On the night of 19 August, the Luftwaffe uncharacteristically carried out an unprecedented night bombardment of southern British towns. From 9 o'clock that night, bomber groups that took off from various air bases along the coast of France, in units of 100 planes, attacked all the important coastal towns and ports from Portsmouth to Dover, and some of them even penetrated deep into the interior of Britain, and the farthest group even reached Coventry.

It was a crazy night of bombs, and when you looked down from the sky, the southern coastline of England was dotted with dazzling explosions and fires, and billowing smoke, as if the end had fallen.

German bombing secrets flew over the city like a swarm of locusts, and in the eyes of the scattered citizens, the dense bombers almost obscured the moon.

The Germans had no mercy in dropping bombs on all the towns marked on the target list, in addition to the regular heavy blasting grenades, as well as some new incendiary bombs, the latter of which caused far more damage to villages and towns than the former.

Most of the old towns in Britain are brick and wood buildings, especially the coastal towns, which are built with a lot of wood and gravel, and once they catch fire, it must be the result of the collapse of the walls and houses. British towns and villages generally have a long history, because they have not been invaded by foreign enemies for a long time, and there are no earthquakes and natural disasters, so a building can often be traced back to hundreds of years, and the central areas of these towns are still in the same pattern as they were centuries ago, with aging facilities, narrow streets, and almost no gaps between houses, and once on fire, they can stretch for several blocks in a matter of minutes.

Now they are not confronted with ordinary residential fires, but by professional arson weapons filled with special accelerants, a single arson bomb that can turn a 50-meter radius of open space into a sea of fire, and the temperature can melt steel and burn cement.

Under the bombs of German bombers, these ancient villages and towns fell into a catastrophe, and the fire brigades of many villages and towns did not even have a chance to dispatch, and were directly trapped in the fire station by the fire. The fires spread uncontrollably across the rooftops of the streets, burning from house to house. Residents scrambled for their lives to escape the flames in the narrow streets, struggling to survive the smoke and heat.

Some residents who did what they did according to the provisions of the air-raid pamphlet took their families into the air-raid shelters dug in the backyards, but they did not know that the air-raid shelters, which could defend against shrapnel and rubble, could not resist the flames at all, and the air on the surface was drained by the violent burning, and even the sewage in the sewers had begun to boil, and the terrible smell of meat filled the streets of villages and towns.

Portsmouth had just survived a catastrophe, and the last resistance of the French fleet had inflicted heavy losses on the port, and the berths in the harbor area were full of half-sunk and half-floating ships. The most conspicuous were the two huge French battleships, one revealing half of its blackened and twisted bridge on the water, and the other turning over its belly to reveal a red bottom full of holes.

It is difficult to say that the French did not deliberately do the work of the French in the neighborhood near the port area, but the initiators had sunk to the bottom with the battleship, and the British had to drink this cup of home-brewed bitter wine alone.

While the Royal Navy and Army were working overtime day and night to clean up the wreckage and salvage the sunken ship, German bombers suddenly arrived, dealing another heavy blow to the most important military port.

The three large-caliber anti-aircraft gun positions in the port had been bombarded by the battleship's main guns in the previous clashes, and most of them had been reduced to twisted metal.

After the German bombers entered the original air defense circle. However, it is a little strange to find that today's anti-aircraft firepower is weak, and the bomber group can completely drive straight into the middle of the country, as if it were in a no-man's land. The anti-aircraft gunners in the military port had already suffered heavy casualties in the previous clashes, and the remaining two or three kittens could only fire shells scattered with the two surviving anti-aircraft guns. There was neither a ranging nor an elevation, just for the sake of showing the angry commander, lest the guy, who was already on the verge of madness, shoot them on the spot.

The hundreds of small-caliber anti-aircraft guns in the military port were very active, spraying shells frantically into the sky under the guidance of searchlights. Red and blue tracer bullets flew around the sky like fireflies on a summer night, but the guns were too close. Completely unable to threaten the planes at height, they could only watch the German bombers swagger and drop huge bombs on their heads.

