Suddenly, a soft female voice sounded from the loudspeaker in the cabin.
"Dear comrades passengers, welcome to the Alliance Special Civil Aviation flight. Our terminal is Tula. There were some bumps when the plane took off. Please fasten your seat belts. Our flight time is expected to be three hours.
For those who are in a hurry during the flight, the toilet is at the end of the cabin..."
That was the voice of Gorizodubova, and now she actually used a lot of rhetoric about civil aviation. In line with her status as a soldier, this rhetoric was really humorous.
Yang Mingzhi then thought about it. When she introduced herself, she said that she was a civil aviation pilot, and she bravely joined the Air Force because of the outbreak of the war.
By the way, what she said was really interesting, and the cabin was filled with sneers.
"Okay! Comrades, I am Gorizodubova, commander of the 101st Long-range Aviation Regiment. Now, let's move forward!"
This transport aircraft seems to be the civil aviation version, only the turret in the middle of the cabin was added later.
Yang Mingzhi was surprised to find that the so-called seat belts were two wide canvas ropes. His arms were passed through them, and his body was basically fixed to the seat.
Yang Tao's hands still grasped her husband's arms, even though she was already fixed by the seat belt.
"Brother! There's absolutely no danger for us flying in the air, right?"
"Of course, there will only be bumps during takeoff. Now keep dragging me."
"Well, I listen to you."
Holding her husband's arm, Yang Tao felt calm. Suddenly, she felt that the entire cabin began to vibrate. The plane was about to take off?!
The sky is dark, Mars and the moon are reflecting each other, the last light of the sun will disappear, and darkness will immediately cover the earth.
Yang Mingzhi felt that the seat he was sitting in was not bad. Through the porthole, he could see not only the propeller on one side, but also the slightly raised wingtips. The beacon and anti-collision lights that emitted red light kept flashing. The sound insulation effect of the cabin was pretty good.
, the roar from the propeller announced that the plane was about to take off.
Ten transport planes, each overloaded with passengers.
Its designed maximum take-off weight is close to twelve tons. If it is overweight, it does not mean that it will never fly. It will require a long run-up and the pilot's perfect operating ability. To pull up the huge body of the aircraft, if you pull it accidentally,
Too much, and the crash caused by the sudden speed will result in no survivors.
It can be said that Gorizodubova's somewhat darkly humorous civil aviation-style conversation was intended to calm the restless hearts of passengers.
Now she is under tremendous pressure, risking her entire life's honor and even her own life.
The plane would run up against the north wind, and the wings would gain greater lift. She calmed down, and after giving the order to the crews over the intercom to line up for takeoff, she made up her mind, pulled the wrench to the bottom, and the engine instantly entered full throttle.
power status.
Each transport plane carried some spare fuel, and the remaining fuel was enough to fly to Tula. However, the fuel of each crew was by no means rich. There must be no mistakes in this return flight. The formation must rush towards the destination airport.
Why? There are nine transport planes full of children. Once one crashes, it means the death of a hundred people.
All the crew members obeyed Gorizodubova's order, and everyone made a concerted effort to watch the lead plane begin to slowly accelerate to take off.
The huge and heavy aircraft ran wildly on the flat dirt road. Its overall weight was nearly eleven tons, which was almost the same weight as the No. 3 assault gun with its ammunition unloaded.
The plane was like an albatross, running at maximum power and trying to fly against the howling north wind.
It was not light, and Yang Mingzhi was under a lot of pressure in the cockpit. He also felt that his left arm was clamped tighter by his wife. Through the cabin lights, he could see that Yang Tao had her eyes closed, and the whole image looked like a frightened rabbit.
"Honey, it's not that scary. The plane is bouncing and soon it will be flying."
"That's right!" Liu Hongxiu acted as if nothing was wrong. She interjected playfully: "Sister, it's not that scary. Just look out the window. Soon we will be soaring like eagles."
Finally the turbulence was over, so the heavy plane flew above the forest.
