Chapter 11: Night Kill
Since it was decided to wait until night to kill the enemy, Weiss and the armed resistance rested in the narrow and cramped tunnels for the rest of the day, but witnessed their close comrades being blown to pieces by enemy gunfire, and people had no intention of sleeping, or their eyes were open in the dark, or their eyes were broken, and Weiss, as the leader of the Slien attack and the commander of the "Lorraine guerrillas", was struggling to think about the current predicament and the way out: whether in Austria or in Lorraine, the resistance guerrilla warfare seemed at first glance to have the necessary foundation, The envisaged model did work well in the early days, but as soon as the enemy's flying warships came out, the space for guerrilla warfare was greatly suppressed, and the most successful guerrilla warfare tactics of the old time and space were constrained in this world where flying warships were rampant and domineering. When the enemy is on guard, no matter how elaborate the design of ground guerrilla tactics is, they are bound to be inefficient and high-risk.
Flexibility, flexibility must be made in order to be able to carry on the great guerrilla war of the people of Lorraine!
After thinking about it, Weiss realized that the most urgent need of the guerrillas at the moment was an aircraft that could take off and land in the grass and hide in the woods. Only aircraft, which can contain the enemy's flying warships, can carry out sneak attacks on the enemy's military facilities and quickly withdraw; Only airplanes can sublimate guerrilla warfare from the traditional mode to a modern mode that matches the technology of flying warships, and can cope with flying warships that are good at sports warfare with faster speed and greater flexibility.
Where the planes come from, that's a question, and it's not a question.
Catalyzed by the war, the Ulster Free Federation became the "aviation power" of the planet Orens, in terms of aircraft technology, production and application. In the battle against the Norman army, it was common for an attack echelon composed of hundreds of aircraft to be formed, and at the most nearly 1,000 aircraft participated in the battle, and the technical performance of these aircraft was not inferior to the level of the end of World War I in the old time and space. Although it is technically feasible to build an aircraft by itself relying on the "family background" of the Clumber-Haysen plant and the Lawrence Automobile Manufacturing Plant - engines, metal castings, guns, and bombs are all ready-made and only need to be slightly modified, and wooden propellers and cloth skins are not difficult to make, but without the guidance of professional and technical personnel, it will inevitably take a lot of time to explore and move forward, and the technical level must start from a lower grade, so the best way is to ask the federal army for help, so that they can provide finished or semi-finished products, The machines and materials in the hands of the Lorraine Resisters were used for the assembly and maintenance of the equipment.
From this point of view, even if a hundred are reluctant, it is still necessary to get in touch with the Union army and seek their support and help. Otherwise, you will have to dig tunnels everywhere and deal with the Normans like gophers carefully, so that this guerrilla war can continue.
Thinking in the dark, Weiss felt that the fog in front of him was gradually dissipating. Night finally came, and they walked out of the suffocating tunnels and headed for the mountain city of Srien with a heart of revenge. At night, the Norman camps were lit up, especially Victory Square at the southern end of town, with huge searchlights piercing the night sky. This uncontrolled lighting seems to deliberately expose one's position to the enemy, and it is like turning on all the light sources around you for fear of the dark. While his companions scattered to contact the resistance in order to concentrate their forces as much as possible, Weiss stood on a hill outside the city, calmly and meticulously observing the distribution of the enemy's forces, relying on his own special vision, as well as his own combat experience and logical thinking. The Norman cruiser was nowhere to be seen, replaced by two much smaller frigates and a medium-sized transport, with trucks parked at various hatches and Norman servicemen loading boxes of supplies onto trucks with mechanical spreaders. In addition, there was a considerable increase in the number of Norman fighters in Slyen, most likely reinforcements who arrived here on transport ships.
The Normans were so powerful and on high alert that the Resisters should find a way to get out of the limelight for a while, but after careful observation and analysis, Weiss believed that now was the right time to launch a night attack on the city. A little later, about half of the people who had been evacuated before were reconnected. Almost all of the resistants, including the commander of the "Knights of Slyen", Wald Stein, agreed with the plan of the night attack, and they would be in position by midnight and would be able to enter the battle by two o'clock in the morning at the latest.
To ensure the success of this nighttime attack, two "raid weapons" that were thrown into the sewers during the retreat were essential. Weiss asked the black-haired youth to enter the town with his companions first, to scout for information on enemy movements and find a way to recover the two mortars and the remaining ammunition.
