Battle of the Third Reich Chapter 77: Cromwell

On the evening of August 19, the Luftwaffe, uncharacteristically, carried out an unprecedented night bombing of towns in southern England. Net; From 9 o’clock that night, the bomber groups that took off from air bases along the coast of France, in units of 100 aircraft, attacked all important coastal towns and ports from Portsmouth to Dover, and some of them went deep into the United Kingdom. Inland, the farthest fleet even reached Coventry.

It was a crazy night of bombs. Looking down from the sky, the southern coastline of England was dotted with dazzling explosions and fires, as well as billowing smoke, like the end of the day.

The German bombing secrets were like a swarm of locusts, flying over the city. In the eyes of the fled citizens, dense bombers almost covered the moon.

The Germans dropped bombs on all the towns marked on the target list without mercy. In addition to the conventional heavy blasting grenades, there were also some new types of incendiary bombs. The latter caused much more damage to the villages and towns than the former.

Most of Britain’s ancient towns are made of brick and wood structures, especially coastal towns and villages, which are built with a lot of wood and gravel. Once a fire occurs, it must be the result of a collapsed wall. British villages and towns generally have a long history. Because they have not been invaded by foreign enemies for a long time, and there are no earthquakes and natural disasters, a building can often be traced back to hundreds of years. The central area of ​​these towns still maintains the pattern of centuries ago, with aging facilities The streets are narrow and there are almost no gaps between the houses. Once a fire occurs, several blocks can be stretched out within a few minutes.

Now what they are encountering is not an ordinary residential house fire, but a professional arson weapon filled with special combustion aids. An arson bomb can turn a 50-meter square area into a sea of ​​flames. The temperature is good. Melt steel and burn cement.

Under the bombs of German bombers, these ancient villages and towns were completely wiped out. The fire brigades of many villages and towns did not even have the chance to be dispatched, and they were directly trapped in the fire station by the fire. The fire spread unscrupulously on the roofs of the streets, burning from one house to another. Residents vying for their lives were surrounded by flames on the narrow streets, struggling with smoke and high temperatures.

Some residents who follow the provisions of the air defense brochure. I took the whole family and hid in the air-raid shelter dug in the backyard. I didn't know that the air-raid shelter that could defend against shrapnel and gravel could not withstand the attack of flames, and the violent combustion drained the air on the surface. Even the sewage in the sewers has begun to boil, and the terrible smell of meat permeates the streets of villages and towns.

Portsmouth has just gone through a catastrophe. The last resistance of the French fleet caused heavy losses to this military port. The berths in the port area are full of semi-sinking and semi-floating ships, the most conspicuous are the two huge French Battleship. One showed half of a scorched and twisted bridge on the water, and the other turned over its belly to reveal a red bottom full of holes.

The neighborhoods near the port area were attacked by a large number of stray bullets. It is hard to say that it was not deliberate by the French, but the instigator has already sunk to the bottom with the battleship, and the British can only drink this glass of homemade bitter wine alone.

Just as the Royal Navy and Army in the port were working overtime day and night to clean up the wreckage and salvage the sunken ship, German bombers suddenly arrived by appointment and dealt another heavy blow to this most important military port.

The three large-caliber anti-aircraft artillery positions in the naval port were bombarded by the battleship’s main artillery in the previous conflict, and most of them have turned into twisted metal.

After the German bombers entered the original air defense circle, it was strange to find that today's air defense firepower is weak. The bomber group can drive in for a long time. It's like entering no one. The anti-aircraft gunners in the naval port had long been killed and injured in the previous conflict. The remaining two or three kittens could only use the two surviving antiaircraft artillery to fire the shells in pieces, with neither ranging nor fixed height. In order to show them to the furious commander, lest this guy who is already on the verge of madness target them on the spot.

Hundreds of small-caliber anti-aircraft guns in the military port are very active. Under the guidance of searchlights, cannonballs are madly jetted into the sky. Red and blue tracers are flying all over the sky, like fireflies in the summer night, but these cannons have too long range. It's near, it doesn't threaten the aircraft at high altitude. I could only watch the German bombers swagger and drop huge bombs on my head.

