Major Akimovich was responsible for suppressing the German radar.
Major Akimovich was responsible for intelligence collection when he served as a staff officer in the army group. It can be said that it is just right to perform this task.
The reason is that gathering intelligence originally requires placing informants, spies, and even organizing guerrillas behind enemy lines.
Suppressing the German radar obviously cannot be achieved through regular combat... If the Soviet regular army can penetrate the German defense line and accurately attack its interior, it means that the Soviet army can defeat the German army at any time. This is obviously impossible.
On the other hand, as Akimovich said, the German army is likely to use vehicle-mounted radars that can be moved at any time, so it is impossible and unrealistic to use regular troops to break through the German defense lines for a surprise attack.
In this regard, Shulka let Major Akimovich do it because he had no resources. More importantly, Shulka had a dispensable attitude towards suppressing the German radar... which could destroy the German ground.
Radar is the best. If it can't be destroyed, it doesn't matter. Shurka doesn't have much hope for this.
Shulka mainly focused his efforts on building floating bridges.
It is indeed not difficult to build a pontoon. The first step is to seal the oil drums in large quantities.
This work is simple and easy because the oil drum itself has a sealing cap, and you only need to fix the sealing cap on the fuel tank.
The difficulty is that it cannot be welded... It is easy to have problems with electric welding of oil barrels. The reason is that there is often a small amount of gasoline remaining in the oil barrel. This gasoline volatilizes the gaseous gasoline and mixes with the air. As long as there is a little spark, it may ignite.
and exploded.
The solution is to use glue to stick the oil drum cover on instead of welding it.
Then tie the wooden board to the fuel tank and you're done.
In fact, this work was completed by the river because the fuel tanks tied with wooden planks were inconvenient to transport.
As a result, carloads of fuel tanks, glue, wooden boards, wires, ropes and other tools were transported to the Volga River.
The people of Stalingrad were also organized...most of them were workers who had not had time to evacuate, and of course there were also soldiers who were temporarily transferred.
Then after making it on site, throw it directly into the water.
It is inconvenient to carry the weight of wooden planks and iron barrels on the shore. If you throw it into the water, it will become a small raft floating on the water. You can easily drag it to the destination with a rope, and there are even many people on the shore.
Connect several such small rafts, and then several people jump on them, holding oars like rowing boats and taking them to the end of the wooden bridge to join them together.
One of the reasons why this is possible is that the Volga River flows gently... It has a total length of 69 kilometers, but a drop of only 190 meters.
Because the water flow is gentle, so many and long sandbars are formed in the middle of the river. Of course, this also makes it easier to build floating bridges.
Another reason for the speed of construction is that there is a sandbar in the center.
This was originally a disadvantage for transportation in Stalingrad. It is precisely because of these sandbars that transport ships on the east bank can pass through a narrow channel to the west bank. It is also because of these sandbars that the fake amphibious landing craft cannot cross and cause problems.
but……
For the "Floating Bridge Project", these sandbars are definitely an advantage.
Because it allows the pontoon to be built from four base points at the same time: one on the east and west shores and two on the sandbank.
In other words, its construction speed should be at least twice as fast.
So, in just two hours, five pontoon bridges were built on the Volga River... Building pontoon bridges is somewhat similar to digging tunnels. Putting all the people in one place to build a pontoon bridge at the same time often does not speed up much. If you separate the hands,
By doing this at the same time, you can build as many pontoons as possible in the shortest time.
When the first pontoon bridge was connected, the good news immediately reached the headquarters of the 8th Infantry Regiment, which was commanding and coordinating the distribution on the shore.
"Bridge No. 3 is closed!" Andrianka, who was guarding the phone, excitedly reported to Major Mikhailovich.
"Great!" Major Mikhailovich ordered: "Start transportation immediately!"
At this time, the German army adopted a "surprise attack" strategy in order to save ammunition, so they knew nothing about the Soviet army's plan to build a pontoon bridge in the dark.
It was not until an hour later that Fred discovered the problem when he commanded a group of fighter planes to conduct a raid in coordination with a reconnaissance aircraft.
"Colonel!" the pilot reported to Colonel Fred in surprise: "They built several pontoons on the river!"
"How many? How can there be several?" Colonel Fred asked: "It's only three hours before dark!"
What Colonel Fred meant was that the enemy had only been out of sight of the Germans for a few hours, and yet several pontoon bridges could be built within these hours... This speed was like dragging the built pontoon bridges directly to the Volga River.
"I'm sure I read it correctly, Colonel!" the pilot insisted: "There are indeed several pontoon bridges. They have even used these pontoon bridges for transportation. I saw that there seemed to be people on them..."
The reason why I use "seems" is because it is difficult to see clearly when looking down from an airplane and using the light of flares.
"What should I do, you ask?" Fred replied angrily: "Do you have any other choice besides destroying them?!"
"Yes, Colonel!"
As a result, the flares lit up over the pontoon one after another, like fireworks blooming on a festival.
In addition to providing line of sight for fighter planes to dive, these flares also indicate the target's location to other fighters.
As a result, fighter planes quickly arrived from all directions, and then swooped down amidst bursts of ear-piercing screams.
This time, the pilots realized they had brought the wrong ammunition.
When dealing with amphibious landing ships in the past, machine guns and cannons were obviously more useful, because a round of bullets could easily penetrate the hull, damage the engine or cause other things to malfunction.
But now, a bullet hitting the pontoon is like a stone cow hitting the sea, and there is no movement at all.
If there was any movement, it was that the soldiers who were lining up on the pontoon bridge to transport supplies were hit by a hail of bullets and fell into the river.
However, this was obviously not what the German pilots wanted.
At the same time, the Soviet army did not care about these casualties, especially since most of these personnel came from the east coast.
The bombers swooped down and dropped bombs on the pontoon bridge, but because the pontoon bridge was not large, it was very difficult to hit the target.
What's even more amazing is that even if it is blown into several pieces by bombers, the rafts that have been prepared on the river will soon fill the gaps down the river, just like a long snake that can heal itself.
Transportation soon resumed.
When the pilot reported all this to Fred, Fred immediately reported to Paulus: "We are in trouble, General!" (To be continued)