Arc of Gunfire

Jules January 16, 915, Kubinka, the station of the mobile army being formed.

At the same time, this is also the residence of the "Royal Yulin Army" among many Yebao people.

Kubinka was originally a royal training ground, with a status equivalent to that of Zhu Rihe in our army. Wang Zhong also made full use of this condition to train troops here every day while organizing his troops.

When the new tanks were delivered, the troops were practicing infantry-tank coordination, so when they saw these Shermans and Crusaders coming in, all the soldiers saw them.

Yegorov was organizing a drill. When he saw this scene, he directly ordered: "Take a 30-minute break and I'll go see what's going on."

"Can we go too?" the veteran asked, having known Yegorov for a long time.

Yegorov: "Stay! The general won't mind if you mess around, I will."

"You are also a general." Alexander Alexandrovich, who succeeded Pavlov as chief of staff of the 1st Guards, said.

Yegorov lowered his head and looked at his collar badge: "Indeed. I have never thought that I could be a general in my life. You and the military bishop look at them, and I'll go see what's going on."

Ivan Petrovich, who succeeded Popov as the commander of the 1st Infantry Guards, said: "Go ahead. If there is good equipment, try to give it to our division."

Yegorov grinned: "Of course. When General Rokossov was the division commander, he led us everywhere to get equipment. Now it's his turn to be annoyed by me!"

Many old soldiers laughed.

Yegorov strutted towards the new equipment.

Chief of Staff Alexander asked Ivan Petrovich: "Vanya (Ivan's nickname), look at his swagger, can you imagine that he is the old man who drank drunkenly because he missed his dead wife last night?"

Before Bishop Ivan could speak, a soldier next to him joked: "Tell me more about drinking wine."

In the end, the person who asked the question was a new soldier, but he was slapped on the forehead by the veteran soldier: "Don't make fun of this kind of thing! The division commander's wife and children were all killed in the enemy's artillery fire!"

Ivan, the military bishop, glanced at the educated recruits and said, "The teacher may not care about your teasing, but you have to be polite, right? In addition to teaching you culture, the night school also teaches you etiquette!"

The night school was a night activity started by General Rokossov. Because the Ant Army did not have the practice of continuing to use time at night before, the soldiers had great objections at first.

Later, General Rokossov took two measures to increase everyone's enthusiasm. The first was to establish a system. As long as he passed the night school graduation assessment, he could be added to the glorious armored force and charge into battle with the general.

The second is that in the weekly night school summary, soldiers who receive excellent evaluations can get a bottle of vodka and are allowed to drink on the weekends and do not participate in additional training on the weekends.

It is not yet known whether the first measure is effective because no soldiers have passed the night school graduation exam.

The second measure was extremely effective. Every weekend, soldiers who performed well in night classes would get together to drink, making everyone else envious of them - and the others still needed extra training.

Petrovich took this opportunity to educate the soldiers, and once again put his hands behind his back and looked in the direction of the new equipment: "I hope the division commander can get some good stuff."

Chief of Staff Alexander said: "I hope it will be a tank with a thick barrel. The barrel of another tank looks similar to our 45mm gun. It looks weak at first glance."

Immediately, a veteran said: "The protection doesn't look good. Tanks with thick barrels at least have a slanted front."

A considerable part of the infantry has not even graduated from the tenth grade, so they only know that the T34 has good protection because the armor is slanted, but they don't understand much more.

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Wang Zhong was arranging for people at the shooting range to set up dummies when he heard someone calling his name: "General!"

You don't need to think that the person who would call the general directly like this must be an old man with whom he is familiar. He turned around and saw it was Yegorov.

"Yegorov, you guy!" Wang Zhong said with a smile, "You are here to get equipment, right?"

Yegorov pointed at Sherman: "I want this!"

Wang Zhong: "This has been decided to be handed over to Davarisi of the Melania People's Army. They have people from the Free Melania Army in the United Kingdom who have used this."

Yegorov curled his lips: "When you get promoted, you won't care about the old troops any more!"

Wang Zhong: "What are you talking about! The first person to complete the T34W training field is Yijibu."

Yegorov: "I only have one battalion, it's not enough, let's get another battalion!"

Wang Zhong: "You are an infantry division, not a tank division. Although I think your division should be more effective than the Tukhachev tank division in combat."

I don’t know if it is the result of someone’s active guidance. Now in the army, the tank divisions formed during the Tukhachev era that lacked everything except tanks are called Tukhachev tank divisions. And these tanks produced by Wang Zhong A large-scale division composed of a battalion and a large number of other troops and arms is called a "new-style division" or a "Rokosov tank division."

After Yegorov knew that there was no hope of getting a new tank, he stopped looking at Sherman and turned to the Crusader anti-aircraft gun: "What is this ugly thing?"

Wang Zhong: "Crusader-style self-propelled anti-aircraft gun."

While talking, he suddenly had an idea. If the 25mm anti-aircraft cannon is called light air defense, and the 85mm anti-aircraft cannon is called heavy air defense, then is the 40mm Bofors like the Crusaders called medium air defense?

