Pulau Ubin, a small island northeast of the island of Singapore, was built and deployed by the British with MkI 15-inch (381mm) shore defense guns.

This behemoth of the battleship's main gun class was oriented in the direction of the sea to the east to deny enemy ships trying to enter the Strait of Johor.

However, its firing range was limited and could only be fine-tuned at a small angle, so the British soldiers operating the shore defense guns could be said to be helpless in the face of the officers and men of the 1st Marine Brigade who landed from the flanks and rear.

In addition to the coastal artillery, the other units that assisted the garrison of Ubin Island were a regiment (battalion) of the Anglo-Indian 8th Infantry Division, about 500 men.

Compared with the 9th Division, which was beaten and discarded on the Eastern Front, the 8th Division, which was fought and withdrawn from the Western Front, was in much better condition and fully organized.

It seems that the Ming army that is attacking this time will also fight slowly and steadily like the Ming army on the Western Front, and the British non-commissioned officers and officers of this infantry battalion are still relatively optimistic.

But as everyone knows, the Ming army that landed this time was not good at stubble - it was a well-trained and experienced Marine Brigade.

As soon as the officers and men came ashore, they immediately gathered their troops and organized an attack.

In order to avoid heavy damage to their amphibious tanks by the enemy's well-camouflaged anti-tank guns, the officers and men took the lead in landing and cleared out any possible ambush near the landing site.

They soon engaged in an exchange of fire with the Anglo-Indian troops in the defensive line, and flares were launched into the air one after another, illuminating the northwestern part of Pulau Ubin with a bleak white light.

"Lie down! Take cover! ”

"I'll go! Special mother's! There's a bunker on the right front! ”

"The Medic—"

A soldier with a bazooka lay prone on the ground, quickly crawled behind a relatively safe rock pile, and leaned out at the right time to aim and fire.

"Bang!"

A bright tail flame erupted from the back of the launch canister, and the distance of nearly 100 meters was almost the limit for the Type 37 A bazooka, and the optimal range had long passed.

The rocket-propelled grenade landed on the bunker in a parabolic trajectory, and the heavy machine gun, which was desperately strafing, suddenly fell silent.

After a few seconds, however, it began to spit out tongues of fire again.

The soldier who wielded the bazooka fired two more armor-piercing shells and an anti-explosive bomb in succession, finally silence the heavy machine gun completely.

"Doot-doo-"

Amid the shrill sound of suona and whistles, hundreds of Marine infantry charged at the enemy in front of them in a sparsely dispersed formation.

Amid the overwhelming shouts, the frightened British and Indian officers and soldiers ushered in an unstoppable torrent.

The Marine infantry fired ferociously from submachine guns, killing the bewildered enemy in the trenches.

"Calm down! Calm down! Hold your ground! ”

A British lieutenant was shouting, but within a few seconds, a figure jumped into the trench, and before the lieutenant could react, he was stabbed in the heart with a bayonet.

But as soon as the Ming pacesetter drew his bayonet, he was knocked down by a large British corporal wielding a sapper shovel before he could turn around.

The sapper shovel was raised high, and it was about to be chopped down.

The sergeant squad leader, who had just finished shooting a shuttle and was changing the magazine, did not hesitate to let go and throw away the automatic gun, pulled out the pistol with his backhand, and fired five shots in a row.

"Grass! I almost confessed! ”

"Don't grind, go, come with me."

The disadvantage of the lack of automatic weapons was evident in this kind of close combat, and the British had become aware of it the other day during the Malay Peninsula war.

Facts have proved that officers and gentlemen often choose to stand still before they suffer blood losses, not to mention that the British have long attached less importance to the army than the Royal Navy.

At present, it seems that the British, who suffered losses, must have begun to be armed with submachine guns in large quantities earlier than the original history.

With a yellow flare in the air, it didn't take long for a dozen amphibious tanks to land leisurely.

They were accompanied by several landing craft loaded with four 80mm howitzers in a disassembled state.

With their support, the officers and men of the 1st Marine Brigade began to sweep away the enemy forces on Pulau Ubin.

Only half an hour later, a patrol of more than fifty people approached the Pulau Ubin fort.

In the darkness of the night, the British soldiers who operated the shore defense guns could not believe that the Ming army had smashed the garrison on the island so quickly.

"Damn! These cowardly Indus! ”

"Blast the battery, immediately, bring the explosives!"

However, as the hurried shore defense artillerymen scrambled to place explosives and wires, the gunfire became louder and louder.

A few minutes later, as the last of the Enfield rifle shots fell silent, the wolf-like Ming army rushed in.

