Chapter 458: Disappointment

They say that life is full of disappointments, and this is perhaps one of the few accurate assessments of human expectations. And so it is that, at this moment, many people are very, very disappointed, or rather, displeased. Because after all their meticulous calculations, they have failed to obtain what they wanted. It can be said that their efforts have not yielded the best results.

Akado, for example, was very depressed at the moment. Due to the incompetence of the Japanese, the Nomonhan incident that he had carefully orchestrated had failed to delay the Red Army’s attack. It had merely postponed the Soviet invasion of Germany, which should have happened in mid-March, to early April.

In other words, the thing he least wanted to see had happened once again. Germany was forced to fight a two-front war, and a two-front war that it was forced to fight before the Balkan Peninsula had been conquered and before it was fully prepared.

The war in Britain still required a force of 600,000 to 800,000 men. France, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Norway required about 700,000 troops to maintain order. In Italy and North Africa, Germany had deployed a 300,000-strong (though not at full strength) Africa Expeditionary Force. Domestic security and stability required the maintenance of 300,000 troops. On the Eastern Front, 2.3 million troops and 700,000 strategic reserves were on high alert. And this was without even counting the troop commitments in the Balkans. Germany had already used up its seemingly massive 5-million-strong regular army.

Although, if they were to scrape together forces from Britain and France, they could probably pull out another 300,000 soldiers. However, Akado, Brauchitsch, and the others all believed that it was more practical to maintain their superior strength on the Western Front and end the two-front war as soon as possible. But everyone knew that even if Germany were to conclude the war in the West, it would still have to maintain a standing defensive force of at least 1 million troops. At most, only 4 million troops could be moved to the Eastern Front.

Assuming the war in the West was over, and counting the forces from Finland, Turkey, Romania, and Italy, the total number of troops Germany could concentrate on the Eastern Front would be about 6 to 7 million, against the Soviet Union’s approximately 10 million. In the eyes of the German high command, this balance of power was not just winnable, but one in which they were “very confident of victory.”

The good news, of course, was that the Soviets were not fully prepared either. Their Great Purge was not yet complete, they had suffered a serious drain of talent, and they had not finished their war preparations. They had only hastily intervened in the war after seeing Germany’s sole dominance. Under these circumstances, Akado was confident that he could defeat this Soviet attack, which was a great fortune in the midst of misfortune.

The Japanese were even more depressed. They had, according to their prior agreement, bitten the bullet and fought the Battle of Nomonhan, incurring the wrath of heaven and man and suffering heavy losses. Not only had the Army lost its influence, but even the Americans had imposed sanctions on Japan. The entire Nomonhan incident had been a complete loss for the Japanese authorities.

Of course, another matter made the Japanese even more anxious: the promised German aid had completely fallen through. The Germans had never given them the blueprints for the Panther tank, and the coal-to-oil technology had been abandoned after only a few initial pieces of equipment were provided. Apart from 100 Me-109C fighters for the Army Air Force, the originally planned three aircraft production lines had also come to nothing. The reason was very simple: Germany and the Soviet Union were preparing for a life-or-death struggle. What time did they have to deal with the distant Japanese authorities?

What was most infuriating was that, in the midst of its busy preparations for the decisive battle with the Soviet Union, while Germany had ignored all of Japan’s requests, it had managed to pull 50 Me-109C fighters from Romania and Italy to aid China. This left the Japanese military at a loss for whether to laugh or cry. The Japanese Foreign Minister threatened to withdraw from the Axis Steel Pact, and then, without any further bargaining, directly signed the Nomonhan treaty with the Soviets, delineating the actual areas of control and declaring a full ceasefire.

However, the American sanctions were a truly fatal blow. Japan’s domestic oil reserves were only enough for three months of military operations and domestic industrial consumption. In other words, if Japan did not find a solution, in three months, its army would have to fight without tanks, planes, ships, or warships. Every bullet fired would be one less, every shell used would be one less. At that point, never mind America, even China could beat them soundly. This was definitely not a message the Japanese government wanted to see.

Thus, many things were thrown out of their original order. The series of operations the Axis had prepared in North Africa were all forced to be postponed, and the joint Italian-German plan to attack the Balkans was also postponed indefinitely.

Of course, the British gained an opportunity and once again managed to hang on by a thread. The British Royal Family collectively went to Iceland, where they stockpiled supplies and prepared to counter-attack the war-torn British mainland. Churchill issued a statement in London, shamelessly declaring that the final moment to strike back against Germany had arrived and calling on the people of the world to unite against German aggression and expansion. Of course, Stalin also gave a speech in Moscow, declaring that the European revolution had arrived and that the Soviet Union’s war to punish Germany, the source of all capitalist evil, had begun.

