Episode 131 On land and at sea, on the expedition at the same time

The bombers were bombing like dark clouds, and in an instant, large swaths of the land below turned into a sea of fire. Four horizontal bombing aviation regiments and more than 500 horizontal bombers, divided into two offensive directions, carried out wanton and indiscriminate bombardment of the two breakthrough points selected by the Ming army. More than 2,000 100-kilogram bombs, plus more than 2,000 100-kilogram incendiary bombs, poured down.

The sound of an explosion shaking the ground and shaking the mountains in front of him came, and the strong light that reflected half of the sky was also clearly visible on the side of the Ming army's position. As soon as the bomber flew over the target, the Changchun Ming Army Headquarters immediately issued an artillery order.

At the sound of an order, the large and small artillery of the 50 divisions of the Ming army roared together, and the mountain of shells covered it with a tsunami. The dawn sky was almost crowded with densely intertwined lines of fire. The ground was like an earthquake, shaking and trembling, and both feet were numb.

Xiang Xiaoqiang lied to the reporters. Now he really ran to the front line, and it was the artillery position.

Standing outside a bunker, he watched as the artillerymen in front of him, wearing steel helmets and shirtless, skillfully reloaded, fired, and unloaded shells, then took new shells and repeated the previous cycle at a rapid pace...... Nothing could be heard in either ear except a loud rumbling sound now. Looking around, I couldn't see where the sun was rising, and all I could see was the dense flash of cannon discharge. The nose now smells nothing but gunsmoke.

He turned his head and shouted loudly to Wu Yanbin beside him:

"War is terrible!!"

Wu Yanbin looked at him with a blank expression, obviously not hearing anything.

Xiang Xiaoqiang was very excited, and then shouted:

"But it's fun!!

Wu Yanbin opened his mouth and smirked, he couldn't hear anything, so he had to nod.

This continuous wave of sound and air is pounding into the chest every second. Xiang Xiaoqiang felt like his chest was being hit with a sledgehammer, and his heart was beating hard. I can't tell whether this feeling is uncomfortable or enjoyable.

He raised his wrist and took a closer look at the faint green light on the luminous watch with the flash of light, it had been five minutes since the shelling. But this is just the beginning. According to the predetermined plan, the fire preparation on this side was to be carried out for half an hour, and by five o'clock sharp, there was a ceasefire, and the tank group began to rush forward.

Suddenly, someone pulled him by the arm. Xiang Xiaoqiang looked back and saw that it was Xiuxiu.

Xiuxiu pulled his arm vigorously with one hand, pointed to the cover with the other, and said something loudly with a resolute expression, not negotiable.

Xiang Xiaoqiang knew that he had to go into cover. This was a "quid pro quo" for Xiuxiu and Lee Geun-sang to allow him to come to the front line: within five minutes of the start of the shelling, he had to go into bunker. Because in any case, after your own artillery position is fired, you may be hit back by the other side. Although the current situation is very small, because there is Xiang Xiaoqiang on the position, too many people can't afford to take the risk. Xiang Xiaoqiang wanted to watch the whole process of the artillerymen firing, and then watch the assault guns, armored vehicles, and tanks in front of him charge forward, but he couldn't help himself.

Xiang Xiaoqiang was pulled into the bunker by Xiuxiu and closed the thick wooden door.

This bunker is also a field bunker, a semi-underground fortification built of logs and sandbags, only the size of half a house, with a table, field telephone, and horse lanterns. Xiang Xiaoqiang lay on his stomach at the observation window and continued to watch the shelling outside.

In the deafening sound of cannons, Xiuxiu suddenly hugged him tightly from behind, her cheek was pressed against his back, and the heartbeat of "tom tom" was directly transmitted to Xiang Xiaoqiang's heart against her chest.

Xiang Xiaoqiang knew that Xiuxiu might be infected by the environment, and the feeling of being afraid of losing himself suddenly came up. He didn't look back, just grabbed his beautiful hands on his waist and stroked them gently.

The pungent smell of gunpowder smoke gradually mixed with a faint smell of gasoline, and some indescribable smell of burning. It was the smell of heavy incendiary bombs more than a dozen kilometers away. Those places must have become a sea of fire, and the smell is only wafting in now.

The bright light outside the observation window kept flashing on the faces of the two men, and the earth and log walls around them trembled.

I don't know how long it took like this, but suddenly, Xiuxiu let go of him all of a sudden, jumped to the side as if flying, and stood up.

Xiang Xiaoqiang turned his head and saw Hu Jiong push open the thick wooden door and come in, trotted to his side, raised his wrist to show him his watch, and pointed outside. Xiang Xiaoqiang nodded. He knew that it was already 4:55, and in five minutes, the fire preparation would cease and the armored troops in front would charge.

Sure enough, at five o'clock in the morning, the sound of artillery outside stopped one after another for more than ten seconds. In the blink of an eye, the whole world seemed to fall into a dead silence again.

The field phone on the bunker table rang. Hu Jiong grabbed the microphone, and after a while, handed the microphone to Xiang Xiaoqiang:

"My lord, it's Commander Li from Changchun."

Xiang Xiaoqiang took the microphone:

"It's me."

Li Gensheng said in the microphone:

"Your Excellency, please give the order to attack! I'll have someone follow you to the divisions! ”

Xiang Xiaoqiang was stunned, but he didn't expect Li Gensheng to think so thoughtfully, and he fell right into his arms. He laughed and said:

"Okay, take it."

