A deafening roar of engines was heard in the sky, and the citizens of St. Petersburg looked up to see hordes of Ming warplanes covering the sky like dark clouds. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

There were so many fighters in the Ming army that it looked like the entire sky was covered from the ground. Countless warplanes whizzed through the sky, and bombshells were still in the middle of the ancient city.

On March 2, 1943, the Ming Army Group North officially launched a fierce attack on St. Petersburg. The 6th Panzer Army and the 15th Infantry Army surrounded the entire city of St. Petersburg. Covered by more than 2,500 artillery pieces, 3,000 warplanes and nearly 4,000 tanks and armored vehicles, they marched to St. Petersburg. The intention is to take over this important city of great significance in one fell swoop.

At this time, the main Allied forces holding the city were very empty, with only less than 300,000 British expeditionary forces and more than 100,000 Cossack cavalry and royal guards guarding the city. As for the rest of the Russian army and militia, they have been depleted in the previous rebellion.

Moreover, because the previous rebellion had destroyed many parts of the city, the original defense system was also unable to form an effective combat system due to the army's joining the rebellion and suppression. Under the fierce attack of the Ming army, the outer defense line soon collapsed.

More importantly, the previous rebellion destroyed the Russian army's will to fight to the greatest extent. Even the British Expeditionary Force was terrified, and no one thought they would be able to hold the city. Especially after the Ming army launched a fierce air attack on St. Petersburg, the kind of earth-shattering power greatly shocked the morale of the defenders.

When the troops under the Sixth Panzer Army of the Ming Army approached St. Petersburg, the Ming officers and soldiers were surprised to find that the garrison of the enemy positions in front was very weak, so weak that the Ming army could easily take the position with an ordinary tentative attack, and the Russian army did not launch a fierce counterattack. This was unusually rare in the past.

Even many front-line commanders of the Ming army thought that this was a ploy of the Russian army, and they stopped their advance and sent reconnaissance troops to investigate, and at the same time applied to the army aviation for air support. It was not until it was repeatedly confirmed that there was no ambush that the Ming army on the front line continued to attack.

It's not that the Ming army has become timid, but that the Russians have been like this on the battlefield for several years. When defending the position, he fought desperately, and constantly launched a tidal wave of counter-charges, and he would not give up his position at all without fighting a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood. This time, it suddenly disappeared, and whoever else would be cautious about it.

The defense system of the Russian army on the outskirts did not work at all. The various fortresses, forts, permanent fortifications, various defensive fronts, etc., which were built with great investment, almost did not play a role. It took only three days for the Ming army to seize the outlying positions and capture nearly 100,000 Russian officers and soldiers.

It was not until the Ming army launched an attack on the core city of St. Petersburg that it met real resistance. The British Expeditionary Force, which had been stationed in St. Petersburg for a long time, became the backbone of the resistance, and with the support of the long-range artillery of the Kronstadt fortress and the fire of the Russian Navy's Baltic Fleet, they firmly held the sea area of St. Petersburg, and engaged in fierce exchanges of fire with the Ming troops who broke through the city.

Britain is an island nation, and for them the navy is the key to survival. The biggest reason why Britain in this era fell to the point of being colonized by the Ming Dynasty at their doorstep was that their navy was defeated. Having had a chance to rise again, the British invested almost all their forces in the navy. This naturally led to the weakness of the army's strength.

Of course, as a country, it is not a small country with little power. The British army is only relatively weak, and it cannot be compared with the strength of the Ming Dynasty. However, the regular army it maintains is unusually elite. Its combat effectiveness is at least much stronger than that of the Russian army.

The Ming army's offensive operations were greatly hampered. In particular, the huge artillery of the Russian naval fortress and the artillery support of the naval fleet caused the Ming army to lose a large number of troops and equipment. The artillery used by the Navy is a super weapon for the Army, and the Army's artillery fire cannot compete with the Navy. They can only ask for support.

The Ming Navy is not yet able to enter the Baltic Sea, and the only thing that can provide support to the ground forces is the bomber unit of the Army Aviation. These elite air forces lived up to expectations, and in just two days they launched more than 3,000 sorties against the Kronstadt fortress and the Russian Baltic Fleet anchorage.

Many ace bomber pilots of the Ming army threw bombs into the belly of the Russian warships with accurate dive bombing again and again, causing huge damage to the Baltic Fleet of the Russian Navy. A number of battleships, including the battleship Alexander III, the flagship of the Baltic Fleet, were sunk in the heavy bombardment.

