The early morning breeze gently blew through the silent grassland and there was silence. After the Soviet offensive troops prepared to move out of position, a newly arrived secret weapon artillery battalion was lined up in a line and making final preparations before the bombardment.
After witnessing this new secret weapon mounted on a Zis-6 truck chassis, almost all Red Army soldiers marveled at this "new artillery" that didn't even have a barrel.
Although this new secret weapon code-named "K" has not yet had any official name, Malashenko, as a future time traveler, knows very well that this new secret weapon is powerful enough to change the history of human artillery.
The new secret weapon of the Soviet army was the bm-13 Katyusha rocket launcher that became famous in later generations.
In order to capture the city of Yelnya, the German salient in the Smolensk theater facing Moscow, the Soviet troops participating in the battle used all the weapons at their disposal, including
The power of the Katyusha rocket launcher, which had just been put into actual use shortly after the war, had not even been experienced by the vast majority of the German army.
Following the order from the Soviet major artillery battalion commander who was in charge of commanding this new rocket artillery battalion, a battalion of 21 Katyusha self-propelled rocket launchers deployed in a line above the Soviet artillery position immediately began to shock.
The roar of heaven.
The M-13 heavy rocket with a diameter of 132 mm dragged a long red tail flame straight into the sky from the launcher pointing diagonally towards the sky. The 16 rockets on a Katyusha launch rail only used
In less than ten seconds, they all poured out towards the bombardment coordinates. The scene composed of 336 M-13 heavy rockets in the sky was as gorgeous as the Chinese New Year's Eve fireworks.
On the German defense line outside the city of Yelnya, the Grossdeutschland Infantry Regiment, one of the most elite units in the entire German Wehrmacht organization, had just finished a somewhat hasty breakfast. Many German soldiers were still holding slices of bread and half sausages in their mouths.
The soldiers didn't even hear the familiar whistling sound of any incoming artillery shells. The M-13 heavy-duty rockets reached a speed of 335 meters in one second and instantly fell on the position like raindrops and exploded.
"Bombardment! Ivan's bombardment, dodge, and quickly enter the shelling hole!"
The loud exclamation from the mouth of the German company commander was instantly overshadowed by the thunderous sound of Katyusha explosions that sounded one after another in less than a blink of an eye.
The German soldiers, who had long been accustomed to the Soviet army's on-time shelling every morning, did not hesitate much after the initial shock. They pushed and shoved each other with long shouts and short howls. The Great Deutschland, which was located on the first line of defense on the outside,
The infantry regiment troops quickly entered the anti-gun hole fortifications built above the defense line to take shelter on the spot.
But this time, they did not expect that the huge explosions that came one after another on their own positions were Katyusha rocket launchers that had just been put into actual combat by the Soviet army. The Germans who mistakenly treated them as ordinary shelling were destined to pay a heavy price.
The Katyusha rocket launcher, which swept through the first line of defense of the Grossdeutschland Infantry Regiment with dense coverage, soon demonstrated its powerful destructive power. The M-18 heavy rocket with 4.9 kilograms of TNT explosive in the warhead warhead alone has an explosive power.
To put it simply, the 122mm caliber cannon howitzers equipped by the Soviet artillery had a high explosive charge that was almost as powerful as the 152mm heavy howitzer high explosive rounds.
When the Katyusha rocket launchers with such impressive destructive power swept through the German positions with a dense pattern of one rocket falling almost every ten square meters.
The infantry trenches that had withstood the Soviet army's army-level artillery bombardment for many days were suddenly submerged in the dust with flying sand and rocks. The German artillery-proof fortifications that could withstand direct hits from 122mm high-explosive shells instantly collapsed and buried the Germans alive.
The ready-made graves of soldiers and the temporary machine gun shelters piled up with civil structures carried the German mg34 general-purpose machine gun that had been reduced to parts and flew straight into the sky.
"Oh my God! Did these Russians drive the battleship to the sixth place? I don't remember that Venetovsky was actually completed and launched. Besides, this thing can't be driven into the Dnieper River! What kind of terrible weapon is this?
?!"
Feeling the mountains shaking like a tsunami and the artillery bombardment, the officers of the Grossdeutschland Infantry Regiment were all panic-stricken and trembling for a moment. The commander of the German Army's Grossdeutschland Infantry Regiment was almost unsteady in his frontline field command post.
, for a time he even mistakenly thought that he was being bombarded by a Red Navy battleship level. The bombardment intensity and firepower output capability of this new Soviet artillery could hardly be equated with any 6-class artillery equipment in his mind.
As the saying goes, the storm is about to come, and after all the 16m-18 heavy rockets preset on the firing rail are tilted, this Soviet Katyusha self-propelled rocket launcher can be said to have come and gone quickly.
It was also very fast. After less than half a minute of artillery fire, it immediately turned around and ran away, making it impossible for the German retaliatory shelling to find anyone to fight back.
"Finally, is it over..."
When the surviving soldiers of the Grossdeutschland Infantry Regiment, bathed in the oblique sweep of hellish terrifying firepower, had just driven their swaying wooden bodies out of the artillery hole with strong tinnitus, they were ready to face the imminent Soviet army.
When the attack starts.
The Soviet army, which had just finished preparing appetizers for the Germans, did not stop there. More than 300 division-level large-caliber heavy artillery, including 2o3, 152, and 122 mm calibers, belonging to the 16th Army, immediately
With wave after wave of ferocity, the truly fierce bombardment of the German positions once again began.
During the repeated offensive and defensive tug-of-wars, the German artillery, which had been wrangling with the Soviet artillery for several days, finally woke up from a dream and understood the Soviet opponent who had been engaged in a back-and-forth artillery tug-of-war with its own side for several days.
It's basically a new force.
This kind of news was extremely bad news for the Grossdeutschland Infantry Regiment, which had been holding out for several days under the fierce Soviet offensive.
"Inform the troops on the first and second defensive positions that they must block Ivan's first wave of offensive no matter what! In addition, let the reserve team be ready! These new Russians are now acting like crazy.
, if we don’t make preparations early, we will be the ones who are swallowed up!”
Just as Colonel Wilhelm Stockhausen, the current commander of the Grossdeutschland Infantry Regiment, is speaking to the chief of staff next to him with his telescope held flat, an unstoppable red storm is about to hit.