The decisive battle against the Third Reich

6:30 am.

Fighters from both sides competed for air supremacy over Prokhorovka... In this direction, Stalin not only invested the reserve force, the 5th Guards Tank Army, but also the 2nd Air Force.

The Soviet Air Force has been reorganized. They are no longer an adjunct to the ground forces and are constrained by ground forces operations as before. At this time, they existed in the form of air force armies, each of which had between 500 and 1,000 aircraft of various types.

Usually in key battles, the Soviet army would invest two to three air groups to provide air cover for ground forces.

But this is not necessarily the case.

Because in certain emergencies, the front-line air force can also be reinforced by aviation corps and divisions from the Supreme Command Reserve, with the number of aircraft reaching 2,500 to 3,000.

For example, the 2nd Air Force Army supporting Prokhorovka has been reinforced by the aviation division and has 1,500 fighter aircraft of various types. At the same time, the Supreme Command is still organizing subsequent reinforcements.

This allowed the Soviet army to invest more than 500 fighter planes in the first wave to bombard the German defense lines indiscriminately.

Of course, the German Air Force, which had always had air superiority, was not to be outdone and immediately sent fighter planes to counterattack.

As a result, almost at that moment, the sky above Prokhorovka was filled with the roar of aircraft and the intensive sound of machine guns and cannons. You didn’t even need to raise your head to see mosquito-like dense fighter planes circling at different altitudes. , chase, and fight. From time to time, several planes were shot and fell from the sky with black smoke. You could even see two fighter planes colliding together and then both disintegrating into pieces in the air in a blaze of fire.

Qin Chuan, who was on the ground, had no time to take care of this, because there were already pieces of artillery shells and bombs falling from the sky and hitting hard around the position. The whole position was in chaos like a pot of porridge.

Then, someone shouted: "Here they come, they are coming!"

He stuck his head out and looked out amid the explosion, and sure enough he saw tanks slowly driving out of the jungle on the opposite side.

At the same time, on the other side, in the direction of the right-wing railway track, tanks also popped up.

There is a one kilometer wide gap between the front and the right wing... This is a smart approach, because as the tank continues to advance, the two offensive lines at an angle will overlap at the angle. This is It will lead to offensive confusion and even possible accidental injuries. Leaving gaps is to prevent this from happening.

However, the gaps in the offensive line were one kilometer long. One can imagine the scale of the Soviet attack.

Qinchuan was right. Rotmistrov invested one-third, or more than 200 tanks, in the first wave of attacks.

Because in Rotmistrov's view, when the tank performance is not as good as the enemy's close combat, the more tanks should be invested, the better, especially since they also discovered the weakness of the German "tracking rockets".

The 4-kilometer offensive line on the right wing is the 18th Tank Corps of the Red Army commanded by Major General Baharov, with 180 tanks.

The first echelon includes the 170th and 181st Tank Brigades; the second echelon is the 32nd Motorized Infantry Brigade and the 36th Guards Tank Regiment; the 110th Tank Brigade is ready to follow up at any time.

The 7-kilometer offensive line on the front is Lieutenant General Kirichenko's 29th Tank Corps of the Red Army, which has 237 tanks.

Troops include the 31st Tank Brigade, the 53rd Motorized Infantry Brigade, the 32nd and 25th Tank Brigades, and the 1446th Self-Propelled Artillery Regiment. The reinforced troops include the 1529th Self-Propelled Artillery Regiment; airborne troops from the 28th Regiment of the 9th Guards Airborne Division will attack on tanks.

In addition, there are the 2nd Guards Tank Corps and the 5th Guards Mechanized Corps, which have 190 and 105 tanks respectively as reserves for the two offensive lines.

The total number of tanks in each part is 712, most of which are Soviet T34 tanks, followed by American M3 light tanks, and some in the reserve are "Valentine" or "Matilda" tanks from the United Kingdom. …these tanks are too slow for attack.

7:11 am.

The Soviet army launched a pre-attack artillery bombardment against the German army.

The bombardment was originally planned to be 30 minutes, but because the 5th Guards Tank Army did not carry many artillery shells for emergency reinforcements, the bombardment was changed to 15 minutes: 5 minutes of forward fire attack, followed by 5 minutes of shallow close-range and deep shooting. Then comes a 5-minute stretch of firepower.

When the artillery fire stopped, Rotmistrov sent an attack signal to all troops through the walkie-talkie: "Steel, steel, steel!"

The sound of artillery that had just subsided was quickly replaced by the rumbling roar of Soviet tanks. Soviet tanks carried soldiers through the smoke and attacked the German defense lines.

This is a feature of Soviet combat, or it can be said to be a feature of tank combat in this era.

Tanks often need to be followed by infantry, but the speed of infantry cannot keep up with tanks.

The British approach was to slow down the tank so that the infantry could keep up, while the Germans had the infantry get on board to keep up with the tank.

The Soviets... they mostly let the soldiers lie directly behind the tank. For this reason, they also welded several iron grabbers on the back of the tank so that the infantry would not be thrown off by the bumpy tank.

Of course, even so, infantry on tanks are still very dangerous, because tanks advancing at full speed on uneven roads will cause a series of accidents. At the same time, these infantry on tanks will become obvious targets, but they Because he had to grab the grip with all his strength, he couldn't fight back.

The advantage is also obvious, that is, the tank will not lack infantry cover at any time. Even if the tank is destroyed on the way forward, the infantry can still be brought to the front line and put into battle.

"Fire!" Colonel Olbridge ordered loudly when the enemy rushed into a distance of 1,000 meters.

"Boom boom" followed by a burst of artillery fire, shells flew out from the barrel and hit the Soviet tanks directly.

One, two... more than a dozen tanks rushing in front were hit one after another, and they were unable to fight back.

However, the Soviet tanks continued to attack the German defense lines with overwhelming momentum, trying to close the distance with the German tanks.

Several tanks ran over anti-tank mines and came to a stop in a cloud of smoke and fire.

So Qin Chuan knew that the enemy was only 800 meters away from the defense line.

"Launch!" Qin Chuan ordered loudly towards the walkie-talkie

After several actual battles, Qin Chuan learned from the operator that 800 meters is the ideal launch distance for the ME63.

Because at this distance, the operator has sufficient adjustment time and a good field of vision (which means that the target and the ME63 warhead can be well observed).

Therefore, Qin Chuan chose to attack from this distance.

However, a few seconds later, while ME63 was still flying to the target, the roar of mortar shells was heard in the sky, and the target was pointed directly at the ME63 launch position.