"It's possible to find out, so let's move fast! Strike first! Jiang Baili said, turned his head to look out the window, at this time there was a roar of engines in the sky, and from time to time the shadows of fighter planes under the sunlight swayed indoors.

"Actually, I should really thank Dongfang Bai for his audacity, if it weren't for him, this war would have become even more difficult to control." Yang Shuoming looked at the map, his eyes looked a little melancholy.

"So the initiative in the war is very important." Jiang Baili pointed to the Soviet part of the map and said, "The difference between industrial countries and agricultural countries is that there is no key point to grasp, and the fundamental land of the Soviet Union is only a few pieces, as long as these places are laid, it is equivalent to the Soviet Union being defeated." So the first months of this war are very important. ”

"Yes! We are already fighting on two fronts, and we must not turn it into a protracted war. Yang Shuoming stared at the map and fell into deep thought.

Since the Chinese army began to carry out the "Taishan Operation" plan to attack the Soviet Union, thus starting a two-front operation, although on the vast Soviet front, the victory of the Chinese army's rapid offensive was so unbelievable. But as Yang Shuoming said, the war has become difficult to navigate.

"Swallow Two, pay attention to the height."

"Understood!"

Yang Zhaoguo looked around, and at this time, the altimeter of his "Dragonfly" tactical attack aircraft began to rise again, 5,000 meters, after some swings...... 5500 meters ....... The crew on board wore oxygen masks. The pilot continued to pull the lever and flew as fast as possible into the hinterland of the Soviet Union at a critical altitude.

Yang Zhaoguo looked at his watch, and in a few minutes it would be 3 o'clock in the morning on June 22, 1944. The earth seems to be still asleep. But this was only temporary, and in another 15 minutes, the roar of artillery would begin the war. The Chinese army will launch a siege of the Soviet army on a 1,000-kilometer front.

The start time is 3:15 a.m., which must be accurate. As a result, the few bombers that took off in advance were flying at critical altitudes. The route was chosen in uninhabited swamps and forests to avoid enemy detection and thus reveal the time to start the attack.

The 2nd, 3rd, and 53rd Bomber Aviation Regiments, who had absolute certainty of instrument flight, almost all went into battle. They had unwittingly invaded the hinterland of the Soviet Union and were to carry out the task of attacking operational airfields behind enemy lines at 3:15 p.m. Each airfield was bombed with three bombers, requiring a surprise attack.

At this moment, the sky is still pitch black, and only the southern horizon is faintly bright. The attack of Chinese bombers began, they flew down from a high altitude, rushed to the enemy airfield, and then skimmed at a low altitude. Hundreds of small bombs fell from the sky in black pressure and fell into the middle of the neatly parked Soviet fighter jets.

Of course, this alone does not give the enemy a devastating blow. This can only create confusion for the enemy, delay the organization of a counterattack, and fill the gap between the Army and the large Air Force fleet before the attack.

There was a bitter dispute between the staff of the Air Force and the Army over the timing of the Air Force's offensive. The army wanted to start the operation at dawn in order to be able to get the maximum effect of the surprise attack tactically. At the same time as launching the offensive, it was necessary to prevent the Soviet Air Force from participating in the battle. To do this, they must be wiped out on the ground. Whether from the ground or from the air, a raid is the biggest premise.

General Huang Shengxiang, commander of the 2nd Air Force in charge of the central theater of operations of the front, said: "Our flying regiment must be assembled and concentrated after dawn to carry out the attack. If the army had moved before dawn, we would have attacked the enemy's airfield an hour late, and by that time the cunning enemy would have flown off from the ground. ”

In this regard, Marshal Xu Yuanjin, commander-in-chief of the Central Army Group, said: "When the Air Force flies over the hinterland of the Soviet Union, it will definitely be discovered by the enemy. If the air force goes first, it will be difficult for us to surprise the enemy and achieve the sudden surname of the campaign. ”

The Air Force was forced to make concessions. The 2nd Air Force proposed a compromise: select some highly skilled pilots to sneak in from high altitudes and ask them to attack at 3:15. The Army agreed to the plan.

The raid was a complete success. The Chinese army first carried out a single-plane attack, and then carried out a large-scale air attack in dense formation. After daybreak, there was no trace of Soviet fighters over the battle line, and not a single Soviet plane could fly from the ground.

In fact, the Soviets were not ignorant of the actions of the Chinese side, and at 1:30 p.m. that night, Stalin warned the German [***] advisers and commanders of the Siberian Military District of the imminent Chinese attack: "At dawn on June 22, 1944, all aircraft must be carefully camouflaged and deployed at all airfields. The whole army entered a state of imminent combat ......".

But Stalin's warnings were delayed by the Soviet Union's cumbersome and complex communications network, which had been damaged by the Chinese army. The war preceded the order. The nightmare struck again, and the surprise attack of the Chinese Air Force cost more than half of the Soviet flying group near the front line.

