"Hopefully you'll find oil here." After completely cleaning up the Soviet troops outside the castle, Liu Hanliang said. The assault force had more than 20 armoured personnel carriers (i.e., tanks observed by the Soviets' radars) and was running out of fuel due to the long journey, and if they were not effectively replenished, they would have suffered as they returned after completing their mission.

To their surprise, when they entered the castle, they met no resistance.

The bunker was filled with a thick smell of gunsmoke and blood, and there were bloody corpses of Soviet soldiers everywhere.

After searching for about an hour, they finally determined that there were no more enemies left here that could resist.

"Sir, I've found them." Sergeant Li Ming hurriedly ran to report to Captain Liu Hanliang, "The identity is confirmed, it is my own person, but it is someone from the FBI, ......"

"FBI guys?" Liu Hanliang and Gu Dewen glanced at each other and smiled bitterly, "It's really amazing that their hands can reach so far!" ”

"Go over and have a look, sir." Sergeant Li Ming stuck out his tongue, "These people are all monsters, and there are few normal ones." ”

"Let's search carefully, don't slip through the net." After Liu Hanliang finished the order, he said to Li Ming, "Take me over to find their leader." ”

Li Ming took Liu Hanliang, Gu Dewen and others to walk around the castle for a while, and came to a hall.

His eyes widened in surprise when he saw a huge rocket with a long pointed head erected under the high dome.

Here, it was the rocket launch fort of the Soviet army.

Next to the rocket, there stood a tall giant, with a face covered with long white hair and a pair of big copper bells, and when he saw Captain Liu Hanliang coming in, he grinned at him, revealing Sensen's white teeth.

Rao is Liu Hanliang has been in battle for a long time, and when he saw him, he couldn't help but fight a cold war.

"Are you the captain?" Liu Hanliang greeted him and asked.

The giant shook his head, stretched out his large, furry hand, and pointed in one direction. Liu Hanliang looked in the direction he was pointing and saw a beautiful girl, and there was a female warrior standing next to the girl.

Liu Hanliang's eyes widened in disbelief, he turned his head and looked at the giant with a puzzled gaze, and the giant grinned again and nodded.

"Captain, can you contact the bombers?" The girl didn't look at Liu Hanliang, but stared at the huge rocket.

"You want to destroy this place?" Liu Hanliang understood what she meant and asked rhetorically.

"Yes." The girl turned her head to look at him, nodded, and seeing the girl's bright and unbelievable appearance, Liu Hanliang's breathing couldn't help but become a little rougher.

"It's no problem to contact the bombers," Liu Hanliang said, "but even if the bombers come, they may not be able to destroy this place." ”

"Why?" The female warrior beside the girl looked at him and asked.

"It takes more than 3,000 tons of cement to build this roof alone, and it's so strong that our bombers, whether it's the Army or the Air Force, are now not equipped with bombs that can destroy it." Liu Hanliang said, "Even if they come, they are also in vain." ”

"I see." A hint of disappointment flashed in the female warrior's eyes, "It looks like it's troublesome to destroy this place!" ”

"What did you do before you joined the army? Captain? The girl asked.

"I'm a construction engineer." Liu Hanliang smiled and replied.

"I don't think it's better not to ruin this place." Captain Goodwin said suddenly.

"Why?" The female warrior looked at him with some surprise and asked.

"It is not easy to build such a large-scale rocket launch site." "The Soviets built such a launch site here to launch rockets to hit us, but if this launch site falls into the hands of our military, we can also shoot these rockets to Moscow, right?" ”

"But this is behind enemy lines, and our troops are still far from here!" The female warrior, Yang Jingyi, said a little anxiously, "If we don't destroy this place, after we leave, the Soviets will reoccupy this place." ”

"You can explain the situation to your superiors and ask them to send paratroopers to come and wait for the arrival of armored troops." Liu Hanliang agreed with Gu Dewen's opinion and said, "Our troops will fight here soon, and we can hold this place before they come here." ”

"Also, it's a pity that such a good rocket was destroyed in vain and didn't hit Stalin's head." Yang Jingyi looked at the rocket and sighed.

"Why did you think to keep this place and these rockets?" Suniana looked at Captain Goodwin and asked.

"I've seen the power of a rocket like this." Goodwin smiled, as if admiring the girl's keen insight, "Actually, this thing is not a new thing, it is in the armored instructor, and it was used in this battle." But not this kind of fixed launch in the bunker, but with a car dragging the launch rack, moving the launcher. ”

"What?" Yang Jingyi couldn't help but be taken aback when she heard his answer, "Our troops are already equipped with this kind of rocket?" ”

"Of course," Gudvin, remembering the astonishing scene he had seen when he first arrived at Sverdlovsk, his eyes became a little dazed, "and there are quite a few of them. ”

At this moment, as Goodvin said, on the outskirts of Sverdlovsk, rocket launches are underway.

