Thunder Strikes Back

Chapter 158 The Platoon Leader's Counterattack

"Tell the rocket artillery battalion to adjust the baseline orientation and increase the depth of firepower spread, and I will erase this target together."

"But...the Ministry of Defense forbids us to send..."

"Here I have the final say. The enemy always hides anti-aircraft firepower and headquarters near the mosque. You staff officers should also know this. So, you can't be restrained."

"Yes." The staff officer led the order.

Amidst the sound of explosions one after another, four 4-type tank destroyers spewed billowing black smoke, and it was not easy to touch the top of a slope in the southwest of Sukur. The crew got out of the turret canopy and were displayed in front of them Stunned by the hellish situation, half of the city was plowed into ruins by the continuous and huge shelling, and the Great Mosque slowly fell under the flames.

"The beasts. See what they've done?"

"..."

"Listen, we have no time to enter the urban area, so we will launch a counterattack here." Abad said decisively.Here is condescending, and the bridgehead built by the enemy is clearly visible in the firelight. Although he is only a temporary platoon leader, he also knows where to fight.

It can be seen that the tanks and other combat vehicles behind the Indian Army's position are spitting flames to the surroundings. Coupled with the firepower fired by the enemy from the opposite bank, the weak firepower of the garrison is tightly suppressed, which makes the counterattack impossible. Above, a long line of enemy headlights stretched out of sight to the east.There are several bulldozers mixed in the convoy, obviously the enemy will keep consolidating and expanding this bridgehead.

"But platoon leader, isn't the distance here too far?" the driver asked.

"Don't worry, this gun is designed to deal with Russian tanks at such a distance." Abad said, his words were transmitted to the other three vehicles through the radio, and it worked. The commanders all calmed down. .

Abad jumped onto the turret and looked through the binoculars for a while. He remembered that he came to Sukkur a long time ago. Originally, there were a lot of messy buildings in the old city that would block his view, but the indiscriminate and brutal shelling of the enemy had already overwhelmed him. The field of fire is completely cleaned up.

Those T90s hid behind the wreckage of the chariot and kept moving and shooting.The accumulation of wreckage ahead made it increasingly difficult to hit them with flat fire from the low infantry fighting vehicles, but this was not a problem for Abad's platoon as they were now commanding.The only question is whether it is possible to give the enemy a devastating blow at a distance of more than 3000 meters?Although he spoke big words, he didn't have a bottom line in his heart.

"Laser rangefinder," ordered the platoon leader.

The gunner put his face on the collimator, put the forehead pad on his head, opened the left eyepiece to observe the laser landing point, and slowly aimed the laser irradiation point at the T90 tank below. However, due to the long-term laser interference of this machine, the cooling system cannot effectively cool down, causing the jammer to be forced to shut down, so it is temporarily unable to prevent the platoon far away from the mountain from measuring its distance.

On the gunner's sight, the final number appeared, 3270 meters.The distance is a bit far, but it is still not a problem for the fire control computer to aim. Soon the gears of the high and low gears made an unpleasant bite sound, and the firing line began to slowly correct to the line of sight. Finally, the gun depression angle reached the limit of minus 8 degrees for this gun. .The loader struggled to lift nearly an oversized tungsten-core long-rod armor-piercing projectile into the pusher in the tail compartment.The gunner pressed the automatic push button, and with a bang, the heavy large chamber shell was loaded into the barrel.

The laser jammer on the enemy turret gradually recovered and began to shoot aimlessly around, but it was too late.Now the gunner's aiming is completely passive. He only needs to wait quietly for a while, and wait for the azimuth angular velocity sensor to track for a period of time to determine the enemy's movement state. This period of waiting is essential. Even if the enemy does not move, he must still aim for a while.

On the disturbance sight, a new light spot appeared. This is the corrected shooting point generated by the fire control after evaluating the inclination of the trunnion and the speed of the enemy vehicle. However, the crosswind correction must wait for manual setting.At such a distance, some minor elements will affect the accuracy of shooting.The gunner moved the aiming point again, aimed it at the turret of the T90, and waited for Abad's command.

"Wait, give up shooting this target." The commander said suddenly, and the inter-vehicle radio broadcast his words to the other three vehicles, which surprised all the commanders.

"I've thought about it. It's imperative that we close this gap. So, I ordered, to shoot at whatever targets on the bridge. Cut off their columns."

The four guns began to correct upwards, and the gunners each looked for new targets from the enemy convoy on the bridge in their sights.This meant re-ranging and aiming, an unnecessary risk for them.This kind of vehicle has only 50 mm thick front armor. It is an unbeatable method for this type of destroyer to find out the most powerful one from a bunch of enemy targets and destroy it first. However, the words of the platoon leader seem to make sense, 8 Hours ago, the superiors assigned them here in general to strengthen the defense line. No one really thought that India would launch a battle to capture Sukkur so soon. Now the situation of the battle is becoming clear. If the Indians cannot be stopped Without a river, there would be no defensive line to strengthen.

