Chapter 262: Chapter 340 The Winter War (9)
As the country that invented anti-tank mines, Germany's arsenal was piled high with World War I-era anti-tank mines.
Currently, the German military was on the offensive and didn't need to lay mines to defend against enemies. Therefore, Wilhelm, with a bold stroke, allocated 50,000 anti-tank mines to Finland. Now, the Soviet Seventh Army was facing a formidable minefield of over ten thousand mines. It was impossible for them to safely charge through.
After losing more than thirty tanks in quick succession, the Soviet forces were finally forced to come to a halt, deploying engineers to clear the mines.
With the vanguard forces at a standstill, more and more troops followed, quickly amassing into a crowded formation, almost shoulder to shoulder. In such a situation, if they were subjected to enemy artillery fire, the casualties would be absolutely devastating.
However, the Soviets were not overly concerned because they knew that the Finns lacked various heavy equipment and were incapable of shelling them.
How much did Finland lack in heavy equipment?
Here's an interesting anecdote: during the original timeline of the Soviet-Finnish War, one day a soldier passing through a small village saw a dilapidated house and decided to investigate. In a corner of the room, there was a pile of firewood, and it seemed like there was something hidden inside. The curious soldier moved aside the firewood and uncovered a large cannon! Excitedly, he ran back to report.
The Finnish commander immediately led the soldiers to move the firewood, revealing a rusty cannon. The cannon had Russian inscriptions on it and turned out to be a field gun left over from the Tsarist era, an early version of a howitzer. Despite its outdated appearance and the effects of prolonged exposure to the elements, it was complete and intact. Therefore, the Finnish commander ordered the soldiers to quickly bring it out, load it onto a vehicle, and transport it back to the Finnish camp. The Finnish officers and soldiers settled the old cannon, cleaned off its rust stains, and called in an armorer for maintenance to ensure it could be promptly put into combat.
During the maintenance, the armorer discovered that this old-style cannon lacked a recoil-absorbing device. No one knew what would happen when a shell was loaded and the firing mechanism was activated because no one had seen or used such a cannon before. However, the Finnish military, facing a shortage of artillery, immediately ordered a test firing.
Soldiers swiftly moved the cannon to a position, aiming its barrel at the Soviet positions. Gunners loaded the shell into the breech, and other soldiers took their positions. Following the commander's firing command, two gunners pulled the firing cord. With a thunderous roar, the shell shot out rapidly, flying towards the Soviet positions. The shell whistled through the air, creating an arc, and exploded on the Soviet positions. However, the entire cannon behaved like a startled wild horse, jumping suddenly and retreating more than 3 meters, knocking down the two gunners, with one of them dying on the spot.
Despite this cannon's lively behavior on the battlefield, the Finnish gunners quickly figured out its "temperament" and learned how to use it. The soldiers even gave it a nickname, calling it "Playful Henry." The abandoned "Playful Henry" miraculously assisted the Finnish military, boosting their morale. This cannon caused the Soviet forces a lot of trouble. Before long, Finland's "Playful Henry" began firing on the Soviet positions again, and one shell narrowly missed hitting the Soviet command post. The Soviets, aware that the Finns didn't have artillery, were puzzled about the artillery attacks. The Soviet commander immediately studied countermeasures. Everyone unanimously believed that the Finns might have received a batch of cannons, so they decided to quickly organize dozens of artillery pieces to deal with the Finns' new weapons.
After all, the Finnish military only had one cannon, and facing the bombardment of dozens of cannons was an obvious mismatch. Therefore, the Finnish commander ordered the gunners to fire four or five shells and then relocate, with soldiers taking cover in bunkers. Despite the continuous bombardment of Soviet artillery onto the original positions, the Finnish military remained unharmed. In just a few days, the Soviet forces had fired over ten thousand shells in vain, and "Playful Henry" only lost one spoke from its wheel, continuing to be active on the battlefield.
The fact that the Finnish military had to use cannons from the Tsarist era against the Soviet forces highlighted their lack of weaponry.
However, the situation had now changed drastically; the Soviet engineers had not yet taken their positions when dozens of aircraft suddenly appeared behind the Finnish defensive line.
"Damn it! Didn't the air force bomb the airfield?" muttered Colonel Ogurcov, the commander of the 35th Light Tank Brigade, instructing the infantry around him. "Quick, set up the machine guns and prepare for anti-aircraft fire!"
The anti-aircraft command post was still in the rear, and now their only hope was the infantry's machine guns. In terms of mechanical principles, there wasn't much difference between anti-aircraft machine guns and regular machine guns. The difference lay in the emphasis on shooting targets and some structural details. For example, the mount of an anti-aircraft machine gun would differ from that of a general-purpose heavy machine gun, ensuring a larger firing angle and a 360-degree directional field. The barrel would be modified to be longer, ensuring greater range and higher initial velocity, with a caliber generally ranging from 12.5mm to 15mm.
Currently, the Soviet army was equipped with the Degtyaryov light machine gun (this machine gun's most distinctive feature is a large disc on top, and it looks quite light) and the DS-39 heavy machine gun (this machine gun's performance was truly poor; in combat, Soviet soldiers found that its belt feeding mechanism often jammed, and it was too complicated to operate, frequently experiencing malfunctions, leading to its retirement shortly afterward).
However, Ogurcov observed that the flying height of those planes was only seven to eight hundred meters, with a speed not exceeding 300 km/h. Even these regular machine guns should be able to hit them. Looking through binoculars at the approaching planes, his expression turned somewhat grim. "German Il-2 attack aircraft?! Are the Germans involved?!" But after a few seconds, his expression became even more grim. "Spaniards?!"
Without giving him much time to think, those planes had already flown to about 1000 meters away, splitting into several groups and dispersing.
"Fire!" The order to open fire was given, and dozens of light and heavy machine guns on the ground began firing simultaneously. Tracer rounds of various colors shot toward the planes. However, since they were not specifically an anti-aircraft unit, many tracer rounds passed close to the aircraft, and very few managed to hit. Despite the continuous fire from the ground forces, not a single aircraft had crashed. Ogurcov even saw a nearby anti-aircraft machine gun firing an entire magazine at an Il-2 attack aircraft. At least three or four tracer rounds hit the fuselage, but the attack aircraft remained unharmed.
In astonishment, those attack aircraft had already flown over the Soviet troops, releasing a sky full of PTAB (as mentioned in Chapter 255) bomblets. As mentioned earlier, one Il-2 could carry 280 PTAB anti-tank bombs; now, these twenty-five Il-2s dropped a total of 7,000 bombs, causing a continuous explosion along a nearly two-kilometer-wide attack line.
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