Chapter 109 The Gate of Moscow (Part 2)

The morning breeze gently blew across the silent grassland. Behind the Soviet offensive force's preparatory departure position, a newly arrived secret weapon artillery battalion was lined up to make final preparations before launching the artillery attack.

After witnessing this new secret weapon loaded on the ZIS-6 truck chassis, almost all the Red Army soldiers were amazed at this "new artillery" that didn't even have a gun barrel.

Although this new secret weapon code-named "K" has not yet been officially named, Malashenko, as a time traveler in the future, knows very well in his heart that this new Soviet secret weapon, which is powerful enough to change the development process of human artillery history, is the famous BM-13 Katyusha rocket launcher in the future.

In order to capture the city of Yelnya, a German salient in the Smolensk theater facing Moscow, the Soviet troops participating in the battle used all the weapons they could at the moment, including the Katyusha rocket launchers, which had just been put into actual combat and had not even been experienced by most of the German troops.

With the order of the Soviet major artillery battalion commander who was in charge of commanding this new rocket launcher battalion, a battalion of 21 Katyusha self-propelled rocket launchers deployed in a row on the Soviet artillery position immediately began to roar loudly.

The M-13 heavy rocket with a diameter of 132 mm dragged a long red tail flame from the launcher pointing obliquely to the sky and instantly rushed straight into the sky. It took less than ten seconds for all 16 rockets on a Katyusha launch rail to pour out towards the artillery coordinates. The scene formed by 336 M-13 heavy rockets in the sky was even as gorgeous as the fireworks on New Year's Eve in China.

On the German defense line outside Yelnya, the Großdeutschland Infantry Regiment, one of the most elite troops in the entire German Wehrmacht, had just finished a hasty breakfast. Many German soldiers, still holding slices of bread and half a sausage in their mouths, did not even hear the familiar whistling sound of any artillery shells. The M-13 heavy rockets, which flew at a speed of 335 meters per second, instantly fell on the position and exploded like raindrops.

"Artillery! Ivan's artillery, dodge, and quickly enter the anti-artillery cave!"

The loud exclamation from the German company commander was instantly overwhelmed by the thunderous sound of Katyusha explosions that sounded one after another in a short moment of less than a blink of an eye.

The German soldiers, who had long been accustomed to the Soviet army's punctual artillery bombardment every morning, did not hesitate much after the initial shock. In the midst of the shoving and shoving, the troops of the Great German Infantry Regiment on the first outer line of defense quickly entered the anti-artillery cave fortifications on the defense line to take shelter on the spot.

But this time, they did not expect that the huge explosions on their own positions were the Katyusha rocket launchers that the Soviet army had just put into actual combat. The German army, who mistakenly treated them as ordinary artillery bombardment, was destined to pay a painful price.

The Katyusha rocket launchers that swept the first line of defense of the Great German Infantry Regiment with dense coverage soon demonstrated their powerful destructive power. The warhead warhead was equipped with 18 heavy rockets. In terms of its explosive power alone, it was far more than the high-explosive charge fired by the 122mm caliber cannon howitzer equipped by the Soviet artillery, and was close to the power of the high-explosive bombs of the 152mm heavy howitzer.

When the Katyusha rocket launcher, which had such a great destructive power, swept through the German positions with a dense situation where one rocket fell almost every ten square meters.

The infantry trenches that had originally withstood the Soviet army's continuous army-level artillery bombardment for many days were instantly buried in the dust. The German anti-artillery holes that were strong enough to withstand direct hits from 122mm high-explosive shells instantly collapsed into ready-made graves for burying German soldiers alive. The temporary machine gun bunkers built with civil structures flew straight into the sky with the German MG34 general-purpose machine gun that had been reduced to parts.

"Oh my god! Did these Russians drive their battleships onto land? I don't remember Venetossky ever being completed and launched, and this thing can't be driven into the Dnieper River! What kind of terrible weapon is this?!"

Feeling the earth-shaking bombardment like a tsunami, the soldiers of the Great German Infantry Regiment were all panicked and trembling. The commander of the German Great German Infantry Regiment, who was almost unable to stand steadily in his front-line field command, even mistakenly thought that he was bombarded by the Red Navy battleship level. The intensity of the bombardment and the firepower output capacity of this new Soviet artillery could hardly be equated with any land artillery equipment in his mind.

As the saying goes, a storm is coming. After all the 16 M-18 heavy rockets pre-set on the launch rails were tilted, the Soviet Katyusha self-propelled rocket artillery battalion came and went quickly. After less than half a minute of artillery firing, they immediately turned around and ran away, leaving the German retaliatory artillery with no target to fight back.

"Finally, is it over?"

When the surviving soldiers of the Great German Infantry Regiment, who were bathed in the hellish firepower tilt, just drove their swaying and dull bodies out of the anti-artillery cave with a strong tinnitus, ready to welcome the Soviet attack.

The Soviet army, which had just finished preparing appetizers for the Germans, did not stop there. More than 300 military and division-level large-caliber heavy artillery of various types including 203, 152, and 122 mm calibers under the 16th Army, Then a truly violent artillery bombardment on the German positions was launched again with wave after wave of ferocity.

During the repeated offensive and defensive tug-of-wars, the German artillery had been wrangling with the Soviet artillery for several days. It was only then that the German artillery woke up from a dream and understood the Soviet opponent who had been engaged in a back-and-forth artillery tug-of-war with their own side for several days. It is basically a new force.

This kind of news is extremely bad news for the Grossdeutschland Infantry Regiment, which has been holding on 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 going crazy now. posture, if we don’t prepare early, we will be the ones who get 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.