"Major General, all the balloons have been inflated!"

Heard his deputy, Lieutenant Commander François of the French Navy. Bernard reported to himself in French English, Hans. Major General Landsdorf sighed softly and glanced back at the dozens of huge rubber hydrogen balloons floating in mid-air, wrapped in a layer of aluminum foil. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

These strange-looking hydrogen balloons were towed by tiny torpedo boats. Rear Admiral Landsdorf's current "flagship" is also the captain of a small S-100-class torpedo boat, the dignified aircraft carrier "Potsdam." Because of the loss of the aircraft carrier, he has now become the captain of a torpedo boat detachment under the United European Fleet.

Not only did the officer become smaller (this position was supposed to be held by a colonel), but he was also assigned an inexplicable task. At the beginning of the Sea Lion movement, dozens of torpedo boats led by the detachment dragged a strange kind of hydrogen-filled balloon to the Strait of Dover.

"Let's go!" Rear Admiral Landsdorf, thinking of his beloved aircraft carrier, whispered the order to attack.

The torpedo boat sailed out of Calais at a speed of about 15 knots, and then drove slowly along the Strait of Dover near the French, as if it were not for war, but for leisurely fishing.

It's not that Landsdorf didn't want the torpedo boat to drive quickly, but it was stipulated that it could only drive 15 knots, no more, no less. Although Landsdorf did not understand what was going on, the order must be carried out.

"Major General, look there, Dover direction."

Landsdorf was leaning on the railing to look at the scenery when his French deputy, Major Bernard, suddenly shouted in English. Landsdorf turned his head and it was almost completely dark, and a little further away from the sea was pitch black, and only in the direction of the setting sun in the west did the red glow of the sunset emit out. Suddenly, Landsdorf saw a familiar red glow from what might have been Dover Beach to the north......

"It's ...... Muzzle flame? Landsdorf was stunned, "It seems that a cannon of more than 300mm is firing." But what do they want to fight? ”

His question was not long before he came out, and the answer was soon available, as if a pot was boiling on the sea two or three hundred meters away from the torpedo boat in which Landsdorf was riding, suddenly stirred up a dozen or twenty columns of water tens of meters high, and then the roar of the train speeding past and the thunderous roar of the explosion.

"Major General, they're firing at us!" Major Bernard, a Frenchman, shouted in French that Landsdorf did not understand.

The coastal batteries of the British were firing at us, torpedo boats, with huge guns of more than 300mm!? Landsdorf didn't understand French, but he knew what was going on.

But he didn't understand why these British bombarded a formation of torpedo boats sailing 28 kilometers away with huge cannons of caliber of more than 300mm? The dozens of torpedo boats here don't necessarily have those shells that are valuable, can they be guilty of such a fight?

……

Of course, the British would not use a giant cannon of more than 300mm to bombard dozens of torpedo boats, which is no different from a cannon to fight mosquitoes. But the problem was that the torpedo boats were towing balloons wrapped in aluminum foil, which, judging from the British radar screens, reflected the light points as if they were a ship of several thousand to ten thousand tons. When dozens of such points of light fill the corner of the screen, it is as if a huge fleet is sailing.

A similar method was mastered by the Germans in history, and in the 1943 Atlantic operation, aluminum foil balloons appeared that could pass off as radar reflections from floating U-boats. And in this time and space, because of Hersmann, German radar experts knew a few years ago that it was possible to disrupt radar with aluminum foil.

That's why in Operation Sea Lion, a group of torpedo boats dragged foil balloons into the Strait of Dover.

"There is no fire, it looks like it didn't hit the target!"

Dover Fortress Command, Commander of the Fortress Complex William. Rear Admiral Tennant couldn't help but frown when he heard the staff officer's report. It's been several rounds of fighting, and I didn't hit anything - this 284 radar is too bad, right? If this continues, the Germans' grand fleet will have to break through the strait.

"When will the planes of the Coast Air Force reach the sky above the target?" Major General Tennant asked loudly.

"I don't know, the Coast Air Force hasn't answered us yet."

No reply yet...... The staff officer's answer made Tennant a little helpless, he was now the commander of the fortress, not the captain of the battleship, and he could not send the seaplane into the sky with a single order. He could only contact the Coast Air Force and ask them to send seaplanes or whatever, and it was none of his business when the Coast Air Force would send them.

But now the Germans already have night fighters with radars, and Calais across the English Channel also has German radars, and it is difficult to say whether the seaplanes sent out by the coastal air force can drop flares on the heads of the German fleet.