Gorizodubova's forehead was covered with sweat. She took a breath and picked up the intercom again to broadcast into the cabin: "Comrades! We are taking off! Cheer."
Except for the poor German prisoner of war Hendrickson, everyone in the cabin was shouting "Ula."
Most people were flying for the first time. This extraordinary experience in life was exciting. The thought of traveling to the capital of the motherland filled people with feverish excitement.
Until the people sitting by the porthole noticed the world outside the window and saw a silver dragon embedded in the forest.
At this moment, the last afterglow of the sun has disappeared, the dazzling Milky Way covers the sky, and the Mars next to the incomplete moonlight is also shining exceptionally.
Today in Eastern Europe, you will be able to see the beautiful sight of Mars transiting the moon at night. It is said that this scene is not uncommon. The Slavic people have absorbed a lot of Roman culture, and combined with their inherent culture, they have special feelings for the moon and Mars.
The moon god and the god of war complement each other, what does this mean? Maybe it is a good omen.
All ten transport planes took off. Under the night, through a series of signal lights on the wings and tail, the crews identified each other. It was through these signal lights that they skillfully formed a herringbone formation of geese at night.
Sitting at the nose of the aircraft, Gorizodubova looked left and right. Her lead aircraft took on the role of "lead goose". She saw the wingmen on the left and right sides lined up, and she had one less worry to worry about.
She picked up the walkie-talkie and switched to the public frequency: "Attention all crew members, we have escaped from the Guerrilla Republic's control area and are now firmly maintaining the current speed and flight altitude to ensure that the formation is stable. I will give you twenty seconds to record various parameters.
"
"Each crew, turn off all signal lights immediately."
"All crews turn off the cabin lighting tubes!"
She continued to look left and right, and finally her lead plane was left alone, and the cabin was still brightly lit.
Yang Mingzhi didn't know what the pilot in the cockpit did. He heard the crew members walking around the cabin shout: "Soon, we will fall into darkness. We will pass through the combat zone quietly in the darkness, as if we don't exist at all."
.”
The man was just talking to himself. Soon Yang Mingzhi saw all the signal lights on the wing tips turned off, and he understood everything.
"Xiao Tao! Hey, you can let go."
"Huh? It's safe now?"
"The lights will be turned off soon, don't worry, just get some sleep and don't think too much about anything."
"All right."
Just after calming down his nervous wife, he heard the cabin loudspeaker and remembered Gorizodubova's warning: "Comrades, we are about to turn off the lights and fly to an altitude of 4,000 meters. We will fly over the war zone. If necessary,
We will raise the level immediately. Please be mentally prepared."
What she said was really unfortunate. The most dangerous time will come soon!
Suddenly, the cabin fell into darkness, and Yang Mingzhi couldn't see his wife's expression clearly, but she still clamped her arm tighter...
Because it is a night flight, the possibility of enemy interception at night is very slim, which is why most airdrop missions behind enemy lines are carried out at night.
The fleet took a shortcut and after passing through southern Gomel, continued to rush towards northern Bryansk.
After a seventy-minute flight, the fleet has arrived at the combat zone.
Even though his glasses were ruined, Yang Mingzhi did not feel uncomfortable. He was not nearsighted and had long been accustomed to not wearing glasses on weekdays. Now that he was informed that he was about to arrive at the war zone, he deliberately changed seats with Liu Hongxiu who was next to the window. Of course, this
My wife is just holding her right arm tightly.
"Will there be a night raid today?"
Yang Mingzhi's eyes were fixed on the outside. In addition to seeing the clouds illuminated by the moonlight, he also saw the flickering fire on the ground.
He immediately understood the situation - it was not enough for the Soviet Union and Germany to finish fighting during the day, and they had to continue fighting at night.
This was already the front line. Yang Mingzhi estimated that the plane had already flown over the defenses of Zhukov's vanguard force.
This was daily life during the long Rzhev-Sychovka battle.