The answer to these voices was not the roar of Führer Akado, but the silent, slow movement of 5,000 German tanks and nearly 4,000 aircraft of various types towards the border. At 7:00 AM on April 6th, the curtain was officially raised on what could be called the largest battle in human history. The German-Soviet War had begun.

“Hey! I say… we’re about to approach the border. Watch out for German planes.” In the blue sky, a Soviet I-16 fighter with a modified enclosed cockpit was flying above the white clouds. This improved fighter had a top speed of over 450 kilometers per hour and was a relatively advanced Soviet aircraft. And behind this plane flew a dense formation of 110 more of the same model.

These fighters were under orders to cross the German-Soviet border and, after the start of the war, to cover the Soviet bomber and attack aircraft units and destroy the German frontline airfields.

“Red 4, watch your high six! Watch your high six! I see German fighters! My God! I see German fighters!” the commander of the fighter unit shouted through the headset.

Since the Germans already knew of the Soviet army’s arrival, they were not going to foolishly wait on their airfields to be attacked. The German planes on the border, guided by ground-based radar, had accurately located the Soviet aircraft formation.

“German planes! German planes! Break! Break!” shouts filled the headset. Before Lieutenant Klinovich, flying in the center of the Soviet formation, could react, disaster struck his unit.

From a distance of nearly a thousand meters, the German air force, which had the altitude advantage, suddenly opened fire. And this time, for the first time in a large-scale air battle, the German air force used rockets. Each German fighter could carry about eight large-caliber rockets. With hundreds of fighters firing rockets at once, one can imagine how spectacular the scene was.

This was a disaster for the pilots of the Red Air Force. To improve command and control, they were flying in a dense formation. Below them were the Soviet bomber and attack aircraft formations, acting as bait. The entire air formation was a dense, three-layered mass, each layer consisting of nearly a hundred aircraft. How could they possibly dodge so many German rockets?

After a moment’s hesitation, the Soviet aircraft formation completely fell apart. One after another, the planes were hit by German rockets and exploded into brilliant fireworks in the sky. A perfectly good flight formation was thrown into chaos by the German air force in just a few seconds.

“Climb! Climb! Evade the German fighters! Careful! Careful on your left! Speed up! You idiot!” shouts filled the headset. Klinovich quickly pulled his plane into a climb. His wingman, who was just a second slower, was hit by a German 30mm cannon and went down, trailing thick smoke. But in mid-air, he collided with another falling Soviet plane and exploded in a ball of fire.

The German fighters began to dive, mercilessly slaughtering the underperforming Soviet I-16s from an advantageous altitude and distance. In this brief engagement, at least 150 Soviet aircraft of various types were shot down, while the German air force suffered almost no losses. The two sides’ fighters engaged in a dogfight at an altitude of 8,000 meters, which was the optimal flight altitude for the German fighters. The German pilots played with their Soviet opponents as if it were a game.

Soon, the order to retreat came through the headset. Klinovich looked at the few remaining friendly aircraft in the sky and quickly accelerated into the clouds. As a Soviet pilot, he was lucky today, because he had never been targeted by a German pilot. But as a member of the Soviet Air Force on this day, he was unlucky. He had witnessed with his own eyes the gap in strength between the two air forces, had witnessed the process of the Soviet Air Force losing air superiority.

For the Soviet Air Force, the disaster of this day had only just begun. After wiping out the attacking Soviet air units in one go, the German air force, providing cover for a massive swarm of bombers, appeared over the Soviet airfields.

The Soviets had been preparing to attack on this day. They had expected their air force to have destroyed the German airfields by now and to have achieved local air superiority. But when the returning Soviet pilots came back, looking as if they had just attended a funeral, before they could even lament their disastrous defeat, the German bomber formations had arrived.

This day was destined to belong to the German Air Force. After shooting down 970 Soviet fighters in the air, the German air force’s attack then crippled a full 1,500 Soviet aircraft on the ground. On April 7th, the second day, the Soviet Air Force could only muster a pitiful 110 aircraft to face the German fighters, while they had to face a total of over 1,000 of their German counterparts.

Published: 2025-08-26T05:11:43.000+00:00
Last Edited: 2025-11-16T07:06:00.000+00:00
URL: https://www.patreon.com/caleredhair/posts/mtr-c458-137361658

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