Episode 186 The Tragedy of Dive Bombing

The regular meeting in the corner of the central command hall of the Purple Mountain Fortress was temporarily suspended, and a circle of generals looked at Xiang Xiaoqiang who came over.

But Xiang Xiaoqiang did not go straight to the meeting, but said a few words to Zhang Zhaoxian's adjutant a few meters away. Zhang Zhaoxian's adjutant nodded, walked up to Zhang Zhaoxian, and whispered a few words to him. Zhang Zhao pondered for a moment, and then said a few words to the adjutant.

The adjutant returned to Xiang Xiaoqiang and whispered to him:

"Chief of the General Staff, please go to the lounge and wait for a while, and he will talk to you about this after the meeting."

thanked Xiaoqiang and took Wang Hexiang to the lounge.

Zhang Zhao first looked at Xiang Xiaoqiang's back and motioned for Commander Feng Lingcai to continue.

Then, he turned his head and whispered a few words to Tang Yunsheng, telling him what Xiang Xiaoqiang meant. Tang Yunsheng also nodded, knowing in his heart.

Zhang Zhaoxian was quite satisfied with Xiang Xiaoqiang's performance just now. Although this was an ordinary regular debriefing meeting, Xiang Xiaoqiang was not on the list of participants after all. When Xiang Xiaoqiang rushed straight over just now, he, like a circle of generals, thought that Xiang Xiaoqiang was going to break into the venue on his own. Although Xiang Xiaoqiang has won the favor of the saint and the trust of the chief of the general staff, if this is the case, it will inevitably seem too pampered and arrogant.

Now it seems that this young man is still sensible.

……

Half an hour later, after the meeting, the generals got up and left. Zhang Zhaoxian motioned for Li Guoliang to stay. He and Tang Yunsheng took Li Guoliang into a small conference room, and then asked the adjutant to call Xiang Xiaoqiang and Wang Hexiang.

"So," Zhang Zhaoxian sat in his chair and said straight to the point, "Quite right, do you still mean to advocate the processing of a batch of large-caliber 'hail'?" ”

As he spoke, he glanced at Wang Hexiang beside Xiang Xiaoqiang. Xiang Xiaoqiang sensitively caught this look, and then glanced at Wang Hexiang. He found that Wang Hexiang was a little uneasy when he was glanced at by Zhang Zhaoxian.

Xiang Xiaoqiang understood that when Wang Hexiang participated in the design of hail bombs, he advocated expanding the caliber and using 80mm to process them, so that in addition to bombing enemy planes on the ground, it could also achieve certain results when bombing large areas of hard targets such as enemy artillery positions. But then it was the 60mm pie that prevailed. Now Zhang Zhaoxian probably thinks that Wang Hexiang, the old man, will not give up after he goes back, and he continues to ask Xiang Xiaoqiang, wanting to use Xiang Xiaoqiang's influence to realize his plan.

Xiang Xiaoqiang grinned and immediately said:

"Ming Gong, I brought Commander Wang here today. I've always felt that I should make the hail bomb more powerful, and I'm worried that I'm not engaged in technology, so I can't understand it when I talk to Ming Gong and Tang Gong, so I pull Commander Wang as a living dictionary, hehe......"

Zhang Zhaoxian and Tang Yunsheng looked at each other and smiled, but neither spoke. Xiang Xiaoqiangxin said badly, and the more he depicted it, the darker it became, and the two old men became more and more unconvinced.

"What," Tang Yunsheng said with a smile, "Still don't think 60 mm is enjoyable?" Want something bigger? ”

Xiang Xiaoqiang also smiled:

"If you want to talk about addiction, it must be 60 mm enjoyable...... Let's engage in this kind of hail bomb, isn't it the hail-like effect of the picture? Naturally, the smaller the caliber, the more ammunition is loaded, the wider and more evenly scattered. It's not a question of over-enjoyment, though...... Tang Gong, still the same sentence, 60 mm to blow up an aircraft is just right, but it is not good to blow up artillery and tanks. And the Qing army deployed several large artillery groups in Jiangbei, each of which was aimed at our cities along the river, if we could not blow them up at the first time of the war, then our cities would have to suffer the tragedy of Nanjing at the beginning of the year. And against this kind of artillery group, the best thing is ......"

