When the news of the pontoon bridge on the Pena River and the reinforcements stationed on the other side of the river were all destroyed, Marshal Rokossovsky's vision went black, and his body swayed. He almost fainted in front of the entire army!
"Helu has caused trouble, he has caused trouble!”
He hammered the sand table a few times and cursed the entire family of Haruff ten thousand times in his heart. Then, he began to think about how to deal with the situation at hand!
Marshal Rokossovsky knew very well what the destruction of the pontoon bridge on the Pena River meant to them.
This meant that their path of retreat had been completely blocked!
At this time, the German army had already gathered from all directions, obviously planning to surround and annihilate Kursk City!
And they were the ones who were surrounded and annihilated!
The Soviets could not sit still and wait for death. Even though he was Comrade Dalin's trusted aide, he knew that Comrade Dalin would not sit idly by and watch him be surrounded. He would definitely do his best to save him!
Even so, he could not place his hopes on the reinforcements. He did not know if the reinforcements could successfully break through the enemy's blockade and arrive at the battlefield to help them!
However, he knew very well that he had to actively save himself. Otherwise, Kursk would be their graveyard!
"Quick, let the Second Tank Guard Army move north immediately. Gather all the armored units in the army and break out of the encirclement with the Second Tank Guard Army!”
Marshal Rokossovsky's eyes were bloodshot. Like a gambler, he placed all his bets on the side without any regard for anything else!
He knew that Kursk was already a dead end, and if the Soviets wanted to survive, they had to get out of this dead end as soon as possible. The faster, the better!
The purpose of breaking out of the encirclement was to get support from the allies and rush out of the enemy's encirclement!
From the looks of it, breaking out of the encirclement to the north, rebuilding the pontoon bridge on the Pena River, and then transporting the troops over was the fastest and most promising method!
After all, although the German army had destroyed the pontoon bridge, they did not have many troops. It was said that they only had one army. Although there were many German troops in the south, they were separated by the main forces of the Soviet army. They could not quickly converge with the German troops in the north!
In other words, for a period of time, the Soviets only needed to face the limited number of German troops in the north!
As long as they could defeat this army and regain control of the Pena River, at least half of their troops could cross the river and escape!
Marshal Rokossovsky had roughly estimated the size of this army from the information he had obtained previously.
He knew that this army was an armored force with many tanks, so their attack power was very sharp. They were able to break through the Soviets 'defense line continuously because of the super assault ability of the armored force, which made the Soviets unprepared and caught them off guard!
Tank troops were destined to become the mainstream on the battlefield. This was not only thought by Guderian, but even Marshal Rokossovsky thought so too!
So, since the German army could use tanks to break through the Soviets 'defense line, why couldn't the Soviets use the same method to deal with the German army?
This was the reason why he ordered all the tanks to gather and let them go north to clear the way!
In his opinion, only the armored troops had extraordinary speed and could arrive before the main force. They could also take advantage of the time before the infantry arrived to defeat the enemy!
In that case, when they arrived at the battlefield, all they had to do was to build a pontoon bridge and set up a position. Then, they would retreat while blocking the pursuit of the southern German army!
Thinking of this, Marshal Rokossovsky felt a little more at ease!
The enemy only had one army and at most a few hundred tanks, while his own army had at least four to five thousand tanks, which was close to a ratio of ten to one. How could he not defeat the enemy?
Marshal Rokossovsky's thoughts were good, but his intelligence was obviously wrong. Guderian did not have hundreds of tanks, but 800 tanks. These were not ordinary tanks, but improved Tiger King tanks!
This was the king of land battles of this era, the strongest tank in the world!
As for the Soviets, after the annihilation of the 1st Guards Tank Army, their tank numbers had dropped significantly, from 6700 to 4500. Some of this was due to the losses caused by artillery and air bombardment!
Although 4,500 tanks still had an overwhelming numerical advantage over Guderian's 800 tanks, this advantage was not as big as Marshal Rokossovsky thought!
Moreover, war was not a game of numbers. What truly determined the outcome was the performance of the soldiers on the battlefield!
……
The large-scale mobilization of the Soviets 'armored forces was quickly detected by the German reconnaissance aircraft.
Ever since the German jet fighters entered the war, the German army had basically achieved complete victory in the air battles between the air forces of both sides!
After six or seven days of aerial combat, the Soviets seemed to have gradually accepted the reality of losing air superiority.
They had no choice but to accept it. After all, in the intense aerial battle, the Soviet Air Force suffered heavy losses.
In just six days, they had lost more than 2400 fighter planes, 330 bomber planes, and more than 600 attack planes.
In addition, there were nearly 80 reconnaissance planes lost!
On average, the Soviets suffered losses of 600 planes every day!
This loss was too heavy. Even if the entire factory was at full capacity, their production speed would not be able to compare to the consumption rate at the front line!
Moreover, if a fighter jet was lost, it could be replaced immediately. However, if a pilot was lost, it would be extremely difficult to replace it!
Due to the collapse of the ground battlefield, the Soviets lost control of the battlefield. Other than a few lucky pilots who successfully parachuted and landed on the Soviets 'own positions, the rest of the pilots either did not have time to parachute, or were captured or shot by the German army after parachuting!
This caused the loss of the Soviets 'pilots to be very serious. In six days of fighting, they had lost more than 2100 pilots!
More than one-tenth of them were ace pilots who had participated in many battles!
These ace pilots were originally the Red Empire's precious wealth. In the end, this precious wealth was lost in this battle!
This book is provided by FunNovel Novel Book | Fan Fiction Novel [Beautiful Free Novel Book]