Chapter 1153: Attack
Just as the Austro-Hungarian Mountain Division on the Northern Front began to attack Vicenza along the road, the long-dormant Chinese and British armies finally launched an offensive. The armored spearhead composed of 2 armored battalions and 2 mechanized infantry battalions of the Chinese Army, an armored battalion and 2 mechanized infantry battalions of the Australian army, stabbed at Trento fiercely. Four British divisions and one Canadian division under Montgomery's command also attacked the port of Garibaldi from the Bologna front.
The British threw all their possessions in Italy for this attack. The Allied forces, which had not been bombed on land since the beginning of the war, finally experienced what it was like to be bombed. The British bomber group from Imola first visited the occupied port of Garibaldi, and as many as 80 bombers of various types directly used incendiary bombs to reduce thousands of tons of various materials placed in the open to ashes. Subsequently, a second wave of bombers attacked the supposed Austro-Hungarian pontoon bridges on the Po and Dije rivers. (The original bridge was blown up by the Italians themselves after the landing of the Austro-Hungarian Army.) Although the two air strikes were not aimed at the combat troops, they put the Austro-Hungarian troops on the southern front in a dilemma.
Logistics supplies were blown up, road junctions were hit hard. And that's just the beginning. Montgomery is not a master who likes to fight hard with the other party from the beginning, he likes to be like a wolf, draining the other party's energy first, and then taking it away in a wave of thunder. Immediately after the destruction of these stationary targets, the focus of the attack of the British Air Force became the transport convoys of the Austro-Hungarian Army.
AS AN AIR POWER IN THE WORLD, THE BRITISH THIS TIME SPECIALLY EQUIPPED A 40MM ANTI-TANK GUN IN THE NOSE PART OF THE TWIN-ENGINE ATTACK AIRCRAFT. In the wing were placed 6 M2 machine guns. In addition to this, it is also equipped with a new type of letter bomb, each 250KG bomb can throw more than 100 small bombs of about 2 pounds, as can be seen from the above equipment. This attack aircraft is designed specifically to deal with enemy transport convoys.
250KG submunitions were used to clean infantry and surface targets. THE M2 MACHINE GUN IS USED TO SUPPRESS INFANTRY AND DESTROY ORDINARY TRUCKS, WHILE THE 40MM TWO-POUNDER GUN IS USED AGAINST TANKS OR ARMORED VEHICLES. AND BECAUSE OF THE HUGE BODY OF THE TWIN-ENGINE BOMBER ITSELF, THE BOMB LOAD OF THE 40MM SHELL IS UP TO 60 ROUNDS! Moreover, these specialized ground attack planes never act alone, and under the condition of ensuring air supremacy, they will repeatedly sweep a certain transport convoy on the scale of a squadron. In a group of 4 planes, they continue to attack like wheels until the target is eliminated. Or your ammo is depleted.
As a result, after the port and pontoon bridge, the logistics and transportation lines of the Austro-Hungarian Empire also became the hardest hit area, facing the fierce firepower of the British Royal Air Force attack aircraft formation. Austria-Hungary lost several hundred taels of trucks of various types in one day. There are also an unknown number of large cars, and even the locomotives that have just been repaired and have not yet been put on the road have been reduced to a pile of scrap metal by the bomb. Thankfully, however, the range of the British fighters was tragic, so the bombers' combat radius was limited by the fighters, and the focus of the attack was on the area south of Vicenza, while the north was somewhat weak. As the Austro-Hungarian Air Force eased up, the two sides resumed their struggle for air supremacy, and the days of the British Royal Air Force coming to an end for the time being.
However, this qiē has little to do with Huaxia. Compared to the huge fleet of aircraft sent by the British. The number of aircraft that the Chinese Army can mobilize is much smaller, except for the remaining Haidongqing Brigade that has already fought N battles. All that remained were the two bomber groups that the British had pieced together. However, considering that the battlefield here is close to the mainland of Austria-Hungary, in order to prevent the bombing of the other side, there are still more fighters, but Zhou Xuan still brought a large number of self-propelled anti-aircraft guns during the insurance period.
In the face of the superior air and ground forces of the Entente, the wide flanks of the Austro-Hungarian southern front became the best breakthrough point. The British, with the help of the Air Force, quickly approached the port of Garibaldi and uprooted the Austro-Hungarian troops on the southern front. The situation on the northern front is more complicated. Lacking sufficient air force, the Austro-Hungarian army was able to reach Italy from Innsbruck by rail and road, and the new reinforcements eventually captured Bolzano with the help of heavy artillery. In the face of the Austro-Hungarian army that was on the defensive and had backups, it was obviously not a rational choice to force a hard attack, so in addition to leaving part of the troops for defense, the entire front immediately turned to the southeast and began to cooperate with the British army to encircle and annihilate the Austro-Hungarian army in Vicenza and Padua, and because of this decision, the Chinese army, which was the spearhead of the attack, and Hubei, who was preparing to cooperate with domestic reinforcements to flank the enemy army on the northern front, collided!
At this time, Schrager's troops on the northern front had completed the encirclement of Vicenza with the troops on the southern front, and when they were about to attack, they found that Trento behind them had been lost, and together with the local garrison, they also had their own logistics units and a large number of supplies! In particular, the loss of fuel and ammunition was so heartbroken that even the supplies for the attack on Vicenza seemed to be somewhat stretched. And after exchanging information with the commander of the Southern Front, Schrager felt more and more that the situation was not good.
The northern front lacked supplies, and the southern front was also short of supplies under the blows of the British, and because of the aggressive offensive posture of the British, it may be difficult to immediately restore the supply of supplies on the southern front. So the only way to get supplies at the moment was to concentrate on assaulting north, joining up with the Austro-Hungarian reinforcements in Bolzano, and reopening the transport lines. And such a difficult task naturally fell to Hubey. And as a good German armored officer, he was also willing to let his allies see how the descendants of the Teutonic knights fought.
"The other side is not a rabble, they have powerful armored forces, these tanks are not the kind of iron tractors produced by the Italians, and they are not tanks of the British, how to say it? They are a bit like the tanks of the French, a weapon specially created for tank warfare, and I hope you will take this opponent seriously. Schrager said earnestly when he met Hubey.
"Americans? Or the French? Our forefathers fought against them, and until the end of the war we still held the land of the French. The French soldiers were brave, but their tactics were rather dull, while the Americans? Their land forces don't seem to have fought against other land powers. None of this is a problem. Hube said confidently. He did have a basis for self-confidence, because since the beginning of this campaign, there was no intelligence that there was an armored group that could match the size of his own troops.
Thanks to the book friend zhouyu1976 for the tip~~~. The number of words in this chapter is a bit less~~~, and I will make up a more ~~~ in the afternoon. (To be continued......)