Therefore, Rear Admiral Tennant could only order the large-caliber artillery of the fortress group to continue to intercept and fire according to the instructions of the fire control radar, and he did not care about the German high-altitude bombers hovering in the air to drop wire-controlled glide bombs.

"It's really fired!" Manfred flying a He-219 at an altitude of 11,000 altitudes. Lieutenant Murray could see clearly that dozens of regiments of muzzle flames were rising from the ground.

"Lieutenant Murray, we're going to start dropping bombs, be on alert." Captain Rethman's order was transmitted to Manfred via the on-board radio. Lieutenant Murray's headphones.

Dropping both the Fritz X bomb and the Hs293 bomb required the aircraft to hover slowly in a specific course. At this time, bomb-dropping planes are very vulnerable and can easily be shot down by enemy aircraft. Except for the initial use of wire-controlled glide bombs, which can catch the opponent by surprise, the subsequent attacks should be carried out under the cover of your own fighters as much as possible.

"Rest assured, He-219 will be around!" Manfred. Lieutenant Murray did not hesitate to assure.

Although his He-219 night high-altitude fighter has not yet met the British "Mosquito", he already knows that the day model of the He-219 shot down more than a dozen Mosquito reconnaissance aircraft in today's daytime battle!

"Lieutenant, enemy aircraft spotted! At 12 o'clock, the distance is 6,000 meters, and the height is 10,000 meters! ”

The 24 Ju.288s commanded by Captain Resselmann had not yet begun to drop Fritz X gliding bombs, and one He-219 reported the detection of enemy aircraft, and it was at an altitude of 10,000 meters, which seemed to be mostly Mosquito night fighters.

"Just in time," Manfred said. Lieutenant Murray ordered, "Squad 1 will follow me and give the British a little bit of a look." The rest of the detachment followed Ju.288, maintaining an escort formation, paying attention to covering each other and keeping an eye on the back. ”

After giving the order, Manfred. Lieutenant Murray piloted his own He-219 and lined up in the air with three other He-219s, swooping in the direction where the enemy plane was found.

It was already night, and although there was some moonlight, it was still impossible to see the target a little farther away. Air combat at night relies either on searchlights or radar. Soon Corporal Baker, a radar observer sitting behind Lieutenant Murray, spotted a target on the radar screen.

"Distance 4000, 1 o'clock direction."

"Okay." Manfred. Lieutenant Murray shifted slightly and aimed the nose of the plane at the target.

"Distance 3000, 12 o'clock."

"Fire now!"

"Sudden ......"

As soon as Lieutenant Murray gave the order, six 20mm cannons and two 30mm cannons were fired at the same time, and the cannonballs dragging orange rays flew like raindrops, forming a fire net in the air, and a mosquito plane was covered in the head, and then the mosquito plane was beaten into a ball of fire.

"Hit!" Manfred. Lieutenant Murray cheered. It wasn't his first success, but it was the first time he had shot down an enemy plane so easily.

Previously, he flew the Bf-110, which was also a good night combat aircraft, but its firepower, speed, and flight altitude were not comparable to the He-219 at all.

"Boom!"

While the He-219 was engaged in a fierce battle with the incoming Mosquito aircraft, a Fritz X glide bomb with a glowing butt (a few light bulbs to let the operator know the location of the bomb) had exploded on the ground.

Then the second, the third, the fourth...... One bomb after another exploded one after another, and the ground shook in an instant, and fireballs rose high. This is an armor-piercing bomb weighing 1.5 tons, even the Yamato, the "first ship in the world" of the Japanese, cannot withstand it, not to mention the armored batteries built by the British on land.

These Fritz X bombs were all smashed towards the firing battery, because they were remotely controlled to kill the target, so the landing points were quite accurate, even if they could not directly give the turret a "through-top", they all exploded near the turret. Even if it can't destroy the turret, it can blow up some surrounding facilities, and after a dozen bombs were dropped, a large fire was already ignited near several armored batteries that were not blown up. And these fires pointed the way for an Fw-189 artillery school firing plane secretly circling the Dover fortress at an altitude of 6,000 meters.

At 8:35 p.m. on May 1, two "Dora" and "Gustav" cannons were fired off the coast of Calais.

A little farther afield, the huge German landing fleet was approaching the entrance to the strait at a speed of 15 knots, escorted by the 5th Fleet of the Combined European Fleet.

At the same time, 120 Z.1007 medium bombers loaded with aluminum foil strips were taking to the sky one after the other at an airfield near Brest. (To be continued.) )