The Germans had rarely carried out large-scale night air raids before, and if they did, they were limited to air bases and a few military enterprises, such as Lower London and the Thames. The radar network on the southern front was completely destroyed, and now the British can only rely on coastal air defense observation posts plus microphones for primary early warning. At night, the observation posts are almost useless, and the listening devices can only hear the general direction of the attacking enemy planes, but it is completely impossible to judge the number and height of the aircraft, and once it encounters a large-scale invasion of multiple planes and groups in multiple directions, it will be completely chaotic.

That night, the British coastal air defense posts were caught in this confusion, and all kinds of messy information poured into the command posts of the air defense sectors, and the local command posts had no other sources of information at all, and could not screen them, so they could only report to the British fighter command with a label to be verified. The fighter command was suddenly in chaos, with Dover, Westhoughgham, Cabul Rafal, Folkestone, Heyzer, Alckham, Hoking, Sandgate, Newington, Grettston, Hastings, Eastbourne, New Haven, Brighton, Portsmouth, ...... The southern coast is in an emergency.

Most of these cities are close to the sea, there is no warning time at all, and by the time the observation post detects the enemy plane, most of the German bombers have already flown overhead, and when the first bomb is smashed into the ground, some cities have not even had time to sound the air defense siren, and some residents are blown to pieces while still asleep.

The south shore of the strait was full of wolf smoke, and the operator at the command post listened to the desperate wail of the coast observation post on the telephone with a sad face: "Planes, there are German planes everywhere above my head, there are thousands of them!" ”

Reports of German bomber incursions were issued at almost all observation points, ranging in number from hundreds to thousands, and in directions of 360 degrees. Dowding, who hurried to the command post, was stunned on the spot by the dense signs of enemy planes on the plane marking table, where did the Germans get so many bombers, could they not reproduce on their own like locusts.

The Germans had never launched such a large-scale night offensive, and the quantity and quality of this were obviously very unusual. Dowding did not dare to take it lightly, because with the current forces at the disposal of the British fighter command, it was impossible to cover such a wide battlefield.

If these German bombers were escorted by a large number of German fighters, then the dispatch of those bulky twin-engine night fighters would have been in vain. And. Perhaps some of these fleets are directly fighter fleets, and the Germans have not played like this once or twice, each time leaving the RAF corpses all over the field.

The more Dowding thought about it, the more he felt that there was such a possibility, otherwise he would not be able to explain the seemingly unscientific number of German planes in front of him, which must be mixed with the huge German fighter army. Dowding came up with his judgment, and he didn't dare to send out the fighters he had left.

There are only more than 300 fighters left in Dowding's hands now, and eighty percent of the pilots have not been systematically trained in night flight, so it is a test for them to be able to ensure night take-off and landing, let alone let them fight at night, and the Germans have obviously mastered the skills of night combat. This can be seen in the wreckage of British bombers floating in the strait.

The old birds under Dowding's men were extremely tired, and most of them were forcibly restricted from taking off, reserving their energy for the most critical battles, but now it seemed that it was the most critical time.

The RAF had already suffered too much blood, and thousands of dead aircrew members had proved with their lives that the tactic of dispersing forces with the intention of breaking each one was a delusion, a trap for the murder of British pilots, and in the end they would only let themselves be broken by the Germans. Immediately a piece of news from Ashford made Dowding even more determined, and a huge group of bombers, to say the least, of hundreds of planes was passing through the outskirts of Ashford. The direction should be straight to London.

Prior to this, the Luftwaffe had not stopped harassing and bombing London, but only on the scale of 30 to 40 planes, and the bombing area was also concentrated in the slums and on both sides of the river. At night, there were only a dozen raids at most, and the damage to the city was generally not as great as the British had made their own anti-aircraft guns.

But this time, Dowding sniffed out something was wrong. The Germans didn't seem to have come well, and the blow inflicted by a large group of hundreds of planes was completely different from the previous squadron bombardment, which could easily raze the entire city center with a covering bombardment of this scale. So the commander of the Air Force hurriedly gave the order. Abandon support for the coastal towns and concentrate the main forces to defend London with all their might.

