Battle of the Third Reich Chapter 68: Counter-attack
Looking up at an altitude of 3,000 meters, the atmosphere is like a flawless blue crystal. www.geiliwx.com (.u first issue) looks far from the horizon. The color of the sky changes constantly with height. The closer to the horizon, the lighter the color, the blue turns into emerald green, and then it turns into a dazzling white .
"There are some broken clouds at an altitude of five hundred meters, but they are not dense. The machine gunner pays attention. We are leaving the land." The navigator Corporal Goss's slow voice came from the headset.
The British Royal Air Force Pvt. Jebson quickly retracted his head from the opening of the machine gun tower and fastened the strap of the canvas oxygen mask.
"The machine gun is ready, request permission to test fire." Through the microphone in the mask, Jebson made a request to the captain.
"Waiting for orders." Captain Gunter tilted his head and looked at the lead plane in front of the formation. He saw that the machine gun tower on the back of the lead plane was turning to the side, and then he saw the muzzle sparks and the sky above the formation. Tracer bullets. Then the machine gun tower of the wingman on the side also began to test fire.
"Okay, let's test fire." Sergeant Gunter gave the order.
Jebson sat on the pneumatic linkage seat, holding the joystick of the electric turret with both hands. After the turret turned to the side amidst the sound of electric motors, Jebson looked at the empty sky in the front sight and pressed down When the button was fired, the 7.7 mm Bedford machine gun expelled a long flame. One five-round burst, two three-shot short shots, the tracer flew straight to the distance, and finally descended slowly in a parabola.
"The shooting is over, everything is normal." Jebson reported loudly. He stretched out his hand and shook the hose connector of the cartridge case collection bag, and then turned the machine gun tower back to the rear position by turning the joystick.
The Blenheim bomber group flew steadily over the clouds. The machine gunner pulled up the collar of the white turtleneck. The machine gun tower was the most freezing post on the Blenheim bomber. In order to get a good In sight, this machine gun tower turned out to be semi-convertible. Except for the glass windshield on the top and rear, the front is completely open. Except for the machine gun, there is a large ricochet steel plate, which can be said to be unobstructed.
There is a hydraulic lift rod under the machine gunner’s seat. The seat and the gun frame of the machine gun are connected by a linkage structure, which can automatically adjust the height of the seat with the pitch of the machine gun, ensuring that the shooter's line of sight can always be level with the machine gun when the machine gun is flat in the turret. The seat is raised to the highest position. At this time, almost half of the machine gunner’s body is outside the fuselage. As long as he easily turns his head in the turret, he can get an omnidirectional view of the upper hemisphere, which is the best view of the Royal Air Force. Viewing platform.
Gibson looked around in the gun turret. The companions in the formation were staring nervously at the sky. He shrugged, lowered his seat, and retracted into the cabin.
"Annalis has a little secret..." Gibson hummed a small tune, leaned against the small cabin wall, and took out his thermos from the glove box hung on the wall.
"Give him a kiss..." Gibson unscrewed the inner lid of the thermos and poured himself a cup of steaming coffee.
"We danced together..." Gibson placed the thermos, cupped the cup in both hands, and drank.
"Jebson must be lazy again." The navigator leaned on the bulkhead of the bombing seat and marked the time to the turning point with a red and blue pencil on the navigation map.
"If it weren't for his lazy temperament, he would have been promoted to corporal. His marksmanship is good. As long as he starts fighting, he can be trusted. At least I believe him." Gunter stared at the lead plane. Adjusting the throttle gently.
"Gaunt, this mission will not be as easy as the guys said. The Germans will not wait for us to bomb. I don’t know how many people will be able to go back alive this time. I heard that last night What happened to the two Wellington squadrons dispatched by Redhill? Yesterday the airport was full during the day. It was empty this morning like a ranch. None of the two squadrons came back. Only the entire airport was left. A group of ground and civilian officers." Corporal Goss got up, poked his head from the bow cabin and looked at the captain.
"What I heard was worse. It was not just two squadrons that were dispatched last night. It was all Wellington in the Eastern and Southern Divisions. There were also five Hampton Squadrons in the north. The German night fighter intercepted and was beaten badly." Gunter glanced at the pilot. Push the throttle sticks side by side forward.
"I don't know what their results are."
"It's very hanging, so today we have to complete the task. The Germans have gathered a large number of ships. They will land at any time. As long as they destroy their assembly port and fleet, we can disrupt their plans. Delay them The landing, to gain time for us to establish the line of defense, what Britain lacks most now is time."
"Just rely on our Blenheim, and those Hamptons. We don't even have an **** fighter jet."
Goss objected to this operation from the beginning. He thought it was just sending them to commit suicide, but in order not to be sent to a military court, and at the same time, he was unwilling to bear the infamy of deserters who abandon their companions. Still bite the bullet and climbed onto the plane.
