Chapter 310 Gibraltar Fortress (2)

The current anti-aircraft firepower of Gibraltar is only a dozen Hurricanes and a few dozen anti-aircraft artillery.

The dozen Hurricane fighter jets that took off with fearless courage encountered a Luftwaffe BF-109 escort fighter that was three times their size.

The result is self-evident. The Hurricane fighter jets, which were already lagging behind in terms of performance, were crushed by numbers and were unable to resist. One after another, they fell to the ground and the sea, turning into balls of fire.

The bf109 escort formation, which easily completed its mission, raised its altitude and then maintained a dense formation with long-range bombers to conduct a carpet bombing of Gibraltar's key defense areas.

As mentioned earlier, after the British occupied Gibraltar, they expelled the original Spanish residents and introduced a large number of immigrants from Britain, Italy, North Africa and other places, thus completely changing the local population structure. In this way, the German bombing did not have to worry about accidentally injuring innocent Spanish people. Anyway, those who stay here are good people who are obedient to the British Empire, and they can be bombed at will.

Aerial bombs weighing 50 kilograms to 250 kilograms fell from the sky, blowing all the houses and streets on the ground into rubble.

On the anti-aircraft artillery position, the heroic anti-aircraft gunners braved the bombing and controlled anti-aircraft artillery of various calibers to fire artillery shells into the air. Unfortunately, the flying height of the German long-range bombers far exceeded the range of the British's poor performance bomber. . Their bravery exposed the location of these anti-aircraft positions, and they were clearly photographed by reconnaissance planes mixed in with the bomber formation.

The massive bombing raids by Mosquito bombers that followed the departure of the long-range bombers caused the loss of about one-fifth of the air defense positions in the Fortress of Gibraltar. And when the third bomber formation flew over the fortress in the afternoon, the end of these air defense positions also came.

This time came the Stuka formation, which was famous for its precision bombing.

Accompanied by the distinctive sharp and piercing buzzing sound, Stukas swooped down almost vertically and carried out surgical precision bombing on those exposed anti-aircraft positions.

In just one day, almost all the air defense positions on Gibraltar's surface were lost. Many minefield barbed wires, machine gun bunkers and various obstacles were also damaged.

The next day, the bombing continued.

All houses, roads, port facilities, trees, and even the rocks on Mount Gibraltar were not immune to the Luftwaffe's aerial bombs.

Regardless of whether the bombing site has British defense facilities or not, as long as the site is on the Gibraltar Peninsula, it will cover everything with aerial bombs, leaving only one thing on the surface, and that is the crater.

Governor Liddell walked around the command room extremely irritably. The light overhead flickered on and off from time to time, as if it could go out at any moment. Yesterday afternoon, a 500-kilogram aerial bomb happened to destroy Gibraltar's only power station, causing a power outage throughout Gibraltar. Fortunately, they were prepared for this. There was a large generator inside the fortress that could provide power to the entire fortress.

Liddell had no time to worry about these annoying light bulbs now. What troubled him was that in just one day, the Germans did not even pay a single casualty, and only spent some ammunition to destroy all the dozen fighter jets and anti-aircraft positions in Gibraltar. Expired.

It is no exaggeration to say that there is no defense in the sky of Gibraltar now. Even if the extremely fragile airship from the last war flew over the fortress, they would not be able to shoot it down.

But he was just irritated and did not fall into despair.

After all, as the governor, he knew everything about the fortress. What could the Germans do even if they had control of the air? Can the fortress be captured by plane? Aren't we going to send infantry up in the end? At that time, the bomb crater in front of the fortress will become the grave of those Germans, and as many as they come will be buried!

It wasn't until the fifth day that a group of "flying tank" IL-2 attack aircraft arrived. After flying at ultra-low altitude for several times, they were not attacked by any anti-aircraft weapons. Manstein confirmed that Gibraltar's air defense position was completely intact. be destroyed.

"Since a 500-kilogram bomb can't blow up, what will happen to a ten-ton bomb?" Manstein said to himself while standing on the top of the mountain with a telescope and looking at the Iron Barrel Fortress in the distance.

There was a rumble in the sky, and five modified He-177 heavy bombers slowly flew over his head and flew towards the fortress.

Each bomber carries a Grand Slam version 0 bomb in its magazine.

Version 0 is because these Grand Slam bombs have undergone a series of improvements and upgrades compared to the ones that bombed the Eben Emaar Fortress in Belgium last time. A newly developed rocket booster was added to the rear of the bomb. The Grand Slam bomb itself can fall at a speed of 1,126 kilometers per hour, and with the addition of this rocket booster, the speed can exceed 1,800 kilometers per hour, nearly twice the speed of sound. You can imagine how terrifying the potential energy is. Although the amount of powder charged has been reduced accordingly, the power is still earth-shaking.

However, no matter how powerful it is, it is impossible to penetrate the nearly one hundred meters thick rock, so the target they want to destroy is the three fortress turrets on the top of the fortress.

Soon, five He-177 heavy bombers flew towards the Fortress of Gibraltar, circling slowly looking for an opportunity to drop bombs.

"bomb!"

The bombardier on the first He-177 bomber pulled the bomb release button hard, and the huge Grand Slam bomb detached from the pylon, causing the He-177 body to jump upwards.

The bombardier stared at the falling bomb and the target on the ground through the sight, and adjusted the bomb's posture according to the cross-shaped luminous signal light that kept flashing at the tail of the bomb.

After the trajectory of the bomb fell, the bombardier pressed another button to send an ignition signal to the rocket booster of the bomb.

Bang!

The rocket booster suddenly spewed out hot flames, and the huge bomb suddenly rushed down, breaking the sound barrier in an instant. A faint sonic boom cloud appeared around the huge bomb; it hit the steel plate on the top of one of the fortress turrets with a devastating force.

The earth-shaking collision sound echoed inside the fortress. Everyone stopped everything in their hands at this moment, looking in horror at the direction of the collision sound above their heads. Even if the British soldiers were arrogantly clamoring to drag multiple Germans to be buried with them, when it really came to the critical moment of life and death, only a few could face it calmly.

At the moment of impact, if you can use slow motion to observe, you can see that the steel plate on the top of the turret, with the impact point as the center point, began to spread out in all directions, and at the center of the impact point, the steel plate seemed to soften, and it sank inwards again and again. Finally, the ten-meter-thick steel plate and cement protective layer was broken!

The huge projectile fell next to a 381mm caliber fortress gun in the horrified eyes of a group of British gunners, but its residual force did not decrease, and half of the projectile fell into the ground.

The British soldiers in shock had not had time to recover before the delayed fuse on the bomb was detonated.

"Boom!"