Chapter 585: Landing Operations (2)

With the sound of roaring, many wooden boats were blown up, but fortunately, these soldiers tried to sit in the back of the wooden boats, and although the boats were damaged, there were few casualties in the overboard. The Axis powers did not need to clear mines, they only needed to clear a road, and soon after the loss of more than sixty fishing boats, the road was opened and the landing ships continued on their way, soon approaching the beachhead near the port of The Hague.

At the flagship of the opposing side, which was busy clearing mines, the Yaman Army did not send troops to attack, because they knew that in the long-distance attack, they could not fight against the thick naval guns of the battleship without the support of coastal batteries, so they did not carry out artillery bombardment, so as not to be found by the enemy's naval guns.

The Boston Army ascended to the beachhead without hindrance and quickly surrounded the docks, but as soon as they set foot on the land of the Yaman Empire, they stepped on a mine. The Boston soldiers who stepped on the land first were blown away by several mines, and the rest were immediately thrown into disarray, and the Yaman soldiers hiding in the warehouse area and coastal woods immediately opened fire, killing and wounding many Bostonians in the chaos.

Again, the Reese soldiers were put to use, and even the Sero soldiers were sent over, and they rushed to the front, stepping on the mines laid by the Yamans, and the soldiers were so frightened that they did not dare to advance any longer, but the Bostonians forced them from behind with their guns, and they had to go hard.

The main gun turrets of several Missouri-class battleships quickly turned and bombarded the warehouse area, covering the landing Axis forces. The Yamans did not confront each other on the coast, and they retreated in an organized way, giving up the port of Sturdam. The Bostonians immediately transported a large number of men and supplies to the port through the docks, and just as the army began to disperse in an attempt to control various points throughout the city, they were killed and wounded by heavy fire from the Yaman army, and a brutal street battle began.

The well-trained Yaman soldiers were much more elite than the Axis armies, and their tactical literacy was higher, and the Yamans soon gained the upper hand. The two armies were already locked in street fighting in the city, and the naval guns no longer dared to fire artillery bombardment, and the bombers were soon killed by the powerful anti-aircraft fire on the ground, and the clumsy carrier-based bombers and the torpedo planes of the cameo bombers were quite lost.

The Axis forces also seemed to have anticipated the possibility of street fighting, and they brought a number of M4 chariots ashore by merchant ships, which immediately rumbled into the streets of the city and charged directly at the garrison of the Yaman army.

The Yaman army also had a number of chariots in the city, but most of them were No. 3 chariots. Although the main guns of these tanks had a caliber of 50 mm, the armor was slightly weak, so the Yaman army piled these tanks with sandbags and used them as fixed fire points for the barricades, which was very successful, and it was difficult for the M4 tanks to penetrate the front armor of the No. 3 tank reinforced with sandbags, and the melee between the two sides fell into a stalemate for a while.

The Yaman army was more creative on the battlefield, using the complex terrain to maximize the power of the 40 rocket launcher, and the M4 vehicles were restrained everywhere, and many of them were hit by rockets flying from somewhere, hitting the weak side armor or top armor.

The Axis army relied on the superiority of its strength to exchange huge casualties for the opportunity to gradually compress the defensive positions of the Yaman army, while the Yaman soldiers were mobile and flexible to strike the enemy, many snipers hid between the ruins or buildings, sniping those Axis front-line officers, machine gunners or outcropping charioteers, and the hidden Yaman artillery also looked for the enemy's dense places and opened fire one after another.

Seeing the fierce resistance of the Yaman army, the Axis army continued to send additional troops to land, and at the same time, all kinds of light and heavy weapons were thrown into street fighting, suppressing the Yaman army with dense firepower. The commander of the Axis army did not realize that the Yaman army, after a fierce resistance, began to retreat in an orderly manner, and the unconscious Axis army launched a pursuit, and more and more troops poured into the port of Sturdam.

Just when the Yaman army was about to be squeezed out of the city, the Yaman army's rocket artillery group, which had been covered by camouflage nets on the outskirts of the city, lifted off the camouflage net covering the artillery, and the eighteen-barreled vehicle-mounted rocket launcher developed by the Yaman army revealed its hideous face.

"Directly in front of the target, at a distance of ten kilometers, full coverage shooting." Field Marshal Rundstedt, who commanded the defense of the port of Steddam, immediately gave orders. After a cloud of smoke and dust kicked up, a cloud of rockets flew towards the port of Steddam. The earth was shaking, the city was crumbling, and the advancing Axis forces were devastated, but it wasn't over, and the Yaman rocket artillery continued to reload and began to bombard.

