Home Garrison Command, London, United Kingdom.

In the air battle at Bonemouth, the British fighter force was completely annihilated, and the more than 50,000 defenders and 700 cannons in Bonemouth not only failed to block the German landing on the beach, but also lost most of the troops in one morning.

"General, you don't have to blame yourself too much, after all, the Germans have a huge superiority in the sea and air! Once their soldiers are inland, we can easily crush them and throw them back to the beach! Haig's chief of staff, General Hubert, remained unremarkable, and although the command had learned that the Fortin Bridge had been captured by German airborne troops and that several sections of the railway line near Bonemouth had been sabotage, the veteran of the wars between Pakistan and South Africa remained optimistic that this was England, the British's own territory.

"Although the German battleships and aircraft carriers could not go ashore, I was still very worried that their planes would have a very negative impact on our offensive. What is even more terrifying is that they can airdrop more than 7,000 people behind our beach defenses. When the two armies are facing each other, once such a large number of troops suddenly appear behind our army, destroy our army's artillery positions, logistics lines and even headquarters, or disguise themselves as our soldiers to disturb our army's morale, it is useless for us to have more troops! ”

Although he had made many wrong judgments in the previous 12 hours, Haig was not really useless, but he was not the kind of general who could see everything, and he was really powerless to do anything about the Luftwaffe that had made the most of the Led Zeppelin and the wooden-framed skinned aircraft. Haig and his staff officers were taken aback when the poor patrol soldiers in Woodtown counted the number of parachutes in the vicinity and reported back to command, but they soon realized the power of this new German tactic.

Staff officers who were as optimistic as Hubert believed that the German airborne landing before dawn was a complete victory, and that in the future, as long as they paid close attention to the movements of the German army's large-scale airships and aircraft groups, and whether there were paratroopers and parachutes in the air, they would be able to judge the location of the German army's airborne landing.

However, there are many staff officers who are cautious, and one of them, a colonel staff officer who is about 50 years old, expressed his worries:

"Airborne is an unheard of tactic for us! By the time we gathered the main forces to the front, the Germans could drop a regiment and put several counties in our rear in a panic. You know, the range of German airships can reach hundreds, if not thousands! ”

"It's important to note that even if we were to judge from the movements of German airships and planes that they were going to be airborne somewhere, such as Northampton (in the middle of England) or Manchester (in the northwest of England), and we only had a small number of troops in the vicinity, we would not have time to mobilize troops from the front, and even trains would not be able to match the speed of the German airships!" Another, equally senior staff officer, also looked a little pessimistic, as if his rear was doomed to be messed up by German paratroopers.

"Everyone, stop arguing, it's impossible to divide the main forces and garrison them everywhere! My suggestion is to deploy all cavalry units to the major cities and to the plains far from them, and to set up an anti-airborne group in the headquarters to keep an eye on the movements of the large German airship and aircraft formations, and to order the garrisons and militias everywhere to keep an eye on possible German airdrops and to report to the command as soon as they occur. I will also communicate with the Admiralty and ask their intelligence officers to keep a close eye on the German forces on the French coast and to send it back to us as soon as possible as soon as the German Airborne Forces take off! "When faced with a desperate situation, some people can be distraught, while others will be surprisingly calm, and it is clear that Haig belongs to the latter group.

"The most important thing at the moment is to take the bridge over the Fortin River and repair the railway to Bonemouth, and our main force must arrive at the predetermined position on the line from Dorchester (west of Bonemouth) to Southampton (northeast of Bonemouth) before dark, and attack overnight. In the evening the navy will cooperate with our combat operations, and I have promised His Majesty with my life that the Germans will be driven back to the beach area by sunrise tomorrow! ”

Haig's order also meant that the German airborne troops occupying the Fording River Bridge would soon have to face several times or even dozens of times their own British troops, including the few heavy artillery pieces of the British army and the secret weapons that had been developed not long ago.

The bridge over the Fortin River has never been subjected to fire since it was built, and the morning battle was its first, but it will never be the last. The corpses at both ends of the bridge and on the bridge deck had been cleaned by the paratroopers, the heavy horses had been pushed straight down the river, and the kitchens and warehouses of the British defenders had delicious food, and the Germans at least had to worry about their stomachs.

Just after 9 a.m., the first reinforcements from Taunton (more than 100 kilometres northwest of Bonemouth) arrived from the west on the outskirts of Fortin, and the British by train had to disembark a few miles west of the town because of the destruction of the railway.

At 10:15 a.m., the Luftwaffe's huge fleet of aircraft arrived over the Fortin, just as the British vanguard had just begun a tentative assault on the town of Fortin, west of the bridge. They also raised two large balloons for school firing on the west side of the town, and the artillery position consisting of 32 rapid-fire guns and four large-caliber howitzers had been aimed at the town of Fortin, but given that there were still many British residents in the town, the British had not yet shelled it. If a tentative attack is unfavorable, the British commander will consider using artillery.

Seeing this, the remaining 1 squadron of attack aircraft and 3 bombers in the German aircraft group quickly broke away from the large aircraft group and rushed towards the British troops on the ground. The longer-range attack aircraft were originally intended to escort bombers, but after the British fighter force was lost over Bonemouth, these attack aircraft now only had to concentrate on ground support operations.

