Chapter 928: Retaking the Salient

“What? Say that again! What do you mean you’ve been attacked?” a Soviet officer roared into his microphone. “Bombed by enemy planes? What about your anti-aircraft camouflage? What?”

Zhukov stared coldly at the dozen or so telephones before him, each manned by a frantic officer. From the moment the offensive began, German aircraft had been relentlessly harassing the Soviet advance. They bombed bridges and road junctions, blasted villages and destroyed supply depots, swarming like flies that couldn’t be swatted away.

The German Air Force was throwing everything it had into supporting its ground troops. Every fighter that took off was loaded with bombs, using their air superiority patrols as an opportunity to destroy as many of the numerous Soviet armored units as possible.

Along the path of the Soviet southward advance, the landscape was littered with the smoking wrecks of Soviet vehicles and neat rows of corpses lining the roads. These poor soldiers had been killed by enemy aircraft before they had even seen the enemy they were supposed to eliminate. Although the Soviet Air Force was also fighting with all its might to interfere with the Germans, they had achieved few successful results, paying a heavy price in blood.

Hartmann, along with his squadron, had arrived on the southern front to rule the skies. He was like an emperor in his own domain, surveying his territory. The “Black Tulip” had become a legend, a legend belonging entirely to the Eastern Front. In this story, this plane was the king of the entire front, cutting down those who challenged him with magical flying skills.

Soviet pilots had laid countless traps in an attempt to take down this black death that inspired the entire German air force. But they had often only managed to add a few more Iron Cross kill markings to the fuselage of this terrifying Ta-152 fighter.

Later, because the number of kill markings painted on the fuselage of the fighter with the black tulip nose had become too numerous, the German Air Force had to redesignate the location for the markings, moving them from below the cockpit to the wider area of the tail.

Of course, Hartmann was not the most legendary man in this battle, which was mainly a ground-attack affair. Because the ace of the German ground-attack aircraft was a genius named Rudel—in just over ten days of fighting, he had flown 400 sorties in his three new Stuka II attack planes, destroying a full 900 targets.

The reason it was three Stuka IIs was because this fellow had been shot down twice and had miraculously managed to escape back to base both times, continuing to be active on the front lines of attacking ground targets. This legendary man was said to take out every target he saw, including trucks, anti-aircraft guns, and even a motorcycle.

These fanatical German pilots had inflicted huge losses on the Soviets. Post-war statistics showed that nearly a fifth of all Soviet tanks had been destroyed by the German Air Force. Without the efforts of these German pilots, the enemy Guderian’s G Army Group would have faced would have been at least a quarter larger.

To achieve such a combat record, the German Air Force had lost 210 planes, either shot down or crashed due to mechanical failure, and had lost 106 pilots. These young lives had thus vanished in the sky, becoming one after another of the cold names on the German Air Force memorial.

But they were still the lucky ones, because as long as you were an air force pilot, at least your name could be found. But many of the soldiers who had given their lives for their country had not even left their names behind—no matter how huge a monument, it could not engrave the names of a million infantrymen.

In the frontline command post, Zhukov received the firsthand intelligence of the German counter-attack. He couldn’t be sure if the German army had begun a full-scale counter-attack, or if this was just a “spur of the moment” action by a part of the German forces.

In the continuous fighting, his troops had lost a large amount of their armored strength. A thousand tanks of various models had become scrap iron, and more than ninety thousand soldiers had died on the path of their advance. For the first time in the past three long months, the Soviet army had suffered such huge losses, and these forces were the most precious main armored units of the Soviet army.

The commander of G Army Group, his old rival Guderian, had also suffered heavy losses, but the moods of the two sides were absolutely incomparable. Even if the entire G Army Group were to be annihilated, the German army would only have lost one armored army group. At least A Army Group also had a large number of armored units. But he, Zhukov, was different. The troops in his hands were the only main armored force that the Soviet Union had accumulated. If it were to be completely lost here, then he could only wait to lose the war.

But he also had his own advantage, which was that no matter how heavy his losses were, once he had thwarted the German G Army Group’s northern advance, he could seize back the initiative on the battlefield and completely thwart Germany’s strategic intention of capturing the Caucasus. From this perspective, the Soviet army’s losses, no matter how great, were bearable. This was also the main reason why Zhukov was gritting his teeth and insisting on not stopping the attack.

