In the early hours of May 24, in the south of the Sevastopol fortress, Cape Kersen, inside the fortress No. 35 "Maxim Gorky-2".

The commander of battery No. 35, Captain Alexei Reshchenko, got up early, put on his military uniform, washed up and did not bother to eat breakfast, passed through the bunker buried in the ground, and walked along the corridor to the south of the battery.

Directly south of Battery 35 is a steep cliff through which Soviet engineers have carved through the interior and carved two man-made caves into the edge of the cliff.

Through scissor binoculars in the caves, the observation posts of the fort could see the sea in the southern part of the fort.

Captain Leshchenko walked into Cave No. 1, and after saying hello to the yawning officer on duty in the cave, he walked to the observation port and lay down behind scissor binoculars to check the situation on the sea.

The lieutenant looked around, and there was a blue sea in the near distance, and the sea and sky in the distance, and there was no sign of the enemy fleet except for the occasional seabird and a few white clouds.

It seems that this is another war-free day, no, it should be a quiet dawn.

After confirming with his own eyes that there was no enemy, Leshchenko relieved himself and turned along the corridor to return to the restaurant of the fort for breakfast.

After a light breakfast, near eight o'clock, Leshchenko walked into the communication room and sat down by a black telephone.

The watch hand on his left wrist had just pointed to eight o'clock when the phone rang.

Reshchenko picked up the telephone receiver and put it to his ear, and he heard the deep voice of Major General Petrov, the supreme commander of the Sevastopol fortress.

"Comrade Captain, did the Germans patronize your position today?"

"Comrade Major General, I can only tell you that this is another quiet dawn. As for whether it will be a war-free day, I'm not sure yet. ”

On the phone, Major General Petrov first sighed lightly. "Huh······ It was good that the German fleet did not appear, but the other positions were very lively, and the enemy artillery was very arrogant. Even if you are not the main area of attack of the Germans, be careful, if necessary······ Well? What a sound, I seem to hear an explosion. ”

A sudden explosion came overhead, the roof shook slightly, and a few tiny wisps of dust fell and stained Captain Reshchenko's military uniform.

The long-lost explosion suddenly came, and Captain Reshchenko's hand shook involuntarily, and then maintained the composure of a veteran, and said into the phone: "Comrade Major General, the Germans are coming, I guess this time it is their bomber." I'm going to test my guess now and report back to you later. ”

After putting down the phone, Captain Reshchenko did not make any verifying actions, because the mournful sound of air defense sirens had confirmed his opinion that it was the German bombers who dropped the bombs.

There were originally eight anti-aircraft batteries around Battery 35 to protect the sky, but in the previous battle, eight batteries were exposed and subsequently eliminated by German bombers.

With no fighters, no anti-aircraft guns, and in the face of German bombardment, Battery 35 could only rely on its own defense to resist the destruction of aerial bombs.

Directly above the two twin turrets, the thickness of the steel plates reached 203 mm thick.

The underground bunkers around the turret were all made of reinforced concrete, and the thickness of the reinforced concrete roof reached four meters.

Thinking of these well-remembered figures, Captain Leshchenko was still confident in the protection of the battery.

Sitting in his office, Captain Reshchenko listened to the muffled explosions overhead, lit a cigarette in frustration, and crouched in the turret to resist the German aerial bombs.

Having smoked half a cigarette, Lieutenant Reshchenko, distraught by the rumbling explosions overhead, casually picked up the phone on the table and called the gun commander of the No. 2 turret.

······

In the sky, six JU-87 Stuka dive bombers, led by Captain Hans Rudel, mixed in a formation of 10 F-190F1 bombers, flew unhindered over Cape Kelsen.

The 10 F-190F1 bombers attacked first according to the original plan, attracting possible enemy anti-aircraft guns on the ground to open fire, and at the same time using the smoke to indicate the location of the two turrets for the six Stukka, after all, from a high altitude, the two turrets with a diameter of only ten meters are too small.