Tang Yunsheng interrupted him and said directly:

"Well, as you know, it was confirmed in the war at the beginning of the year and the Nanyang War that the dive bomber was very effective against ground artillery targets, and it was not comparable to that of horizontal bombers. Especially with a large number of anti-aircraft guns on the ground. ”

Xiang Xiaoqiang wanted to open his mouth to refute, but he stopped talking, licked his lips, lowered his gaze, and wanted to make the wording less intense.

But Zhang Zhaoxian saw it immediately and said:

"Stand out, say whatever you have to say, young people don't always learn to beat around the bush."

I couldn't ask Xiaoqiang, so I said directly:

"Duke Tang, Duke Ming, the hour of our army's attack is before 5 o'clock in the morning."

"Not bad."

"At h'clock, the bombers must have flown over the artillery group, ready to attack."

"Yes."

Xiang Xiaoqiang smiled:

"But at five o'clock in the morning in October, it was pitch black and there was nothing to see on the ground."

Tang Yunsheng turned to Li Guoliang and said:

"Commander Li, you should have thought about this question."

Xiang Xiaoqiang also looked at Li Guoliang. Li Guoliang, as the commander of the Army Aviation, although he is a subordinate of the Chief of the Army General Staff, is also his person to Xiaoqiang after all. Xiang Xiaoqiang thought to himself, this time Li Guoliang should help himself speak.

Li Guoliang was obviously very embarrassed, looked at Tang Yunsheng, and then at Xiang Xiaoqiang, and said with a reluctant smile:

"To your lordship...... This one...... It shouldn't be a problem. We'll drop flares before we attack. ”

Xiang Xiaoqiang was dumbfounded. Unexpectedly, Li Guoliang did not stand on his side this time. Of course, it is not to "betray" himself, but at least it shows that Li Guoliang also thinks that it is feasible to destroy the artillery group with dive bombers.

Compared with himself, Li Guoliang is naturally an expert in aviation. Seeing Li Guoliang say this, Xiang Xiaoqiang couldn't help but wonder if his point of view was wrong.

However, after thinking about it for a little bit with the common sense and experience of later generations, I once again came to the conclusion that if you want to bomb accurately in the dark, it is simply a dream, even with the help of flares. Numerous examples of World War II have proven this time and again. Whether it was the bombing of Britain and Germany in the air battle of Britain, or the bombing of Germany later. The bombing of Germany was carried out by Britain and the United States in turn, with the US Air Force flying during the day and the British Air Force flying at night. It turned out that the bombing during the day was effective and accurate, but the bombers suffered heavy losses. Night bombing suffered little losses, but the bombing effect was too poor to be limited to large-scale non-precision bombing, such as the bombing of German cities and civilians, which could only play the role of creating an atmosphere of terror and striking at the will of the enemy country. If you want to really blow something up effectively, such as factories, railway junctions, bridges, ports, etc., you have to do it during the day.

Moreover, this is still talking about large-scale strategic bombing that does not require very precise precision. If it is a tactical dive bombing that pursues precision, there is no door to rely only on flares to provide a light source in a pitch black situation.

……

Xiang Xiaoqiang took a deep breath and said slowly:

"Commander Li, what do you say...... Maybe the dive bomber is also a new thing, and you may not know much about it if you haven't participated in a few battles...... Dive bombing requires very high eye aiming, and it is absolutely not possible to do without sufficient visibility. The light of the flare is definitely not going to work. I know that the largest aviation flare commonly used by our army has a continuous illumination time of only about 25-30 seconds in the air, and the maximum diameter of illumination is only 800 meters. Among them, the brighter range is only 500 meters in diameter. And that's just the maximum illumination range that can be achieved at an altitude of 400 meters above the ground. How many of these flares can be dropped by dive bombers alone? ”

李国梁 says:

"Lord Xiang, that's right, take the Pukou artillery group as an example, the Qing army is stationed in a strategic artillery corps behind the Laoshan Mountain Range in Pukou, consisting of three heavy howitzer divisions and an anti-aircraft artillery division, with a total of 180 105mm howitzers, 135 155mm howitzers, and 60 210mm howitzers. In addition, there were 54 anti-aircraft guns of various calibers. Of course, this was calculated according to the establishment of the Qing army's books, and there must have been a big shortfall in reality. We will send a reinforced dive bomber group, that is, 45 dive bombers, against this artillery group......"

