More than a dozen Soviet tanks in Hami City were turned into scrap metal by dive bombers in the blink of an eye. Without the deterrence of the tanks, the people hiding in the houses and on the roofs rushed out and reoccupied those buildings.
Important streets. Ming army planes kept passing overhead. When they found out where Soviet troops were gathering, they would swoop down and shoot them. The spies lurking in the city were also risking their lives at this time, and exposed the radio stations they usually hid.
On his back, he climbed up to the roof and called, reporting the shooting coordinates for the Ming army artillery outside.
The telephone lines in the city have long been intact. Now, even in the same city, communication between Soviet units can only rely on messengers. Radios are only equipped by higher-level units, and they are also very difficult.
It was easy to be eavesdropped by the Ming army. In an environment where planes were scurrying around in the sky and there were cold guns and secret swords everywhere on the ground, the Soviet troops in various parts of the city felt isolated. They were all surrounded by fear and tension, and they almost saw each other.
When someone runs away from a distance, they shoot. Some Soviet trucks are equipped with Maxim heavy machine guns on the back, and they drive quickly on the street. The Soviet machine gunners are like crazy, regardless of whether they are under attack, they just go all the way to the houses on both sides.
They shot and chased and beat anyone they saw. The walls of the houses on both sides of the street were covered with bullet holes, and there were almost no intact windows. The bodies of civilians who had been shot and fell to the ground were everywhere, and blood was spattered here and there on the walls.
Now the Soviet army is no longer "suppressing", but has upgraded to indiscriminate massacre. And the people in the city are no longer rioting, but fighting for their lives. Regardless of whether they originally supported the riots or not, they are now participating.
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The five divisions of the Soviet Army are said to have a relatively large number of troops, but they are defending a narrow area with a small area but a large circumference. It is more than 100 kilometers long but more than ten kilometers wide, basically along the perimeter of Hami.
Oasis and residential areas were defended. This was equivalent to spreading the troops very widely, and there was not much depth. At first, the Ming army did not quite understand what the Soviet commander was thinking, and why they had to set up a defense line exactly according to the shape of the oasis.
, the defense line will be as long as the oasis is. Then if the oasis is a thousand kilometers long, do we have to divide these five divisions into a thousand kilometers of defense line? If the Ming army commander came to set up defenses, he would have already deployed his troops
After shrinking, the length-to-width ratio of the entire defensive area should be roughly the same, the area will increase, and the perimeter will decrease. In this way, the troops will be concentrated and the depth will be larger. This is the way to defend.
But as the Ming army successively captured some villages around Hami, it gradually became clear. In these villages, almost every household had people starving to death. There were still corpses in many homes, which looked like skeletons. Before, the Soviet army had sent people
They came to snatch the corpses and transported them to the distant depths of the desert for burial. However, in the past few days, the Ming army had been attacking intensively. The Soviet army only focused on setting up defenses and did not bother to snatch the corpses. This allowed some of the newly starved people to die.
The body remained.
Starting from Hami, they entered an area where people had starved to death on a large scale. The Soviet army defended along the oases, which was equivalent to defending along the residential areas, in order to cover up the evidence of the famine they created. Stalin forced the Hami defenders not to take a step.
To retreat, even if the 150,000 troops are trapped in a tight siege, is not a military consideration, but a political consideration.
He did not expect that the Ming army's attack would be so smooth and they could approach the Hami area. More importantly, the Hami area was just the beginning. Going west into the two Xinjiang areas, the famine situation would become more serious. Once the Ming army occupied Hami, then
The next target must be Turpan and Dihua. And there is already a hell on earth. Stalin knew what it meant for the Ming army to invade the Soviet-controlled areas. It meant big exposure, and it meant that all kinds of cruel truths that had been covered up for many years would be revealed.
Unobstructedly exposed to the flashlights of the world. This is what the Ming army did after they invaded the Far East of Siberia last autumn. Stalin was deeply stimulated at the time, and the image of justice that the Soviet Union had painstakingly built for many years collapsed at a faster speed.
Bolshevik organizations around the world even experienced a wave of withdrawals from the party. The more free the media and open information, the greater the scale of the wave of withdrawals from the party.
Therefore, this time he was determined to cover this lid at all costs. There was no such famine last time, and that was it. If the Ming army uncovered it again this time, the consequences would be unimaginable.
But he didn't expect that the effect of this riot would be so great. The main reason was that the timing was particularly good, and it happened to coincide with the Ming army's fierce attack, making it impossible for the Soviet army to take into account both internal and external considerations. Moreover, the Soviet army's defense zone basically had no depth, and it also caused
It played a big role. When a village rioted, it could cut off almost half of the entire defense zone. Moreover, the telephone lines were artificially destroyed, and the Soviet command did not know what was going on everywhere. This was all because Stalin stayed there
Unexpected by the Kremlin.
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From the start of the battle to attack the outer suburbs of Hami at around 9 a.m. on the 23rd, to around 3 p.m., the Soviet army's narrow position of more than 100 kilometers had been divided into six sections by the Ming army. And the intervals between several sections were ten minutes.
Several kilometers, because the area in the middle has been occupied by the Ming army. At four o'clock in the afternoon, the battle to attack Hami County began. The walls of Hami City are not high and not thick. Although it is located in the Western Regions, it was occupied by the Ming and Qing Dynasties.
The dynasty has been in operation for many years, and the city walls were built according to the traditional style of the mainland. That is, the outer city bricks, the middle rammed earth, and the upper battlements.
The Ming army transferred eight 150mm heavy howitzers and sixteen 105mm heavy cannons. Under the cover of dozens of tanks and assault guns, they began to demolish the city wall. The 24 heavy guns lowered their muzzles and bombarded the city wall directly.
On the top, the Soviet troops mounted machine guns, mortars, and anti-tank guns to fight back desperately, but soon the city was submerged in a sea of small and medium-caliber artillery shells and machine gun bullets. And the location directly bombarded by those 24 heavy artillery pieces,
There was no talk of fighting back at all. The man and the wall were immediately swallowed up by a big explosion like a landslide.
In just ten minutes, the four walls of Hami County almost collapsed and turned into a hilly land mixed with bricks and earth. With the "ceasefire" order, all light and heavy artillery stopped firing, and the world seemed to have stopped. A few minutes later
, the thick smoke and dust became thinner. At this time, sharp whistles sounded one after another on the Ming army's position. Dozens of tanks and armored vehicles roared at the same time, spraying blue smoke, rushed over, climbed up the ruins of the city wall, and drove directly
Go down.
Behind, more Ming soldiers jumped out of armored vehicles, holding automatic rifles in their hands, and rushed into Hami County, shouting.
Suddenly, there were gunfire and killing cries from all over the city, and the shouts of "Come on" and "Ula!" were intertwined with each other. Gradually, the latter's voice became less and less and less powerful.
At 5:30 in the afternoon, the main fighting in the city ended, and only a few sporadic clearings were still in progress. The sickle and hammer flag above the mosque rolled down, and a bright yellow dragon flag was raised.
On May 23, Hami, an important town in eastern Xinjiang, was recaptured by the Ming army.