"Our airfield is too close to the front line, or the Chinese are pushing too close to us, and China knows these places well. In addition, many brigades of the Air Force are busy with renovation work, and front-line airfields are no exception. As people often call 'Russian' laziness, they ended up arranging all kinds of planes on the runway without concealment...... "Colonel Eugene, commander of the 23rd Division of the Soviet Air Forces, who was later captured, said bitterly, "Our planes had already suffered serious losses at the beginning of the war, and these planes were the only ones that could be brought in easily, and now everything is gone......."

In this way, in the early morning of June 22, a group of Chinese dive bombers roared and bombed the planes parked at the airport. The horizontal bombers of the group were responsible for raiding airfields in the rear, and the fighters and attack aircraft were responsible for low-altitude attacks.

On a long front, the Chinese Air Force deployed 2,768 aircraft on 22 June. Of these, two-thirds of the forces available for the first line accounted for two-thirds, that is, 1,845 aircraft, of which 510 were bombers, 642 tactical attack aircraft, and 650 fighters. In addition, 120 long-range reconnaissance aircraft were commissioned.

From the very beginning, the operational objective of the Chinese Air Force was to seize and master air supremacy, and then to support the ground forces. They also imagined that the Germans had applied the magic of blitzkrieg to the vast expanse of Russia, and that it had been a great success from the start, with the Chinese Air Force raiding Soviet airfields with astonishing results. Two-kilogram small bombs rained down between Soviet planes. Since there were no enemy aircraft in the air, the fighters also used artillery and machine guns to strafe ground targets.

"I really can't believe my eyes." Captain Dai Guangjin, commander of the 1st Flying Group of the 3rd Air Regiment of the 5th Chinese Air Army, which is deployed on the forward front, said, "The runway is full of reconnaissance planes, bombers, and fighters, which are arranged there in an orderly manner like a military parade. I can't imagine that the USSR had so many bases nearby and concentrated so many aircraft! ”

Hundreds of Soviet military planes were burning. It was only at an alternate airfield in the theater of operations of the 2nd Soviet Air Army that a squadron of Soviet fighters tried to take off urgently, but at that very moment a bomb exploded in the middle of them, and then the burning wreckage of the aircraft was found next to the runway.

In the early morning of 22 June, the Chinese Air Force, which had returned from its sortie, immediately loaded new bombs and struck again. On the second sortie, it was volleyed by Soviet fighters. While hundreds of planes were blown up on the ground, new adversaries kept emerging.

Chinese fighters have finally found an opportunity to show their skills. On the morning of June 22, Soviet bombers began to bomb Chinese airfields. These bombers are flying from nowhere. They are attacking the Chinese military airfield in a dense formation of 10, 20, and 30 planes.

At this time, Yang Zhaoguo's 77th Tactical Bombardment Aviation Regiment had just returned from the first bombing of the Soviet pillbox group on the Ob River, and had just landed at a nearby dusty field airfield.

Suddenly, five explosions occurred in a row, followed by smoke rising from the edge of the airport. It was later discovered that it was five bombshells dropped by enemy planes. I saw that the enemy plane made a big turn in the air and tried to escape.

At this moment, two or three small black dots attacked the Soviet bombers from above at an astonishing speed, and Yang Zhaoguo looked up into the sky, and in the gray sky, the long white tail smoke dragged by the tail of the three small planes was particularly eye-catching. He couldn't help but smile.

It was China's newest jet fighter.

This thrilling battle scene made the tactical bomber pilots on the ground nervous and held their breath one by one.

The Soviet plane in front was knocked down, and a wisp of green smoke connected the two planes together, only to see the big and stupid Soviet plane suddenly fall down, flashing and falling vertically. The engine roared like crazy, a huge pillar of fire rose from the ground, and it was completely finished.

The second Soviet bomber, which also spewed red flames, exploded in the fall, its wings falling like a large leaf. Then there was another one, which burned and tumbled down the bucket. And so it goes, one after the other. The last one fell into a nearby village and burned for an hour. Six high columns of smoke appeared on the horizon, and it took only a few minutes for all six enemy planes to be knocked out.

"What a fucking cow!" Captain Lu Jixian, who was beside Yang Zhaoguo, looked at the new fighter plane passing in the sky, his face was full of envy, "It's still a fighter jet!" ”

What they saw at this time was nothing more than a small example of war, and this was the case everywhere on the entire front. The attacking Red Army bombers did not escape from the anti-aircraft artillery fire, nor did they escape the interception of Chinese fighters.

"For a whole afternoon, they came and bombed continuously," Captain Lu Ki-hyun wrote in his diary, "and at our airfield alone, twenty-one planes were shot down, and not one of them was spared." ”

June 22, 1944 was destined to be a bloody day, recording the results of the 24-hour battle between the Chinese and Soviet air forces.

According to incomplete statistics, the USSR lost 1862 aircraft of various types (the number of aircraft capable of combat was much less). China lost 55 aircraft. Of the Soviet losses 823 aircraft were shot down by fighters and anti-aircraft artillery, the rest were blown up by Chinese aircraft on the ground.

General Jiang Dawei, commander-in-chief of the Chinese Air Force, could not believe the report and privately sent someone to investigate. The officers of the General Headquarters worked for several days at the airfield occupied by the Chinese troops, counting the wreckage of the burned Soviet planes. The statistics are even more staggering, with more than 2,200 Soviet aircraft destroyed.

