Chapter 170 Assault Rocket Launcher

After learning the detailed plan from his chief of staff, Zhukov, who was instantly interested in the plan proposed by the commander of the siege column, couldn't help but chuckle and said.

"But I remember that the order I issued was only not to use the field artillery group to bombard the city, and did not prohibit the use of small-caliber mortars accompanying their infantry. Wouldn't it be better to use light-equipped small-caliber mortars to fire smoke bombs to cover the target?"

Different from the result Zhukov expected, the front chief of staff, who was still holding the telegram, shook his head again.

"The telegram also mentioned this reason, Comrade Commander."

"Because the building is too tall and the square is very open, the smoke screen created by the small-caliber mortars' smoke bombs cannot meet the actual expected requirements. It is difficult to raise a wide enough smoke screen to the height of a five-story building to completely block the German army's vision."

"Only by using the division's 122 field howitzers to launch large-scale smoke screen coverage can the need to block the vision of the German defenders in the building be basically met. However, the use of field artillery groups was clearly prohibited in the pre-war order, so Lakutin hopes to obtain your consent."

Hearing this, Zhukov, who thoroughly understood the whole story, did not hesitate too much and nodded lightly.

"If it's just artillery smoke bombs, there's no problem. Tell Lakutin that I allow him to use artillery smoke bombs. However, is the name of the commander of the siege column mentioned in the telegram? I really want to know who can come up with this idea."

Faced with Zhukov's question again, the chief of staff, who still remembered the little major, couldn't help but smile bitterly.

"Who else could it be, comrade commander? It's Major Malashenko, the commander of the independent first heavy tank breakthrough battalion that we just transferred from the Western Front."

"Malashenko!? Well, if you think about it this way, such an innovative siege tactic is very consistent with his always agile and changeable tactical thinking."

Accompanied by General Zhukov's inner sigh, a telegram requesting approval quickly flew out from the reserve front headquarters and was officially delivered to the 24th Army headquarters on the front line of the Yelnya theater of operations in the form of signal transmission.

After receiving permission from Zhukov, Major General Lakutin, commander of the 24th Army, finally felt relieved. He ordered the deployment of 12 M30 122mm howitzers at the artillery positions, and then raised the muzzles of the guns under the operation of the gun groups.

The effective range of up to 8 kilometers enables this high-performance 122mm field artillery to accurately deliver artillery firepower to the center of Yelnya from the artillery positions outside the city.

The direction of the artillery fire was roughly determined based on the coordinates of the city center reported by Malashenko through the car radio.

The Soviet army, which has a complete and detailed map of the main urban area of ​​Yelnya, knows this historic old city of their own country very well. In addition, with the high-performance M30 122mm field howitzers, it is not difficult to accurately deliver smoke bombs to the coordinate square in the center of the city.

Boom boom boom boom——

The formation of 12 M30 122mm field howitzers firing in unison was quite impressive. After being ejected from the barrels, the 122mm full-caliber shells flew straight to the center of Yelnya City. The official model in the Soviet artillery sequence was the D-462A artillery-fired smoke bomb.

This type of 122mm smoke bomb, which has a large caliber and a large amount of powder, has an amazing coverage range. The smoke bomb detonated in mid-air by a fixed time-delay fuse can spread into a spherical smoke ball with a diameter of 50 meters in just half a minute.

And if the target location is assisted by a breeze and the humidity is suitable, the diffusion speed and coverage of the smoke will be faster and larger on this basis.

After four rounds of salvos, a total of 48 122mm full-caliber artillery-fired smoke bombs all landed accurately in the central square area marked by Malashenko.

These smoke bombs, which exploded in mid-air under the action of the fixed-time delay fuse, took less than half a cigarette to completely block a thick smoke screen that rose from the ground in an instant between the German stronghold building and the street where Malashenko was located. The smoke screen barrier, which was more than five stories high and more than ten meters thick, was much more powerful than Malashenko expected.

Seeing that the first step of his plan was in place, Malashenko, who knew that the opportunity could not be missed, immediately picked up the communicator at hand and gave orders to all the crews of the entire siege column.

"Now, comrades! According to the existing formation, move forward immediately and set up an offensive formation in the square! Heavy tanks are at the front, special tanks follow closely, and assault rocket artillery are at the end to prepare for artillery fire immediately. After the smoke dissipates, the German's broken building must be flattened as soon as possible!"

Accompanied by Malashenko's order, the entire siege column that had retreated to the blind spot of the German firepower stronghold immediately began to move. Following closely behind the vanguard troops were a group of light vehicles with "steel pipes on their heads". These were the assault rocket artillery troops just mentioned by Malashenko.

As a pioneer and practitioner of rocket weapon technology, the Soviet Army was greatly encouraged by the fact that it first installed air-launched delayed rockets on fighter planes in the Nomonhan Battle and successfully tested them on the Japanese Kwantung Army. The actual combat of land rocket projection weapons began to proceed more intensively.

After the Katyusha heavy vehicle-mounted rocket launcher became the new favorite of the Soviet artillery, which greatly improved the Soviet artillery's intensive strike capability.

Realizing that there was still a large application space for rocket weapons, the Soviet engineer team immediately began to boldly try to load the rocket launch rails onto the tank chassis with armor protection capabilities.

As a result, when the truck chassis is used as a launch vehicle, rocket weapons that cannot appear in the front-line battles due to poor defense can follow the front-line troops for assault and attack operations, thereby expanding the use space of rocket weapons with excellent performance and powerful power.

The efforts of the Soviet rocket engineer team soon reaped corresponding rewards, and a front-line rocket assault tank based on the Soviet Red Army T-60 light reconnaissance tank as the chassis came into being.

Taking into account the weak structure and poor carrying capacity of the T-60 light reconnaissance tank, which has a combat weight of just over five tons, the Soviet rocket engineering team, for the sake of safety, ultimately did not choose the 132mm heavy rockets of the Katyusha rocket launcher as ammunition. Instead, they chose the 82mm air-launched rockets equipped to Soviet Air Force attack aircraft and fighters as ammunition for this new tank.