Chapter 677: Hard to Say

Thus, the Soviet Red Army had nearly 14,000 tanks available for combat, still maintaining a certain advantage over the German armored forces. However, even Zhukov admitted that among these tanks, only about 4,000 could pose a threat to German tanks. The rest were no different from armored cars in the face of the Germans.

Of course, the Soviet Red Army’s air force was also no match for the German aircraft. Compared to Great Britain, which had a very strong technological reserve and a bottomless research and development capability, the development of the Soviet aviation industry had not yet reached that level. Therefore, the overall level of the Soviet Air Force in another timeline was always at a point where they were being bullied by German pilots. Those well-known aircraft with slightly acceptable performance basically only entered the war in the later stages of World War II.

So now, although the Soviet Air Force had a terrifying number of 11,000 aircraft, most of them were outdated fighters like the I-16. They were no match for the German Fw-190D, let alone the even more outstanding Ta-152.

Although the Soviet Union had received a production line for a neutered version of the Rolls-Royce aircraft engine and had also developed its own fighter models like the I-20 and MiG-1 using the new Rolls-Royce piston engines, their overall level still had a clear gap with the mainstream German fighter, the Fw-190D.

As a result, Soviet pilots had completely lost confidence in gaining air superiority. All sorts of rumors circulated among them, including descriptions of the paint schemes of some terrifying opponents. Some German ace pilots were described by these Soviet pilots as demons. And the reason these Soviet pilots could not be called an “air force” was mainly because ninety percent of them were just people who could fly a plane, not soldiers who could fight in the sky.

As for the opponents mentioned by these “rookie pilots” (the German ace pilots’ term for Soviet pilots), the most famous was a Ta-152 fighter with a black tulip painted on its nose. This plane was described as the black death, the wings of a demon. Some even said that this plane was piloted by the gatekeeper of hell.

By the time these rumors spread, Hartmann had already shot down a full 130 enemy aircraft of various types in his plane. This number was almost three times the number of enemy planes he had encountered in the air, because every time he encountered an enemy, he would add to his score. It was only a question of how many, not if.

But even so, the Soviet Red Army still had its advantages, for example, in large-caliber artillery, where the Soviet forces had an overwhelming superiority. Historically, the Soviet army could be said to be one of the armies in the world that attached the most importance to artillery. Stalin, in particular, had urged the Red Army to deploy more large-caliber artillery with an almost pathological intensity. Perhaps the power of artillery in the wars he had experienced had left a very deep impression on him, or perhaps he knew that it would be difficult to surpass the Germans in other aspects for the time being.

In fact, the number of 122mm cannons possessed by the Soviet army exceeded 5,000. This type of artillery had played an important role in the Battle of Nomonhan, so the Soviet Union had been producing this weapon desperately since 1937, and its stockpile now had an astonishing amount of capital.

In addition, the Soviet Union also had a large number of 210mm cannons, American-supplied 155mm cannons, 100mm cannons, and a large number of 85mm and 76mm guns. Coupled with the mortars, howitzers, and railway guns that the Soviets had always valued… the total number of artillery pieces deployed by the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front, with calibers ranging from 380mm railway guns to 75mm mountain guns, had already exceeded 31,000, which could be said to completely overwhelm the German army in numbers.

However, these artillery pieces also had limited mobility and could not be deployed quickly on a large scale. Compared to the German artillery, half of which could be easily towed and a fifth of which was self-propelled, their backwardness in mobility was more than just a little. They could not, like the German army, quickly concentrate their forces in a local area to form a firepower advantage.

In fact, a more fatal firepower threat came from a new special branch of the German army, the Army Aviation. This Army Aviation was not a land-based air force like the U.S. Army Air Corps, but a low-altitude support unit equipped with armed and transport helicopters.

The new Odin helicopter had a qualitative improvement in payload capacity compared to its predecessor, the Crusader. Therefore, this new type of helicopter could be fitted with thicker steel plates and more powerful armament, and its battlefield survivability already allowed it to participate in frontline combat.

And the German troops discovered that the Soviet Red Army lacked self-propelled anti-aircraft units that could accompany the troops. The immediate battlefield air defense capability of its armored forces was actually very limited. Because the Soviet Red Army was different from Germany, the second war in Poland had caused the Red Army to lose a large number of armored units and also realize the serious lack of quality in its armored forces.

Thus, the German method of converting outdated tank chassis into self-propelled anti-aircraft guns and self-propelled howitzers could not be imitated by the Soviet side in the short term. Soviet engineers had been trying to find ways to convert existing tank chassis into anti-tank guns as an emergency measure and had no resources to deal with the less prominent need for battlefield air defense.

