Chapter 461: Artillery Battle

It was only early April, and the weather in Poland was still very cool. However, on a German artillery position, most of the men were shirtless, and the whole scene was a hive of activity.

A burly man with a hairy chest rammed a shell into the breech of a cannon. The soldier behind him pushed in the stacked propellant charges, and then another soldier helped to close the breechblock. The entire sequence was a single, fluid motion. After a brief period of aiming and adjustment, as the flag officer not far away waved his red flag, the five 150mm cannons on this position roared in unison.

German artillery was slightly better than Japanese artillery, but they were basically in the same league. The German conventional artillery had an advantage in the number of 105mm and 150mm guns, but they were outnumbered by the Japanese in 75mm and even 37mm guns. This was a direct result of the German army’s organization and equipment.

In terms of equipment, the German army had a large number of 75mm anti-tank guns. But although these guns were numerous, they could not be compared to the Japanese 75mm mountain guns, which were the mainstay of their field artillery. At the same time, the German 40mm anti-aircraft gun was purely an air defense weapon, so its numbers could not compare to the Japanese 37mm guns, which served as both anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons.

On the other hand, the German infantry support weapons were mainly 60mm and 80mm mortars, with rocket launchers for direct close support. The Japanese, however, used grenade launchers as their primary support weapon, supplemented by a large number of mortars. It was difficult to judge whose artillery support was better.

Of course, if one included the StuG III assault guns used to support the infantry and the “Friedrich” rocket launchers of the rocket artillery units, the German army’s artillery strength was more than enough to overwhelm the Japanese. This, of course, was nothing to brag about, because the strength of the Japanese Army’s artillery was only slightly better than their tank forces.

Overall, during the Battle of France, the overall strength of the German artillery was only slightly better than Japan’s. But now, the German artillery was in a different league. They had captured thousands of French cannons and millions of rounds of reserve shells in France. This arsenal naturally became the German army’s own, continuing to serve where they were needed.

If one also added the Belgian cannons and the cannons produced in the occupied French territories as war reparations, the number was very considerable. Although this captured equipment caused a bit of a breakdown for the German logistics units, and the already chaotic logistics categories were doubled, the benefits were obvious: in just two short months, the German artillery had grown by a third.

Sometimes, an accumulation of quantity eventually leads to a leap in quality. This is a simple truth that everyone knows. Now, the German artillery units, relying on this accumulation of numbers, had undergone a qualitative change—they were actually able to go toe-to-toe with the massive Soviet artillery park, holding their own and giving as good as they got.

Boom! Another volley. The shells flew into the distance at a speed invisible to the naked eye. These long-range artillery units could not see their own results. They could only mechanically repeat their actions, firing shell after shell at the coordinates provided by the front line.

“Coordinates, 75, 44! Adjust parameters!” a second lieutenant, standing by the radio with a headset on one ear, jotted down the enemy positions provided by the forward observation post with a pencil.

“Adjusting gun parameters! Coordinates: 75, 44! Load shells!” a captain standing nearby commanded loudly.

At the officer’s command, a group of shirtless German soldiers got busy again, following the string of commands to load the shells and propellant charges into their cannons.

Then the flags waved, and another round of shells was fired, flying over fields and farmhouses, over forests and small rivers, over barracks and tanks parked by the roadside, over the heads of the soldiers in the frontline trenches, over the dense craters and corpses in front of the trenches, and then landing precisely on a piece of land crowded with attacking Soviet soldiers.

In a forward artillery observation post, its roof constructed from wooden planks and carefully camouflaged, a soldier was observing the Soviet positions opposite them with a scissor periscope. He then excitedly reported the results of the shelling: “Target hit! A perfect shot! Creeping barrage forward 15 meters, same direction.”

“Zero-four, zero-four! This is zero-one, this is zero-one. Same direction, correct range to 76! Repeat: same direction, correct range to 76!” another soldier reported loudly into the radio.

On the other end of the radio, the second lieutenant once again shouted out the calculated coordinates: “Coordinates, 76, 44! Adjust parameters! Fire for effect!”

“Fire for effect! Coordinates 76, 44!” the officer standing by commanded loudly again.

The signal flags continued to wave, but this time the cannons did not wait for a volley. They roared with slight differences in timing, and the deafening, uniform sound was replaced by a continuous rumble.

