The British had occupied Gibraltar for more than 200 years and had long since run it through thick and thin.

Gibraltar's topography is unique in that it is a peninsula with gentle terrain on the land side and steep cliffs on the seaside side. For more than 200 years, the British used various natural karst caves to build underground fortresses in all directions.

In order to capture this fortress, it is recognized in military circles that the only way to enter it is from the ground. As for the coastal side, facing the almost 90-degree vertical wall shore and the major battery groups carved out from the cliff wall, even if the Allied navy has an absolute advantage in the Mediterranean, under this terrain, there is no possibility of landing on the coastal side.

Jiang Yunzhi is adventurous, but not crazy. Attacking the fortress of Gibraltar from the sea is undoubtedly the work of a madman.

But attacking from the ground, the British fortifications built at the narrow isthmus would wipe out the numerical superiority of the Allied forces, and the British soldiers could take turns unilaterally "slaughtering" the attacking Allied forces from the various underground fortifications.

The staff officers conducted several exercises on the land assault and came to the conclusion that it would take at least tens of thousands of casualties to approach the Rock of Gibraltar, known as the "Pillar of Hercules".

The rugged hill and the flexible military deployment of the British army, as well as the successive successes of the defense of the fortress of Gibraltar throughout history, have led many to maintain cautious optimism about the capture of Gibraltar.

Vice Admiral Giriziani, the new commander of the Italian navy, even believed that a hasty attack on Gibraltar without capturing the city of Ceuta on the south bank would inflict unbearable casualties on the Allies, and at best, at least 50,000 casualties and several months before it would be possible to achieve the objectives of the campaign.

In the face of all kinds of doubts, Jiang Yunzhi's face was still black, and he didn't even make too many explanations. In his opinion, these questioners can be called qualified generals, but they are by no means geniuses.

Only those who, like His Majesty, can come up with a "surgical" blow, can be called a genius.

In everyone's opinion, the landing of the Chinese expeditionary force led by Sun Liren in Malaga meant that the Allies were going to storm the British fortifications in the neutral zone of the isthmus.

They may have even imagined that the soldiers of the expeditionary force would pay a great sacrifice in front of the British army's massive fortified underground fortresses. But they don't know that there is already a weapon in this world called a ground-penetrating bomb specifically designed to deal with such underground fortifications. Moreover, it is a high-precision ground-penetrating bomb with laser guidance.

During Operation Big-Eared Fox, the Allies used ground-penetrating bombs when they bombed coastal airfields of the multinational forces, but at that time, most people, including those unaware of the Allies, believed that they were the effects of the explosion of a super-large aerial bomb.

The ground-penetrating bomb is indeed very heavy, and the 1,450-kilogram ground-penetrating bomb can indeed be regarded as a super-large aerial bomb, but more importantly, the "ground-pumping mouse" dropped at an altitude of several thousand meters, its sharp penetrating warhead can continue to penetrate several meters of thick concrete ground or more than 20 meters deep sandy land. A delay of 300 milliseconds is also enough to ensure that the high-explosive charge of the warhead will only be detonated when the ground-pumping rat is deep inside the target.

With this kind of large-scale killing weapon, as well as nearly 100 powerful Hong's Penguin-5 air-to-surface missiles and thousands of Ruby-2 laser-guided bombs urgently produced, Jiang Yunzhi really did not feel that there was any great difficulty in breaking through the Gibro Fortress.

An unsinkable land carrier? An impenetrable fortress of the century? It's a joke.

Perhaps in the last century, in the era of earthen guns and bronze cannons, Gibraltar was indeed difficult to attack due to its unique terrain and underground fortresses. But what age is this? That is, Germany and the USSR were still playing meat grinders in Stalingrad. Well...... Didn't Germany also come up with an 800-millimeter caliber "Gustav" train gun? And with one shot, it destroyed the underground ammunition depot of the Sevaspotor fortress, which looks like the fortress on the Crimean peninsula, and is also known as the world's first fortress, which is much more bullish than this Gibraltar. It's just that the giant cannon named "Dora" is too heavy and can only fire a few shells a day, that is, it is difficult for the Soviet Air Force to raise its head if it is suppressed, otherwise it would have been blown up a long time ago!

However, its single shot blasted away the underground ammunition storage of the Sevasporto Fortress thirty meters deep, which is indeed enviable.

But what would be the effect of those hundreds of tons of steel if they were all made into precision-guided bombs? Maybe this question is difficult to answer, Jiang Yunzhi just wants to prove it through practice.

Air Force Admiral Long Xiaotian had already arrived in Cairo a week ago to participate in the pre-operation ...... Uh, it's a pre-campaign preparation meeting. The so-called "surgical" strike, of course, must be carried out by the strike force outside the defensive circle of the navy and air force, otherwise it will not become hand-to-hand combat if it rushes into the enemy group?

Admiral Guan Canghai, commander of the Royal Navy's Northern Fleet, has been quite high-spirited recently, and before the New Year's Longxiang Hall conferred the title, there was even a very high demand in the army for Commander Guan to be promoted to the rank of marshal.

Guan Canghai certainly made great contributions to the successive defeats of the main fleets of the United States and Britain in the Mediterranean Sea and completely turned the Mediterranean Sea into the territory of the Allies, and even compared with the dragon fat man who defeated the Japanese combined fleet in the Battle of the Yellow Sea. Although the dream of marshal Jin was shattered by His Majesty's faint remark that "we will talk about it after the complete defeat of Britain", it was enough for Guan Canghai to be embarrassed in front of other colleagues in the navy by taking the lead in being promoted to admiral among the commanders of the three fleets.

