USSR 1941

  Chapter 141 Ask for help

  The 9th Soviet Army used a little time during the day to make some preparations.

   First of all, communicate with Major General Toliczka. After all, this requires his coordination. More importantly, Major Gavrilov does not want to watch Major General Toliczka wipe out the tank troops like this.

   In order to avoid leaking the news, Major Gavrilov took Shulka to the military headquarters.

   "Are you sure this method works?" Major General Tolicka asked.

   "We tried it in the Brest Fortress, Comrade General!" Major Gavrilov said: "We successfully crossed the Bug River!"

   "But that's a small force!" Major General Toliczka said: "And it's just crossing a river. Now we obviously need more troops. The distance they have to dive is several times that of yours before!"

   This difficulty and danger are indeed not comparable to crossing the Bug River before. In case they are discovered by the enemy... they only need to throw grenades into the lake to make the Soviet army lurking in the lake overwhelmed and go away.

   "So we chose to dive in the dark, Comrade General!" Shulka said: "At the same time launch a feint attack on the enemy to attract their attention!"

   After thinking about it for a while, Tolicka nodded and agreed to the plan.

   "It's no loss to us anyway!" said Toliczka.

  Even if the submarine is discovered by the enemy, there will only be a few casualties, and death is unavoidable on the battlefield, so this is not a "loss" for Soviet officers.

  So the offensive of the 9th Army stopped, and the news to the troops was that it was preparing to attack at night... This excuse is very good. If you can't rely on tanks, it is indeed more appropriate to attack at night and fight the Romanian army at night.

   Next is the gas mask.

   This is not difficult in Brest, there are many gas masks in the warehouse of the fortress.

  But in the Soviet army, gas masks were not standard equipment. Many soldiers thought they were troublesome and useless, so they didn't bring them.

  However, it is not difficult to search hundreds of gas masks from an army. The only worry is that collecting gas masks will leak secrets and attract the attention of the enemy.

   For this reason, Major Gavrilov also performed a scene, pretending that a warehouse leaked some harmful gas and temporarily needed a gas mask, and this task was completed.

   Once again, it is modification.

  It is too dangerous to modify like before in the Brest Fortress, when a float was tied to the top of the extension pipe.

  The target of doing this is too big, a pile of floating objects is very obvious in the lake, and it is very likely to be discovered as soon as the searchlight shines.

  The new method is to add a foam float to the lower half, so that the extension tube will be suspended in the water and only a section of the extension tube will be exposed on the water surface, so the target is obviously much less.

   But in fact, the problem of exposure is not that big.

   On the one hand, this is because the lake located in the defense line is not as clean as Shulka and others thought. The military and civilian living garbage living on both sides and nearby are all dumped in, and there are a lot of floating objects.

  On the other hand, it was difficult to find anything in the rainy night, and the searchlights could not shine very far, not to mention that the Romanian soldiers were afraid to turn on the searchlights because they were afraid of being bombed.

  One serious problem that no one thought of...rainwater.

  When the extension tube is exposed to the water surface, the rainwater will flow into the mask from the opening along the extension tube, accumulating more and more...

  After the war, Gavrilov asked Shulka: "How did you solve this problem?"

   Shulka replied: "Easy, drink it!"

   As he spoke, Shulka touched his full stomach with lingering fear... Actually, this is not simple at all.

  Finally, the soldiers of the first battalion followed the feint attacking troops with modified gas masks.

  With the cover of heavy rain at night, they don't need to start swimming from a very far away.

  The feint attacking troops reached a position 200 meters away from the enemy's line of defense to prepare for a feint attack. The first battalion launched into the water one after another behind it, and then moved forward under the cover of gunshots and explosions...

   Admiral Schobert on the other side didn't realize that the danger was approaching him step by step, and all his attention was focused on occupying the Odessa port.

  The port is the key to occupying Odessa.

One reason is that the Soviet army has been sending reinforcements to Odessa through the port... Although the Romanian and German allied forces have blocked the port with mines, bombers and artillery fire, as the saying goes, "the soldiers will block the water and flood the soil", these blockades are difficult to supply the port Completely blocked.

  Especially at night when bombers are unable to fight, large and small transport ships from Crimea will bring supplies and ammunition in batches through the passage swept out by minesweepers.

  On the other hand, the port is the only way out for the Soviet army. Occupying the port will undoubtedly deal a heavy psychological and morale blow to the Soviet troops stationed in Odessa.

   More importantly, the Romanian 6th Infantry Division has penetrated into Odessa from the west and occupied the museum. If the German army occupying the port can respond to the east and west to attack the Soviet army and then cut Odessa into two parts that cannot be connected, then Odessa will be helpless.

   At this time, Schobert persuaded Rakowitza to assign him an artillery regiment... In fact, this was the result of Schobert's "snitching" to Rundstedt.

   "Your Excellency the Marshal!" Schobert reported to Rundstedt in the telegram: "The 22nd Infantry Division is an airborne force, and they don't have artillery. And the Romanians refuse to use their artillery to support us..."

  As said before, Rakovitza worried that Schobert was here to take credit for him.

   This "little report" was useful, Admiral Schobert got an artillery regiment right away.

   But Schobert was still furious.

   "Haven't these guys learned how to fire a cannon?" Schobert said: "Or they let the farmers who planted the fields become artillery!"

  It turns out that in the artillery support just now, at least one-third of the shells smashed into the German area and caused a lot of casualties to the German army.

   "Fabian!" Then Schobert ordered an artillery adjutant: "You rush to the artillery position immediately to take over their command, and bring a radio station, understand?"

   "Yes, General!"

   This is actually not surprising. Two armies with different levels of training and quality cooperate, and there will always be problems of one kind or another.

   After Fabian finally settled in the artillery position, Schobert breathed a sigh of relief and turned his gaze to the port again.

   But at this moment, a communication soldier panicked and reported to Schobert: "Your Excellency, it is General Rakowitza...he asked us for help!"

   "What the **** are you doing?" Admiral Schobert looked at the communications soldier suspiciously: "Ask us for help?"