Episode 3 A million heroes cross the river

At 5 o'clock in the morning, the Qing army's 8 strategic artillery groups on the north bank of the Yangtze River.

Among the eight artillery corps, the Sixth Artillery Corps had the best quality, training, and discipline, and only the Sixth Artillery Corps sounded the air defense alarm when the bombers flew overhead, and only the Sixth Artillery Corps rushed out and tried to fire into the sky before the bombs fell.

However, precisely because these eight artillery corps are all deployed about 10 kilometers north of the Yangtze River, which is equivalent to being close to the river, the distance that can give early warning is too short. Especially in the dark. In most of the artillery corps garrisons, it was not the air raid sirens that woke the soldiers up, but the loud sound of bombs. They were still sleeping in the barracks, and the artillery on the position was engulfed by the dense explosions.

Some of the barracks, which were relatively close to the artillery positions, also suffered the same fate as the artillery, and in an instant they were caught in shock waves and blazing fire. In the barracks area near the bombing site, tens of thousands of Qing soldiers howled and crawled out of the barracks, some naked, some naked, some naked. As soon as he came out, he threw himself on the ground, clutching his head, and did not dare to look up. The barracks area, far from the bombing site, was also swarming with fryers, and the Qing soldiers noisily wore trousers, put on clothes, put on steel helmets, grabbed rifles, and rushed out of the barracks.

As soon as they went out, they were blinded by the bright light. Flares fell from the sky, and everything on the ground was illuminated so that it was invisible in color, except for one side of the snow and the other side of the darkness. This kind of scene is like hundreds of welders in the sky, and they are engaged in welding at the same time, which is extremely terrifying.

However, as the roar of the planes in the sky faded away, the flares also fell to the ground and went out.

More terrifying scenes gradually come into view:

In the distance, the flames filled with smoke and soared into the night sky, illuminating half the sky. In the darkness, everyone stared blankly at the sea of fire in the distance, and their faces reflected red.

Another color. It was snow-white just now, but now it's fiery red.

From time to time, another fireball or two shot into the sky, and a few seconds later there was an explosion.

That's what was left of the shells that were burned.

……

This kind of "carpet" bombing is unprecedented in the Northern Qing Dynasty and unprecedented in the world. The 10-kilogram small bomb maximizes the number of bombs of a twin-engine horizontal bomber and expands the bombing area that an aircraft can cover to the extreme.

After the initial shock, the junior officers of the eight artillery corps went into a frenzy. Everyone was looking for the chief, and the station was a mess. But officers above the regimental commander are basically nowhere to be found. They went to Chuzhou yesterday to eat, drink and have fun.

Several officers rushed to the office building in a hurry, trying to make a phone call. But the office building on the edge of the position had already been blown to pieces, and every window was on fire. The office building far away from the position was pitch black again, and even the lights couldn't be turned on. Where the buildings were not blown down and the wires were not blown up, I grabbed the telephone and shook it for a long time, but there was no sound. …… The telephone lines had long since been cut by nearby underground organizations.

Nearly an hour after the initial bombardment, the eight artillery corps were in complete confusion, and the platoon commander could not find the company commander, the company commander could not find the battalion commander, and the battalion commander could not find the regiment commander...... Someone found the radio, but not the signal corps; Someone found the signal corps, but not the radio...... Eventually, the communications corps and the radio got together and sent a message to a higher military unit, but most of them went unanswered......

Because today is Sunday.

……

Between 5:10 and 5:20, eleven airports within 550-600 kilometers of the Northern Qing Dynasty: Dongtai Airport, Baoying Airport, Sihong Airport, Fengyang Airport, Hefei Airport, Lu'an Airport, Xuzhou Airport, Xuchang Airport, Zhengzhou Airport, Hanzhong Airport, and Xianyang Airport were also bombed almost simultaneously.

To bomb these 11 airfields, the Army Air Force dispatched 330 horizontal bombers and 300 dive bombers, a total of 630 aircraft.

Fighter escort was not arranged. Because it is impossible to fight in the air in the dark, there is no need to worry about being attacked by Qing fighters. By daybreak, the fleet had already returned.

It is precisely because there are no fighter jets accompanying them, so the bombing radius this time can be much deeper, in addition to the six first-line airfields bombed last time, it can also attack seven second-tier airfields.

In addition, bombers taking off from three airfields on the Changshan Islands also bombed the Tangshan airfield at h hour.

A group of bombers that took off from two aircraft carriers at sea 50 kilometers south of the Shandong Peninsula also bombed Dongying airfield on the northeast side of the mountain at the same time.