On March 25, four days after Franco announced that Spain had joined the Iron Alliance and declared war on the Allied countries, while the United States, Britain and other countries were still coordinating whether to launch a landing campaign in Spain, the 22nd Division of the Chinese Expeditionary Force under the command of Sun Liren concentrated nearly 100 artillery pieces and launched an hour-long artillery bombardment with the Blue Legion, which was composed of all members of the Falangist Party of the Spanish Defense Force, to the fortifications of the British army in the neutral zone of Gibraltar, opening the prelude to the liberation of Gibraltar.

However, the heavy artillery bombardment did not cause much damage to the British underground fortress group, and in the subsequent charge launched by the Spanish Blue Army, the British soldiers easily repelled several Spanish attacks with various fortifications.

After paying more than 1,000 casualties, Sun Liren consulted with the Spanish commander and stopped this senseless act of sending him to death.

This was not surprising, and if these field guns alone could capture British positions, Gibraltar would not have been worthy of its reputation as a fortress of the century.

It's just that the Spanish officers had to press the impulse to regain lost territory for the country in the face of the casualty figures, and they looked a little annoyed, and Sun Liren couldn't help but laugh a little when he saw it. In fact, it wasn't that Sun Liren wanted to trap his teammates, but this group of Spanish people came up and coaxed them into a cowhide, as if they could recapture Gibraltar with a single charge, but they fought for a day and killed nearly a thousand people, and even the British outlying positions were not taken down.

The next day, the Xiban people did not ask for a charge, and at the request of Sun Liren, they also concentrated a small number of large-caliber howitzers and bombarded them together with the artillery of the expeditionary force. All day, the British soldiers in the underground fortifications were spent with earplugs.

The commander of the British isthmus fortifications reported to the Governor of Gibraltar, Sir Noel Marson Mark Farane, that the Allies had no choice but to vent their anger with artillery, and that the result of their shelling throughout the day was that three of our ground fortifications were hit, and seven soldiers were wounded.

Sir Mark Farane received such a report without any joy on his face. Today, he received two telegrams from London almost simultaneously.

One is from King George VI in Buckingham Palace, while the other is from Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the stronghold of the British army.

The content of the telegram was the opposite, the British king demanded that Viscount Mark Farane cease resistance and that the Allies temporarily take over the Strait of Gibraltar; The Prime Minister ordered Governor Mark Farane to hold the fort and wait for reinforcements from the mainland, and made it clear that Gibraltar was the last line of defense of the United Kingdom, and if it was lost, it would have to fight a home defense! To defend Gibraltar is to be a hero to the whole of Britain, and vice versa to be a sinner of the United Kingdom.

Mark Farane held his left and right hands together, and looked at the king in his left hand and the prime minister in his right hand. He locked himself in his office all afternoon, hesitating between the two telegrams.

He was a nobleman, inheriting the ancestral Viscount Ramsey, and hundreds of years ago, his family also owned their own territory, the Isle of Man. In his heart, he also fantasized about reproducing the glory of his ancestors.

But British law states that the Prime Minister is the de facto supreme commander of the British army, and as Churchill said, if he obeys the orders of the British king, he will become a sinner in Britain.

He had read both telegrams at least dozens of times, and he did not know whether he should obey his heart or obey the laws of England.

That night, the British king and royal family in London were anxiously waiting, and Churchill's cabinet and parliamentarians were even more anxious. As soon as the reinforcement fleet sent from the mainland left the English Channel, it was blocked by the Allied air forces.

The 1st Marine Division, which had just finished the "Dynasty" operation to seize Zhongshan Port on Xiqi Island and handed over the port to the Nationalist Army, rushed to the Mediterranean Sea under the leadership of Commander Kan Aiguo and "sailed without stopping." Without much rest, it accepted the order to seize the port of Marseille.

Guan Canghai was definitely a large-scale operation this time, and the 3rd Marine Division landed in Montpellier at the same time, and it took less than 48 hours for the Royal Marines to take control of several large ports in the French Gulf of Lion. The four paratrooper divisions of the Guards also seized the French ports on the Mediterranean coast with lightning speed.

Before the Free French troops could adjust their deployment, they had to surrender in formation under the blows of the Allies who landed in the follow-up landing.

The German mustache wanted to protest with the Han Emperor and the Han army was a bit too much, but thinking that the German army really couldn't muster troops to fight a large-scale battle on the Western Front, he had to give up.

After seizing several ports and airfields around the Gulf of Lyon, strictly speaking, the British mainland had already entered the strategic strike range of the Han army, not to mention that if necessary, it could also borrow Spanish bases.

So the reinforcements sent by Churchill were really bumpy and several troop carriers were sunk, so that they had just sailed through the Bay of Bicas, and they were already more than half of the journey, and nearly half of the losses were lost.

It was late at night, and the Allied artillery in the neutral zone had been fighting for a day, and it finally stopped. The British soldiers took off their anti-gun earplugs, but their ears were still buzzing and they couldn't hear anything clearly.

At the foot of the Rock of Gibraltar, the door to the Governor's office remains unopened. Mark Farane is still torn over whether he is a Governor or a Viscount?

At this time, Chang'an is in the afternoon, and the warm sun in the southern hemisphere shines on the human body, and it will always unconsciously give birth to some laziness. His Majesty leaned back in the leather chair, and just as he was about to take a nap, he heard the sound of his little leather boots kicking on the ground.

"Your Majesty, a telegram from the Duke of Windsor!"