Chapter 659: Istanbul Crisis (1)
The massive explosion slowed down the attacking Bostonians, and many couldn't help but look back, and when they found that the Overseers were gone, many chose to flee. Escaping seemed to be contagious, and there was a first and a second, and soon the Boston army, which was in the midst of the charge, began to flee in full force. The routs rushed backwards, completely disrupting the ranks that were waiting for the order to attack, but the Boston Ninety-first Army was already in an encirclement, and in the face of the enemy pressing on all sides, where could they run.
Having lost their commander, their organization, and no longer had the strength to fight, the Boston rout could not stand the intensive fire of the Wehrmacht, so they had to surrender on their knees. Brigadier General Baden looked at everything in front of him in astonishment, he had always heard of how powerful the Chinese Imperial Army was before, but he had never seen it, and this time he finally realized the power of this friendly army.
And the Imperial Chinese Defense Force, which has such combat effectiveness, is actually a recruit unit lacking heavy equipment, which makes Brigadier General Baden feel a little fever on his face, because he knows that the Yaman Army, which was boasted by Emperor Yaman as the number one army in the Western Continent, has no such combat effectiveness at all.
After the complete annihilation of the 91st Army, Cheng Guangling ordered his troops to quickly clean up the battlefield, and the troops who had already rushed to the two places could not take a break, so they moved their troops north again, and a few days later arrived at the Kunene River and the south bank of the Okavango River, across the river from the Boston River defenders opposite.
After mobilizing a large number of Aboriginal people, the Wehrmacht began to build fortifications along the south bank of the two rivers and confronted the Boston army.
Seeing Cheng Guangling building fortifications along the two rivers, McLean was a little anxious, originally he was ready to continue the attack later, but he didn't expect people to block the door of his house. McLean immediately commanded the troops to launch an attack on the Wehrmacht, but the Wehrmacht easily repelled the attack of the Boston army by virtue of the advantageous geographical environment along the river, and even those river gunboats were sunk by the Wehrmacht with anti-tank artillery, so that they no longer dared to take the lead.
Although McLean, who suffered heavy losses, was very unwilling, he could only accept the reality of ruling across the river, but Cheng Guangling unknowingly took back Walbeck's troops in the melee across the river. This commando, which had expanded to nearly 20,000 men, crossed the Kunene River safely and merged with Brigadier General Baden's troops, and the Yugoslav Army grew to more than 50,000 people, and the next thing they needed was to receive systematic training from instructors in the Chinese Empire.
With the 50,000 troops of the Southern Army, Cheng Guangling can use more than 150,000 troops, although this is much worse than the 350,000 troops on the other side of the river, but with a well-trained and well-armed national defense force, with the geographical advantage of two large rivers, their strength is not too much of a loss, and while building fortifications along the river, Cheng Guangling secretly placed an order for 20 river gunboats at the Cape Town shipyard, and he is going to have a good game with McLean.
After learning of the victory in Nanfang County, Fang Ruijun was overjoyed. This is the battle line he is least looking forward to, as long as they can defend their homeland and not fight too embarrassingly, Fang Ruijun will be satisfied, but he didn't expect Cheng Guangling to unexpectedly annihilate 150,000 Boston regular troops, almost canceling the number of the Boston Empire's most elite Third Army in the Southern Subcontinent.
Fang Ruijun, who was excited, immediately promoted Cheng Guangling to a second-class general, and at the same time transferred two fighter wings, a ground attack aircraft wing, and a strategic bomber wing to Nanfang County, which greatly strengthened the strength of the Southern County Air Force.
This defeat in the Southern Subcontinent was not known to the Boston military, firstly, because McLean wrote a vague operational report in the Spring and Autumn penmanship, and at the same time dotted up and down to make this report confused, and secondly, the Boston military had focused its attention on the battlefield of the Western Continent.
Due to the gradual passing of winter, the temperature in the western continent is also gradually warming, first of all, the temperature in the southernmost part of the western continent began to rise, after the ice and snow melted, the various equipment of the mechanized troops could finally be used again, and the Nantes army finally launched a large-scale attack on Istanbul, the capital of the Istanbul Empire, at the urging of the Boston Empire.
Istanbul is located in the westernmost part of the Empire, and is the only piece of land in the Western Empire of Istanbul, which is across the Dardanelles and Esphorus Straits.
Hundreds of years ago, it was the capital of the ancient Byzantine Empire, and it was owned by the Byzantine Empire after the Empire joined forces with some countries of the Western Continent to destroy the Byzantine Empire, which had fallen to the extreme. As one of the most prosperous cities in the Western Continent at that time, the wealth of Byzantium stunned the Istanbul royal family, and in order to better control this place, and in order to avoid the aggressive invasion of the Persian Empire at that time, they moved the capital here and renamed it Istanbul.
With an area of more than 5,000 square kilometers and a population of 3 million, it is the only sea passage connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Black Sea, and it is also one of the important transportation points from the western continent to the middle continent.
But the fortress was not unconquerable, and Istanbul was no exception, and after a year of preparation, the Axis forces led by the Nantes Army finally reached the border. Led by a large number of fighters and bombers, the Axis Southern Route Army launched a huge offensive operation, millions of Nantes troops launched an attack from the long front east of Istanbul, and under the cover of a strong air force, thousands of Nantes Renault 39 vehicles covered a large number of infantry to start a full-scale offensive.
Under the intensive shelling of hundreds of 203 mm heavy guns of the Nantes Army, the reinforced concrete fortress that the Islamic Empire considered impregnable was also destroyed continuously, and the Iranian army retreated one after another, and their strategic space was continuously compressed.
The situation on the southern front of the Western Continent was increasingly tense, as the Empire of Istanbul was unprepared for such a large-scale battle, and their self-conceived strong defensive line was broken through by the Axis forces led by the Nantes Army within a week. Abdul II believed too much in the defense capability of his capital and was unwilling to allow the Chinese army to enter his capital too much, so he allowed only three divisions of the Chinese army to be stationed in the Istanbul area before the war.