"What," Xiang Xiaoqiang exclaimed exaggeratedly, "only 45 dive bombers?" That's too little, right? The number of bombs that can be thrown at such a time is not as large as the number of guns of the Qing army! Even if every bomb hits accurately, it will only destroy less than half of the artillery! ”

Li Guoliang was a little embarrassed, looked at Tang Yunsheng, and said:

"To your lordship...... Not a lot, we have a total of 8 cities along the river, and we are going to destroy 8 such artillery groups at the same time at h hour...... Even if the average dive bomber group is counted at 40 aircraft, this mission alone will occupy 380 of our dive bombers at h hour...... Although we have 3,200 combat aircraft, only half of them are bombers. And in this half, only two-thirds are dive bombers......

"That is, in the entire Ming Dynasty, there are now only about 1,100 dive bombers. As a strategic reserve and guarding other strategic directions, it will occupy about 300 aircraft...... In this way, there are only about 800 dive bombers that can be put into combat on D-Day. It's good to be able to allocate 380 planes to do this. ”

Xiang Xiaoqiang smiled:

"Then why dive bombers?"

As soon as he said that, he regretted it. He understood that he had said something stupid.

Sure enough, Li Guoliang and the two old men both showed strange expressions on their faces.

Li Guoliang coughed dryly and said:

"To your lordship...... You should know that there are fewer horizontal bombers and more tasks. We have only more than 530 horizontal bombers, a total of 15 brigades. Less than 400 horizontal bombers were able to fight on D-Day, and they could only be organized into 11 brigades. And these 11 bomber groups had to deal with the 11 most important airfields in the Northern Qing Dynasty. Whether the Northern Qing Air Force can be basically annihilated as soon as the war starts depends on these 11 brigades. If you attack an artillery group with horizontal bombers, then two squadrons per artillery group, that is, 24 aircraft, is not much, right? In this way, 8 artillery groups will occupy 192 horizontal bombers, which is nearly half of the total investment in D-day...... Look at this ...... to your lord."

Xiang Xiaoqiang was stunned for a moment, and he was speechless for a while.

Li Guoliang said:

"Lord Xiang, in the war at the beginning of the year and the South Seas War, our smallest aerial bomb was still 100 kilograms. Now we already have a 70 kg one. In this way, each dive bomber can carry 6 bombs, and a brigade can drop 216-240 bombs at a time. Of course, although the number of artillery pieces in each artillery group is not as large, and there is no guarantee that every one of them will hit, I can guarantee that after these more than 200 bombs are dropped on the artillery positions of the Qing army, they can destroy at least 30%-40% of the artillery of the Qing army, and completely crush the will to fight of the Qing artillery.

"In this way, within a few hours, our assault boat infantry will rush to their artillery positions and completely remove the threat. Moreover, within these hours, our dive bomber formations could carry out a second bombardment. By the time of the second bombing, it was already dawn, and the effect of the bombing would be even more thorough. Look at this ...... to your lord."

Xiang Xiaoqiang was angered by his "Lord Xiang, look at this", and thought that he had to clean up Li Guoliang when he turned back. But what they said sounded very reasonable, and it would be difficult for me to refute him militarily for a while. But if he is right, it is not right. The experience of World War II is alive there, I know it, but I can't say it.

