On the night before dawn, the moonlight converges and the stars disappear, and only human figures can be discerned from a few meters apart, while in the seaside town of Crickieus, located in the eastern part of the Cohen Peninsula, several blinding pillars of light shoot into the sky, leaving a circular spot of light in the deep canopy and providing additional light to the people on the ground. Pen, fun, and www.biquge.info

A few hours earlier, a stormy shelling had ruthlessly destroyed this beautiful and idyllic resort town like a fire in purgatory. As it was the first day of the war, many civilians had not yet had time to evacuate, and the British troops stationed and subsequent reinforcements were also killed and wounded in the shelling.

Looking back at the last war, Britain had never been so ferociously devastated.

As a result, the railway station, which welcomes hundreds of thousands of passengers every year, was burned to ashes, and the railway line passing through the city was destructively hit, and a heavy shell was enough to tear the railroad tracks and sleepers within a radius of more than ten meters into pieces, but in just a few hours, the debris that collapsed on the railway line was basically cleared, several huge craters were filled, covered with new sleepers and rails, and the hideous train cannons were swinged out one after another, and the huge barrels were proudly raised......

"The last five minutes to prepare! Everyone hurry up! Remember the course and stay safe! ”

A middle-aged officer wearing a flat-brimmed steel helmet and a khaki military uniform resembled a scrappy rooster, with his chin held high, his chest held high, and his hands behind his back, reminding the busy officers and soldiers with a rich tone not inferior to that of a baritone and a subdued London accent that there was very little time left for everyone.

Each train gun is a sophisticated and complex machine, requiring a dozen or twenty well-trained soldiers to run smoothly, and it takes a lot of time to check the parts, calibrate the elements, and load the ammunition, not to mention the enemy's daytime bombardment and night shelling, which has paralyzed the railway system in North Wales. In order to ensure the smooth operation of these train guns to the Cohen Peninsula, the British engineering troops and the urgently dispatched railway workers worked all night to finally complete this arduous task.

Less than half of the five minutes, there was a sudden earth-shattering roar in the distance, and the flames produced by the heavy artillery fire suddenly stained the sky red, and the strong tremor was transmitted to the people's feet through the ground, and the whistling sound of the cannonballs crossing the head was fleeting.

Many people involuntarily stopped what they were doing and turned their heads to look.

The loud rumble sounded one after another, a total of six times before and after, and those in the know knew in their hearts that it must have been the six 343mm super-heavy train guns codenamed MK11. They used all guns taken from the George V-class battleship Ajax, which had been sunk at the mouth of the Thames, and used ammunition produced before 1914 - by the standards of the time, the British Navy had a severe shortage of large-caliber shells, so the Admiralty sent an urgent order to the munitions factories immediately after the start of the war, and a few months later, the number of ships matching them was drastically reduced by the accumulation of shiny shells in the naval warehouses. After the end of the war, the British army's annual live-fire training was depleting stocks, but in the past 20 years, the surplus is still very large, and it can basically be used normally, on the one hand, it can be seen that the quality of Britain's military technology is high, and the logistics storage conditions are excellent, and on the other hand, it is also a helpless witness to the historical drastic change of the British Empire from prosperity to decline.

The larger the caliber of the train gun, the weaker the steering ability of the gun carriage, and even can only be fixed on the carriage, the adjustment of the firing range must rely on the rails, the railway transfer yard a few kilometers away from Krikius is the only place around the area that can allow the train to adjust the direction, so the six MK11 chose there as the firing position, and the reason why the remaining train guns arrived at Krichius, the most critical factor is the firing range - the large-caliber artillery installed by the British army, even if it is a product of the last century, has an absolute range of more than twenty or thirty kilometers, The problem was that the construction of non-standard train guns was usually not perfect, for example, some train guns using the 8-inch main guns of old cruisers, with a maximum firing elevation angle of 18 degrees and an effective range of about 22 kilometers, had to be deployed at or closer to Krygius in order to bombard German troops landing in Abersoch.

In the faint light, the officer took out his pocket watch and looked at the time, and then shouted a loud greeting: "In the last three minutes, check the fixing knob and close the bolt to make sure nothing goes wrong!" ”

People silently checked the controls of each train cannon. Some of these train guns belong to mass-produced standard weapons, such as the 234 mm MK10, the 356 mm MK3, and the 305 mm MK9, but more are the "waste reuse" of installing guns on train cars -- subject to the terms of the London Armistice, many ships that have already started construction have to be dismantled on the spot, and the British Navy has no funds or need to repair a considerable number of damaged ships, so that hundreds of naval guns have become redundant materials after the war. Despite the generous price offered by the Germans, the senior officials at the helm of the British navy insisted on mothballing them, and the low-cost "investment" paid off handsomely ten years later, and as international tensions rose again, the British quickly used these high-quality guns to form a large train artillery force, adding a military force of strategic deterrence to the defense of Britain itself.