As a veteran player of Hearts of Iron 4, his favorite thing to do is to put a self-propelled anti-aircraft defense in an infantry division to improve the armor rating of the entire division, because the game only looks at the armor of the unit with the thickest armor in the division when calculating the enemy's armor-piercing ability. , if the enemy's armor-piercing ability is not enough to penetrate the armor, the entire division will become harder.

This behavior is commonly known as mixed gold shield, so Hearts of Iron players have a unique preference for mid-air defense that can provide gold shield, anti-air defense and soft target killing, and is also cheap.

Wang Zhong's Guards already has a battalion of tanks, and may add another tank destroyer battalion equipped with vortexes in the future. The armor strength is not weak. In the game, there is actually no need to use this kind of "Gundam Division" Anti-aircraft guns come "mixed with gold shields".

But in reality, the armored units of this elite division need reliable self-propelled anti-aircraft guns to provide accompanying air defense.

Wang Zhong: "This anti-aircraft gun will be strengthened to the level of a guard machine step, providing accompanying air defense for the armored forces."

Yegorov immediately frowned: "This doesn't look strong!"

Wang Zhong: "Not strong?"

He turned and asked the officer at the shooting range: "Have the targets been set up?"

"The generals have been laid out, including the aerial targets hoisted by balloons and the dummies on the ground."

Wang Zhong looked at the Crusader anti-aircraft guns - they were now manned by United Kingdom military instructors who had flown in.

"Tell the instructor to shoot the air target first and be careful not to hit the balloon."

After he finished speaking, Vasily immediately translated.

The instructor made an OK gesture, and then the Crusader turned the muzzle and fired at the target in the air.

Wang Zhong heard Yegorov yell next to him: "This movement!"

After all, Bofors is only 5 mm smaller in caliber than the 45 mm anti-tank gun used by the Ante Army, and even larger than the 37 mm gun equipped with the early Prosen III tank. This thing makes a lot of noise when fired continuously. Scary.

The target was shot down in a series of air explosions and fell to the ground with a bang.

Wang Zhong: "Let them shoot the houses."

The training ground has brick houses used to practice indoor melee combat, and also used to test the damage of various artillery shells to targets in the houses. Dummies are now also set up in these houses.

After Vasily conveyed the order, the Crusaders leveled their machine guns, aimed them at the house, and started shooting.

When Bofors fired, a layer of dust would be blown up from the ground with each shot. This thing was a dust collector, which suddenly caused a large cloud of smoke around the Crusaders.

On the other side of the target, high-explosive shells hit the brick wall continuously, tearing apart the solid brick wall piece by piece, and broken bricks flew everywhere.

The dummy placed outside the house was directly smashed, and the dummy inside the room was not spared. The one standing at the window was directly smashed, and the one hiding inside was probably also beaten into pieces.

The wall facing Bofors of the brick house was directly demolished.

Wang Zhong: "Cease fire!"

Vasily: "Sisfael!"

Stop shooting.

The shooting range personnel rushed to the house to check the situation inside, and soon a report came from the walkie-talkie in the hand of the shooting range officer: "The ten dummies were damaged to varying degrees, and all were determined to be injured."

Wang Zhonggang looked at Yegorov, who said, "I want this! I just don't know if this thing is good at anti-armor."

Wang Zhong said to Vasily: "Let them change armor-piercing bombs, bring one of the Panzer III tanks, Panzer IV tanks and half-track vehicles we captured, and put dummies inside."

This time the preparation took a little longer, so Wang Zhong chatted with Yegorov: "How does it feel to be a division commander?"

"It's great, I can't wait to beat up the Prosen Japs." Yegorov said.

Wang Zhong: "I heard that you often drink alcohol?"

Yegorov: "If you don't have time to fight the Prosen Japs, there will be no problem if you start fighting them."

Wang Zhong patted Yegorov on the shoulder: "It's still early. I estimate that the Prosins will not start a new offensive until April."

Yegorov: "Are we attacking the capital again?"

Many officers around him looked over immediately after hearing this.

Wang Zhong: "No, the enemy's plan to quickly force us to surrender has been ruined. At this time, the importance of Ye Fort is not that great, at least not as large as our oil-producing area in the south. General Gorky and I both judged that the enemy's main attack this year The direction is south."

Yegorov: "So there will be no attack on the central front and the north?"

"How is it possible? The enemy needs to hold back our forces, so we will attack in the north, center and south, but in other directions we will conduct diversionary operations."

At this time the range officer reported: "The target is ready."

Wang Zhong: "Aim at the half-track vehicle first and fire."

Without waiting for Vasily to translate, the Crusaders opened fire directly. After a few shots, the half-track vehicle burst into flames - this vehicle had just arrived at the shooting range, so naturally there was oil and engine oil inside that could burn.

Yegorov: "Oh, not bad."

Wang Zhong: "Aim at the No. 3 tank."

Soon the Crusaders opened fire. The armor-piercing bullets first raised the headlights of the Panzer III tank, and then broke the tracks.

Yegorov: "Not bad, it can break the tracks!"

If the track breaks on the battlefield, the crew will temporarily abandon the vehicle, and a tow vehicle will be called to tow it later.

Yegorov was obviously very happy to be able to break the tracks, but the Crusaders were still shooting. He didn't know where he hit, and No. 3 suddenly caught fire.

Yegorov: "Oh oh oh, okay, okay, give me a whole battalion for this!"