"Are you really going to launch all the missiles?"

Yu Wenlong, the captain of the missile launch team to which the armored instructor belonged, looked at Dongfang Bai, who was pale, and asked a little strangely.

"Hasn't the location of the enemy's assembly already been determined?" Dongfang Bai looked restless, and his voice was also irritable, "Then shoot it all!" Blow them up! ”

"Yes, sir." Seeing that Dongfang Bai was a little hysterical, Yu Wenlong didn't say anything more, but gave the battle order. The officers and men of the missile unit immediately gathered around the launch vehicle and began to get busy.

Looking at the sword-like "Sirius" rocket erected on a launch vehicle, Dongfang Bai calmed down a little.

Officers who come from staff officers have such shortcomings, and whenever there is a stalemate in the battle, they will instinctively choose to avoid bloody battles, but face them with a more flexible attitude, or choose to escape. At this time, they will also become emotionally agitated, and at the same time, the panic will greatly reduce the level of command.

As a typical "staff officer", these shortcomings are now exposed in Dongfang Bai.

In these days of fighting, although the Chinese [***] team achieved a great victory (of course, such a victory was also contributed by Dongfang Bai's "strong play"), but in this border battle, which lasted for 80 days, it also suffered huge losses. According to current statistics, in the first 10 days of fighting alone, the army lost 21,087 people (of which 8,886 were killed, 2,707 were missing, and 9,494 were wounded, not counting the sick and the losses of the Chinese Navy and Air Force, not counting the losses of the Chinese army on the southern front). And in the first 13 days of June, the Chinese army lost more than 30,000 men. Its total losses in this battle amounted to more than 52,000 people, of which about 20,000 were killed.

The above figures are obviously not small, but according to the latest figures released, the actual death toll of the Chinese army on the Eastern Front reached 25,000 in May and 63,099 in June (China's wartime statistics were 8,886 in May and 37,584 in June). From this, the actual number of Chinese casualties during the Battle of Sverdlov is estimated to be around 50,000, while the total number of casualties should be around 150,000 according to conservative estimates. On the southern front, the Chinese army lost another 7,000 men.

In the fierce and brutal battle, the Chinese army also suffered heavy losses in technology and weapons. According to the front-line quartermaster, as of June 30, the first armored units to go on the offensive had lost 12% of their tanks (about 1,700 units), but most of them had been repaired, and 616 tanks and self-propelled guns were eventually lost. In addition, the Chinese army also lost 2,154 vehicles, tractors, and more than 3,000 motorcycles.

Since the beginning of the war, in May, the number of aircraft lost by the Chinese Air Force in combat on the Eastern Front was 472 (186 horizontal bombers). By June 5, 607 aircraft had been lost in the fighting in the USSR. By June 22, the loss figure had risen to 786. Aircraft lost due to breakdowns and accidents are not included. In terms of personnel, in the nine days of fighting in June alone, Chinese pilots (excluding ground crews) lost 156 people on the Eastern Front, another 229 were wounded and 118 were missing.

The stubborn resistance of the Soviet Red Army not only inflicted huge losses on the Chinese army, but also left a deep impression on them. General Lu Wei, Chief of Staff of the Chinese 4th Army, recalled: "Even in the first battle (for Sverdlovsk), the Soviet troops were more tenacious than their own army, and they still held their positions and continued to fight when they were surrounded." Hu Lian, on the other hand, described his enemies in his personal letters as follows: "The Russians are not like Yu himself, they have been defeated tactically, but they still refuse to flee, and must kill them one by one in a half-forest and half-swamp." Jiang Baili told her female secretary, Li Xiaoxian, that the Russian soldiers would rather blow themselves up in their bunkers than surrender to the Chinese army. After listening to Jiang Baili's assessment, the female secretary wrote: "We have seen the tenacity of the Russian soldiers, and if they command more reasonably, they will be equal to us." Thanks to the fact that they don't have that kind of leadership. ”

And in the course of the battle, the large number of technical equipment of the Soviet Red Army also surprised the Chinese. "Again and again the equipment of the enemy forces has shocked us", exclaimed a lieutenant [***] officer after inspecting the battlefield. And this shock was especially evident in tanks. The Red Army's "T-34" tank and "KV" tank dealt a certain blow to the superiority of the Chinese in armored weapons, and the strangely shaped Soviet multi-turret tank also impressed the Chinese army. In this regard, Admiral Zhong Liwei, who is an authority on China's tank technology, also had to sigh: "How can a nation that has fallen into madness achieve such technological achievements." ”