After a while, another huge rumbling sound sounded, but there was a clear difference between the scale and the momentum of the previous six "Big Macs".

After the cannon roared, the sharp whistles came and went, and the atmosphere suddenly became tense, and the soldiers on the gun emplacements covered their ears one after another.

The whistle sounded for a few seconds, then sounded again, and the train cannons on the tracks fired one after the other, like a beast roaring in rage. The ground continued to tremble, and the burst of cannon flames illuminated the surrounding ruins and the faces with serious expressions.

The smoke was filled, the dust and smoke were everywhere, the vision was blurred, and the chaos was blurred, but only the thick and firm voice remained the same.

"Load standard ammo! Five minutes time limit! ”

Equipped with mechanically assisted reloading equipment, the main gun of the battleship can be automatically reset after loading or can be loaded at any angle, usually complete the reloading of ammunition within one minute, the German dreadnoughts and super-dreadnoughts can even reach an amazing rate of fire of two rounds per minute, while most train guns basically rely on manual operation, the gun barrel needs to be lowered to a fixed loading angle when loading, and then the muzzle is re-raised when firing, so complicated procedures, the firing speed is naturally much slower than that of naval guns. It would be nice to be able to shoot more than five times per hour at a land giant with a caliber of more than 300 mm.

The acrid smoke lingered all around, and the soldiers wearing flat-topped steel helmets cooperated with each other in an orderly manner, only to see the high barrels slowly lowered, the heavy bolts opened, the hot shells withdrew, and the warheads weighing one or two hundred kilograms and the ****** weighing dozens of kilograms were fed into the loading slide, and then loaded by manual tamponage or hydraulic assistance, and the barrels were slowly raised and returned to the firing angle.

In the process, the middle-aged officer in charge of the on-site dispatch took out his pocket watch three times and twice. There are prescribed training standards for the rate of fire of heavy artillery, but there are often no hard indicators on the battlefield, and the reason why it is so urgent at this time is only because the enemy fighters will follow the trail after dawn, and the overall strength of the British Air Force is already at a disadvantage, and a large number of fighters were lost in the battle the day before, and then there is no certainty of protecting the ground forces, so the offensive operations of the British troops on the front line will be temporarily ended before dawn, and the train artillery units are also required to end the shelling at dawn, and use camouflage means to hide on the spot or quickly withdraw to the rear to disperse and conceal.

In addition to the superior coalition air force, coalition warships supporting the landing operation are also a potential threat that cannot be guarded against. Earlier, the British Navy's mine-striking ships carried out a surprise attack on the coalition fleet that was shelling targets in the southeast of the Coen Peninsula at night, and the two sides engaged in an extremely tragic battle, the British ships dealt a heavy blow to the coalition forces at the cost of almost total annihilation, and the coalition fleet was forced to retreat, and the British ground forces were able to seize the outer defense line of the coalition landing force in the second offensive, and took the lead in the follow-up combat operations.

When the five-minute time limit expired, the whistle for firing did not sound. The officer standing by the field telephone received a new order to quickly report a set of data to the commander in charge of on-site dispatch.

"The impact point is actually 1,500 meters closer?" The middle-aged officer touched his bare chin, on the military map, the straight-line distance from Krikius to Abersoch is 19 kilometers, and the firing parameters of these train guns are set according to the target of 20 kilometers, and the shells should have crossed the town and landed in the coalition landing area, but the observation results transmitted from the front line were that the impact point was close, which made him feel very puzzled - could it be that the light was too dark, and the most cutting-edge observation point was still three or four kilometers away from Abersoch, which caused the observation situation to be wrong?

"What now?" His subordinate asked.

The middle-aged officer did not hesitate, nor did he have time to hesitate, he waved his hand to summon the officers under him: "Jim and David inform the first group that the shooting elevation angle will be increased by 20 points; Big John and Roth informed the second group to raise 25 points; John Jr. and Firth informed the third group to raise 30 points. Gentlemen, you have one minute left, hurry up, run! ”

At this time, the lieutenants didn't care about the image of any officers, and ran out one by one.

Everyone was gone, and the middle-aged officer took a deep breath, calming down a lot. Judging from the existing battlefield experience and theoretical research, the long-range firing of heavy artillery units needs to go through three or four rounds of calibration before they can be put in place, and then there is continuous firing without adjustment, and the whole process takes at least two hours, and the more times and the longer the shelling, the more it can strike at the enemy, but there is still an hour before dawn, and it is very good to be able to fire seven or eight more rounds of effective firing.

(End of chapter)