On the front lines, a German veteran sat squatting in a trench he had dug with his own hands. Beside him, a few young soldiers, terrified, clutched their rifles and trembled, muttering prayers to God.

The veteran held his own assault rifle, a cigarette dangling from his lips, and gently polished the two campaign medals pinned to his chest. One was from Poland, a commemorative medal from the Polish campaign. Anyone who had participated in that campaign had one of these rather crudely made medals. The other was a commemorative medal from the French campaign. Its workmanship was not much better, but it was still polished to a shine by the veteran.

Suddenly, the sound of an incoming shell, a different sound from the others, was heard. The veteran, who had been acting nonchalantly, suddenly frowned. He shouted, “Get down! Take cover!” As the sound of his voice went out, he threw himself into the anti-blast trench on the other side.

Although the Germans had not prepared permanent fortifications, their positions were still meticulously constructed. Compared to 20 years ago, their skills in digging trenches and fighting trench warfare had not diminished in the slightest. There were countless old men in the Wehrmacht, on the verge of retirement, whose greatest skill was digging holes. They had studied, used, and even witnessed trenches for their entire lives, and from the bottom of their hearts, they looked down on the Wehrmacht’s current Blitzkrieg.

These men would criticize the Blitzkrieg tactic, which the Führer held so dear, at almost every meeting. They would hypothesize countless ways they would set up defensive lines if given the time, enough to make the Blitzkrieg a complete failure. But when the Führer proposed his theory of defense in depth on the Eastern Front, these same men stood firmly by his side and did not hesitate to elevate him to the divine altar of tactical masters.

So the positions the German army was hiding in could be described as “the strongest defensive system among non-permanent fortifications.” This was the original wording from a report by an old infantry general. Since it could be so highly praised by the most authoritative old-timers of trench warfare, these defensive lines were by no means simple shallow pits.

All defensive positions were required to be constructed in the shape of an “M,” not a simple straight line. On both sides of these M-shaped trenches were shallow communication trenches for moving troops, and behind these trenches were T-shaped blast-deflecting pits. As long as a shell did not score a direct hit on the multiple junctions of these pits, a slight deviation would reduce the shell’s power by more than seventy percent. If it was off by a few meters, even a large-caliber heavy artillery shell would not cause fatal damage to these simple trenches.

After the key parts were reinforced with wood and cement, several of the strongpoints on this defensive line were capable of withstanding artillery barrages. If one also included the 20-kilometer elastic defense zone in front of the main line, this defensive system was more than enough to deal with any of the Soviet’s attack methods.

Akado was certainly not a god, but he was at least standing on the shoulders of giants. In his previous life, the massive pits dug by Soviet military experts for the German panzer forces at Kursk had been lauded by the victors for half a century. Now, he was using it in reverse against the Red Army, and he suddenly felt a thrill of giving them a taste of their own medicine.

The German veteran threw himself into a fork in the T-shaped anti-blast trench. At almost the same moment, a shell landed in another corner of the trench. The explosion threw up countless amounts of dirt, burying the soldiers hiding in the other corners. After a long moment, the aftershock of the explosion finally passed. The German veteran dug himself out of the loose soil and shook the debris and black mud from his helmet.

His ears were still ringing from the massive blast. Although he had covered his ears in time, it would take at least a few minutes for them to recover. This was the experience he had gained from being shelled by the French. He shook his head, picked up his rifle from the loose earth, and then returned to his trench, where he saw a few of his comrades who had also just returned.

These soldiers had long been told to listen to the advice of the veterans. Although they were afraid, they had been training in the trenches they had dug on the Eastern Front for three months. Following the veterans’ warnings to dodge the shells that might hit them had become an ingrained instinct. So just now, they had all unhesitatingly thrown themselves to the ground, avoiding the massive shockwave and countless fragments of the Soviet shell.

If the Soviet gunners could see this result, they would probably go mad. A single German shell landing on the attacking Soviet troops could basically take away a dozen, or even dozens, of lives. But the shells they fired, despite being more powerful, could only occasionally add a few wounded to the German side.

Published: 2025-08-27T04:14:52.000+00:00
Last Edited: 2025-11-17T05:29:24.000+00:00
URL: https://www.patreon.com/caleredhair/posts/mtr-c461-battle-137441225

Advance chapters at Nightjar Reads · nightjarreads.com