He gritted his teeth and said:

"What if within these few hours, the Qing artillery group bombarded our city and Nanjing? You say that one round of bombing can completely destroy the will of the Qing army's artillery, and I also believe this, but we cannot pin our hopes on this. What if the will of the Qing artillery was not as fragile as we would have liked? There are 8 strategic artillery groups of the Qing army, and their training and quality are different, what if there are one or two stubborn artillery groups that insist on firing at our cities? A 150-mm howitzer may only hit the edge of the city, but a 210-mm one can definitely hit the city center. ”

Tang Yunsheng and Zhang Zhao looked at each other first, and then Zhang Zhaoxian smiled:

"Quite right, this is Shen Ge's old business...... However, I can tell you that the preliminary decision is as follows: On the eve of Day D, all the police and gendarmes in the eight cities will not leave work and will remain at their posts. Three hours before the hour hour, the news of the attack was announced to them, and two hours before the hour, the air defense sirens were sounded in the eight cities along the river, and then all the police and gendarmes ensured that all citizens within the bombardment area would enter the air defense shelters within two hours. This can not only avoid possible tragedies, but also prevent leaks as much as possible. ”

Xiang Xiaoqiang was speechless again.

He looked at the three people in a daze, licked his lips, and hesitated to tell the experience of World War II. …… But in that case, it will probably involve your own "crossing" story again. If not, they have to invite an old professor from the hospital to re-diagnose their "intermittent paranoia".

In the end, he only made one request - testing.

Since both sides are so confident, let's speak with facts. In the dark of dawn, an air force training ground was selected for a dive bombing test with the help of flares alone.

Fortunately, this request was not too much, Zhang Zhao nodded and agreed, and handed over to Li Guoliang to arrange.

After coming out of the fortress, Li Guoliang followed Xiang Xiaoqiang in fear, telling his distress and asking Xiang Xiaoqiang to understand. But Xiang Xiaoqiang's anger has not subsided, and he gave him a few words very unsinkingly.

……

Li Guoliang was sick with his heart, coupled with the request of Xiaoqiang for this test, he arranged it with the mentality of atonement, and the arrangement was fast. Just one day later, at dawn, at the training ground of the Tangshan Sniper School, a piece of terrain similar to the artillery position on the north side of Pukou Laoshan was selected, and 20 scrapped howitzers were arranged. The convoy of the four generals Zhang Zhaoxian, Tang Yunsheng, Li Guoliang, and Xiang Xiaoqiang stopped in the distance, and the four of them entered the observation bunker next to them with the guards and adjutants, and looked at the cannons glowing with cold light in the distance by the faint starlight.

After a while, there was a "buzzing" sound in the sky. This is two detachments of dive bombers that took off from Nanjing Xianlin Airport, a total of 6 units.

Li Guoliang took a radio headset and reminded Xiang Xiaoqiang and the two chiefs of general staff that the experiment was about to begin. Then he gave the order to the bomber leader in the sky to attack.

Six flares sprayed magnesium light and descended slowly one after another, and several snow-bright circles suddenly appeared in the nearby mountains.

…… However, the six Osprey bombers were hovering all the time, and did not dare to dive down until the six flares landed one after another and returned to pitch black.

Li Guoliang was sweating a little, and shouted over the radio to the bomber leader. But the answer was:

Target not found.

Li Guoliang immediately ordered them to start over and drop the flares again.

Each Osprey carried two flares on its wings, and now only one remains.

Six more flares were dropped one after another, and the six planes took advantage of the short three or four minutes to look for them as much as they could.

Finally, an osprey seemed to have spotted its target, lowered the nose of the plane and dived downward. Immediately afterward, the other two followed it and rushed down.

But a few seconds later, to the stunned people of the observation fort, something happened—

A fireball exploded, followed by a muffled sound into the observation fort.

Then, Li Guoliang's face turned pale, and a frightened voice came from his radio headset:

"Pull it up! Pull it up! That's the ground!! ”

Two seconds later, another fireball exploded.

Heart-rending voices continued to come from the headphones:

"Pull up! Pull up! …… Come on! Good, good, get up, we're saved......"

Xiang Xiaoqiang, Zhang Zhaoxian, and Tang Yunsheng were also dumbfounded, but they were not completely confirmed.

"This ...... What's going on? ”

Tang Yunsheng asked in a muttered voice.

Li Guoliang almost collapsed to the ground. After a while, he groaned:

"Two ospreys...... Hit the ground...... The third one pulled up in time ......"

Suddenly, the three of them fell into consternation.

The temperature inside the observation fort seems to have dropped to freezing.