“Are you saying that we encountered a new type of German tank unit in this vicinity, that you destroyed three of them, suffered heavy losses, and had just managed to capture the position when the Germans immediately launched a counter-attack?” Zhukov asked with a frown to the division commander who had come to report. The other’s expression was dejected. It seemed he had truly lost too many, many men, which made this division commander’s heart ache.

“Yes, they committed a large number of Tiger tanks, probably more than 30. Our troops had already suffered heavy losses in the previous offensive, so we were simply unable to organize an effective defense,” the division commander said, his head bowed, answering Zhukov’s question.

Hearing this division commander’s “heartfelt confession,” Zhukov felt his own heart clench. He painfully deduced another, translated version of the truth: in attacking a German position defended by five tanks, the Soviet army had lost dozens of tanks. Now that dozens of enemy tanks were counter-attacking, he had lost dozens more. His troops had retreated to their starting position, not having captured a single inch of land, but having lost a hundred tanks.

Such losses were unacceptable even for the wealthy Zhukov. It should be known that although he had several thousand tanks as his capital, the number that could really be brought to the table to fight against the German armored forces was definitely no more than 3,000. Among them were the KV-1B tanks, which had had their guns temporarily modified, the T-34 tanks, and a small number of Stalin tanks—but these tanks only accounted for less than half of his total.

The rest of the lot were some T-26 “reconnaissance tanks” that no one wanted. From the name, you knew that this type of tank was about the same as a German armored reconnaissance vehicle. There were also some old KV-1s, and some KV-1s that had had their reliability patched up and were finally usable… As for that big-headed doll, the KV-2, the Soviets themselves had very consciously stopped producing it.

And yet, even so, these tanks were being consumed at a visible rate. Under the double蹂躏 (ravages/torment) of the German Air Force and the German armored forces, the Soviet army had already lost nearly 1,000 tanks. Although a large part of them were the T-26s used for reconnaissance and the KV-1s to make up the numbers, these losses were undoubtedly heartbreaking.

What’s more, just now, a main force unit of the Soviet army had been annihilated in a salient they had just taken. These tanks were not the bullshit T-26s or the outdated KV-1s used to make up the numbers, but brand-new T-34s and Stalin tanks, as well as some KV-1Bs with improved guns, the “Super KVs.”

Unfortunately, as a supreme Soviet commander, Marshal Zhukov did not know that the five tanks in front of his troops were the most elite of the entire German army, the 502nd Heavy Panzerjäger Battalion. Nor did he know that the weakest rookie in this unit was an ace who had destroyed more than 10 Soviet tanks. Of course, he knew even less that he had almost finished off the tank No. 113, which was firmly in second place on the German armored forces’ ace leaderboard, and that tank No. 112 was also a regular on that list.

If he had known all this, would he have been a little more comforted? At least he had had such an opportunity, to use superior forces to take out a German super-ace tank crew. But now he did not know these things. He was just lamenting the gap between his own troops and the Germans.

“Your unit has suffered too great a loss. I will arrange for your division to be moved to the rear for rest and refit,” Zhukov said, waving his hand. He then turned to his chief of staff and asked, “Comrade Chief of Staff, that tank ace who has applied to be transferred from Stalingrad, the one named Wolf, has he reached the front yet?”

His words made the chief of staff standing to one side’s eyes light up. As a chief of staff, of course, he knew what his superior was asking. To put it another way, for Zhukov to ask this question meant that he was preparing to commit his elite armored units to fight a proper battle with the German tanks.

Who would be the final victor would be decided in the next few days. How could this not make him excited? How could this not make him thrilled? The life-or-death battle of the Soviet Union had finally, with his participation, begun!

Thinking of this, this chief of staff immediately replied, “Comrade Marshal, he arrived here a few hours ago. We have given him and his crew a brand-new Stalin tank with an American-imported sight. I have heard from the commander of the 1st Guards Assault Detachment that they are already prepared to fight for the motherland!”

“Very good!” Zhukov nodded with a smile. He looked at the map hanging on the wall, and a voice in his heart was shouting: Guderian, now I am beginning my real attack. And you? How will you face this fierce assault of mine?

He pointed to the salient that had been retaken by the Germans and ordered solemnly, “Have them retake this position! Eliminate as many German tanks as possible!”

“Yes, sir!” the chief of staff replied, saluting at attention.

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