As the F-190F1 bomber dived and dropped bombs, clouds of gray-black gunpowder smoke rose from the ground, indicating the approximate location of the two turrets for Captain Hans Rudel and others.

Even more smoothly, there was no Russian anti-aircraft fire on the ground, and Captain Hans Rudel quickly became emboldened, lowered the altitude with two wingmen, and soon found two turrets in the scope as if they were pans upside down on the ground.

"I found it, and it won't run away. Gentlemen, let's go down, don't be in a hurry, come one by one, and attack the turret farther from the sea first. ”

Hans Rudel soon heard the wingman's response.

"I caught them too······ The command was received, and the target was determined. Lieutenant Perry's voice came over the radio.

Captain Rudel was the first to turn the nose of the plane and began to dive, and as the distance closed, the "pan" on the ground in the scope grew larger and larger.

With years of experience in bomb throwing, Captain Rudel aimed the center of the scope at the "pan" and dropped the bomb to pull the fighter up until a dangerous distance.

The massive body of the sky-blue PC-1800 concrete armor-piercing projectile continued to fall by inertia, but under the effect of the sea breeze and error, it deviated from the target one by one, falling towards the west side of the turret.

Turret 35 consisted of two turrets, and the ground around it was covered with camouflage earth.

However, in the previous confrontation with the German-Italian Combined Fleet, the shells of the German-Italian Combined Fleet left a large number of craters of various sizes on the floating soil on the ground.

Shells from naval guns lifted off the floating earth, revealing the reinforced concrete roof of the underground bunker beneath the hidden floating earth.

The PC-1800 aerial bomb dropped by Captain Rudel landed in a crater on the west side of the turret, and the huge crater was a masterpiece left by the 380mm naval gun shells on the battleship Tirpitz.

The PC-1800's steel body falling from the sky slammed into the reinforced concrete floor, then disappeared into the ground, leaving behind a large crater.

······

"Hey······ Why don't you speak? What was the sound just now? Lieutenant Reshchenko shouted into the microphone, and as soon as he had spoken a few words with Alexei, the gunner of the No. 2 turret, he heard a loud noise coming from the microphone, which seemed to be the sound of steel colliding.

After the noise, Alexei, who was still full of anger on the phone just now, instantly became mute, which made Captain Reshchenko's heart immediately clench.

On the west side of turret No. 2, Alexei held the telephone in his left hand, ignored the shouts of Captain Leshchenko in the microphone, opened his mouth slightly, first rolled his eyes to look at the hole that suddenly appeared on the roof, then looked at the big guy who was leaning on the ground and half inserted into the ground, and finally his eyes fell on the "whooshing" rotating fan at the tail of the "big guy".

As a veteran, Alexei knew that the fan was a time-delay fuse, and once the fan stopped turning, it meant ·····

As if sensing Alexei's thoughts, the fan suddenly stopped turning, followed by a long scream from Alexei.

"No ······"

"Rumbling ······" An unprecedented explosion sounded along the microphone to Captain Leshchenko's ears.

Our comrade lieutenant only felt a loud "buzzing" in his head, and then it became blank, and his body flew out involuntarily, and he fell to the left side of the chair, and the red blood flowed down his right ear, staining his cheeks red.

"Uh····· Ahem·····" Captain Leshchenko clutched his chest and coughed a few times, exhaling.

The captain waved his hand, trying to dispel the black fog in front of him and the Venus flying around, but to no avail.

"Great, still alive, what just happened?"

Holding on to the chair, Captain Leshchenko got up and sat down on the chair with difficulty, rubbing his eyes for a long time before he could regain his vision, only to find that the world in front of him was swaying from side to side.

Shaking his head vigorously a few times, Reshchenko found that he could not get rid of the "buzzing" sound in his head.

Picking up the phone again, Captain Leshchenko found that he could not hear anything, so he could only hang up the phone and shout at the door: "Someone, someone." ”