The Normans retreated!

Standing in the upper secondary gun position of the Norman battleship, looking at the sparsely scattered Norman soldiers who retreated, Weiss breathed a sigh of relief. Although the Battle of Belakaser Pass also ended in a victory for the Union army, it was a tragic and tragic victory, and the Union army paid a very heavy price in exchange for a nearly scrapped Norman warship and a fortress completely reduced to ruins, and this time the situation was completely different: hundreds of heavily armed Norman soldiers were on guard around the Norman battleship, and if you count the guards around the stadium, the Normans had more than ten times as many troops at their disposal as Weiss, although the battle losses were not counted. But the Normans' withdrawal gave him and his companions the opportunity to make history. The next thing they have to do is seal the hatch of the near exit, use the ship's weapons well, and wait for the Federation forces to kill, and this miraculous raid will come to a successful end. If nothing else, Weiss's group of "rabble" will be written into military textbooks as the creators of this classic war example, and will become the object of worship by later generations of soldiers......

Until the dust settles, all honors and achievements are just speculation. The immediate reality is that the Norman soldiers retreated, but the battle was far from over. Without caring about wiping away the sweat, Weiss hurriedly gathered the Union soldiers on the deck of the battleship, and sent some people to respond to their comrades from top to bottom and sweep away the remnants of the enemy, while the other part carried ammunition, sorted out their armaments, and prepared to resist the enemy's counterattack. Finally, he unloaded his backpack, took out his flare gun and flares, and fired two green and one red flares in the direction of the center of the city.

With a force of less than 200 men, a surprise attack on a heavily protected Norman warship was almost impossible to achieve by conventional thinking. Because of this, as the initiator and commander of the operation, Weiss actually forgot to agree on how to contact Octavier when he said goodbye to Octavier. The two green and one red flares are the most commonly used battlefield signals by the Federal Army, and are usually sent by the front army to guide the rear army to continue advancing.

There was no response from the federal forces in the center of the city, but gunfire and explosions were heard in the direction of the stadium. In this two-pronged battle, it would be extremely difficult to raid a Norman battleship, and the operation to rescue the Union soldiers and civilians from the stadium would be easier in theory, but the reality may be very different. One of the reasons for this was the huge disparity in strength between the enemy and us, even if two-thirds of the Norman defenders were urgently transferred, the dozens of warriors sent by Weiss still had to deal with hundreds of Norman soldiers, and these enemies set up machine guns and machine guns at various nearby crossings, and it was not easy to deal with these firing points. Second, the number of rescue targets is huge, and even if the evacuation route is opened, how to maintain order and avoid non-combat casualties such as stampedes is a very challenging task. In addition, among the evacuation targets, there may be some people who are unable to move or have injuries, and the handling and placement of these personnel is difficult to predict in advance and must be improvised...... In the brief interval between battles, Weiss speculated, pondered, and worried, but the real trouble was much more than that. As night fell, the city's urban areas, streets, and open spaces gradually disappeared into darkness, and the visual distance rapidly decreased, and the enemy could approach the battleship at any time under the cover of night, waiting for an opportunity to launch a counterattack.

In order to guard against the enemy's reverse attack, Weiss turned on the "human radar", and this time, the enemy on the ground was still gathering on the periphery, but the enemy situation in the air made his scalp tingle: in the northeast sky, the Norman fleet had already been killed!

Didn't you say that you would hold back the enemy's fleet and buy a day and a night for the brothers who were engaged in a counteroffensive in Aocheng? How is it that the enemy's fleet came just after nightfall? Not to mention that he and these soldiers under his command are not capable of controlling this battleship to take to the skies to fight, even if there is, if they rush into battle, is they capable of being the enemy? Since it is impossible to fight, wouldn't the raid and rescue operation against the trapped soldiers and civilians in the stadium all be wasted?

Born and died again and again, Weiss gradually had a big heart. He did not panic, let alone give up in despair, but gritted his teeth, silently observing and speculating on the strength of this Norman fleet. Well...... There are no capital ships in the true sense of the word, and the strongest ones are the two secondary capital ships between battleships and armored ships, are they fast battleships built by the Norman Empire, or large cruisers captured from the slipways of the Kingdom of Wessex, and do they carry high-power weapons of destruction - the kind of aerial torpedoes that two or three rounds are enough to destroy a battleship? There were seven corvettes, three of which were genuine first-class frigates, the standardized products of the Norman Empire, fast and powerful, which were quite difficult opponents in air combat; Four of what appeared to be second-class frigates, or old frigates from the Kingdom of Wessex, were fast and had weak firepower. Three non-combat ships, fast and with a large number of passengers, should be fast transports carrying marines.

The situation is indeed a bit tricky.

Just as Weiss was worried about the sudden change in the battlefield situation, the hull of the ship shook violently, and a huge explosion came from under his feet. A moment later, billowing smoke rose from the stern of the ship, and thick smoke poured out of the amidships' hatch. A short time later, the men sent to clean up the remnants of the enemy on the ship returned in disgrace to report that a group of Norman crew had moved the propellant packs from the aft ammunition depot to the power room, blowing up the floating power plant at the rear of the battleship, and that the ship was no longer capable of flying until great efforts were made to repair it.