This gave the German Army Aviation a relatively small space for survival on the battlefield. Although this space was small, it was very deadly. Because the results of several battlefield raids had shown the German army that dispatching helicopters with rockets to carry out saturation strikes on the battlefield with speed, and then quickly withdrawing, was an effective way to inflict casualties on Soviet Red Army ground targets.

Using helicopters to raid the battlefield with rockets for short-duration saturation fire, to a certain extent, allowed the Germans to find a way to make up for their lack of artillery. After all, compared to air force support, calling in one’s own air strikes had an unparalleled advantage in reaction speed.

But this seemingly wonderful prospect had a very fatal flaw, which was the production problem of the Odin helicopter. This helicopter had only just gone into production, and the total number on the entire Eastern Front did not exceed 100. It was heard that in the future, this aircraft would be divided among the navy, air force, and domestic police, so it was impossible for the army to use it for large-scale frontline assault operations in the short term.

The problem that also plagued the German forces on the Eastern Front was that another new weapon also had insufficient production capacity, and that was the newly produced King Tiger tank. After testing, this tank was fully capable of defeating the Soviet Stalin tank, and it had an even greater, overwhelming advantage at night, which was enough for the German army to regain its leading edge in tank performance.

However, this tank had only just begun mass production. It was said that the first batch of 30 tanks had not yet left the factory. By the time this tank was in large-scale service, the most optimistic estimate was that the German army would have already reached the gates of Moscow. So, the German high command all knew that they already had more advanced technological equipment, but the unlucky thing was that they would have to wait until after the victory to use these black-tech weapons.

Compared to the army and air force, the German navy was much luckier. Their super submarines were already at sea, preparing to achieve great things in the waters near Iceland. At the same time, the carrier fleet under Lütjens was conducting night combat training. Once this training was completed, the German fleet would take the initiative to attack, seeking another decisive battle with the British fleet.

After a year of recovery and redeployment, the British Navy had recalled its battleships from all over the world and formed a new battleship fleet. Although this large fleet had not yet gone out to find trouble with the German Navy due to the lack of carrier cover, Lütjens, Raeder, and even Akado all knew that the British Navy was far from defeated. Even using the adjective “heavy losses” to describe it seemed a bit of a stretch. Compared to the total number of over 20 battleships that Britain had, the loss of less than 10 warships was clearly not enough to completely crush this fleet that had dominated the world for 100 years.

The United States was simultaneously building a large number of aircraft carriers and escort fleets on both coasts. If the war dragged on to the second half of 1939, the number of U.S. Navy carriers would exceed Germany’s. If it entered 1940, the U.S. carrier fleet would even have a two-to-one advantage over the German Navy. After all, most of Germany’s production capacity was consumed by the army’s armored forces, and the proportion of naval construction could not be exactly the same as that of the United States.

In other words, by comparison, the branch of the three German armed forces that had increased the least in number was the navy. And in terms of absolute numbers compared to the enemy, the navy was in a trend of being surpassed and even having the gap widened. After all, the function of the German Navy could not be compared with that of Britain and the United States. Even though it had rendered meritorious service in defeating Britain, it was still in a supporting role in the overall strategy.

After all, the United States and Britain were countries that relied on their navies to survive. As long as Germany ensured its army could enter the Middle East and control the oil-producing areas, then Germany’s energy transport lines would be protected by the Mediterranean. No matter how many more ships the U.S. Navy had, it was impossible for it to rush into the island-filled Mediterranean and compete with the thousand-plus German land-based aircraft.

Therefore, the only mission of the German Navy now was to cooperate with C Army Group to firmly defend the British Isles and ensure the absolute security of the Atlantic Wall. And this goal was also very simple to achieve: just maintain a presence. This was a true “fleet in being.” As long as it was there, an American landing in Europe to attack Germany could only be called an unrealistic fantasy.

So, from all current aspects, the three branches of the German armed forces were already in an invincible position. But was this really the case? Not necessarily. At the very least, all of this was based on the premise that the Axis powers were united. But in fact, including Italy and Turkey, the member states of the Axis all had their own little schemes. Once a problem arose in Germany’s military, whether these allies would turn to the Allied side was still hard to say.

Published: 2025-09-17T08:54:10.000+00:00
Last Edited: 2026-02-19T17:59:30.000+00:00
URL: https://www.patreon.com/caleredhair/posts/mtr-c677-hard-to-139090377

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