A British non-commissioned officer who tried to resist was shot to death in the blink of an eye, and more than a dozen holes in his body appeared in an instant.

"Poe squirt! Trouble! Oh Wei Wei bites the twig! ”

The Ming soldiers spoke half-baked Chinese English, which was included in the pamphlet "Battlefield Western Shouts."

This booklet, which was specially printed for the war in the South Seas, was very thin, with a total of only a few common phrases, divided into English and Dutch, and expressed "Western" in the homonym of Chinese characters.

When the British captain at the head of the army was the first to put down his pistol and raised his hand to surrender, the other Britons present also slowly lowered their rifles and pistols one after another.

At this point, this powerful 381mm coastal defense gun was reduced to a trophy without firing a single shot.

The Anglo-Indian troops, who had scattered and fled, fought for the few transport boats and tried to escape to the island of Singapore on the other side.

However, there was no order at all, so many people were crowded around, and no one wanted to let anyone, and even a fire broke out. The transport boat, which was packed with soldiers, managed to leave the dock, but soon capsized due to severe overloading.

The landing on Ubin Island was actually regarded as a sound attack from the east to the west, because the main direction of attack of the Ming army's large forces was actually northwest and due north.

A little later, the 2nd Marine Brigade began to force a night crossing to the northwest of Singapore Island, while the 33rd Infantry Division forced a crossing due north.

It was already dark, but the non-stop artillery fire and non-stop flares illuminated the more than ten kilometers long battle line as bright as day!

According to the regulations of the landing operation, the landing force of the first echelon was to first establish a solid beachhead to block a possible counterattack by the enemy.

Wait for the follow-up troops to come ashore and have enough troops before launching an attack in depth.

By midnight, thousands of Ming troops had already come ashore, and the Anglo-Indian 11th Infantry Division was already a demoralized and tired division after the previous days' battle losses, and they did not dare to take the initiative to launch a counterattack.

But what are the similarities and differences between such a passive response to battle and waiting for death?

Under the light of the flares, I saw countless Ming infantry surging in a row, and the British and Indian troops were terrified.

"Sir, we need support, at least one division of Chinese infantry is attacking us!"

The machine gunners, who are desperate to resist, hysterically manipulate the Vickers heavy machine guns to fire wildly, as if this is the only way to dispel the fear in their hearts!

However, this was more of a psychological effect, because basically all the Ming troops fell down immediately after being hit by machine-gun fire, and not many people were actually killed or wounded.

The infantry guns that accompanied the infantry in the attack were pushed very close to the enemy's position, and some brave artillery crew members even pushed them to a position of less than 200 meters!

The 37-type 112mm infantry cannon has a short barrel and light weight, and the maximum firing range of this short-barreled gun with only eight times the diameter is only 3900m, and the total combat weight is 760kg.

However, the infantry gun itself is used to provide strong close-range fire support for infantry detachments, not pursuing range, but only flexibility and power.

The 112mm anti-explosive projectile, loaded with 2.07 kg of TNT, was so powerful that the civil fortifications were vulnerable to the shells it fired.

Under the dense barrage of bullets, the artillery crew maneuvered the infantry guns to fire at the raging machine-gun bunkers, and after a large burst of fire and a deafening roar, the fortifications collapsed, and broken limbs and clothes and pants fell one after another.

The Ming army easily smashed the first two lines of defense of the Anglo-Indian 11th Division, but an encounter broke out with two battalions of the 44th Infantry Brigade of the Australian Army, which rushed to reinforce them.

After a brief moment of surprise, both sides reacted, seeking all available terrain and objects around them to use as temporary cover, and then began to fire fiercely.

The 3rd Battalion of the 97th Regiment of the 33rd Division, which was trying to outflank it, ran into big trouble and ran head-on into two companies of the 44th Brigade and some armored vehicles.

Although the other side also arrived in a hurry and did not have time to set up positions, the presence of several Bren machine gun cars and Vickers armored vehicles still gave them an advantage.

The battalion commander and other officers above directly led the troops to launch a frontal attack, and they were immediately fiercely returned by these Australian troops.

With the support of mortars, three teams of about five or six hundred people launched an assault in three echelons!

"Wansheng !!"

"Kill them all!"

There are constantly people who are knocked down by machine guns, but the red-eyed Ming officers and soldiers are still attacking one after another, and it can be said that most of them have lost their minds at the moment because of the surge of blood and energy.

The shocking scene of the group's charge frightened many Australian soldiers, and as the distance closed, the thin-skinned armored vehicles were destroyed by bazookas and armor-piercing grenades, turning them into blazing metal bonfires.