Today's historical process has changed. After the German Army Group Center lost the defense lines of Rzhev and Vyazma, the counterattack did not regain the territory. Therefore, in the area with the city of Sychevka as the core, the troops stationed here
The defense area of the German General Ludwig's 4th Army became a complete protrusion.
But this protrusion is not bad. In a sense, it looks like a corner of an ancient bastion.
A protruding part, the Soviet army seems to have the ability to cut it off from the rear end with a pincer offensive, thereby achieving the goal of complete annihilation. Unfortunately, the Soviet army does not have this ability for the time being.
Zhukov's Western Front and Rokossovsky's Voronezh Front each had their own difficulties.
In order to resist the German counterattack, Zhukov and Konev won the defensive battle with great losses. Originally, the troops suffered heavy casualties during the offensive battle, and then suffered another round of losses in the defensive battle. They had lost the ability to continue.
The ability to counterattack at the campaign level cannot be launched until a large number of newly formed divisions and brigades are in place in the rear, and a large amount of heavy equipment is successfully assembled.
However, due to the current situation, new troops will be sent to the battlefield in the Don River Basin first to win the Battle of Stalingrad.
Throughout the day on August 31, the German Fourth Air Force dispatched nearly 3,000 aircraft, bombing the city of Stalingrad indiscriminately. Indeed, the best way to deal with disgusting street fighting is to level the city and protect it.
The reason why Luce did this was entirely because the first German army that rushed into the city encountered brutal street fighting. The two regiments were basically wiped out in just one day of fierce fighting.
The brutal losses convinced him that after indiscriminate bombardment, the new offensive force could quickly capture the entire city.
Unfortunately, he was wrong. On September 1, the small group of Soviet troops who had been bombarded used bullets and mortars to declare to the Germans who was the master of Stalingrad.
This time, Paulus did not send planes to dump ammunition again. Why? The Fourth Air Force's aerial bomb reserves were already in danger.
So the brutal street fighting in Stalingrad finally broke out on the morning of September 1st.
Once the German army began to fall into a tug-of-war of attrition, with its strong production and organization capabilities and the continuous arrival of supplies from international allies, although the German army still had the initiative in the battle, by this day, the battlefield situation began to quietly change.
The entire eastern front is a thousand kilometers long. The fierce fighting in the north has been suspended. The Kalinin Front and the Western Front have temporarily entered a state of comprehensive defense. This will give the Voronezh Front and the Bryansk Front the opportunity to send some of their forces to Stalingrad.
Especially for the Voronezh Front, General Vatutin divided the front into two. The northern army supported the Bryansk Front, and the southern army directly participated in the battle on the northern edge of the Battle of Stalingrad, cooperating with the Southwest Front.
In fact, both sides were increasing their troops. Seeing that the Soviet army did not want to launch another large-scale attack, both Model and Ludwig received Hitler's order to withdraw some troops and go south for reinforcements.
Model sent some logistical troops southward to deal with the situation in a symbolic manner, but Ludwig of the Fourth Army really felt that there was something wrong with the Führer's mind.
In Ludwig's view, no matter how stalemate the battle between Stalingrad and the Caucasus was, if he was guarding this salient and had to divide his troops, who could guarantee that the Soviet army would not take advantage of every opportunity?
As far as the current situation is concerned, Ludwig does not dare to move his troops away at all. He is encountering a new nightmare, because every day, the damn Soviet army will take advantage of the cover of night to carry out sneak attacks.
Large-scale battles were suspended and small-scale daily destruction was carried out. The Soviet Union and Germany never gave up.
Sometimes, the German army dispatched commandos, using tactics learned during World War I, and could always find the minefields on the Soviet defense line. They took advantage of the darkness to defuse the mines, then went to the barbed wire and cut it with a vise, and then went into the Soviet frontline trenches.
Start a fight.
But the Soviet army is not a soft persimmon. The Soviet army can also operate the same commando tactics. It is exactly the same routine. Maybe the Soviet commando team is more clumsy, but they can still succeed.