Before the German fighters could get closer, the soldiers on the two school-fired balloons slid down the cable to the ground with great agility, and the others retreated in a panic before they had time to put away the balloons, everyone knew that these two large things full of hydrogen and very conspicuous would soon become two fireballs.

"Move the cannon!" The British artillery officer shouted to his gunners to disperse the artillery, and the British army now lacked artillery and machine guns.

"The infantry spread out and lay down!" The infantry officers on horseback shouted at the soldiers to disperse in a neat formation, but some of the infantry unwittingly retreated as they dispersed. Some of the machine gunners were ready to fire into the air, while others picked up their machine guns and ran away with a wry smile. In the British Army, machine guns are more expensive than artillery, and this has a lot to do with the military preparations of various countries before the war. The poorest Russian army also had the least machine guns, followed by the British, which was dominated by the navy, followed by the French, and the Germans with the most machine guns (which was roughly the case in history).

Hundreds of British artillerymen could only stay in their positions and push the cannons desperately, rapid-fire guns were relatively light, three or five soldiers could push them away, while the rarest large-caliber artillery in the British army was so heavy that it required a dozen men or a group of mules and horses to pull it, so the German army, which had more heavy artillery, always needed a lot of mules and horses to transport the cannons.

The German pilots did not relentless in the face of these lambs to the slaughter, and they did not rush to ravage the defenseless school-fired balloons, but threw bombs under the belly of the aircraft at the British artillery positions and the densest places of the infantry. A 100KG bomb in the "Sky X" and a 6 50KG bomb in the "Ostrich I" suddenly made the British soldiers on the ground turn on their backs, and ammunition was constantly detonated on the artillery position, and for a time people's ears were full of a series of explosions.

Most of the British infantry lay on their stomachs with their heads covered, while others who had lost command retreated and fired their rifles at the German planes in the sky. After a while, the Vickers machine gun, which had limited angles due to the angle of fire up and down, and needed to raise the angle with the help of other objects, also fired, and a string of bullets rising from the ground formed a very gorgeous picture of war with the planes whizzing through the air. However, this kind of painting sometimes cost blood, and the British machine-gun fire points soon became the main targets of German fighters, and German pilots were in danger of being shot down at any time. After the bomb was dropped, the two machine guns in the nose of the "Sky X" and a parallel machine gun in the co-pilot seat of the "Ostrich I" began to fire one after another.

The most tragic battle was the British artillery position, where at least 50 aerial bombs took it as their final destination, some of the artillerymen with bloody faces were knocked down by bullets falling from the sky as soon as they got up, and many artillery pieces were blown to the ground by German bombs and shells, and the artillery carriages, wheels, and other parts of the cannons could be seen everywhere.

As the gunfire reached a climax, the two school-fired balloons were finally hit by bullets and burst into flames, and the two huge fireballs only remained in the air for a few seconds, and then turned into a cloud of black smoke and drifted away in the wind, leaving only the ropes tied to the balloons and some fragments on the ground.

It was not until the British organized more effective anti-aircraft fire that the German fighters gave up chasing and strafing these British infantry, but they did not rush to leave, but circled in the air outside the British range (the range of machine guns to the air was about 500 meters), and the roar of the engines could at least mentally put a lot of pressure on the British.

(PS: Some people say that the Luftwaffe ground attack in this book has no losses at all, but after flipping through the previous chapters, aren't there already dozens of German pilots in the British prisoner of war camps?) Is it necessary to depict some downed German plane after every ground attack? The sky doesn't have the ability to write about the downing of the plane in a different way. It is very rare to have no damage at all in battle, and as for the battle of London, it was fought by British planes with almost no decent weapons against well-armed German attack aircraft, and it is strange that the British are not beaten by tens to zero! I hope you don't ask such laughable questions in the future, at least this book will not have an invincible Iron King Kong like some TV series, even if there will be losses in tanks and armored units, such as the Battle of Reading, Verdun, and the Seine. As for the setting of the weight of the Stone tank, the Stone I is 9 tons, and the Stone II is 11 tons, as was said in previous chapters. Their armor, volume and travel speed are indeed stronger than the 7-ton Renault FT-17, and it is difficult for ordinary military fans like us to accurately calculate the weight of the tank they designed, and it must not be enough to add 2-4 tons to equip the engine with more horsepower and add 3-10 armor in some parts? Besides, tracks, ammunition, gun type, and material technology are all factors that affect the weight of a tank, and it is a bit biased to look at the volume, armor, and speed alone. ）

During the bombing, only two German attack planes were shot down by British ground fire, and many attack planes and bombers ate some British bullets, but as long as they did not hurt vital parts, a few more rows of bullet holes in their wings or fuselage hardly affected normal flight. Due to the low-altitude horizontal bombing and strafing, the German pilots on the downed planes were killed directly because they did not have time to parachute, and they were also the 132nd and 133rd German pilots to die in the war.

