At 4:15 a.m. on April 19, 1943, the beachhead in the Panama Canal Zone was as bright as daylight under the continuous light of flares, and the 2nd Brigade of the German Marine Corps, under the personal command of Colonel Reimer, began to land exactly 15 minutes earlier than scheduled—15 minutes more precious than gold. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

In order to gain time and reduce losses, the Panama landing battle completely broke through the routine of amphibious landing warfare: instead of trying to conceal and test the weak points of the defenders, they used all their strength at the beginning, the battleships fired at a close range of 8,000 meters, the heavy cruisers rushed to within 4,000 meters to provide fire cover, and the destroyers even advanced to 2,000 meters to provide direct firepower, and stubbornly suppressed the artillery fire of the US positions in depth -- they hit as soon as they appeared. The few 152mm howitzers in the hands of Lieutenant General Ross were basically reimbursed in such a fierce attack. As for the firing points on the beachhead, they were almost completely destroyed long ago.

The establishment of the German Marine Corps is rather peculiar, there is no regiment under the brigade, and the battalion is directly under the jurisdiction of the brigade, and the whole brigade includes a total of 6 battalions, namely 1 armored battalion, 1 armored grenadier battalion, 2 amphibious infantry battalions, 1 artillery battalion and 1 air defense battalion, in addition to 8 directly subordinate units (company level) such as guard company, engineer company, reconnaissance company, etc., plus the total strength of the brigade headquarters is about 6,000 people. Much smaller than the U.S. Marine Division, but much stronger than the Japanese Marine Corps. As a new-type unit of the German Navy, the Marine Brigade has its own unique advantage -- it is drawn from the Wehrmacht as a whole, and the original naval guard and land forces account for no more than 15 percent of the troops, and the level of beach-rushing landing will be somewhat worse, but once it has landed ashore and gained a firm foothold, its land combat capability will be much stronger.

The strength of the first batch of troops to land was very strong, and in order to seize time and occupy an advantage, Reimer directly pushed up the armored battalion, the armored grenadier battalion, one amphibious infantry battalion, and the engineer company. But everyone knew that the danger of drifting on the surface of the sea was no less than that of landing on the beachhead, and that enemy planes would rush to attack them after dawn, and that they could not help the battleships with thick skin and flesh, and it would be a piece of cake to deal with landing craft and transports.

The Marine Brigade Armored Battalion is smaller than the Armored Battalion under the Armored Division, and is the same as the Independent Heavy Armored Battalion, which also has 54 tanks, but all of them are No. 4 tanks. However, the reason why Reimer's 2nd Brigade was specially selected by Horikichi from the four Marine Brigades to take on the Panama Raider mission was because the brigade's armored battalion had an armored company of 17 Tiger tanks, and the remaining two companies were still equipped with No. 4 tanks. This batch of Tiger tanks has undergone special modifications for amphibious use. Of the 12 Marine Brigades, only three are deployed in the Azores and one is still awaiting final reorganization.

While the German offensive was rapidly unfolding, the U.S. military base in Nicaragua was also brightly lit and busy, with ground crews refueling the departing strike aircraft group. In order to guard against the night attack of the Axis Air Force, the entire operation was placed in the hangar, and in addition to the anti-aircraft guns that were on standby, the entire base also adopted strict lighting control.

The losses in the first air raid yesterday afternoon were very large, but the Army Airlines received 75 aircraft from the country to replenish it, and the Hainan Airlines also provided 12 F4U fighters, plus the remnants of the base, bringing the entire base strength to 145 combat aircraft, and with the arrival of daylight, the country will continue to provide reinforcements again.

Major General Cohen, commander of the Third Air Force of the US Army Air Corps, personally rushed from Florida to Nicaragua to take command, and after listening to Lieutenant Colonel Pfister's report on the first air raid and combining it with the description of the surviving fighter pilots, he could not help frowning: The enemy fighter pilots are unexpectedly skilled -- much better than those top pilots who are now serving as flight instructors in the United States! The performance of the BF-219 also far exceeded that of the Zero, and when the fighter pilots tried to put on the Thatch scissor tactics against them, the enemy two-plane formation easily took out itself with a small radius inward.

Of course, after studying the entire combat process, the pilot also admitted that it was wrong to use the Saatchi scissors tactic, whether the P-47 or the F4U were actually faster than the BF-219, so there was no need to use the Saatchi scissors that had been explored in order to accommodate the F4F, but should give full play to the advantage of fast speed to play energy tactics -- the question was how to keep the attack aircraft group. Because these enemies are so calm and terrifying, they don't pay any attention to a thick and bulky bomber like the B-25, except that they really can't avoid it, and they don't want to waste ammunition on the fighters at all, and their targets always revolve around the SBD and TBF.

