At dusk, the atmosphere at the RAF Operational Command Center in London was particularly solemn, and preliminary statistics were already available on the daytime battle situation: more than 25,000 coalition fighters had intruded into British airspace, and the RAF figure was only half; British fighter units and ground air defense units shot down a total of 579 enemy fighters, killed 1,232 enemy pilots, and captured 780 people, while the British lost a staggering 1,512 aircraft, of which about 30 percent were destroyed on the ground, 40 percent were broken in the battle to defend British airspace, and the remaining losses were over St. George's Strait and Ireland, with more than 3,000 pilots killed and missing. Pen ~ fun ~ Pavilion www.biquge.info With such a battle loss ratio, the performance of the RAF on the first day was a disaster.

Under the watchful eyes of a group of subordinates, the founder of the British Air Force, the highly decorated General Hugh Trenchard, sat into the car with a dark face, and he will go to Buckingham Palace to report to the king and **** on the situation of the battle and the next plan of the air force. Regardless of the outcome, it was undoubtedly a matter of great embarrassment and frustration to go to the audience with such an achievement, and the older officers could not help but think of the cold winter of 1914, when Britain was in a terrible situation and there were widespread fears that the German army would attack Britain with a great naval victory, but Britain persevered, becoming the only of the three Entente powers to retain its political structure and core territory.

As soon as the general's car left, a heart-wrenching air raid siren sounded in the city. London is located in the southeast of Britain, only a few dozen kilometers away from the European continent, the rapid development of aviation technology has greatly attenuated the role of the English Channel in the strategic protection of Britain, the German fighter plane taking off from the airport in northern France can appear over London in less than a quarter of an hour, and the bomber taking off from the United Kingdom needs to trek nearly 1,000 kilometers to reach Berlin, this extremely asymmetrical strategic situation made the Germans unscrupulously launched the war. Within two hours of Germany's declaration of war on Britain, German planes flew into London three times, dropping thousands of tons of bombs, and the eastern shipbuilding area and the northern industrial area were caught in flames.

As soon as the air raid sirens sounded, flocks of war eagles roared over the city. The dismal battle loss ratio reveals not the weakness of the British Air Force, nor the technical backwardness of the British Air Force, but the influence of objective factors such as the initiative in the war, strategic layout, geographical location, etc. In more than 10 air battles over London that day, the elite British Royal Air Force fighter units shot down a large number of German bombers with relatively small losses, so that the confidence and morale of the soldiers and civilians in London would not be too shaken by the casualties and losses caused by the enemy's bombing.

"It looks like the Germans are not ready to let us go to the North Wales battlefield." Before entering the headquarters in the underground bunker, a tall, wide-faced British Air Force colonel muttered.

The officer next to him muttered as he walked: "The accuracy of night bombing is already low, so why let our elite pilots waste physical energy in running back and forth." In this way, all the pilots of the capital's air defense circle have a good rest tonight, and tomorrow will be another bitter battle! ”

At this time, on the Cohen Peninsula in North Wales, the aviation units of the two sides were engaged in the Nth battle of the day under the setting sun. Coalition fighters flying from airfields in eastern Ireland have tried their best to protect their landing grounds, so that the follow-up troops and supplies can be transported ashore as smoothly as possible, and the landing force has built a complete defensive belt in the south and central part of the peninsula, and opened up a number of airstrips at the southwestern end, where many IR-30s and HE-28s with strong short-range take-off and landing capabilities have begun to be deployed directly to provide strong support to front-line combat units.

After an afternoon of hard work, Irish paratrooper Evan Gallaher had become a "gray man", clean from head to toe, and even his nostrils were covered with British dust. Leaning on the point of sitting in a bunker that is more than one person deep and can accommodate two people in parallel, watching the people who come and go to carry ammunition, my heart is much more relaxed. As the coalition air units adjusted their tactics and used small groups of fighters to deal with the small groups of British mixed fighters, from noon to now, they were only half as harassed as they were in the morning, and under the repeated crushing of the coalition bombers, the British ground troops on the opposite side were not having a good time, and their troop movements, artillery deployments, and baggage transportation were certainly greatly affected.

The construction of the first-line trenches has been completed, and the excavation of the second-line trenches is still underway, but that is the task of the follow-up troops. Gallaher took out the cigarette case, lit one, put the rifle flat on his lap, opened the bolt and took a look, after all, it had been carefully maintained the day before, and it was spotless, and the yellow bullets were lying in the magazine like full corn kernels - the Hubert-II bolt-action rifle developed and produced in Ireland uses a fixed box-type magazine, which can be loaded with two five-round magazines at a time, and the firing speed is comparable to that of the British Lee Enfield MK-II. The standard rifle equipped with infantry has a total length of 1160 mm, a barrel length of 640 mm, and an effective firing range of about 600 meters; Equipped with cavalry and navy and air forces, the Type IIC short rifle has a total length of 1080 mm, a barrel length of 600 mm, and an effective firing range of about 500 meters.