While waiting for Walder-Stein to arrive at the rendezvous, Weiss calmed down and tried his best to figure out the key aspects of the raid and the various contingencies that might arise during the battle. With an hour to go until midnight, Walderstein finally arrived at the agreed rendezvous point. The two men got together to discuss the operational arrangements, and Walder-Stein's full knowledge of Slien enabled Weiss to concretize many details, even down to how many resisters to arrange and how many explosives to plant at a certain firing point. By the time they had finished deliberating, it was past midnight. They set out immediately, using those ancient and hidden passages, to infiltrate the war-torn mountain city once more.
Near two o'clock in the morning, two sour-smelling mortars were erected behind the ruins about 5,000 feet from the center of Victory Square. With only six mortar shells left, the "Lorraine guerrilla fighters" who were in charge of operating the guns repeatedly measured the firing parameters and adjusted them. However, it was not they who sang the opening tonight, but Weiss, who personally led the team to the Norman garrison headquarters, and he led three warriors, with a feral cat's agility, through the Norman army's cordon, placed the explosives equipped with time-delay detonators under the enemy's nose, and then withdrew like a ghost.
Rumble! Rumble!
The violent explosion instantly woke up this sleeping mountain city. The Norman barracks in the north and west of the city were immediately attacked by the resistance, and not only were the sentries beaten into hornet's nests by the sudden bullets, but the barracks were also machine-gunned and bombed. A few minutes later, two mortars also made a special tone, and the shells flew over the ruins and the Norman cordon laid by the Normans on the edge of the square and towards the Norman ships that were anchored on the ground. At this time, in addition to the medium transport, a Norman cruiser also stopped in the square. The former was to the north, the latter to the south, and the other cruiser was slowly moving in the night sky.
The first round of mortar fire, the point of impact was only a few feet away from the transport, and before the crews of the three Norman ships could react, the second round of firing with a slight adjustment was a big success, and the "bloated" Norman transport ship was hit by a shot on the head, although it did not cause a fire or ammunition detonation, which was a great psychological blow to the Normans - a great encouragement to the resisters.
The second round of shots hit and the last shot didn't need to be adjusted. This time, a halo of luck befell one of the mortar crews, and the shell landed next to a truck carrying ammunition, which exploded and overturned the truck, causing the ammunition to explode, and a "salute" was immediately placed in the square. The extent of the damage to the hull of the transport, as a result of the series of explosions, was affected by the series of explosions, but it is certain that its ability to fly was affected and it was unable to fly away from the area until the end of the attack.
In less than two minutes, three rounds of firing were completed, and all the mortar shells brought by the "Lorraine guerrilla fighters" were also exhausted. According to Weiss's arrangement, the soldiers in charge of operating the cannon put a spinach bullet in each of the barrels, destroyed them directly on the spot, and then quickly evacuated. By this time, the Norman warships on alert in the air had already found the attackers on the periphery of the square with searchlights, and artillery fire followed. These attackers did not have the skills to hide from the ground, and it seemed that they could not escape the pursuit from the air. At a critical moment, a series of machine shells were fired from a half-collapsed house. Although the cannon of this caliber could not threaten the core area of the Norman battleship, it could knock out the searchlight and kill the Norman crew in the low-protection and unprotected areas. This sudden machine-gun fire forced the Norman cruiser to stop its eagle-like descent, and also allowed another Norman cruiser that had scrambled to take off to focus on this place, rather than chasing down the "runaways" who had no air defense.
If there were no Norman warships here, the night raids could have been fought deeper and more thoroughly, and it was even possible to drive the Norman army out of Slane, but as Weiss melancholy, the Norman warships were simply the natural enemies of guerrilla warfare. Two Norman cruisers forced them to carry out this night attack by attacking everywhere to interfere with the enemy's field of vision, and each place was a one-shot attack. In order to cover the safe retreat of the resisters as much as possible, Wald-Stein shook out the most valuable belongings, not only the only heavy machine gun on the battlefield, but also how many grenades and explosives were used, Weiss was not ambiguous, making full use of the tactical skills cultivated in the guerrilla warfare of the Austrian city, combined with his special talents, constantly attacking the Norman infantry in the city, just his group of Norman soldiers killed and wounded, more than 100 people, their elusiveness, made the Normans dizzy. By the time the two Norman warships had cleared the guns of the resistance, the resistance had once again vanished, leaving only a mountain town full of wolf smoke and blood, and most of the blood stained red by the stone slabs of the streets came from the Norman garrison.
The ambush on the outskirts of Slien, followed by the attack on the outskirts of Slien, the Normans lost nearly as much as they had paid for the capture of Slien, and what made them feel even more disgraced was that the total number of resistors they killed and captured in these battles was less than a third of their casualties. Such a battle loss ratio in an irregular battle has only occurred in the ice and snow of Wessex before, and it is a "tragedy" that occurred when the flying battleship could not go to support in time, and it is the first time that the weather is not bad and the air supremacy has not been lost! Can you bear it?