"The range of the Spitfire and the hurricane is not enough. The southern frontier airport has been destroyed. The 11th Air Force has been defeated. Fighters taking off from the 12th Air Force airport must return after they fly to the French coast. This **** It's better not." Gunter finished speaking, suddenly covering his earphones nervously.
"Fighter! Nine o'clock! Lots!" At the same time, Jebson's howling came from the rear cabin.
"Keep the formation, keep the formation! All the planes stay in their respective positions." The leader of the team yelled over the radio.
"Thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three, I can't count it!" Gibson shouted.
"They are coming! 109! At six o'clock! Up." Then the cabin was filled with the sound of machine guns.
"Go to hell, bastard! Look here! German! Oh, hell!" Jebson skillfully moved the control lever of the turret, and the twin Bateford 7.7mm machine gun bullets were swept out in the air Two bullet chains shining white light.
Jebson aimed at the lead plane in the middle of a German four-finger formation approaching from behind and fired frantically. With his skillful fine-tuning, the arc trajectory of the tracer quickly leaned towards the shadow of the enemy plane. .
At this moment, a harsh crackling sounded, and Jebson turned his head in panic, and saw a Blenheim plane flying in formation following the Gunter plane 50 meters away. A ball of flame was ejected, and the billowing black smoke instantly covered the fuselage of the bomber, dragging a long plume of smoke behind the tail.
Jebson could clearly see the continuous flash of light on the fuselage of the poor bomber and the aluminum flakes and paint coatings scattered after the fuselage was torn apart by bullets. The top windshield of the machine gun tower on the back was beaten into The fragments. The machine gunner's head was leaning on one side of the windshield pillar, his neck twisted, his back facing the sky, and the broken windshield glass beside him was covered with bright red liquid.
Jebson hurriedly looked up. A BF109 twin-plane formation was inserted almost vertically from the top of the formation like lightning. Before Jebson could react, the two tracer-jetting demons were on the right side of the Gunter plane, not far from the bomber wing end. Passed through the aircraft cluster at ten meters, and rushed towards the sea without hesitation.
"Attention! Eleven o'clock direction. 109!" The navigator screamed in the headset. There was no machine gun in the bow cabin, so he could only stare at the enemy plane approaching.
Jebson fired at the German fighter plane approaching from the tail, completely powerless to respond to the pilot's instructions. The number of German fighters far exceeds the resistance of the bomber group.
"Keep the formation, all the planes stay in the formation!" The air commander in the captain's plane was still yelling.
"This blood-drinking brute! Bastard!" the navigator cursed loudly.
A German fighter jet swept across the outside of the fleet in an elegant arc, made two sharp rolls, tilted its wings and began to climb again. At the same time, the white smoke from the outermost Blenheim engine slowed down suddenly. Jebson watched the poor plane struggling to escape from the formation and began to descend. The four BF109s surrounded them like hyenas with injured wildebeest on the African grasslands.
"Poor Anderson, they are done!" Jebson turned the turret and pointed at a German fighter approaching from the right. The 109 passed through the barrage of the bomber on the right without any scruples, and charged straight against the three-plane formation at the rear of the fleet.
"Come on, you little Nazi! Let Uncle Jebson come to love you!" Jebson controlled the dual-line gun, and the front sight in the steel sight pressed the entire fuselage of the fighter. Jebson grinned and pressed the firing button, but one of the machine guns stopped abruptly after only two beeps.
"Oh! Shit!" Jebson kicked the gun stand strut vigorously, and continued shooting with the remaining machine gun.
Messerschmidt walked through the tracer barrage of the machine gun, like a light Swift flying over the waves. In the blink of an eye, BF109 wiped Jebson's landline and rushed out of the range of the machine gun.
Jebson quickly turned the machine gun tower, but it was too late. He could only watch the fighter rush into the three-plane formation behind the tail. The muzzles of the two 20mm cannons on the fighter wings flashed dangerously, and the cannon shells plowed from the wing of the lead plane to the cockpit of the wingman. The German fighter jets passed by, and the noses of the two Blenheim planes sank, one left and the other facing down in two directions.
"Keep the formation! Keep..." The entire fleet has lost more than half. However, the commander still stubbornly asked to maintain the formation. The pilots of the formation endured the torture of the German fighters while cursing their commanders. Afterwards, the **** captain plane was in front of all the formation pilots and exploded into a ball of fire as desired.
"Fighter! Right above!" Gunter looked up through the transparent valve on the top of the cockpit, seeing it against the background of the blue sky. A group of black spots lined up in a neat formation and only rushed towards the bomber formation.
"The formation disperses! Disperse! Throw away the bombs, everyone will run for their lives." A pilot in the headset shouted.
