Chapter 721 Oil Barrel

These artillery fires were urgently summoned by Alexander, and some of them were even Soviet M1910 howitzers. Since their range was only 7.7 kilometers, they had to take the risk of being deployed in Stalingrad to provide artillery reinforcements on the sandbar.

They arrived in time, otherwise the sandbank where Qin Chuan and others were stationed might have been lost under this charge.

"How is the situation?" Alexander asked anxiously on the phone.

"It's very bad!" Qin Chuan replied: "We suffered thirty-three casualties, and now only one hundred and thirty-two have combat effectiveness. What's even worse is that because of the battle just now... our MP43's ammunition is almost exhausted. !”

This is indeed a serious problem.

Because a large part of the reason why Qinchuan and others were able to block the Soviet charge with more than a hundred people was the MP43... Its range is 350 meters, and the east coast is only more than 300 meters away from the sandbank, which makes the MP43 at close range While shooting at the charging Soviet troops at high speed, it could also suppress the covering firepower of the Soviet troops on the east bank, which gave the Germans a great advantage. If it were replaced by the Soviet Bobosha submachine gun, it would not be able to do this.

After a pause, Qin Chuan continued: "If we don't get supplies and reinforcements, we may not be able to withstand such an attack from the Soviets tomorrow!"

Of course what Qin Chuan said makes sense.

Although the German army may still be able to rely on artillery fire to blow up the pontoon bridge tomorrow, the problem is that the Soviet army can temporarily suppress the German artillery with artillery fire. Then, as long as the Soviet army has enough pontoon bridges and can carry out this attack once or twice... each time it only needs to consume dozens of German troops or some ammunition, then the German army will be completely annihilated in just a few times.

"But we haven't opened the passage to the Volga River yet!" Alexander replied regretfully.

What Alexander meant was that if the German army reached the Volga River, then they could cross the Volga River to reinforce the sandbar.

But in fact, this is unrealistic... Let’s not say that this passage has not been opened. Even if it is opened, the Soviet army will deploy firepower along the coast to block the river unless the German army clears the Soviet troops along the Stalingrad coast and even the central ferry. It’s almost possible to do it.

"You can use Soviet weapons, Major!" Alexander comforted.

"Yes, we may have to do this!" Qin Chuan replied helplessly.

Everyone knows what the result of this is...the gap in firepower will make the commando team, which is already lacking in strength, even worse.

After hanging up the phone, Qin Chuan looked at the map in a daze.

what to do? Neither troops nor ammunition can be obtained!

The reason why the Soviet army is not attacking now is simply because their pontoon bridges are insufficient.

Tomorrow, once they've built enough pontoon bridges, they'll obviously launch an even stronger charge!

Mines?

It's probably useless in this case.

Fighter?

The role they can play is probably very limited, especially since the Soviets will deploy more and more anti-aircraft firepower on the east coast, and German fighter planes will not be able to attack targets with confidence.

Qinchuan was right. Yeremenko, who was eager to capture the sandbar and rescue Stalingrad, even transferred a squadron to the east coast.

This squadron did not want to compete with the German air force, but hoped to harass the German air force to cover the Soviet pontoon attack on the sandbank.

artillery?

This might work, but even as mentioned before, it would probably be suppressed by Soviet artillery.

So, after much deliberation, Qinchuan believed that the only way to hold the sandbank was to obtain troops and supplies.

But this seems impossible... It is difficult to drop supplies to this small sandbank by airdrop, and the same is true for airborne troops, and helicopter transportation is blocked by anti-aircraft fire.

Land was even more impossible. The sandbank was almost surrounded by the Soviet army, and there were almost no gaps except for the Volga River.

Wait, Volga!

Thinking of this, Qin Chuan couldn't help but jump up from his chair, and immediately asked the correspondent to get through Alexander's phone.

"Colonel!" Qin Chuan said, "I need you to send me a support force!"

"But...how to send it?" Alexander asked doubtfully.

"We've been blowing up a lot of Soviet transport ships, especially these days, haven't we?"

"Yes!" Alexander replied: "To be precise, during the period when you occupied the sandbank, the Soviets even opened several temporary ferries in the upstream industrial zone, but they were all destroyed by our air force!"

After a pause, Alexander asked: "But what does this have to do with our reinforcements?"

"I think..." Qin Chuan said: "There must be many floating objects on the Volga River, so they won't have any suspicion about floating objects, such as oil barrels!"

"Uh-huh!" Alexander asked back: "Why are they suspicious? We also blew up a transport ship transporting fuel yesterday. You know, there are still some factories in Stalingrad that need to be operated. At the same time, the Soviets still have a few Ten tanks! There are oil drums floating everywhere on the river..."

"That's the point, Colonel!" Qin Chuan interrupted Alexander.

"What?" Alexander still didn't understand what Qin Chuan meant.

"Colonel!" Qin Chuan said: "What if the oil in the oil barrel is not oil, but people or ammunition?"

Alexander couldn't help but said "Oh" when he heard this, and then immediately said: "What a great idea, Major! That's great, I understand what you mean, I'll do it right away!"

Alexander hung up the phone immediately after saying that.

But after a while, Alexander called again, obviously he remembered something.

"How do they know that they have reached their destination?" Alexander asked.

"We will fire flares!" Qin Chuan replied: "In addition, you have to roughly calculate the time, and so do we, and then we will send people to meet on the shore!"

"No problem!" Alexander replied.

The method is actually very simple, just put people and supplies in oil barrels and drift downstream to the sandbar.

As for where to put these oil barrels down... Of course, it is the Renock area occupied by the German army upstream.

This can also be said to be a coincidence, because on the other side of the world, the same thing happened to the US and Japanese troops in the Pacific battlefield at this moment: the Japanese army was blocked by the US army on Guadalcanal Island and could not get supplies, so the Japanese army came up with a solution: use destroyers to transport supplies to the vicinity of Guadalcanal, and then throw the oil barrels with supplies into the sea, and the tide will bring these oil barrels to the island. The Japanese army called it the "Tokyo Express".

Now, Qinchuan used the same method on the sandbar.

The only difference is that the Japanese used the tides, while Qinchuan used the flow rate of the Volga River.