Immediately afterwards, another Union soldier came to report that all the surviving assault personnel had boarded the ship and closed the outer hatches. According to the preliminary count, there were more than 120 federal officers and men on board, and nearly 200 Norman sailors who had surrendered were disarmed and surrendered, and all of them had been detained in the crew canteen on the third floor.

Before Weiss could make any further arrangements, a short shriek struck, and in an instant, the outer wall of the bridge exploded, and everyone bent down to avoid shrapnel and debris.

The blast was not over, but someone could hear a shout of "the Normans are coming", followed by the roar of machine guns.

Weiss squinted, good fellow, hundreds of Norman soldiers were besieging from all sides. However, after subduing the remnants of the ship, his more than 100 commandos were able to concentrate on fighting against the Norman army. Although the enemy had field guns and machine guns in his hands to cover the attack, the ship's strong defenses and the many weapons on board gave Weiss and his soldiers enough confidence to hold the trophy.

"All into battle! Tell the guys, keep someone to watch those Norman sailors, and if there is any change, kill them! Also, use the enemy ship's shells to set up an explosion point close to the boarding hatch, and if the boarding hatch is blown open by the enemy, block the passage by blasting! ”

After making a quick deployment, Weiss did not continue to "take the blame" in the upper secondary gun position, but ran to the gun frame auxiliary gun room on the first floor with a few helpers, and used the medium-caliber secondary gun to suppress the Norman field artillery. Caliber is truth, and this hegemonic battlefield criterion is once again embodied here. Weiss and his helpers were not professional operators of the Norman naval guns, and they calibrated them while debugging, and a few guns were ejected, and the Norman artillery fire on this side stopped on its own. So, they turned to the other side of the battleship, and two guns were ejected, and the Norman artillery fire to support the attack also came to an abrupt end. Without the support of artillery, attacking a battleship with infantry that is much more powerful than an ordinary steel fortress is tantamount to hitting a stone with an egg. Even under the cover of night, countless Norman soldiers were beaten into a sieve by the rain of bullets pouring from the ship, and the Union soldiers could be regarded as a bad breath for their allies in the north......

Within a quarter of an hour, the Norman counterattack was crushed. Weiss assigned his soldiers to form two makeshift artillery groups, and continued to use the secondary guns of the Norman battleship to bombard the Norman soldiers stranded and assembled nearby, and walked through the ship's passage to the bridge by himself. There, Union soldiers with a little radio equipment were working to repair the radio station that had been damaged by the enemy, but the situation was not ideal. Weiss himself went into battle, and when he was not familiar with the Norman communications equipment and had not found repair parts, he had no choice but to use the old method of using flares to signal his own troops who were still fighting in the center of the city. Perhaps they had understood, but they were still slowly advancing through the ruined city under the stubborn resistance of the Norman army, or perhaps they thought it was a Norman trick?

Standing on the bridge, Weiss looked at the south with his eyes, expecting that the large forces of the Federation Army could come down like a god general, sweeping away the remnants of the enemy with the autumn wind sweeping away the leaves, at that time, even if the battle situation deteriorated due to the early arrival of the enemy fleet, the trapped soldiers and civilians could retreat calmly, as for whether this Norman warship was used to base on the enemy, fight to the death, or take the initiative to blow up, to avoid the enemy, the Federation army will not have much loss.

The large reinforcements did not appear for a long time, and the Norman army's counterattack was like the rising tide of the sea, wave after wave, sometimes strong and violent, sometimes weak and weak. The fortress-like Norman warships became an excellent barrier against the enemy for Weiss's motley commando team, and they carried boxes and boxes of ammunition with unfamiliar weapons, mechanically loading, firing, and firing indefinitely. Although the killing efficiency on paper is unprecedentedly low, as long as you can keep killing enemies, what's the harm in sweating?

If there were no dark clouds of the Norman fleet, such a battle mode would be a live-action version of the beach-grabbing landing. After just over half an hour, the Norman fleet had already approached the city, and instead of rushing to open fire, they turned on their searchlights and swept the city battlefield with a dazzling pillar of light. This kind of silent demonstration was undoubtedly a great deterrent to the officers and men of the Federation who were engaged in the battle, and the sound of gunfire and explosions in the city was like a basin of cold water poured on a hot stove, and it was immediately weakened. However, to the southeast of the city, Weiss saw a horde of Union fighters in his special vision. Compared to the limited production of flying ships, combat aircraft powered by piston engines and carrying machine guns and bombs have obvious advantages in mass production. In a number of recent air battles, the federal army often sent one or two hundred planes to form a large echelon, and four or five echelons were dispatched every day. These rudimentary and inconspicuous aircraft are constantly being put into the battlefield, and with a steady and rising combat efficiency, they provide the Federal Army with stronger and stronger battlefield assistance.