The Australian army, which was less than 300 men, was overwhelmed by the surging crowd in the blink of an eye, and the two sides engaged in a bloody white-knuckle battle.

A large number of Australian soldiers were killed by submachine guns and automatic guns at the first glance, and then they had to deal with the cold, glittering sword-shaped bayonets.

A few minutes of fighting destroyed the fighting spirit of these Australian soldiers, and they had less than 70 people left with heavy casualties.

The Ming infantry who pursued them followed all the way and rushed directly into the defense line of the 44th Brigade of the Australian Army.

Because the enemy and us were mixed together and did not dare to open fire, now these Australian troops had to engage the Ming army in the position.

At 4:12 a.m. on March 7, the Australian army, which had failed to counterattack, was forced to abandon its position, and the remnants of the defeated generals began to retreat to the rear, along with the British and Indian troops along the way.

By daybreak, a section of the 1st Tank Brigade had landed, and three teams of 43 Type 38 medium tanks were rapidly lined up.

They were assigned infantry units in the two main directions of attack and began a major offensive in depth.

The snowflake reports and requests for help left the Far Eastern Command in a state of flux, and a desperate Arthur Ted smoked cigarette after cigarette.

"Your Excellency? Excellency? The adjutant cautiously said: "The inquiry message from the London side has arrived, what should we do?" ”

Arthur laughed self-deprecatingly and said calmly: "According to the facts, the battle situation is very bad and morale is low, but we will not consider surrendering for the time being, and we will do everything possible to defend." ”

But the fact is that the entire Singapore fortress is in chaos, and the balance of victory may never be reversed.

To the west, the Anglo-Indian 11th Division and the Australian 44th Brigade had been defeated, and were now struggling to rely on the New Zealand 5th Infantry Brigade.

To the north, the fully equipped Australian 6th Infantry Division was attacked by the Ming army on a large scale, and the intensity of the fighting was unusual, but it probably did not last long.

A large number of the routed soldiers fled directly into the city of Singapore, preferring to fight with the gendarmes rather than return to the front.

"Return to the front line at once! You cowards! ”

"To hell with Singapore! The British have already abandoned here, why are we still desperate? ”

The rout wandered through bars and dance halls, drunk and drunk, hoping to forget the horrors of war.

Drunken defeated soldiers began to smash and loot to vent their dissatisfaction, and crime abounded.

After being defeated, in order to maintain the poor self-esteem, it can only bully the civilians.

Because the Ming army had already occupied Pulau Ubin and deployed artillery there to constantly bombard the Seletar airbase, the Far East Air Force had become an ornament and was suppressed on the ground.

As a result, the Ming Air Force became more and more arrogant, bombing any exposed enemy targets day and night.

Transport planes spread leaflets over the city, claiming that the colonial authorities' connivance with the rout had plunged the local people into a crisis, and that they had confiscated civilian guns, and that the Ming army was going to drop guns into the city to help the people defend their lives and property.

From the afternoon of the same day, transport planes continued to drop boxes of airdropped weapons.

Each small drop box weighs 125kg and contains 10 Type 20 automatic guns, 10 Type 39 submachine guns, 30 grenades, and a large number of matching bullets.

The automatic gun copied from the Winchester M7907 was cheap, and the Type 39 submachine gun with the stamping process was even cheaper.

Although they are bargains, they are both serious automatic weapons, which can be described as good and cheap.

Led by the agents of the Metropolitan Governor's Office, a group of brave Chinese Chinese were improvised to ambush the local military and police.

A team of military police was walking well on the road, and suddenly they were strafed by more than a dozen automatic weapons, and the scene can be imagined.

The agents also taught the armed expatriates how to make Molotov cocktails — glass soda bottles, strips of cloth, and gasoline.

"Da-da-da-"

"They're on the second floor!"

"Beware! Look for cover! ”

Several colonial policemen were knocked down by a barrage of bullets before they could react, and a Vickers armored car in front of it was spinning its machine-gun turret, but before it could turn, four or five fiery glass bottles were thrown off.

The glass bottle shattered with a crisp sound, followed by a "whew", and with the flow of gasoline, the flames instantly engulfed the entire armored car!

For a time, gunfire erupted in the city of Singapore, and there was a crossfire everywhere.

After reading the telegram sent back by the intelligence station, the chief military officer Qiu Peisheng couldn't help but praise: "Good boy, your trick is ruthless enough, and the British can't bear it anymore." ”

Zhou Changfeng, who was opposite him, smiled lightly: "As the saying goes, a strong city is often captured from the inside. There are so many overseas Chinese in the local area, it would be a pity not to join forces with the outside. ”

(End of chapter)