These two airfields are outside the combat radius of the army aviation, belong to the Beijing-Tianjin defense circle of the Gongwei Beiqing Dynasty, and also concentrate a large number of combat aircraft of the Beiqing Air Force, and the density is much higher than those airports in the south. Moreover, because of the deep rear, the vigilance of the airports in the Beijing-Tianjin defense circle is generally very poor, and the planes are openly parked next to the runway. One by one, quite densely. When "hail" bomblets fall, it is often a bomb that can blow up two planes.

Six of the 11 Qing airfields in the army's mission area were on high alert last time, and most of the planes were parked in concrete hangars, and anti-aircraft guns were fired in time. But because it was not yet dawn and the planes were all in the hangar, the Ming army had no threat of fighters except for anti-aircraft guns.

In this way, the Ming army's "Swan" bombers and hail bombs basically did not come in handy, and they only repeatedly dropped flares at high altitudes.

Dive bombers show their skills. On average, there were 30 Ospreys per fleet, each carrying 2 200-kilogram bombs. With the help of flares in the sky, they swooped down in turn and dropped bombs on the hangar. Although it is a concrete hangar, it is not a permanent fortification like a submarine cave after all, and it still cannot withstand a 200-kilogram aerial bomb. If you eat two bombs in each hangar, it will collapse with a bang, burying all the planes inside.

The vigilance of the other 7 Qing army airfields was significantly worse, and it can be said that they were no better than the airfields in the rear. Coupled with the fact that it was the early hours of the morning on Sunday again, it could be said that there was no defense. The planes all stopped on both sides of the runway until the bombs rained down, and the anti-aircraft guns did not go off.

……

At 5:30, when the bombing was basically over, the central command hall of the Purple Mountain Fortress also calculated the approximate results according to the radio reports of each aircraft group.

The 11 target airfields of the army destroyed about 350 Qing bombers and about 400 fighters. The two target airfields of the Navy destroyed a total of 50-80 Qing bombers and about 100 fighters. In total, about 900 Qing aircraft were destroyed.

Own losses, 6 Swan bombers, 11 Osprey bombers. A total of 17 aircraft.

Compared to the huge results, the losses were simply negligible.

It is worth mentioning that none of the losses of the Ming aircraft were shot down by Qing fighters. As expected, from the beginning of the air raid to the final return, not a single Qing fighter took off to intercept it. The six Swan bombers lost by the Ming army were all shot down by anti-aircraft guns at the airfield. 11 dive bombers, again because of the old problem, the challenge of diving bombs at night is too great, even with flares. - They all hit the ground.

When the announcer lady reported the results of the battle in a soft voice, the entire headquarters was jubilant.

The Qing army had only about 1,800 combat planes in total, and now half of them were wiped out in one fell swoop on D-Day. This means that in the next war of unification, the burden of the Ming army's aviation will be greatly reduced, and it will be able to better support ground operations.

In Xiang Xiaoqiang's words, as long as the air raid on day h reaches the intended purpose, then half of the war for reunification will be won. Although Zhang Zhaoxian and Tang Yunsheng do not dare to think that "half of the reunification war has been won," they are still smiling from ear to ear.

The most crucial thing in the war of unification is the first day, and the most critical thing in the first day is the first hour.

Now that the first hour is just halfway over, the next half hour is even more critical.

……

While Ming planes bombed eight artillery groups on the north coast, and more planes flew across the Yangtze River from these eight "air corridors" to the airfield in the hinterland of the Beiqing Dynasty, it was still dark and quiet on the river between these eight "air corridors."

On the front of the attack of Army Group on the right, on the 450-kilometer-long river, 8,000 assault boats participating in the first attack began to advance to the north bank from five attack positions.

The five breakthrough points across the river are all selected between cities, and the two banks are basically wilderness. This kind of place is because the Qing army's guard is relatively loose and easy to break through, and second, it is also because when the air raids on the Qing army's artillery group, these "middle grounds" are far away from the air attack site and are not easy to be alarmed. Whichever side strikes first will not affect the other.

Thousands of assault boats in each place were scattered in formation, 50 meters apart, and 10 soldiers were carrying on each one, driving low-speed motors, desperately pressing their bodies down, and approaching the north shore as quietly as possible.

In the early morning, the river was black, like ink, and only the dazzling light jumped where the moonlight was reflected.

The moonlight was bright, which was a good condition for an air attack, but for an infantry attacking on the river, it was troublesome. The other side was still far away, and it was dark to see anything, but the soldiers on each assault boat were exposed to the moonlight, and it was very clear to see a nearby assault boat 50 meters away. Each soldier felt like a target, desperately holding his head down and clutching the boat gang hard, excited and fearful in his heart.

It has reached the center of the river, but there is still no movement on the other side, and the Qing army still has not found the assault boats on the river, and the shiny steel helmets on them.

Every soldier, knowing the impossibility, prayed and hoped that it would be so quiet until he came ashore.