This was later confirmed by information obtained by intelligence officers from the Soviets. The memorandum of the Ministry of Defense in Moscow reads: "The decisive factor in the success of the enemy's ground forces was the sudden attack of the Chinese Air Force...... Enemy bomber units concentrated on assaulting 86 airfields in our territory. The first to be attacked was the airfield where the new Soviet fighter jets were stationed. In such a surprise and fierce air battle, our side lost 2,200 aircraft. More than 800 of them were blown up on the ground. ”

"In the Eastern Front theater alone, the enemy managed to blow up 562 aircraft parked on the ground and shoot down 370 in the air."

On the evening of 22 June, the Chinese Air Force completed its primary task of seizing and mastering air supremacy. From the second day of the war, all units of the Air Force began to switch to supporting the Army from the air.

On all fronts, the rapidly advancing ground forces of the Chinese army received strong air support from the tactical units of the Air Force. Dive bombers opened the way for tanks, and the stubborn resistance of the Soviet troops was completely crushed.

June 23, early in the morning.

Yang Zhaoguo, who was sitting in the "Dragonfly" tactical attack plane, looked down through the cockpit glass and looked at the torrent of steel rolling forward on the plain below the "Dragonfly" formation.

“…… The two wings are the light cavalry of the 'gray wolf', like a whirlwind blowing through the battlefield, just like Genghis Khan's Mongolian iron cavalry, once again let the whip of God Attila descend on the Russian land, and the roar of self-propelled artillery and rocket artillery is the drumbeat of the god of war, the metal wings across the sky are the light of Ares's tomahawk, Zeus's god of lightning, and the Nordic Valkyrie parade ......"

In the distance, the horizon shone with a soaring red light, followed by a thunderous roar, as if a volcano had erupted.

Yang Zhaoguo looked at the time displayed on his watch, and he knew that this was the artillery preparing for the tank unit.

Of course, Yang Mingyun could not see the scene when 4,000 cannons roared wildly in the deafening roar of a landslide after the order for the "all-army artillery bombardment" was issued.

The entire front immediately burst into flames. The barrage of artillery poured hellfire into the Soviet positions. Violent explosions could be heard even in the city of Sverdlov, a few dozen kilometers away. In a few moments, the Chinese gunners lost their hearing, and the thick gloves they wore were burned through the red-hot barrels. A lieutenant [***] official wrote in his account: "I felt the earth tremble under my feet, like the skin of a brass drum. A Mongol officer fictionalized a strange scene: "It was as if on the rough and desolate snowy Gobi Desert, the giants struck matches as thick as pine trees, and then a gust of wind blew out the flames." ”

On the Soviet front, there was a dizzying scene everywhere. Originally, the officers of the Soviet divisions were having a drink with their army group commanders in a huge underground bunker that was used as a tactical command center. With the sound of the first explosion, there was a "pop", and I don't know whose wine glass rolled to the floor. A staff officer grabbed a bottle of wine that looked like it was about to fall to the ground. Looking out through the cracks in the underground bunkers, they saw that the sky was lit up like day by bright flames.

A Soviet war correspondent recorded this horrific scene: "The offensive began to roar, shells exploded one by one between the fortified strongholds of our army, and countless mines were blasted out of the ground and thrown into the sky. The sand and barbed wire, which had been blown up unevenly, flew around like fountains, thousands of explosions were heard at every moment, pillboxes collapsed like toppled paper houses, underground bunkers caved violently, and the power of the shell explosion tore the naked bodies of the Red Army soldiers to pieces. ”

There is no one more at a loss than these Stalinist generals. In just a few seconds after the bombardment began, the Soviet communications facilities were blown to pieces by shells, and the communication between the command and the regiments and divisions had been cut off, so they decided to immediately go to the line of fire. The division commanders took only one staff officer and one driver with them, and left for the battlefield early the next morning.

The cars of the division commanders shuttled through the barrage, constantly jumping up and down, and finally left the barrage easily, when suddenly, they were hit by a group of Chinese fighters. Many people were fatally injured and collapsed in the car. The driver of the car frantically reversed the car, only paying attention to avoiding the incoming bullets, but did not notice the ravines and huge craters in the road, many cars were hit and caught fire, and some officers tried to climb out of the cars, but they did not succeed, and collapsed during the attack of the Chinese fighters, never to get up again.

In this way, not long after the battle began, the Soviet army temporarily fell into a situation without command.

Despite the terrible blow, the Soviets did not retreat, and a stubborn will prevailed. Bauer of the 38 regiment of the Soviet "Red Banner"? Captain Koshcin, facing the earth-shattering hail of bullets, felt "as if I had drunk a few bottles of vodka." He shouted to his panicked men: "Don't be afraid! Comrade Stalin is watching us! - We haven't fired a single shot yet! He drew his pistol and drove the frightened soldiers into position, holding their heads and not moving, until the Chinese artillery fire forced him to quickly take cover.

(To be continued)