By this time, the Axis battleships at sea had finally reacted, and they turned their guns and bombarded the rocket artillery positions of the Yaman Army, but the rocket artillery positions were already far away from the coast, and almost at the limit range of the 381 mm caliber naval guns, the accuracy of the naval artillery support was too low to play a big role.

Marshal Rundstedt ordered a continuous fire, and the rocket artillerymen fired ten volleys without stopping, and although these dense rockets blew his entire city into ruins, they used a large number of Axis troops as burial objects.

The direct losses of the landing force exceeded 60,000 men, and countless weapons and equipment were destroyed, and even a few merchant ships anchored at the wharf for unloading were hit by indiscriminate rockets, igniting a raging fire.

"The carrier-based aircraft immediately took off and destroyed the opposing artillery positions." Admiral Hull ordered the carrier-based aircraft on the carrier to attack immediately, and now every second of allowing the enemy to attack, his side will suffer heavy casualties.

Admiral Hull, fearing that the losses would be too great, had sent the carrier-based aircraft unit back to the carrier, and now he had ordered the carrier-based aircraft to attack, which caused chaos on the carrier. Many ground crews immediately began to hang bombs for the plane, and the pilots quickly climbed onto the plane to check various instruments and make various preparations before takeoff.

At this moment, a loud bang was heard, and a cruiser in the outermost part was blown up, and then the hull broke apart, and the hull began to sink rapidly in two sections.

"Torpedo attack, there are submarines." The lookout post immediately shouted, and just as the Axis fleet turned its attention to land, the submarine forces of the Yaman Empire came into play.

Seeing the attack of the submarine force, the destroyers deployed around the area were dispatched one after another to find the location of the Yaman submarine. Attacking a well-protected large fleet with submarines is very dangerous in this era of increasingly advanced depth charges and sonars, and they can easily be sunk by destroyers who have heard the news, but this time Marshal Rundstedt has engaged in such a big battle, and it is not for these submarines to lose.

The launch of torpedoes to attack the fleet was just a decoy, because only a few of these arriving submarines had torpedoes, and most of them were full of mines. These submarines had already arrived nearby, and they took advantage of the fact that the fleet was facing the land and had no time to take care of the sea, quietly laying mines nearby, filling the surrounding space with floating mines that sank under the water, encircling the entire Axis attacking fleet, and then they used torpedoes to attract the attention of the other party and lure the destroyers to chase them.

When the destroyers of the Axis countries saw that there were torpedoes attacking them, they immediately judged that this was a submarine, and they quickly turned on the sonar and rushed towards the possible position of the submarine at full speed, but soon several destroyers hit the mines, and after a few loud bangs, many destroyers were sunk.

The panicked Axis sailors did not even think in the direction of the mines, they panicked, and did not know what secret weapon the other side used to inflict heavy damage on their own side, and the whole fleet fell into chaos. Taking advantage of this confusion, the submarines carrying torpedoes continued to fire, firing a large number of torpedoes at the fleets of the Axis powers, sinking many cruisers and destroyers.

No matter how panicked the anti-submarine warfare on the periphery was, the aircraft carriers in the inner ring were meticulously carrying out Admiral Hull's orders, and one after another carrier-based planes took off one after another, heading towards the artillery positions of the Yaman Army.

As soon as the Axis carrier-based aircraft group reached the skies, the anti-aircraft artillery fire that greeted him exploded in the air like fireworks. In order to protect the safety of the rocket artillery units, Marshal Rundstedt had already deployed a large number of anti-aircraft guns around the artillery positions, including the most advanced 88-mm large-caliber anti-aircraft guns.

The intensive anti-aircraft fire caused the Axis planes to fall one after another, and the Yaman Army's land-based fighter group, which had chosen to evacuate after a period of air fighting, surrounded it again, and the Axis fighter group was completely impenetrable. As the rumble approached, the Axis soldiers were shocked to discover that the Allied Air Force's Kunpeng 2 bomber, which had never been seen, was finally unveiled.

More than a dozen Corsair fighters on guard over the fleet immediately met them, but soon a dozen Golden Eagle 3 fighters accompanying the bomber group rushed out and engaged the Corsair fighters. The two sides were similar in performance and in equal numbers, and an evenly matched air battle began.

Escaping the opposing Corsair fighters, the Kunpeng 2 bombers continued on their way and soon reached the skies above the Axis fleet, where they unhurriedly opened the hatches and dropped a string of 100-kilogram bombs. The dense bombs fell and blew up the already chaotic Axis fleet, especially the aircraft carriers with extremely large targets, which became the target of the bombers.

Under a string of bombs, several aircraft carriers began to catch fire. Seeing that the fleet was under attack, the Axis carrier-based fighter units that were entangled with the Yamaman Air Force's land-based fighter group wanted to retreat, but the other side stuck to it tightly and used its own fierce firepower to stop the opponent's attack.