.

However, time is tight, and the troops that can be invested in the front line in the short term and the combat materials reserved for the battle are very limited. "Breakthrough" seems to be a luxury, not to mention that the main task given to the front army by the base is to restrain rather than defeat the enemy in front.

If we want to use limited resources to restrain as many enemies as possible, we have to try to bluff and let the enemy feel the pressure they deserve. However, the fake is fake. As the attacking force gradually approaches the enemy's core defense area, the real situation of our army will sooner or later be revealed. If the enemy in front of us transfers large forces to Orenburg before the runner-up wins the decisive victory, then no matter how many towns the Northern Army seizes or how many enemies it annihilates, it can only be considered a failure.

The sky was bright and the rising sun broke through the fog on the horizon of the Western Siberian Plain. Wang Zhi had a premonition that this day would be long.

...

80 kilometers south of Orenburg, the railway town of Soli Iretsk, and the front headquarters of the Central Asian Front of the Chinese Army.

Liang Tianhe stood in front of the tent of the headquarters, holding a cup of hot coffee in his hand - double milk and sugar, and his eyes went north. On the other side of the Ural River that was invisible under the horizon, hundreds of tons of steel and explosives were constantly spraying out by thousands of cannons, ruthlessly ravaging the land of Europa.

Yes, the Ural River, the boundary river that separates Asia and Europe, crosses this river, even if the Central Asian Front of Liangtian River attacked Asia and invaded Europe.

But here is only the edge of Europa. The edge of the edge is still very far away from the center of Europa, the German Empire.

The Central Asian Front’s mission is to make the distance no longer far as soon as possible, and the first step in this mission is to annihilate the Russian heavy army group in front of Orenburg.

The combat plan of the Central Runner-in-Law can be described as a "right hook punch" in one blow, that is, the left wing and the central government are feinted, restrained, the right wing breaks through and detours to encircle the enemy's rear, and the last three attacks are combined to divide and annihilate the enemy.

In order to achieve this combat attempt, from Ostrovnoy in the upper reaches of Orenburg to Gorodice in the lower reaches, the runner-up of the Central Runner-up launched 10 infantry divisions, 10 cavalry brigades, 6 armored brigades and 1 brigade-level armored detachment on the 120-kilometer front, with a total force of nearly 300,000 people, equipped with 1,100 artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of artillery pieces of aircraft that can be deployed on the front line. The total number of aircraft that can be deployed to the Second Aviation Group can not be less than 250.

The attack forces of the Front were organized into five clusters, namely the central, left, right, assault and cover clusters.

The central cluster commanded by Lieutenant General Du North Latitude, commanded by the 15th Infantry Division, is based on the task of restraining attacks on the positions around Orenburg City in the center of the enemy's defense line, attracting the attention of the defending enemy in this area.

The left-wing feint attack mission was the left-wing cluster commanded by General Qian Lan, the commander of the 5th Army. The 11th, 13th, 17th Infantry Divisions and the 31st Cavalry Brigade were the bases. The cluster will first launch a crossing assault from the river between Gorodies and Dedurovka. In order to increase the effect of the feint attack, the enemy's attention should be focused on this area as much as possible. Liang Tianhe specially equipped the cluster with a battalion of the latest "Iron Leopard" to a single type of medium-sized chariot - this is actually an old trick that the Northern Army has successfully used in the Battle of the Alkut River when breaking through the defense line of the enemy's Irkutsk Fortress.

After the feint attack of the left-wing cluster achieved the expected effect, the right-wing cluster commanded by General Yan Meng, the commander of the Imperial Guard Group, will carry out the main attack from the river between Viazovka and Oslorovnoy with the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th Divisions of the Imperial Guard Infantry. The 31 "Iron Leopard" chariots of the Independent 2nd Chariot Battalion will provide support to the Imperial Guard Division, which is responsible for key assault tasks.
Chapter completed!