Although all the Hubert rifles have not been tested in large-scale combat, from the technical tests and daily training, they are of high quality, reliable performance, and have their own technical characteristics.

Half a day is not a long time, but for the coalition officers and soldiers who have landed in a foreign land across the sea, this half day buffer time is very valuable. With the arrival of war materiel, the ammunition dispensed has increased from basic requirements to a more abundant level, and anti-aircraft guns and grenades are effective anti-armor weapons in the hands of well-trained soldiers capable of dealing with known types of combat vehicles.

With a whimper, like a wail, another biplane crashed to the ground, followed by a violent explosion. Thousands of meters away, it is difficult for the naked eye to discern the camp belonging to this plane, not to mention that at the end of the day, there are two or three hundred warplanes crashed on this Cohen Peninsula, who cares about this one in particular?

Gallaher, who was munching bread on hot soup, glanced up, and the sky reflected in the glow was still a gladiatorial arena for the fighters of the two sides to fight each other, and the plane that had just fallen left a trace of smoke and a white umbrella flower. In the Irish Army, parachutes used by pilots and paratroopers can control the direction of flight, and both have corresponding training courses in their daily training, and they can adapt to the landing process during the landing process, compared to the early parachutes that were not maneuverable, and try to avoid enemy-occupied areas or battlefields where heavy fighting is being fought as much as possible, as was the case with German airborne equipment.

With the natural wind weak, the parachute was drifting eastward, and Gallah felt that it must be a British pilot, as long as he landed safely, he should be able to return to base soon, and maybe he would be able to fly into the air again tomorrow morning.

"Lucky guy!" Gallaher muttered and continued to drink the soup, and at this moment, the noodle soup in the military lunch box actually rippled, which was a sign of ......

In an instant, the screaming sound of heavy shells came in the air, and the ensuing huge explosion completely obscured the roar of artillery fire from a distance, the tremor of the ground was so violent, and the soup in the lunch box was shaken out, how could Gallah care about this, he hurriedly buckled himself with a steel helmet belt, held the rifle in his arms, freed his hands to plug his ear holes, and crouched in the trench in a face-down and back-up position, which was a reasonable way to reduce damage in enemy shelling.

As for whether or not they can survive, that is not determined by the individual's ability.

From sparse school firing to intensive and heavy large-scale shelling, the whole process lasted about twenty minutes. In this process, the coalition forces dispatched more than 100 fighters to suppress it, but they were blocked by unprecedentedly fierce anti-aircraft artillery fire over the British position, and then the sky gradually darkened, and the fighters could still take off and land at the well-equipped airfield, but the search for targets had become a problem, and the British artillery began to bombard the coalition landing area unscrupulously, and it did not take long for the coalition ships supporting the landing to open fire on the British artillery within range, and the noisy artillery battle lasted for more than three hours. By the time the continuous artillery fire had subsided, every soldier in the trench was covered in a thin layer of sand, and when he didn't move, he looked like a sand sculpture.

In the clear moonlight, Gallah saw his lunch box, picked it up and looked at it, and poured out a lump of mud and sand soup mixture.

A piercing whistle sounded over the position, alerting every surviving warrior: the enemy's ground offensive has begun!

Gallaher hung his uncleaned lunch box on his belt, picked up his rifle and stood up, looking out to see a black wave rising in the silver fields, and the gut-wrenching sound of the crawlers grinding could be faintly heard.

The command "Prepare for battle" quickly spread through the trenches, followed by the sound of guns being loaded.

Gallaher breathed in the smoke and dust of the air, his second battle since parachuting into the Cohen Peninsula, and it was a battle that really needed to be faced stubbornly.

Before the machine-gun rifles in the trenches could fire, the field guns deployed at the rear of the battle line were the first to fire, dark red shells streaked across the battlefield in a low trajectory, and orange flames flashed in front of them, reflecting the silhouette of British chariots and infantry attack groups.

The limited number of field guns of the coalition landing force was not able to stop the offensive of the British ground forces, and as the black wave continued to approach, the characteristic thudming sound of the 37-mm single-barreled anti-aircraft guns began to echo over the coalition positions. This anti-armour weapon was derived from the 37mm Hatch Chase machine guns, which the French army had heavily equipped in the last war, and which was one of the few outstanding works of the French in 1914-1915. According to incomplete statistics, more than 800 German tanks were damaged by French machine guns during the war, accounting for nearly seventy percent of the total losses of such weapons. Scholars of war history generally believe that if the French army had realized the great role of naval machine guns on land as early as possible, the Germans would not have easily crossed the Maas, taken the fortress of Verdun in a relatively short time, and then launched the Battle of Paris in a favorable position, and then the entire course and even the outcome of the war could have changed.

Watching the shadowy enemy tanks and infantry groups approaching, Gallah tried to calm his breath, closed his gaze, and aimed with one eye, ordinary bullets did not pose any threat to the armor of the tank, and could only be used against the infantry attacking with the tank—what could a vehicle without infantry cover do in front of the defenders' positions?

(End of chapter)