At twelve o'clock in the evening, the fleet arrived at the island of Banterelli. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

Of course, the fleet did not land on the island, but stopped in the waters off the island, waiting for the time to attack.

At this time, General Juan made a speech on the radio to boost the morale of the soldiers.

"Everyone!" General Zhu An said: "I am honored to be your commander, and you will be baptized in battle before dawn, and this is also the first battle that the Third Army has received since its reorganization. Be proud to have been chosen to take part in this operation, because you have been given the power to attack and destroy the enemy, you have been given the power to fight for freedom, you have the glory of Algeria and the future of the world in your hands, and you deserve this great trust......"

General Juan may be a good general, but he is not a very good orator, and he does not know how to stir up the emotions of the soldiers.

After a long time, General Zhu An finished speaking.

He turned to Zhang Chi and said, "You can say a few words!" ”

Zhang Chi stepped forward, puffed out his chest and said, "Soldiers, we are going to the battlefield tonight." As your general adviser, I don't want you to go to war for the sake of your country, for your family, or for anything else. Listen, you are for yourselves, for yourselves to go to war, for yourselves to live...... The best way to come back alive is to destroy the enemy, understand? Kill all the enemies, and Sicily will be ours! ”

This speech like a bandit drew bursts of cheers from the Algerian soldiers, and they even shouted with Zhang Chi: "Kill all the enemies, Sicily is ours!" ”

After an hour's rest on Banterelli, the fleet sailed for Sicily.

At 2:45, the flotilla arrived off the coast of Sicily on time and began to drop landing craft.

At this time, the Allied air forces began to sortie.

The Air Force here refers to the Airborne Forces...... At this time, due to the strategy of the so-called "surprise attack" developed by Alexander.

The "surprise attack" is naturally indispensable for airborne troops, and the British and American armies have both invested airborne troops to carry out airborne landings on Sicily.

The task of the Airborne Forces is to seize fortifications in depth and ensure the smooth implementation of the landing force landing.

The 1st Airborne Division invested by the British Army, and the 82nd Airborne Division of the US Army, each with more than 5,000 officers and men, were transported by 1,500 C47 transport planes of the 52nd Transport Wing of the United States, and the departure airports were Kairouan Airport and Susa Airport in Tunisia.

Because of the "surprise attack," the airborne troops could only be airborne a few minutes before the landing force carried out the landing, so they could only be airborne by moonlight at midnight, that is, around 5 o'clock in the morning.

However, it turned out that the plan of the "surprise attack" drawn up by Alexander was very crude or too idealistic and unrealistic...... Zhang Chi had already reminded him of this, but Alexander did not listen to the persuasion of others at all, and he may be showing that the British were the leaders of the battle.

From the British point of view, such an airborne operation did not seem to pose much risk to them.

The British Airborne Forces had to face the Italian army, which could make them surrender even by forcing a pilot, but at this time it was a division parachuted in...... So what Alexander had in mind was that the British airborne troops parachuted into Sicily with great beauty, and then easily received Italian prisoners, creating a myth in the history of British airborne.

As for the German mechanized units or armored divisions that the American Airborne Forces had to face, it was not for Alexander to consider.

It's just that what Alexander did not expect was that the main difficulty of the Airborne Forces was actually not the enemy at all, but himself.

The Allied forces were composed of fleets of many countries, including the British, American and French armies, and these fleets could not effectively identify each other, let alone the sea and air in the dark and night, and even the fleets and fleets needed to rely on signal lights to identify each other.

To make matters worse, these fleets were all anchored off the coast of Sicily, and they were all crumbling into a string for fear that the German and Italian air forces would come to bomb, so they prepared for air defense from the beginning.

And then, without surprise, when British and American transport planes flew over the fleet...... I don't know which hairy guy opened fire as soon as he was nervous.

This firing was terrible, and everyone thought that it was an enemy plane flying in the sky, so they couldn't help but fire all kinds of anti-aircraft guns and anti-aircraft machine guns into the sky...... The transport planes took evade in the air in a hurry, many planes collided and caught fire because they changed their routes, and the terrified paratroopers rushed to parachute in a panic regardless of whether they had reached their destination or not, so the first two regiments of the US airborne troops were scattered within a radius of 100 kilometers, and many even fell into the sea and had no follow-up.

The situation on the side of the British Airborne Forces was not much better than that of the American army.

The first echelon of the British army totaled 2,578 people, and the national army and Italy pointed out by the patriarch of the first airborne clan, Hicks, took 137 gliders, and the group did not rise to the predetermined altitude due to lack of experience when it was still 2,700 meters away from Sicily, and could only be urgently decoupled at low altitude.

However, because the altitude was too low, 69 of the more than 100 gliders crashed into the sea before they could enter the island, and more than 600 of the airborne troops on board were drowned.

Brigade Commander Hicks escaped from the water before the glider sank into the sea and was later rescued by an Allied landing craft.

The airborne landing in Sicily was considered a one-time airborne landing that caught nothing and grossly failed...... From this it can be seen that Alexander's so-called "surprise attack" strategy was completely based on imagination.

And the price Alexander paid for this strategy was only the beginning.

It should be said that one thing is good, and that is that the landing force is going well.

In fact, the landing was already very smooth, and intelligence had long shown that the anti-landing facilities and preparations in Sicily were insufficient, and the Allies only needed a burst of artillery bombardment plus aircraft bombardment and then landing.

But Alexander had to engage in some bells and whistles, which led to heavy casualties for the Allies at the beginning of the landing.

The landings went smoothly, partly of which was a blessing in the storm......

The German and Italian troops thought that the Allies would definitely not come to land on such a stormy night, so they slept in the barracks with peace of mind.

Even the planes flying over their heads and the incessant roar of anti-aircraft guns did not alert them.

Because similar bombing has been going on for more than a month, and this is nothing surprising to them.

But when they turned their gaze to the sea, they opened their mouths wide in astonishment, and could not close them any longer, because in the hazy moonlight, at some point there appeared on the sea, and at some point there were countless warships, large and small, and then the red light of the warships' guns flashed, and a thick smoke floated out, and soon a loud thunderous noise was connected above their heads.