Abad is convinced that this is the only sane choice. He has been with machine tools for half his life and knows the importance of precision. The chaotic battlefield is a running machine. To block it, you must find that point precisely.Fortunately, he was lucky enough to find that point. Blocking the Indian tanks on the bridge was the only way to turn defeat into victory, and destroying a few tanks was secondary.

The Indian tanks on the bridgehead were still shaking their turrets in a daze. Spanga's non-stop shelling interfered with the work of the thermal imager, making it impossible for these precision instruments to find the deadly nemesis lurking on the top of the mountain 3 kilometers away.

"Shoot that engineering vehicle," Abad said in the gunner's ear (one of the characteristics of this destroyer vehicle is that the commander stands behind the gunner.)
"Understood." The gunner pointed the spotlight at a bulldozer occupying most of the bridge deck, perhaps killing it, and it would be difficult for the vehicles behind to push this big guy down the river.

"Use a grenade, shoot a volley, and block their attack."

While the loader was struggling to replace the grenade weighing nearly 20 kilograms, Abad saw the aiming display light up in the station scope. He waited for a while for the shell to push the breech block, and he ordered to shoot.

The launch was like shaking the ground, the huge recoil drove the entire chassis to push back violently, and the reaction force lifted the chariot high from the last pair of road wheels, as if it was about to be overturned.The upturned front half of the tank destroyer fell heavily, causing the members of the fighting room to fall backwards and forwards.

The shells fired by Abad's No. 109 vehicle accurately hit an Indian engineer bulldozer on the bridge deck. This bulldozer was originally intended to dig a few groove-shaped passages on the West Bank river to facilitate the subsequent 40-meter-long folding bridge. The steel springboard girder of the type pontoon bridge can be stably installed on the west side of the river bank. As long as the springboard girders at both ends are installed firmly, the pontoon-type bridge body already on the river can be towed in place by a motorboat quickly, and then covered with a layer of steel plate. A pontoon bridge of 50 meters can transport [-] tons of tanks.But Abad's blow completely destroyed the machine, and the progress of the Indian army's construction of the pontoon bridge was bound to be greatly reduced.

The shells fired by the remaining vehicles also hit the moving Indian military vehicles or at least hit the bridge deck, and the entire column of the 471st Engineering Brigade was interrupted by this round of surprise attack.

Colonel Majid, who was standing on a pile of rubble in a daze, saw that the situation was over. He vaguely hoped that an enemy shell would kill him, but suddenly he saw the enemy convoy exploded one after another on a bridge one kilometer away.
"What's going on?" He looked around in surprise, and several staff officers also looked at each other, not knowing what happened.The sound of gunfire around them blocked the shelling of the anti-tank destroyer, and they couldn't detect the artillery fire behind them for a while.

The colonel suspected that the air force support had arrived, so he raised his head blankly.There were no planes in the sky.He thought, could it be that the enemy's attack on the Great Mosque was retribution?

"Allah is Almighty, praise Allah!" He couldn't help shouting, tears falling down uncontrollably.

Two kilometers behind Colonel Majid, Abad's shelling has not yet ended.

"Shoot at the enemies near the approach bridge at will, and attack the tanks first." Abad issued a second order.Now he wants to see if the enemy's turret armor can withstand a long-range blow from this 50mm gun with a caliber of 120 times.

"Aim for the turret. Don't hit the hull," he yelled.

The gunner did not answer, but concentrated on aiming. This kind of static-to-static shooting has a very high hit rate for the simple disturbance fire control system on this self-propelled artillery.

The turret of the T90 began to rotate, and this time its thermal imager finally saw several strange-shaped armored vehicles on the top of the hill. For a while, the Indian soldiers could not recognize what kind of vehicles they were from the 3X scope in the white, but only these The fact that the large-sized "tanks" can destroy the vehicles on the bridge outside the effective range shows that they are very powerful (they can't know that the front armor of these behemoths is only 50mm thick), and the top laser launcher of the T90 begins to fail. The non-stop firing of lasers is obviously not just for distance measurement. This is a precursor to the enemy's use of long-range laser beam missiles. However, most of the reserve gunners and commanders of the 12th Army do not know the existence of this technology, so they do not know panic.

The huge and simple semi-automatic loading machine at the rear of the No. 109 played a role of high efficiency. It loaded another armor-piercing shell within 7 seconds, while the Indian tank soldiers were worried that the armor-piercing shells would not be able to penetrate these tanks, so they blindly replaced the shells in the barrel. For missiles, a lot of precious time was wasted in vain. For tanks to shoot each other, any second of delay is fatal.When No. 109 opened fire like thunder, the enemy's automatic loader had not yet completed the work of selecting and pushing bombs.

(End of this chapter)