The "Rhinoceros" turned out to be a "coolie cannon", and whoever owns it is destined to sell coolies day and night on the battlefield. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

This is the post-war Gustav. Major Schwarzenegger's assessment of the "Rhino" tank destroyer. In his opinion, the "Rhinoceros" is not a tank destroyer at all, but a universal cannon that can fight tanks, infantry and work, and if the 10-mm steel roof is removed, it may even be able to fight an airplane.

In fact, the 88-mm STUK36L/56 main gun mounted on the "Rhino" tank destroyer was improved from an anti-aircraft gun. This cannon is exactly the same as the 88mm KWK36L/56 main gun used by the Tiger tank, but it is mounted on a tank destroyer, so it bears the name STUK (assault cannon).

In fact, the main gun of a Tiger tank was equipped with a certain amount of armor and the territory of tank No. 4. Now it can go where tank No. 4 can go, and most of the targets that tank No. 4 can't hit can be killed. Moreover, when the "Rhinoceros" was designed, special consideration was given to the commonality of parts and components with the No. 4 tank, so the tank repair company that can repair the No. 4 tank can also repair the "Rhinoceros" tank destroyer, which is really a cheap and high-quality mechanized weapon.

As a result, the 5th SS Tank Destroyer Battalion, equipped with the Rhino tank destroyers, was quickly dismantled into pieces and assigned to various panzer battle groups under the 5th SS Panzer Division. These battle groups usually consist of a tank company, two Panzergrenadier companies, then an Armoured Reconnaissance Company, an Armoured Engineer Company, a number of auxiliary units, and finally a few (usually 6-8) Rhino coolies.

Therefore, Major Schwarzenegger, the commander of the 5th Tank Destroyer Battalion, has been in office for more than ten days, and when it was time to go to the battlefield, he did not recognize all the platoon commanders below him, because these platoon commanders were in various armored battle groups.

And Major Schwarzenegger himself also got a "Schwarzenegger battalion-level battle group" that belonged to him on August 25, that is, yesterday, and today he will command this battle group to fight the Soviet Red Army.

Boom Boom Boom ......

The rumbling sound of artillery reached Major Schwarzenegger, who was the artillery group of the 4th Panzer Army shelling targets on the Soviet lines in front of them. By the time the shelling was over, Major Schwarzenegger was going to lead his battle group on the offensive.

According to the battle plan, the initial stage of the offensive should have been smooth. Because the Soviet Red Army adopted a large-depth defense in front of Lithuania, there were not many troops on the front line, and it was still easy to break through.

The 5th SS Panzer Division, on the other hand, had a large number of grenadiers and auxiliaries because of its combat experience. Therefore, General Hult of the 4th Panzer Army sent a pathfinder drudgery, and divided 6 battalion battle groups (all 1000-1200 people) to advance in the direction of Minsk, attacking while looking for Soviet armored clusters. After encountering the Soviet armored group, they prepared for a hard battle, waiting for the follow-up German tank sea to come over.

Because it had long been identified that the strength of the Soviet front line was weak, the shelling did not last long. It only took 90 minutes of bombardment before it came to an abrupt halt.

"Attention comrades, I am Major Schwarzenegger, and now I give the order to start the vehicle. SS soldiers, forward! ”

Major Schwarzenegger marched in a half-track armored command vehicle, and as soon as the shelling stopped, he ordered all the vehicles of the battle group, which had long been in battle formation, to launch. Then they jumped out of the starting position, followed the route opened up by howitzers and rocket artillery, and rumbled towards the Soviet position.

……

"Comrade Commander, the 29th Army reports that the German offensive has begun." At the General Headquarters of the Belorussian Front in Minsk, the Chief of Staff of the Belorussian Front of the Red Army, Major General Lyapin, in a very calm tone, reported to the commander Vasilevsky what had just been received.

"Okay, it's finally getting started." Vasilevsky also appeared unhurried, because the attack had long been expected by the Supreme High Command. Otherwise, the Reserve Front would not have been transferred to Belarus, and the name of the Belarusian Front would have been changed.

And in order to cope with the imminent attack of the German army, the strength of the Belarusian Front has been strengthened for the past half month.

In addition to the original 7 armies, including the 24th, 25th, 26th, 27th, 32nd, 33rd and 1st Assault Army, four armies, including the 37th Army, the 9th Army, the 4th Army, and the 28th Army, were also obtained from the Western Front, bringing the total strength to 11 armies.

In addition, the internal affairs troops of the Belarusian and Smolensk regions formed 10 internal guard divisions on the instructions of Stalin. Minsk, Vitebsk, Mogilev, Gomel (all of which belong to East Belarus), Smolensk and other places have also formed 12 militia divisions with military subdivisions as the backbone.