Throughout the airstrike, many residents of the town of Reading had no idea what was going on outside. On the orders of Lieutenant Colonel Garris, paratroopers of the 1st Airborne Regiment occupied some of the houses and locked them in basements or other rooms. Many residents naively thought that their army was driving the Germans out of the area and that they would soon be rescued, but the fact was that the British infantry had been ravaged by the Luftwaffe.

In view of this situation, the Germans changed the landing site of the second wave of airborne troops from the flat land on the west side of the Fording River Bridge to the hilly area on the east side, and Lieutenant Colonel Garris of the 1st Airborne Regiment ordered his soldiers to light colorful guidance fireworks there, and the transport aircraft group in the air circled a few times and dropped 2,500 paratroopers of the 4th Airborne Regiment on the areas where there were guidance signals. For the first time, a spectacular and magnificent large-scale parachute was unfolded in broad daylight.

"Mom, look!"

A cute little boy said and tugged hard at the corner of his mother's skirt, just outside the window on their right, not far away, those fluttering white parachutes were slowly falling like giant dandelions.

"Well, Giessen, those Germans on German planes are just like you, with a head and two eyes, they have noses and mouths, nothing strange! Stay here and don't make noise, okay? Otherwise, the Germans outside will rush in and take you away! The young mother was washing dishes in the kitchen, and she was used to her son's shouting when he found a visitor. In the morning, German paratroopers occupied the house, but luckily for the mother and son, a platoon of German soldiers used their house as their canteen, and the two of them were given more freedom than the other residents. As the British approached, the paratroopers had their lunch in advance, and naturally left a large pile of plates, and at this time the attic and hall of the house were set up as a shooting stronghold, and only the small kitchen belonged to the little boy and his mother.

The little boy pouted with some dissatisfaction, he brought a small stool from the side and climbed on it, and then rested his chin on the windowsill and stared into the distance, a dreamlike scene that may forever remain in his childhood memory.

"Giessen?" Finding that her son had suddenly quieted down, the young woman turned her head to look, and she was about to praise the little boy for being well-behaved, but she happened to catch a glimpse of the German paratroopers landing outside the window. The plate in her hand slipped and shattered on the floor with a thud.

"Oh! My God! The woman covered her mouth with her right hand, fearing that she would scream. Due to the wind, some paratroopers who were about to land outside the town drifted towards the town east of the bridge during the descent. One of the paratroopers descended and landed just a dozen meters away from the mother and son.

"Mom, are they angels?" The innocent little boy pressed his forehead against the glass of the window, and those white parachutes looked really beautiful.

"I don't know...... I think they may be demons in the form of angels! The young woman said as she held her baby tightly in her arms, for fear that the German paratroopers would rush in and snatch the lovely little boy.

"I hope that one day, I will be able to fly in the sky like them!" The little boy's dream was unlikely to come true, and soon after, as a defeated country, the British were permanently banned from building and using airplanes, and the planes of future airlines were also supplied and controlled by the Luftwaffe.

For the British officers and soldiers on the other side of the river, who had just experienced a catastrophe, it seemed as if a heavy snow was falling on the east side of the town, and the snow was not falling much, but it was enough to bring a heavy snowstorm to this place.

"It's horrible!"

A gray-haired British general with a telescope looked at it for several minutes before he could say that he had never seen such a shocking scene in Europe, Africa, or Asia. In the British Army, the middle-aged and elderly generals who participated in the colonial wars of the eighties and nineties of the last century (19th century) occupied the middle and upper echelons of the army, which was similar to the situation in the German army, and even the East Prussian Army, which was known for its youth, had veterans like François and Mackensen, who were over half a hundred years old.

The 20,000-odd British soldiers who had arrived from Taunton were woken up in the middle of the night, and it took them hours for the men and equipment to board the train, and there was no direct railway line from Taunton to here, and their trains were running and turning for hours on the road, and the officers and men had sleepiness written on their faces. After being attacked by the German air, although they were not afraid of fighting, they were inevitably uneasy. There were thousands of corpses lying on the flat ground between them and the town of Fortin, the charred craters in the snow were still steaming, the severed limbs, the bloody faces, and the dark red stuff in the snow were all unappetizing.

"General, Colonel Cole is asking for advice on whether to continue withdrawing or wait for reinforcements on the spot?"

The staff officer said that Colonel Cole was the commander of the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division, and the troops who came to reinforce Bonemouth overnight In addition to this Canadian division, there was also a British 17th Infantry Division, also known as the Reeser Infantry Division, the division commander was this white-bearded veteran, and the two divisions were under the unified command of General Reese. (In World War I, Canada and ANZ often acted as the vanguard of the main force of the British army, and there were not many Indian colonial troops in the French battlefield)

"Are these Canadians scared by a few bombs?" General Reeser was very dissatisfied with the fact that Cole did not attack in his options, but with the opponent's forces and weapons unknown and a large number of aircraft still in the nearby airspace, Reeser had no intention of attacking again, and he was ready to leave the decision of attack to the garrison command.

"The troops are resting on the spot, but they must not relax their air vigilance! Signal soldier, send a report to the headquarters for me......"

At 10:41 a.m. on the 27th, the Luftwaffe fleet completed the task of dropping the second wave of paratroopers and ammunition supplies and began to return.