The Germans rarely used large-scale night air strikes before. Even if they had targets, they were limited to air bases and some military-industrial enterprises, such as Lower London and the area along the Thames. The southern radar network was completely destroyed, and now the British can only rely on coastal air defense observation posts and listeners for primary warning. At night. The observation post is almost useless, and the listener can only hear the general direction of the attacking enemy aircraft, but the number of aircraft types is completely impossible to judge. Once a large-scale invasion of multiple directions and multiple aircraft groups is encountered, one will lose sight of the other and completely fall into chaos.

The air defense posts along the British coast were caught in this chaos that night. All sorts of messy information flooded into various air defense sector command posts. The local command posts had no other sources of information and were unable to screen them. They could only be reported to the British Fighter Command with a label to be verified. The fighter command was immediately plunged into chaos. Dover, West Hogham, Kabul Rafal, Folkestone, Heyzer, Alkham, Hawking, Sandgate, Newington London, Greatston, Hastings, Eastbourne, New Haven, Brighton, Portsmouth. . . . The southern coast is in desperation.

Most of the cities here are close to the sea, and there is no warning time at all. When the observation post detects enemy aircraft, most of the German bombers have already flown overhead. When the first bomb hits the ground, some cities even have air defense alarms. Before it sounded, some residents were blown to pieces in their sleep.

Smoke was everywhere on the south coast of the Strait. The operator of the command post was crying and listening to the seaside observation post in the telephone, desperately wailing: "Aircraft, there are thousands of German planes above me!"

Almost all observation points have issued reports of the discovery of German bombers invading. The number ranges from hundreds to thousands, and the directions are all three hundred and sixty degrees. Dowding, who hurried to the command post, was shocked by the dense array of enemy plane signs on the plane marking table. Where did the Germans come from so many bombers, could they not reproduce themselves like locusts?

The German army has never launched such a large-scale night offensive. This quantity and quality are obviously very abnormal. Dowding did not dare to take it lightly, because with the current strength of the British fighter command, it is impossible to cover such a wide battlefield.

If these German bomber groups are accompanied by a large number of German fighter jets, then dispatching those heavy twin-engine night fighters will only kill them in vain. Moreover, it is possible that some of these fleets are directly fighter fleets. The Germans have not played like this once or twice. Let the Royal Air Force corpses run across the wild every time.

The more Dowding thought about it, the more he felt that it was possible, otherwise he could not explain the seemingly unscientific number of German planes in front of him. There must be a huge German fighter corps among them. Dowding had come to his judgment, and he was even more afraid to dispatch his only remaining fighters casually.

Dowding now has only more than 300 fighters left. Moreover, 80% of the pilots have not undergone systematic night flight training. It is a test for them to ensure that they take off and land at night, not to mention allowing them to fight at night. The Germans have clearly mastered night combat skills, which can be learned from the strait. Proof on the wreckage of a British bomber floating.

The veterans under Dao Ding are exhausted to the extreme. Most of them were forcibly restricted to take off and reserved their energy for the most critical battles, but now it seems that the most critical time has come.

Previously, the Royal Air Force has suffered too many blood lessons. Thousands of aircrews who died in action have proved with their lives that the tactics of dispersing forces to defeat each is a delusion and a trap for the murder of British pilots. Let yourself be broken by the Germans. Immediately a piece of news from Ashford made Dowding more determined. A huge bomber group with hundreds of planes passing by the suburbs of Ashford, to say nothing, should be directed towards London.

Prior to this, the Luftwaffe had not stopped harassing and bombing London. However, they were all only thirty to forty. The bombing areas were also concentrated in slums and rivers. At night, there were at most a dozen raids. Generally speaking, the damage to the city was not as good as the British themselves. The anti-aircraft gun is big.

