Chapter 611 General Attack
Cavalry does have the advantages of fast speed and strong impact on the battlefield, but this was only before the emergence of cold weapon combat or machine guns.
Once the machine gun appears...the weaknesses of the cavalry, such as their tall targets and poor survivability, are fully exposed.
The war horse seems to be able to block a few bullets, but the problem is that the war horse is a living creature. When it is hit by a bullet, it will be injured, in pain, and even die. What is worse is that the consequences of the horse's injuries often cause the rider to be injured and lose his life. Fighting and even death.
Therefore, this unit that has dominated the battlefield for centuries is destined to be eliminated on the battlefield.
Just like now, with Colonel Slaine's order, the Germans rained down bullets on the 63rd Soviet Cavalry Division.
In an instant, artillery shells exploded randomly among the Soviet cavalry. The shrapnel flying in radiating directions made the horses neigh. Riders kept falling off their horses. It was not known that the horses were frightened and knocked off their owners. , or be hit by shrapnel... The shrapnel of the artillery shell spreads from low to high. The Soviet soldiers on horseback will have a higher probability of being hit by shrapnel due to their higher position.
Occasionally, there would be a few large-caliber artillery pieces that would hit hard and blow up the Soviet cavalry, both men and horses.
Rows of bullets flew towards the front of the position, causing strings of soil flowers to rise on the soft ground, and then extended to the horses behind them...
There was a scream of grief, and the war horse spurted out a stream of blood and fell to the ground. Because it was running so fast, the war horse almost turned over and fell to the ground. Of course, the cavalry was thrown out hard. Even if he didn't die, he would be trampled to pulp by the heavy horses' hooves that followed.
The most tragic thing was the Katyusha rocket launcher... The model of this rocket launcher in the Soviet army at this time was the BM13 multi-rail rocket launcher (note: the early version used rails instead of tubes).
It has a total of 8 side-by-side launch rails, which can fire 16 rounds of 132MM caliber rockets in one salvo... The track is similar to the "work" character on the railway track. One round is installed on the top and bottom, and the rocket can be fired within 7 to 10 seconds. A volley of bullets was fired.
The German army found 10 such rocket launchers in the Soviet warehouse. At this time, 160 rockets were fired in one breath, and a wall of fire exploded in front of the position.
But the Soviet cavalry still did not flinch. They still shouted and charged forward, during which they also needed to show their equestrian skills to jump over or avoid the corpses of the horses that fell on the ground.
Even so, the Soviet cavalry's charge still ran into trouble at about two hundred meters... The speed of advancement was basically the same as that of death, and they could not advance another half minute.
The reason why it is 200 meters, Qin Chuan believes that this may be because the German soldiers use Bobosha submachine guns in large quantities... The range of this thing can only barely reach 250 meters, and it is much less powerful than the MP43 intermediate bullet. .
In other words, the German army has not actually exerted its full combat effectiveness, otherwise the Soviet cavalry would not be able to rush into this distance.
In fact, even if these cavalry can rush into the city, they will still be dead ends... There is a tank parked in the middle of the street for defense. Unless their horses can hit the tank, there is basically no room for the horses to move.
So, under the almost continuous light of the flares, the horses fell down in the hail of bullets, and soon the battlefield was filled with corpses of horses and the cries and struggling figures of injured horses.
However, what puzzled the German army was that the Soviet army did not seem to care about this, and soon launched a second wave of attacks after the failure of the first wave of charges.
"Are they crazy?" Eberhard held up the telescope to observe for a while and sighed: "What is the difference between them committing suicide?"
"Maybe!" Qin Chuan said: "They think that if the first time doesn't work, the second time will be fine, so there may be a third or fourth time..."
Qin Chuan was right. After the second wave of charges was repelled, there was indeed a third wave of charges.
But the third wave of charges was a little different: the Soviet infantry rushed up behind the cavalry.
This is a rather creative way of charging, because the tall figures of the cavalry will block the infantry behind them. If the flares had not hit far, the Germans would not have been able to detect the infantry for a while.
On the other hand, these infantrymen can use the corpses of war horses as cover when charging... The corpses of war horses in front of the position have been piled up to a distance of more than 100 meters in front of the German trenches. They are stacked one on top of the other like trenches. , coupled with the fact that the blood on the ground can provide natural protective color for those Soviet troops, it will indeed cause some trouble for the German troops in this dark night.
So the Soviet cavalry charge finally came to an end. After all, the scattered infantry on the position would hinder the cavalry charge.
But the battle did not pause because of this, and it immediately switched to infantry combat mode... In fact, it was much more difficult to deal with infantry than cavalry, because infantry knew how to hide themselves and also make some flexible tactical movements, which made the German soldiers Suddenly there is no way to adapt.
A regiment of the 9th Mountain Division charging towards the German army... In fact, it cannot simply be said to be the 9th Mountain Division, because it is also mixed with other troops that have withdrawn, because it is difficult to organize in the night, so I just thought So they all were sent up.
The 9th Mountain Division was an earlier mountain division formed by the Soviet army.
The Soviet mountain divisions were not professional, and because the frontline troops suffered heavy casualties and were in urgent need of manpower, they were often organized into infantry divisions and deployed to the front line. The 9th Mountain Division was not disbanded because of the importance of mountain warfare in the Caucasus region and because it had not participated in any battles... The Soviet army had a tradition that troops that had lost several battles on the battlefield would likely be disbanded.
The 9th Mountain Division in history was disbanded because of its poor performance in the Caucasus Campaign... In fact, this could not be blamed on the 9th Mountain Division, but on the fact that the German Mountain Division was well trained. There was a team of professional rock climbers in the German Mountain Division. They always used ropes and other tools to climb over dangerous peaks and suddenly appeared behind the Soviet checkpoints, thus defeating the Soviet Army again and again.
The result was that the 9th Mountain Division was disbanded and turned into an infantry division, and the number was given to the 20th Mountain Division, which performed well.
Of course, the situation at this time was a little different.
Because the German army bypassed the Caucasus Mountains, the 9th Mountain Division was used as an infantry division before it could show its mountain skills.
Compared with other Soviet troops, this unit obviously had some combat effectiveness... Although they had no combat experience, they were well-trained, which can be seen from their tactical actions of charging and their coordination with each other.
But even so, what the Soviet army did was still useless.
Because, on the other side of them, Manstein had already led the main force to launch a general attack on the Soviet front.