Four of the six battleships of the Baltic Fleet, Alexander III, Duke Suvorov, Borodino and Osrijabia, were sent to the bottom of the sea using a super-opener bomb designed to deal with the Navy's heavy warships. Another battleship, the Navarin, ran aground on the beach after being heavily damaged. Only the only battleship fled from the port when the situation was not good.

In addition to the battleships, other warships of various types belonging to the Russian Baltic Fleet were also sunk, seriously damaged and grounded, or escaped under the attack of the Ming Army Aviation. The huge fleet that Russia had spent a lot of money and supplies, as well as a lot of time, built up was almost completely lost in a sea and air battle.

When the Russians built the warships of the Baltic Fleet, they wanted to dominate this small sea area. I didn't think about ocean-going warfare at all. After all, above the ocean, it was the territory of the Ming Navy. The narrow Baltic Sea is simply not capable of large-scale maneuverable operations, and with land on all sides, there is no place for aircraft carriers.

Although the Russians saw the future development direction of the navy after the outbreak of the war, it was aircraft carriers. They also began to design and prepare for the construction of aircraft carriers. But as the war situation continues to deteriorate, the Russians simply do not have the energy and resources to build aircraft carriers. Their aircraft carriers are still stuck on the drawings.

After being heavily damaged by the Ming Army Aviation, the remnants of the Baltic Fleet of the Russian Navy retreated all the way to Riga and then to the British. In the years that followed, it played little role.

After clearing the Russian naval artillery threat, the Ming Army began to concentrate its forces on the armed batteries of the Kronstadt fortress.

The Russians built several large forts in the Kronstadt fortress to defend St. Petersburg. These turrets are equipped with main guns that have been retired from battleships. These artillery, hidden under reinforced concrete and armored steel plates several meters thick or even more than ten meters, caused great damage to the attacking Ming troops.

In particular, a turret named Odyssey was armed with two twin 305 mm guns. These four guns under heavy armor blocked the Ming army's offensive for two days with unparalleled lethality. Even if the Ming army concentrated artillery fire and mobilized a large number of army bomber units to bombard the turrets fiercely, they could not destroy these super cannons.

Artillery of this caliber has almost no chance of surviving if it is fired at least within a radius of several hundred square meters. Moreover, these guns were all retired from old battleships, and their power was originally stronger than that of army artillery. And there is no need to think about rifle wear like on a battleship, and when using high-explosive shells, it can cause great damage to ground targets.

Because these fortress turrets are equipped with super thick layers of defense, even the Army Air Force's can opener bombs cannot penetrate it. Under these conditions, the offensive of the Ming army was forced to pause for two days. Until the arrival of heavy artillery of the Ming army.

The super artillery equipped by the Ming Army is powerful and highly accurate. After these huge artillery pieces equipped in the heavy artillery division were fired from Moscow to the vicinity of St. Petersburg, they quickly tore apart the Russian fortified fortresses layer by layer with armor-piercing shells weighing more than a ton.

Under the dual guidance of ground observation and air correction, several 380 mm heavy guns of the Ming Army's heavy artillery division fired more than 100 heavy armor-piercing shells in a whole day, successfully overturning all the main batteries of the Russians.

Without the protection of these heavy artillery, neither the Russian defenders nor the British Expeditionary Force had the ability to continue to resist. The morale-boosting Ming officers and soldiers advanced layer by layer under the cover of armored troops and army aviation fighters, and little by little they seized this vital city into their own hands.

On April 9, 1943, the British War Office issued an order for the complete withdrawal of the expeditionary force stationed in St. Petersburg. When many officers and soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force, Russian officers and soldiers in St. Petersburg, as well as local citizens, rushed to use various tools to cross the Gulf of Finland and fled to Finland to temporarily avoid the Ming army. The Russian Tsar, with his family and important members of the government, quietly went to London at night on a British warship, and proclaimed a government in exile in London.

In fact, the Ming army had already captured the Ukrainian city of Kyiv in early April, and attacked all the way west to Odessa and Lviv. The Ming Army Center in the center had already captured the important town of Minsk and was rapidly advancing towards the Polish border.

As for St. Petersburg, the capital of the Russians actually fell into full hands of the Ming army just two days after the Tsar fled. At this point, there was no longer any resistance in the whole of Russia. No matter what its government-in-exile may say, the country has actually died out in the long run. (To be continued.) )