Therefore, the amphibious landing ship was put into use at night, and the entire process was kept strictly confidential.
Confidentiality work mainly involves the management of transportation routes, starting points, and ending points.
Starting from the material warehouses on the east bank, to the sandbar in the middle of the Volga River, and finally to the storage warehouses in Stalingrad, personnel were deployed for martial law and protection.
This unit is the 33rd Guards Infantry Division... The 33rd Guards Infantry Division is a unit directly affiliated with the 62nd Group Army. Every soldier is a veteran who knows the basics, and any one of them has disappeared or left the unit without explaining a reasonable reason.
All will be kicked out of the unit.
It goes without saying why this is.
In actual combat, the Soviet army found that many soldiers disappeared inexplicably and then returned. The soldiers were not as simple as getting lost, getting separated and then finding their troops.
Some of them were actually captured by the Germans, and then they were given evidence and used to instigate rebellion before being released back to collect intelligence for the Germans and carry out espionage activities.
During the war, it was difficult for the army and even the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs to find out which of the people who returned to the army had been prisoners and which were indeed just separated... This was caused by the Soviet army's chaotic management and lack of identification.
, their ID card is often just a soldier's ID card, which is easily lost in battle.
Therefore, if you want to ensure that there are no spies in an army, you can only kick out all the soldiers who have been separated and reorganize them into another army with a lower confidentiality level.
Although this approach is simple and crude, it is very effective.
For example, now, the 62nd Army still has troops available when it wants to keep it secret... The 33rd Guards Rifle Division is responsible for keeping the entire new transportation line in Stalingrad secret.
The reason why I say "entire" is because Golikov and Shulka opened two supply lines in Stalingrad after discussion.
Each of these two supply lines is responsible for the transportation tasks of one hundred amphibious landing ships. They are divided into the south and north lines, which are respectively responsible for supplying the northern half of Stalingrad's industrial area and the southern half of the residential area.
The reason for this allocation is to make supply more efficient.
There are factories in the northern half of the industrial zone that can produce ammunition, so there is no shortage of ammunition even if there is a shortage of food.
The southern half of the residential area has a certain amount of food reserves, as well as bakeries and the like, but ammunition needs to be transported from outside, so there is an even greater shortage of ammunition.
If only one transportation line is established, supplies will inevitably be transported to the north or south, and then secondary transportation will be used to transport the supplies between the north and the south.
On the contrary, after establishing two transportation lines, although there are still more than 200 amphibious landing ships, they can be tilted according to the different needs and conditions of the south and north, thus increasing the efficiency of transporting supplies in one place.
As mentioned before, Stalingrad at this time needed to make careful calculations to seize every benefit and opportunity.
Due to the good confidentiality work, the soldiers stationed in Stalingrad found that the supply situation seemed to have improved somewhat. For example, the amount of ammunition for frontline combat troops had increased significantly. However, the strange thing is that the Germans still continued to carry out attacks on the Stalingrad transportation lines day and night.
bombing.
There hasn't been much improvement in terms of food for the time being.
This is not because the transport volume is insufficient to increase rations.
In fact, more than two hundred amphibious transport ships shuttled back and forth between the east coast and the west coast throughout the night, bringing supplies not only to completely change the supply situation, but also to increase the rations appropriately.
This also fully shows that the transportation effect of the amphibious landing ship is good, and its transportation efficiency can even be said to be seriously underestimated.
This is because large transport ships will still have such a transportation process even when they are not blocked by the German army: materials must first be transported by car from the warehouse on the east coast to the port on the east coast, then loaded on the ship at the port on the east coast, and then transported to the port on the west coast for unloading.
Ship, and finally transported by car to the warehouse or in all directions.
It is different when using an amphibious transport ship to transport supplies. All these processes can be omitted. It is directly loaded from the east coast warehouse and then transported directly to the target warehouse on the west coast in one go.
Of course, in order to shorten the time of crossing the Volga River as much as possible, the Soviet army still set up temporary storage points on both sides of the river.
In other words, although amphibious transport ships have a small transport capacity and most of them are the size of lifeboats, their actual transport efficiency is very impressive.
However, in order to strategically deceive the enemy, that is, to make the German army believe that the supply situation in Stalingrad was getting worse and worse, the soldiers' rations not only did not improve but got worse.
This is of course also the result of discussions between Shulka and Golikov.
"Our soldiers will inevitably be captured by the enemy!" Shulka said: "The Germans will learn about our army's supply situation from their mouths. If they know that our soldiers' rations have improved, they may be interested in our supplies."
The situation becomes suspicious. Otherwise, if the soldiers' rations get worse and worse, they will think that the current blockade is correct, and at the same time think that they only need to push harder to completely strangle them in the city and continue or even intensify
blockade!"
"So the ammunition..."
"The impact of ammunition is too great!" Shulka replied: "Reducing ammunition may achieve the purpose of deceiving the enemy, and the effect may even be better, but it will increase the casualties of our army. I think it is not worth it. Moreover,
We can find a good reason...the supply of ammunition is because we have increased production in the factory area!"
"That's right!" Golikov nodded: "In fact, that's what we did!"
At this time, Major Akimovich handed two pieces of bread to the two people and said: "I think this kind of strategic deception does not apply to us!"
"Of course!" Shulka took the bread and stuffed it into his mouth without politeness.
He was so hungry during this period that he felt dizzy even when walking. He didn't want to continue torturing himself like this... It wasn't until he was starving that he realized that other difficulties were nothing compared to hunger.
As the saying goes, "A man who is full does not know how hungry he is when he is hungry." It is difficult for people who have never been hungry to understand the feeling of starvation and weakness.
As soon as it gets dark, all transportation tasks come to a halt.
In fact, for fear of being discovered by the Germans, the transport mission was stopped half an hour before dawn. No matter whether the transport ship was on the east coast or the west coast at this time, or during transport, it had to return to the nearest concentration point to hide itself.
(Note: The 33rd Guards Infantry Division has set up three concentration points, namely the starting point, the end point, and the sandbar in the middle of the river.)
As the German bombers "rumbled" into the sky one after another, the Soviet army's deception plan during the day was launched.