Both sides deliberately took advantage of the darkness to grab each other's tongues, hoping to find out the other's intentions from the prisoners of war's mouths.
After all, both the Soviet Union and Germany were afraid of each other, because everyone was exhausted after the war. If they suddenly encountered a new round of fierce attacks from the other side, they would inevitably vomit three liters of blood.
As for the scene on the ground that Yang Mingzhi saw, he felt that it was the result of the German commando's failure.
In order to avoid being attacked by a sneak attack, the machine gunners of the Soviet frontline machine gun fortress belonging to the Western Front always fired hundreds of rounds of deterrent bullets at the German positions in the distance during tense nights. This was to embolden them, and secondly, they also served as physical reconnaissance.
The Soviet army was eager for the enemy's commandos to attack this kind of firepower point, or for the German artillery positions in the rear to fire.
This time, the Germans finally fell into the trap.
The German commandos attacked three machine gun bunkers and immediately encountered a counterattack by the Soviet bunkers. As a large number of Soviet firepower points were exposed, the German artillerymen excitedly thought they had seized a good opportunity.
After the German artillery opened fire, a group of "mathematicians" in the Soviet army quickly deduced the approximate location of the German artillery position within the headquarters through existing data.
Don't know how to hit the precise position? The Soviet Katyusha rocket launcher has impressive accuracy, and when used on a large scale, it uses barrage to make up for the accuracy.
So at an altitude of 4,000 meters, Yang Mingzhi witnessed the yellow flowers blooming on the ground. They were shining with dazzling light and almost lit up the plane.
Yang Mingzhi could not hear the explosion on the ground at high altitude, and the vibration of the earth had nothing to do with the aircraft at high altitude.
With his soldier's intuition, he keenly realized that the dense and extremely brilliant fire was definitely not caused by ordinary artillery. It must be a rocket launcher, and only rocket launchers can project volcanic eruption-like fire on an area in a short period of time!
His heart was pounding. The armies of the two countries on the ground were still fighting late at night. After this night, hundreds of people must not be able to see the sun of the new day.
Yang Mingzhi stopped looking. He turned his head and noticed that the people sitting at the porthole on the other side of the cabin were all scrambling to look out the window and muttering something to each other.
Either frightened, or excited, even Liu Hongxiu, who seemed calm, seemed to be trembling.
"Xiu'er, are you okay?"
"I...I'm fine. It seems like there's a war on the ground. Thank God, they didn't fire into the air."
"Of course! The explosions on the ground covered up the noise of the aircraft." Yang Mingzhi forced a smile and tried to calm the girl's nervousness: "We are crossing the line of fire. Thank you to the friendly forces fighting on the ground. Their actions forced the enemy to have no time to care, and the enemy had no time to care.
Time to detect the sky, we will be safe soon."
"Well, if you say that, I feel relieved."
Yang Mingzhi nodded and looked at his wife next to him. His right arm was finally no longer uncomfortable. He put his ear to it again and heard his wife's weak breathing - she really fell asleep.
"Asleep? Okay! I don't think about anything anymore. The more I think about it, the more troubled I become. I'll take a nap as well."
Yang Mingzhi closed his eyes. The battle on the ground had been going on for a long time, and he had no more thoughts about the battle.
But he never imagined that all this was a conspiracy! Stalin listened to Ponomarenko's suggestion and launched a night attack on the night of September 1st. Zhukov's troops launched a night attack to protect the transport group from any possible interference.
Therefore, no matter whether the German commando attacked the Soviet machine gun fort or not, the Katyusha rocket launchers would hit them all over the place. However, the German sneak attack was exposed, and the Soviet army used their plan to attack the German artillery positions.
The ground in the east was turned red by the violent cannon fodder. General Ludwig was awakened and was sitting on pins and needles. In panic, he thought that the Soviet army had finally launched an attack on the Sychovka salient! (To be continued)