"They don't have a lot of planes, about 40 planes that intercepted us last time, only half of us, so we have to have a numerical advantage......," said Lieutenant Commander Pfister, "Another thing that must be pointed out is that finding the enemy carrier formation and attacking first is the overriding priority, otherwise we will be intercepted by a steady stream of enemy aircraft." ”

"But where the hell is this damn carrier group?" Since the Panama airport was destroyed and the reconnaissance planes were lost, they could only rely on Nicaragua's own reconnaissance forces, but yesterday after a day of searching, they could not find the location of the Axis aircraft carrier formation, Cohen decided to send more reconnaissance forces, since the B-25 results were very small, simply transfer 8 cameo reconnaissance planes.

"Sir, Lieutenant General Ross has sent us a telegram that the German marines have landed under the cover of naval guns, the offensive is fierce, and they are in dire need of air support."

"What?" Cohen muttered to himself, "Big trouble. ”

There was silence at the scene: Yesterday, the Joint Chiefs of Staff was optimistic that there were no ground troops in the axis, so the first target for today's attack was selected as the aircraft carrier formation, and it was okay if it could not find the first air attack and artillery attack fleet, but as soon as the enemy landing force came ashore, the situation deteriorated greatly -- the Joint Chiefs of Staff made an urgent assessment and held that the damage to the canal caused by simple naval shelling and bombing was completely different from sending people to the canal.

In a word, the landing must be contained!

"Sir, General Marshall has sent an urgent telegram asking you to launch an attack on the enemy forces on the beachhead in the early morning, and landing the enemy troops as a priority goal."

"It seems that our primary target must be adjusted." Cohen sighed, "Tell the boys, bomb those ground troops in the Canal Zone first, and then go to the warships for bad luck, and let the TBFs hang all the bombs." In addition, I will tell Lieutenant General Ross that we will launch the first wave of the offensive at half past six. ”

At 5 a.m. and 15 minutes, a swarm of U.S. attack planes from the Nicaraguan Air Base came out and roared southeast.

At this moment, the huge Axis aircraft carrier group is also releasing fighter jets one after another. In order to conceal himself to the greatest extent, Tsukahara 243 took advantage of the darkness to pull the main force of the mobile fleet to the triangular sea area at the junction of Panama and Colombia, which of course was not chosen at random, but was finally selected by him after careful calculation: from here, the distance to the Panama Canal Zone is about 300 kilometers, and the air defense group can be reached in 40-45 minutes; The location is more than 950 kilometers from the U.S. military base in Nicaragua, more than 1,850 kilometers from the U.S. mainland in Florida, and nearly 1,500 kilometers from the U.S. military airfield in Puerto Rico -- in other words, even if the U.S. military finds it, it will exceed the combat range of the TBF and SBD, and the only thing to worry about is the B-24 or B-25, which pose little threat to the fleet.

As for Colombia or Venezuela, which have enough fleets in the north of South America, he has already sent water reconnaissance to check the situation, and there is almost no air power and no available air bases - this is where his confidence and confidence lie in his promise to reduce the losses of air raids.

The mobile fleet departed with a total of 278 aircraft (240 normally, with 38 additional deck mooring), of which the proportion was relatively high because the deck was all fighters, with 128 aircraft, reaching 46%, 80 HE-218 and 70 Ju-98. Yesterday there were losses of 8 BF-219 and 19 HE-218s, and after the emergency call of backup aircraft and replacement pilots, the total number of aircraft recovered to 275, of which the number of fighters increased further to 130, the HE-218 to 75, and the Ju-98 remained unchanged at 70.

At a quarter past 5 o'clock, a group of 72 anti-aircraft aircraft carrying auxiliary fuel tanks flew over the Canal Zone, where they were to hold up a vital air umbrella for the fleet. Twenty minutes later, Chief of Staff Ryunosuke Kusaka reported: "24 anti-aircraft direct cover aircraft have taken off, and the last 34 fighters are all on standby on deck. ”

Tsukahara nodded with satisfaction: "Very good, the outcome of today's battle depends on whether the Americans cooperate." ”

At 6 o'clock, all the air defense planes flew over the fleet, and the officers and men of the warships and the landing troops could not help but smile when they looked at the escort planes, which were twice as large as yesterday.

At 6:08, the sky began to brighten, visibility improved quickly, all the flares supporting the landing force stopped firing, Reimer's troops were still speeding up the landing, and the beachhead was full of Sibel-class landing craft.

At 6:11, the heavy cruiser Hipper, which was on guard on the perimeter, sent a telegram, indicating that the radar had found a target 135 kilometers away, and 2 minutes later, the news was confirmed by a number of warships, and the Nagato issued an air defense alarm, and the ships began to sail to the deep water area to facilitate maneuvering, and the air defense formation was quickly formed.

Caolu was nervously staring at the air defense aircraft group, and at this critical moment, whether or not the safety of the beachhead could be guaranteed depended on the fighters in the air. (To be continued.) )