The performance of the Soviet Air Force in the engagements was also remarkable (the Air Force was a branch of the military that Stalin loved to use in emergencies). During the campaign, the bombers of the Soviet Red Army continued to attack Chinese ground targets in dozens or even hundreds. The range of attacks included not only the front-line troops of the Chinese army, but also airfields and industrial targets in depth. According to Chinese statistics, from 2 May to 20 June, the Soviet Air Force carried out more than 1,000 attacks on Chinese military airfields with 3,700 sorties. Although it is said that in the attack on the deep target of the [***] team, there is a lack of relatively successful examples. Beginning on 23 June, Soviet long-range bomber aviation also attacked a number of bases in Mongolia and Kazakhstan proper. However, in most cases, due to the lack of fighter cover and the sluggishness of the formation, the Soviet air raids often suffered huge losses under the intensive antiaircraft artillery fire of the Chinese army and the interception of the advanced "woolly rhino" fighters, but the actual damage caused to the Chinese army was very limited. In just one day on June 27, the Soviet Air Force lost hundreds of bombers in the attack on Mongolia. In one of the battles in the south, the Soviet Air Force, with the loss of 43 bombers, shot down only 5 Chinese "swiftlets" fighters with limited self-defense firepower. If we take into account the difference in the surnames of the aircraft of the two sides, it should be said that the Soviet bomber pilots did a good job.

Compared with shooting down Soviet bombers that could lag behind and have no cover, the Chinese Air Force fought against Soviet fighters not so easily. Although a large number of "I-15" and "I-16" fighters lagged far behind Chinese fighters in terms of speed, firepower, and airborne equipment, and there were too many rookies among Soviet pilots, a small number of outstanding Soviet pilots were still able to fly these old planes to shoot down advanced Chinese planes in air combat. And in the case of new Soviet fighters, the Chinese Air Force is even more challenged. Therefore, while shooting down a large number of opposing fighters, China's fighter losses are also very serious. Take, for example, the 2nd Fighter Wing of the 51st Air Force. On 24 May, the wing had 160 first-class "woolly rhino" fighters, but from 2 June to 25 June, it lost as many as 59 fighters.

All of this has caused great pressure on Dongfang Bai (although these losses cannot be counted on his head alone), and now he is on the verge of collapse under pressure, and he only hopes to end the battle as soon as possible. As long as there is a way to speed up the course of the battle, he is willing to give it a try. Ordering all the remaining "Sirius" missiles to be launched was actually a sign that he was on the verge of a mental breakdown. Nearing the end of the campaign, he regarded this epoch-making advanced weapon as the last straw.

After the end of the First World War, China vigorously carried out research work on military rockets very early. In order to seek new weapons that will ensure that the Chinese armed forces will have military superiority in future wars, the authorities naturally set their attention on the research and development of rocket weapons.

China's work in this field began with the improvement of solid-fuel rockets that had been discovered long ago, and after repeated improvements, their power has been increased. Other scientists began experimenting with rockets using new liquid fuels.

In 1925, Chinese scientists experimented with rocket engines on competition cars produced by the company Renhe. The trial did not produce the desired results. But Chinese scientists have set out to expand the testing of rocket engines in new areas.

Chinese scientists attach great importance to the development of rocket technology. In 1927, a group of enthusiastic Chinese scientists and engineers led by Dr. Shi Guangyuan established a non-governmental academic organization, the famous China Astronautical Association. It has the purpose of "for the benefit of mankind". The organization attracts a group of rocket experts represented by Professor Wang Xiyi. They conducted the initial tests on rudimentary liquid rockets at the Aerospace Association's rocket launch test site on the outskirts of Yenching. Their research and development and testing have been restricted by various conditions, the most difficult of which is the lack of funds.

Engineer Feng Tianming, a young and promising up-and-comer, was inspired by some scientific materials written by anonymous people and developed a keen interest in rocket research. He recognized that this was a promising undertaking that would certainly serve the military. He was not affected by the prejudice of most Zihang members that "they are not with the army", and took the initiative to seek help from Major General Xie Xun, who was in charge of this work in the Chinese Army.

Xie Xun had participated in World War I, when he was a low-ranking artillery commander in the Chinese army. During the war, the Germans used a cannon with an extra-long barrel on the Western Front, the 39-meter-long "Paris Cannon". The shells fired by this big guy can actually fly in atmospheric space with very little air resistance. The artillery was fired at a distance of 120 kilometers. This left a deep impression on Xie Xun. Xie Xun was interested in artillery, so he actively engaged in research in this area and studied for a doctorate.

In 1930, the Chinese Army was ordered to accept the task of secretly researching rockets, and the army selected and appointed Xie Xun, who was in the prime of life and had research on artillery, to be directly responsible for the work. Xie Xun turned his attention to the Chinese Astronautical Association, and he was determined to attract this group of knowledgeable and dedicated scientists and engineers to his work.

Feng Tianming was only about 20 years old at the time, and he was an unknown person. Xie Xun did not underestimate this energetic engineer and arranged for him to work in the Army's Missile Division. Becoming the first scientific and technological personnel engaged in military research among the members of the Word Aviation Association, Feng Tianming was like a fish in water and found a broad world to display his talents.

(To be continued)