Chapter 2084 Raid on Calais III
The British fighter force could not save their Channel Fleet. The air defense shield composed of at least 5 squadrons of fighter jets blocked most of the British fighter jets from the battlefield, while the British battleships and armored cruisers on the sea were beaten and fled.
What surprised the British and German pilots was that at this time, the German submarine also came up to grab the head! A British armored cruiser passed in front of a German submarine in a panic. When its slender hull appeared at a distance of less than 900 meters from the front of the submarine numbered U589, the German submarine officers and soldiers were overjoyed and did not hesitate. 4 rounds of heavy ship-borne torpedoes were fired, so the Luftwaffe pilots in the air looked sluggish! Their torpedoes hadn't been thrown yet, so why did the battleship on the opposite side suddenly blew up?
Attacking the British Channel Fleet was only part of the mission of the German bomber force, not even the most important part. When the sea was already in a mess, hundreds of German bombers began to bomb the British positions near Calais. , The German army on the ground also launched a breakthrough immediately!
boom! Huge pillars of smoke rose above the front line of defense of the British army, and the entire position was like a heavy hammer hitting the ground! When the gunpowder smoke dissipated, a huge crater with a diameter of only more than 20 meters appeared on the British army's position, and outside the crater, there were scattered British corpses. There are no traces of shrapnel on these bodies, but the seven orifices are bleeding, and the faces are distorted. It is obvious that they were shocked to death by the shock wave generated after the explosion!
"It's a siege artillery! This is at least the power of a 10-inch artillery!" A British soldier exclaimed. The large-caliber artillery was even shocking and powerful before the end of World War II! Even if only a few of these cannons with a caliber of more than 10 inches appear, they can shake the entire front without being suppressed. This has been verified in the Lushun offensive and defensive battles in the Russo-Japanese War in history or in this plane. After that, no matter how strong the bunker is, it cannot withstand repeated blows from large-caliber siege guns!
But this time, the large-caliber siege guns that appeared on the battlefield were not a few, but dozens of them! 2 complete siege artillery regiments of the Austro-Hungarian Legion have arrived on the battlefield and deployed! This 12-inch L18 heavy-duty siege gun produced by the Skoda military factory is definitely a masterpiece of this era. The artillery is deployed on a four-wheel chassis and can be disassembled into two parts, the barrel and the gun mount. The total weight is only 24 tons!
Two types of shells are used, one is heavy shells. The bomb weighs 384KG, and the effective range is around 14 kilometers. The other is a light bomb, which weighs 287 kilograms and has an effective range of about 18 kilometers. Moreover, this artillery has an elevation angle much higher than normal artillery and a curved trajectory. When the British fleet was still there, these heavy artillery with a short range would not be able to play any role, but now, when the British fleet is overwhelmed, up to 36 12-inch heavy siege guns are enough to let the British army on the opposite side know what it is It's called Thunderbolt!
"I felt like an earthquake in the whole position. Not far away, the German siege artillery kept throwing shells weighing several hundred kilograms at us. Once a shell fell, the entire trench was wiped from the ground. A huge earthen pit and scattered weapons parts or charred body parts tell us that there was once a British army position here."
"The firepower and support points of the civil structures we built on the periphery were smashed to pieces like eggs under the blow of Skoda's heavy hammer. The entire line of defense became fragmented under the continuous German attacks, and our heavy artillery was destroyed by the Luftwaffe. Suppression, in the rear, the sound of explosions and machine gun fire has never stopped. As soon as you look up, you can see a swarm of German planes circling above our heads. Our fighting spirit was quickly destroyed by the massive bombs and shelling of the Germans worn out,
We can only watch the German infantry follow the tanks and run over our defenses. "
"When the German shelling was suspended, when we could see the faces of the German soldiers on the opposite side, the first reaction of most people was not to raise their guns and shoot, but to throw their weapons out of the trench, and then put their hands on their heads. Waiting to be captured by the opponent, the long-term battle has exhausted us, and seeing comrades-in-arms whom we know or don’t know turn into corpses or shredded flesh has already brought us to the brink of collapse. We were completely broken, and I became one of the prisoners." A British officer wrote in his diary after the war.
When the British artillery positions in the distance were completely suppressed, the front was bombarded by a large number of heavy artillery, and the moment tanks poured into the British defense line, it was only a matter of time before the British were defeated. However, what the Germans did not expect was that this time, for the first time, the German army encountered a large number of British troops who directly chose to surrender in the first wave of attacks. After two years of war, the British Army, which was once known for its elite It is no longer the prestige of the past, and in the current desperate situation, the will of the British army to resist collapsed directly. The 7 British divisions defending the entire periphery of the Port of Calais surrendered one after another within a day. In addition to the 2 British divisions in the city, more than 80,000 British troops finally entered the German prisoner-of-war camp!
"Don't fight street battles with the British, let's go around the edge of the city and occupy the port!" Lieutenant General Hall continued to give orders to the German troops who were attacking. After tearing open the British defense line with heavy artillery, hundreds of tanks and a large number of infantry circled outside Calais and rushed directly towards the seaside port area. By this time, the remaining British troops outside the city It was no longer possible to defend the most critical port for the British Expeditionary Force. Before four o'clock in the afternoon, the German armored forces finally rushed into the port area, controlling the port facilities and the remaining British fleet in the port. And began to build defensive positions, and blasted key facilities in the port area!
The Germans did it very thoroughly. Lieutenant General Hall didn't know what the British would do next. They might concentrate their forces to take it back. For the British Navy, which has a large number of former dreadnought battleships and more than 2 dozen old-fashioned cruisers, it is a daytime battle. Although the attack was brutal, it was not without the power to fight back. If they came over at night and supported the British army and continued to try to seize the position, then Lieutenant General Hall would still have some troubles. Therefore, in the end, the Lieutenant General came up with a solution once and for all. , Block the entire port area directly through blasting and shipwrecks! In this case, even if the British army took it back, it would be meaningless.
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