……

On the river between Nanjing and Zhenjiang, it is relatively close to Nanjing, and among the five breakthrough points, this place is regarded as the section with the highest defense level of the Qing army.

The silence was first broken here.

A flare was first set up on the opposite side, and in an instant, a radius of several hundred meters on the surface of the river was illuminated. Dozens of these assault boats were exposed.

A few seconds later, a tongue of machine-gun fire appeared on the north bank, and the jumping line of fire was in an arc, constantly throwing into the river, making countless splashes between the assault boats. Immediately, several more machine guns opened fire. Immediately afterwards, a searchlight was turned on, and the pillar of light swept across the river.

The surface of the river suddenly boiled, and tens of thousands of soldiers shouted, all of which drove the motors to high speed. At the same time, the woodpecker machine gun in the bow returned fire.

More than a thousand lines of fire flew from the assault boat to the north shore, and the searchlight was knocked out in the blink of an eye. More searchlights were turned on, but they were all extinguished as soon as they were turned on.

The Qing army soon stopped turning on searchlights, and instead shot more flares into the sky. Magnesium and moonlight, the whole river is illuminated like daylight.

More and more machine guns opened fire on the north bank, and the Ming troops on the river suddenly flew flesh and blood in the assault boats. Now the Ming army has also experienced the taste of the Qing army at the beginning of the year.

On the defense line of the Yangtze River on the south bank, all the artillery also fired at this time. Countless shells roared and smashed into the positions of the Qing army on the north bank, and hundreds of smoke bombs also fell on the river, spewing white smoke, and soon a smoke screen was formed.

With the fire support and smoke screen cover on the south bank, the casualties of the Ming army on the river dropped all at once. But in the smoke screen, the assault boats were not very able to maintain the formation, and they all opened the throttle to the maximum, and the speed of the Ming army's assault boats was much faster than that of the Qing army......

But the biggest advantage of the Ming army was its suddenness and strong artillery support on the deep Yangtze River defense line.

The biggest disadvantage of the Qing army is that it has been arranged in an offensive posture for a long time, and it does not have a strong river defense like the Ming army's Yangtze River defense line, and there are not even mines. On the river defense of the Qing army, there were very few concrete permanent fortifications, most of them were field fortifications of sandbag fortifications, and these fortifications were mostly machine-gun forts.

The Northern Qing never thought that the Ming army would take the initiative to attack them, and did not arrange artillery positions on the first line along the river. Most of the artillery positions of the Qing army were arranged more than 10 kilometers away along the river, all for the purpose of bombarding the defense line and cities on the south bank and cooperating with the Qing army's southern invasion. And such artillery positions are mainly those eight strategic artillery groups. In normal times, they can cover the entire south bank, including the area between the artillery groups and the artillery groups. But now, they have been swept away by the "hail" and become burning scrap metal.

Five minutes later, the first assault boat approached the north shore. The five remaining soldiers on board jumped out of the boat with a shout, paddling their legs in the mud and struggling to rush up the embankment. But they were immediately swept down one by one by machine guns, with blood spraying from their chests, and fell into puddles.

However, the assault boats of the Ming army rushed ashore one after another. Soon, on this section of the river beach, the Qing army's two machine guns no longer had to deal with 5 Ming troops, but 50, 100, and 500......

More and more Ming soldiers jumped out of the boat with a roar, and grenades were thrown on the river embankment intensively. The Qing infantry who were lying on the embankment and opened fire were blown to pieces.

At the same time, accompanied by the scream of "whoosh-whoosh-", one after another fire dragons flew up the river embankment from the river beach. The flamethrowers also came ashore.

On the embankment, the machine-gun fortresses with sandbags were "pounced" by the fire dragon one after another, and the Qing soldiers inside rushed out in flames, screaming and rolling on the ground......

At 5:10, after ten minutes of short fighting, the section of the Qing army's river defense between Nanjing and Zhenjiang was torn open by the Ming army about 20 kilometers.

In fact, this can no longer be called a "mouth". The total distance between Nanjing and Zhenjiang is only more than 50 kilometers. It should be said that it is like being blasted with a shotgun in the chest.

……

The firing of smoke bombs on the south bank stopped, and soon this section of the river became clear, and the follow-up assault boat troops lined up in a neat formation and marched towards the north bank in an orderly manner.

Boatload after boat of Ming troops jumped out of the assault boat, waded knee-high water, guns in hand, and heavy equipment on their backs, and marched to the shore. This section of the beach is basically safe, except for sporadic gunfire, there is no more fighting.

The Ming soldiers gasped and looked around as they walked. It was the first time in their lives that they had set foot on the North Shore.

It's not so dark now, and you can see that it's far away,

The east was already a deep blue, and it was almost dawn.