Gunter couldn't hear whose voice it was, but he reacted immediately. He pushed the throttle fully and pulled the two throttle levers to the end. "Throw away the bomb! Goss! Open the magazine door, we have to go down to the sea, so we can run away."
"Got it!" Lin Hang fell on the bombing mat and flipped the magazine opening switch. When the green light came on, he flipped the bombing switch without hesitation. There was a sound of metal friction in the magazine. The plane lifted up more than ten meters in an instant.
"Everyone wear their seat belts! We are going to rush!" Gunter pushed forward abruptly on the butterfly steering wheel of the Blenheim bomber, and the bomber's nose immediately drooped and began to dive at extreme speed toward the sea.
"150 knots, 200 knots...It's almost reaching the limit." The fuselage trembles violently, and Gunter gritted his teeth and pressed the steering wheel desperately. He turned his face to look out of the cabin, not far away. Blenheim is doing the same thing with him. Obviously he is also an experienced veteran who made the same choice as Gunter.
"It's Waynes and the others, we can form a formation with them when we get to the surface." Goss held his seat belt tightly with both hands, poking his head and looking out the window.
"The Germans are following! Oh my god, the speed is too fast!" Jebson's roar suddenly sounded, and then there was the sound of machine gun fire.
"Disperse them, Jebson, we still have two kilometers." Gunter firmly stabilized the fuselage so that the gunner could shoot accurately.
"Oh, God!" Goss shouted, and Gunter looked out the window and found that the Blenheim on the left was struggling in an unimaginable rain of bombs. The fist-sized tracer slammed down like a torrential rain, exploding huge sparks on the wing and fuselage of the bomber.
The bomber was still diving, but it was obviously out of control. Gunter saw a series of fire flashes from the engine wing root to the position of the cockpit, and the entire wing was torn from the body. , The bomber began to roll like crazy, and began to fall apart under Sergeant Gunter's gaze.
"God bless them." Gunter didn't look back at the final fate of the plane. He confirmed that no one would survive.
"God, look! What kind of fighter is this? I have never seen it!" Jebson fired frantically, trying to drive away the fast approaching enemy plane, and then he found the two following them diving. The German fighter was not the Messerschmitt he was familiar with. It looked like this aircraft was bigger and had a thicker fuselage, obviously with a huge flat nose.
Gibson strafed fiercely, and then he was surprised to find that the fighters on the opposite side were able to change stance flexibly when they dived. They rolled the fuselage easily and aimed their nose at Blenheim.
The Air Force privately pressed the firing button of the motive gun, but the machine gun suddenly stopped roaring. He quickly looked down. The remaining ammunition indicator on the ammunition box showed four zeros. He had shot all the ammunition. Jebson raised his head and watched desperately as the German fighter was turning and approaching at high speed.
In the evening, under the crimson glow, a large motorboat painted with gray-green paint was slowly moving on the pink sea. A German Army military police sergeant, wearing a short shawl, stood at the bow of the boat and looked around with a telescope.
"Sergeant, it's getting dark, when will we return." The helmsman stood at the wheelhouse with the steering wheel in one hand and a lunch box in the other hand. A soldier with a red cross armband carried a kettle to the lunch box. Pour hot water.
"Turn around one more time and go back. Doctor, have you fed hot water to those prisoners of war?" The sergeant asked loudly, holding the telescope.
"I drank them all. I think two of them were seriously injured, and I gave them two shots of morphine." The medic turned his head and looked towards the stern.
In the cabin, several men in British Air Force blue woolen uniforms sat down on the floor leaning on the side of the ship~IndoMTL.com~ With their hands handcuffed behind them, there were two wounded men lying in the middle, curled up and groaning secretly. With. On the platform at the stern, a dozen long white cloth bags were stacked, and some were still dripping with water. A pile of parachutes and various life-saving supplies filled a corner of the cabin in a mess.
"Wait a minute, turn to the eleven o'clock direction, something is wrong." The military police sergeant shouted loudly, and the helmsman quickly got back into the wheelhouse. The motorboat's engine roared and began to accelerate in the direction directed by the sergeant.
"It looks like a bomber, with weapons ready, there are three live." The sergeant shouted and jumped off the bow. Several military policemen who were chatting in the first cabin immediately stood up, and the sergeant took an MP40 submachine gun from a subordinate.
The motorboat was advancing at high speed. Not far away, an airplane painted in brown and green camouflage was half-floating and half-sinking on the water. The tail was high and slanted pointing to the sky, lying on the inclined fuselage. There is a figure of a person sitting on the fuselage, holding the antenna pillar on the fuselage with one hand, and waving desperately toward the motorboat with the other hand.
The motorboat started to slow down, and then slowly stopped beside the plane. (To be continued.)
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