Dowding knew very well that it didn't matter if other British cities were razed to the ground, it would only arouse the hatred of the British against the Germans, boost the morale of the people, and become another blood debt owed by the Germans to the British. Some people may accuse him of dereliction of duty or incompetence, but Dowding believes that the prime minister will keep him, and Churchill knows his ability, and only he can control the air force for Churchill, or order the air force to complete all the reasonable and unreasonable orders given by Churchill.

But once London is devastated, then no one in the world will be able to save him. The capital of the country, the heart of Britain, the glory of the empire, the British royal family and important government agencies, parliament, and the headquarters of all branches of the armed forces are all in this city, as well as the most influential media, newspapers, foreign news agencies in the United Kingdom, as well as millions of city residents, various scholars, experts and professors, generals, lawyers, bureaucrats, bankers. There are also a large number of military factories, shipyards, research institutes, technical institutes. Once the city suffered serious losses due to the German bombardment, not to mention the group of politicians, the group of pen-trickers on Fleet Street alone was enough to leave him in the stench for 10,000 years, and even Churchill could not protect him, and even personally sent him to court-martial in order to maintain the authority of the prime minister and the wartime cabinet.

Dowding was determined, and he dispatched all the planes that the Twelfth Air Force could take off, more than two hundred Hurricanes and a hundred Spitfires, and surrounded the airspace over London.

The Germans were very cooperative, never touching the cordon in Sir Dowding's mind, and whenever a group of German bombers approached London, the British fighter group would pounce like bloodthirsty sharks, while the German bombers behaved like frightened cattle, scattering from a distance, turning their noses and fleeing frantically in the direction of the channel. But then another group of planes will slowly approach London, and the cycle will continue to continue. As a result, Dowding had no choice but to let the fighter jets take turns to land and refuel at the temporary airfield around London, while the rest kept circling around London to ensure the safety of the airspace in London that night.

"As of two o'clock in the morning, the latest reports from the Coastal Observatory and the Army, that Folkestone had suffered heavy losses, that the fortress of Dover was under a second bombardment, that all anti-aircraft positions had been destroyed, that the whole town centre of Heyzer had been set on fire, and that the casualties were very serious. Hoking, Sandgate, Newington are being bombed. The fire in New Haven has been severe, the Portsmouth military port has been bombed, and communication with us has been cut off, and the command is trying to find a way to reconnect with them. The Army Liaison Adjutant stood tremblingly in front of Churchill and reported to the Prime Minister the latest war report.

At this moment, the heavy blast door was pushed open, and the chief of staff of the British Army, Ismay, hurried into the conference room.

"Your Excellency, the situation is so critical that I think it is time to call an emergency meeting of the Cabinet members, and I have just spoken to Dowding on the phone, and he has already repelled five attacks on London by German bomber groups, and according to him there are countless more German bombers coming towards London, and he and his men will defend the city to the death, and the safety of His Majesty."

Churchill looked like he had been woken up from his sleep, dressed in pajamas, a checkered bathrobe outside, and barefoot in slippers, sitting upright on the sofa, his whole body sunk into the cushion.

The annihilation of the H Fleet and the conflict with the Portsmouth Fleet had dealt him a severe blow, and he looked even more haggard, his thinning hair clinging to his greasy scalp, his brow furrowed, his face pale, and his drooping bags under the cold light from the roof looked large and black.

"It's too late, the blonde finally can't help it, it's an invasion, they're ready to land, immediately issue a notice to all army units in my name, "Cromwell". ”

"Cromwell? Your Excellency Prime Minister, we have not yet received reports of the discovery of German ships, do you want to confirm again? Ismay did not expect Churchill to make such a judgment.

"Cromwell", which was a secret phrase confined to the British Army, meant "the invasion has begun". (To be continued, please search, the novel is better and updated faster!)