But this time, Dowding smelled something wrong. The Germans seemed to be bad. The blows caused by hundreds of large aircraft groups were completely different from the previous squadron bombings. Covered bombing can easily razed the entire city center. So the Air Force commander hurriedly issued an order to give up supporting coastal towns. Concentrate the main forces and fully defend London.

Dowding is very clear that it doesn't matter if other British cities are razed to the ground, it will only trigger the hatred of the British towards the Germans. Boosting the morale of the people became another blood debt owed by the Germans to the British. Some people may accuse him of negligence or incompetence, but Dowding believes that the Prime Minister will keep him. Churchill knows his abilities, and only he can control the air force for Churchill, or order the air force to complete all reasonable and unreasonable orders given by Churchill.

But once London was destroyed by bombing. Then no one in the world can save him. The national capital, the heart of the United Kingdom, the glory of the empire, the British royal family and important government agencies, parliaments, and military headquarters are all in this city. There are also the most influential British media, newspapers, foreign news agencies, and several Millions of urban residents, various scholars, experts and professors, generals, lawyers, bureaucrats, and bankers. There are also a large number of military factories, shipyards, research institutes, and technical institutes. Once the city suffered serious losses due to the German bombing, let alone the group of politicians, the group of penmans on Fleet Street alone would be enough to make him stink for thousands of years, and then even Churchill would not be able to keep him, even to defend the Prime Minister and the war. At that time, the authority of the cabinet personally sent him to a military court.

Dowding was determined. He dispatched all the aircraft that the Twelfth Air Force could take off. The mighty two hundred hurricanes and one hundred Spitfire fighters encircled the London airspace.

The Germans acted very cooperatively. They did not touch the cordon in Sir Dowding’s heart from start to finish. Whenever a German bomber group approached London, the British fighter group would pounce like bloodthirsty sharks. In the past, the German bombers behaved like frightened cattle. Those far away were scattered all at once, and they turned their noses and fled madly towards the strait. But then there will be another fleet of planes slowly approaching London, and it will go round and round without stopping. So Dowding could only let the fighter jets land and refuel at the temporary airports around London in turn, while the rest kept circling around London to ensure the safety of the London airspace that night.

"As of two o'clock in the morning, the latest report from the Coastal Observatory and the Army shows that Folkestone has suffered serious losses. Dover Fortress is undergoing a second bombing. All anti-aircraft artillery positions have been destroyed. The entire town center of Heze It was set ablaze and burned into a sea of ​​flames. The casualties were very serious. How King, Sandgate, and Newington were being bombed. The New Haven fire was serious, and Portsmouth Naval Port was also bombed. The contact has been interrupted, and the headquarters is trying to find a way to contact them again.” The Army Liaison Officer stood in front of Churchill tremblingly and reported the latest report to the Prime Minister.

At this moment, the heavy blast door was pushed open, and the British Army Chief of Staff Ismay hurriedly walked into the meeting room.

"Prime Minister, the situation is very critical now. I think the cabinet members should be called immediately for an emergency meeting. I just talked to Dowding on the phone, and he has repelled five German bombers' attacks on London~IndoMTL. com~According to him, there are countless German bombers flying towards London. He and his men will defend the city to the death and the safety of His Majesty the King."

Churchill looked like he was awakened from his sleep. He was wearing pajamas, and a checkered bathrobe was approved outside. He was wearing slippers with bare feet. He sat on the sofa, sinking into the cushion.

Previously the H Fleet was completely annihilated and the Portsmouth Fleet conflict had caused him a very serious blow. He appeared more haggard, his thin hair messed up against his greasy scalp, his brows frowned, his face pale and drooping. The bags under the eyes looked big and dark under the cold light from the roof.

"It's too late. The blond boy finally couldn't help it. This is an invasion. They are about to land and immediately issue a notice to all army troops in my name, "Cromwell."

"Cromwell? Your Excellency Prime Minister, we have not received the report of the discovery of the German ship, do we need to confirm it again." Ismay did not expect Churchill to make such a judgment.

"Cromwell", this is a secret word confined to the British Army, and its meaning is "the invasion has begun." (To be continued.) xh211

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