If you add to the artillery, air force, reserve forces and a number of other units directly under the command of the Front. Now the total strength of the Belarusian Front has exceeded 1.3 million! They were almost equal in numbers to the German Army Group North, which was being engaged.

Moreover, the Belarusian Front now also has a powerful armored strike force. The 37th Army, the 9th Army, the 4th Army and the 4th Army of the 28th Army, which were mobilized from the Western Front, had a total of 6 tank corps or mechanized corps.

In addition, the Belarusian Front has the newly formed 1st Shock Army, a rapid army group consisting of 2 tank corps and 1 cavalry corps. Armed with a large number of T-34/57 tanks (each tank regiment had a battalion armed with T-34/57, while the establishment of tanks of the KV series was canceled), the army group was the trump card in the hands of the Belarusian Front.

However, the Belarusian Front, with its strong forces, did not put more than a million troops on the front line. Instead, the tactics of large-depth defense were adopted, with few troops on the front line, and the tactics of exchanging space for defense were adopted, and mechanized troops were concentrated in Brest, Minsk, and Smolensk. The 1st Army, the ace of the assault, was located just outside Minsk, because the Soviet High Command estimated that Minsk was the most likely target of the German Army Group North.

……

Major Schwarzenegger was now on his way to Minsk, and the Soviets were right, and the Germans were the capital of Belarus. There was the closest place along the Warsaw-Moscow railway to Vilnius, the logistical supply center of the German army. It has been an important border town of the Soviet Union since the 20s, and if Minsk is not taken or encircled, Guderian and Manstein will definitely live in fear all day in the next month or two.

"Let the rhinoceros fire! Bomb that village with high-explosive shells! ”

At 8 a.m. on August 26, the Schwarzenegger battle group met Soviet resistance in Oshmya, Belarus, about 10 km from the Liby-Belarusian border (Lithuania and Belarus), in a converted collective farm settlement. It had been subjected to heavy shelling one hour earlier, and there were bomb craters all around, and most of the houses in the settlement seemed to have collapsed.

However, an infantry company of the 254th Division of the Red Army, which was guarding here, did not retreat, and refused the persuasion of an old white man to surrender, and used a sniper rifle to blow the poor white-bearded old man in the head - in fact, this old white man also suffered a life, and he persuaded a unit composed of internal guards of the Moscow region, all of whom were Cheka soldiers with Moscow hukou, loyal to the cause of GCISM!

"Boom, boom, boom......"

As soon as Major Schwarzenegger gave the order, the six "coolie guns" immediately began to roar, and the 88mm caliber shells were smashed very accurately on the fire points of the Red Army on the outskirts of this settlement. The houses of the collective farms are no better than the solid buildings of the big cities, which are stacked with reinforced concrete, where can they withstand the bombardment of 88mm guns? It didn't take long for them to be bombarded into ruins, and then the Panzergrenadiers turned a hundred or so Cheka fighters who were dazed by the artillery into revolutionary martyrs or anti-G-Natologists with a single charge.

However, the Cheka fighters with a Moscow hukou still had a different consciousness from ordinary Red Army soldiers. Before being taken prisoner, their company commander made an impassioned speech to the battalion headquarters by telephone, claiming that they had been attacked by a German armored regiment with "heavy tanks", and now they had fought to the last moment, most of the fighters had died heroically, the ammunition was almost exhausted, and the soldiers who were still alive had made up their minds to carry anti-tank grenades and German tanks to die together!

"Comrade Commander, 6 armored regiments, maybe 6 regimental armored clusters." The chief of staff of the 29th Army, Colonel Zharalev, told the commander of the army, Major General Shvetsov, after counting the reports from the front, that "and all of them have Tiger heavy tanks (due to the propaganda of the Germans themselves, the Soviets already know that the heavy tanks that made them suffer so much on the battlefield of Warsaw are called Tiger tanks)...... It seems that the 254th and 256th Divisions faced the enemy with 2-3 elite German Panzer Divisions. ”

"Are there armored units in other directions where the Germans were found?" Major General Shvetsov asked.

His 29th Army is now playing the role of cannon fodder, and its subordinate 245th, 252nd, 254th, and 256th divisions are spread along the Libai border, opening a very thin defensive line. It was not to block the enemy's breakthrough, but to find out the direction of the enemy's main attack, and at the same time to delay the German offensive.

"A large number of No. 4 tanks and Tiger tanks were not found, only No. 3 assault gun and another light assault gun (Weasel 2)."

Major General Shvetsov nodded and said: "The situation seems to be more or less as expected, and the main direction of attack of the Germans is really Minsk." (To be continued.) )