Chapter 712 Landing

The entire rappel was completed within two minutes. After the helicopter dropped the commandos, it immediately accelerated and continued to fly along the Volga River. The German fighter planes would cover them and fly back to the base from the German-controlled area on the other side, which was the defense line of Hoth's 4th Panzer Army.

The Soviet air defense forces did not react until then, and hurriedly organized anti-aircraft machine guns and anti-aircraft guns to shoot into the air...

With a series of crisp "ding ding ding ding ding" sounds, two helicopters were hit and black smoke came out. One of them, perhaps the pilot, was killed. The helicopter lost balance and fell to the ground. The other one was hit on one side of the engine, turned back and forth in the air for several circles and then fell into the Volga River.

In this respect, Conrad's previous concerns were correct. The helicopter was still too vulnerable under anti-aircraft firepower.

But helicopters are all about using speed to defeat the slow. For example, at this time, all the assault members have successfully landed, and eight of the ten helicopters have successfully escaped and returned to the base. They even used the machine guns on the fuselage to shoot wildly at the Soviet soldiers they could find along the way before leaving.

So, this can be considered a very successful landing.

Then the Soviet army will have trouble... The two hundred elite German troops landing on the sandbar will be a nightmare for the Soviet army, especially since it is a sandbar. The other Soviet troops, that is, the Southeast Front on the east bank of the Volga River, will not be able to reinforce for a while even if they receive danger.

Qin Chuan's command was not needed at all. The battle entered a white-hot stage almost the moment Qin Chuan and others landed on the ground, because they were directly airdropped into the Soviet anti-aircraft artillery position.

The Soviet soldiers didn't even realize that the enemy was already on the ground or even next to them. The Soviet soldiers in the anti-aircraft artillery unit still habitually entered the artillery position and nervously aimed at the sky... This can't be blamed on them, they were trained for this, and they also knew that this was a sandbar, and the enemy couldn't enter the hinterland as soon as the battle started, so they had no defense against the ground at all, especially since they had just woken up and it was not yet dawn.

This made the German soldiers a little unbelievable.

But thinking is one thing, but the movements in their hands are not slow at all. Once the trigger is pulled, all the targets in sight are eliminated one after another.

It is not an exaggeration to regard this battle as a massacre. These Soviet artillerymen can almost be said to be unarmed... To be precise, they can't be said to be unarmed. They are operating anti-aircraft machine guns and anti-aircraft guns in their hands, and these anti-aircraft machine guns can strictly lower the firing range to fight against German soldiers.

(Note: Most of the Soviet anti-aircraft guns in World War II were M1 anti-aircraft guns, with a range of -5 degrees to 85 degrees)

But in this situation, they had no time to adjust. The German soldiers were like wolves that broke into a flock of sheep, killing anyone they saw. For a while, the anti-aircraft gun position was full of gunshots, grenade explosions and screams.

Qin Chuan pulled the trigger and killed two Soviet soldiers who were hiding behind the anti-aircraft gun and were about to throw out grenades... There were eight people in a Soviet 37MM anti-aircraft gun squad, and the eight people in this anti-aircraft gun squad were closely coordinated. They immediately let two team members constantly throw grenades out to stir up smoke and dust, or temporarily stop the German attack, while the others took this time to adjust the anti-aircraft guns to turn to the Germans.

If they succeeded, there was no need to think about what would happen.

Qin Chuan believed that even if the Germans and Soviets were in a melee, these Soviets would still fire without distinguishing between enemies and friends...Generally speaking, the Soviets would not have the saying of "throwing a weapon at a rat".

In fact, this is one of the reasons why the commandos attacked the Soviet anti-aircraft artillery instead of the howitzer first. In this close combat situation, the greater threat to the German army is the anti-aircraft machine guns and small-caliber anti-aircraft guns that can fire horizontally and quickly, rather than large-caliber howitzers.

Qin Chuan certainly won't let them succeed.

Then, under the cover of Qin Chuan's sniper rifle, Werner and Keller stepped on the "Z"-shaped steps and flexibly surrounded them from the left and right, and a few gunshots killed them all.

A little further away, several anti-aircraft machine guns had been leveled and swept in this direction, but this was also useless... An anti-infantry rocket was fired with a whistling sound, and the gunshots soon stopped, replaced by a scream from the Soviet army.

Several shells exploded near the German army, which was the work of the Soviet howitzer unit. This once again proved that the Soviet army would choose indiscriminate attacks without hesitation when the enemy and us were mixed.

In fact, the Soviets were right to do this, especially in this situation... If the Soviets did not do this but took up weapons such as rifles and pistols to resist, they would undoubtedly die in the hands of the Germans in the end, even though they had much more troops than the Germans.

But if they could organize more artillery to bombard the enemy... the result would be different.

However, this still did not change anything.

Because in addition to the airdropped commandos, the Germans also had air superiority.

The German fighters hovering in the air soon discovered these threats, and several "Stuka" bombers dived down and dropped bombs into the Soviet artillery positions, followed by six BF fighters madly strafing below, making the Soviet artillery in a mess and hiding everywhere with their heads in their hands, unable to organize an effective defense at all.

Then, the German commandos had dealt with the anti-aircraft artillery and rushed into the howitzer unit, which was undoubtedly another massacre.

The battle was completely over within half an hour.

The reason why it took so long was more because the sandbar was large and needed to be cleared than the Soviet resistance.

In fact, the Soviet resistance collapsed almost completely after ten minutes.

Although the Soviet army was several times larger than the German army, more than seven times to be exact... the total Soviet force was about 1,500, while the German army had only 200.

But the German army caught the Soviet army off guard, and launched an air-to-ground integrated attack with MP43, which was similar to modern special operations. The fragile Soviet artillery was certainly unable to resist.

The German soldiers did not have time to count the results of the battle because they had to do a good job of defending the sandbar as soon as possible.

It was estimated afterwards that at least 800 Soviet soldiers were killed and wounded in this battle, and more than 100 prisoners were taken... The reason why there were so few prisoners was that the German army was unwilling to capture prisoners, because these prisoners might become their troubles.

In addition, more than 500 Soviet soldiers could swim, and they jumped into the Volga River and fled to the east bank.

After all directions reported "safe", Qin Chuan reported to the headquarters via walkie-talkie: "Successfully captured the sandbar!"

The headquarters immediately cheered.