After a while, I heard the voice of the female soldier in the microphone:

"My lord, it's connected, you can speak."

Xiang Xiaoqiang looked at the gunpowder smoke outside the observation window, took a deep breath, and said loudly:

"I am Xiang Xiaoqiang, now I order, all divisions to the predetermined target, attack!"

Immediately, I heard various passwords intertwined in the microphone. The divisional headquarters of each division are giving orders to attack the troops below.

At this time, Xiang Xiaoqiang felt the ground under his feet shake again, but this time it was not the loud explosion that came to his ears, but the roar of thousands of engines in the distance ahead. Countless tanks, armored vehicles, assault guns, cars...... Diesel and gasoline engines, large and small, are intertwined, creating a "buzzing" roar between heaven and earth. It was heard clearly from several kilometers away.

And what Xiang Xiaoqiang heard was just this small section of the engine of the offensive front.

Soon, another roar resounded through the sky. The sound of engines appeared in the sky, quickly sweeping from the back of the head to the front. Xiang Xiaoqiang hurriedly leaned to the window and looked at the sky. In the narrow "one" sky in the observation window, one group of planes after another is constantly flying. But this time they were all small groups, three in a group, three or four in a group, quickly passing by. That's a dive bomber.

Higher in the sky, there were also fighters in groups of four.

Judging from the general appearance of Xiang Xiaoqiang, this time the bombers are all "vultures", and most of the fighters are "goshawks". After the unification of the Ming Dynasty, the huge production capacity showed results. This is the first time since mass production that these two aircraft have been used in such large quantities.

The bombers an hour earlier, all horizontal bombers, were in the early hours of the morning, not seeking accuracy, in order to drop bombs on a large area on the Japanese positions and play the role of long-range fire preparation. The current group of dive bombers is aimed at directly supporting ground battles and carrying out "surgical" precision strikes on Japanese defensive positions.

"Alas......" Xiang Xiaoqiang grabbed the log of the observation window with both hands, and sighed with melancholy, "I really want to sit in the tank and rush forward with them!" ”

"My lord......" Xiuxiu gently grabbed his arm from behind and smiled softly, "If you think about it in your head, it's the same." ”

“……”

Just when the Ming army in the northeast was pushing the Japanese army with a torrent of steel, far south in the Zhoushan Islands, in the naval shipyard of the East China Sea Fleet Base, the first two "Shooting Fish-class" air defense submarines were refitted.

However, this cannot be called a real "shooting fish level". This is just a conversion with two ordinary submarines, and it is not specially built. Modify two ships first and try them out, and then build them if the effect is good. These two ships did not cancel the torpedo system, and there were still torpedo tubes in the nose and tail, but they did not carry torpedoes when they went to sea. Moreover, the foredeck 75-mm gun was canceled. The weight savings resulted in an additional layer of armor on the deck and conning tower to protect against shrapnel, strafing and close-range shock waves.

The rest of the firepower is the same as designed, that is, 2 40mm Bofors cannons, 8 20mm Erriken cannons, and 8 12.7mm M2 heavy machine guns. These anti-aircraft weapons are already unprecedentedly powerful for a submarine.

A dozen heavy torpedoes and foredeck guns were removed, a layer of armor and two machine guns, eight machine guns were added, and the total weight increased slightly. After testing, the maximum surface speed of the submarine did not decrease much, but dropped from the original 17.5 knots to 17 knots. However, the underwater speed has dropped significantly, from the original maximum of 7 knots to a maximum of 5.5 knots. After all, two cannons were installed on the upper part of the submarine, which increased a lot of underwater resistance.

In the early morning of the 15th, when the Ming army attacked the Japanese army on land, two air defense submarines quietly sailed out of the submarine base in the dawn of dawn. The girls on the boat, wearing steel helmets, heavy bulletproof vests, and harnesses, looked at the sky with anxiety and prayed in their hearts.

They prayed that it would be better not to show up with Japanese planes, and even if there were Japanese planes, it would be better to have only one, so that they would be shot down in two or three hits.

The two submarines were specially selected. The difference is that the criterion for this selection is not the ace captain - not how many tons of enemy ships have been sunk before, but the ace gun crew - just how many enemy planes have been shot down before. A group of girls in the artillery crews of these two submarines are all good at "fighting planes", but despite this, they have only shot down two and three planes respectively, and they are still Qing army planes.

Now they have to face the Japanese planes, which are said to be "ten times more powerful" than the Qing army planes. Not long ago, I sank the Blackfish. After the girls of the Blackfish were fished back, the girls of the submarine force of the entire East China Sea Fleet, whether it was the canteen or the dormitory, took the matter of the Blackfish as a topic and passed it on to each other. Gradually, even the men of the surface ship unit became a little nervous. The entire East China Sea Fleet was permeated with a sense of fear of Japanese aircraft.

It was also at this time that the high-ranking generals of the East China Sea Fleet also began to understand the significance of Xiang Xiaoqiang's insistence on building air defense submarines. Now, to break the fear of the submarine forces against Japanese aircraft, it is up to these air defense submarines. When they obediently beat down a few Japanese bombers, returned triumphantly and bragged about it, the mentality of the submarine girls will return to normal.