The news reached the Guam headquarters. Zhang Long, as the supreme commander this time, immediately ordered all the reconnaissance aircraft in the Ruke Islands to go out for reconnaissance. The novel website first updated and he also ordered all the reconnaissance aircraft in the Mariana Islands to also expand outward.
For reconnaissance, you must find out where the enemy’s fleet has gone?!
After Zhang Long's order was conveyed, all the imperial reconnaissance planes in the nearby island groups scattered like fishing nets to conduct reconnaissance in the waters near the archipelago. However, for the whole day, none of the imperial reconnaissance planes found the enemy fleet.
The enemy's fleet seemed to have disappeared from the world.
Faced with the predicament, Zhang Long couldn't help but want to wonder about Zhou Yu's Shenlong, but in the end he resisted this unreasonable thought. After all, everything cannot rely entirely on unconventional methods, and conventional battles must be fought with conventional methods.
Only in this way can the team develop healthily!
At about 6 o'clock in the morning on the third day, the good news finally came. Two reconnaissance planes from the Mariana Reconnaissance Group discovered traces of a huge enemy fleet formation in the waters southeast of Saipan and the northeast of Tinian.
.
When the news reached Zhang Long's general headquarters, not only was he not happy, but he frowned even deeper! Because the enemy fleet appeared in the waters north of Mariana, indicating that their target was Saipan or Tinian.
Or even doing both, he doesn't know where the enemy's target will be!?
However, he immediately recalled the hundreds of bombers entrenched in the Luolin Islands, and ordered Tinian and Saipan to sound the war alarm and enter a full war state. At the same time, the capital of the Chinese Empire also received a warning from the Allied Powers.
A declaration of war submitted to the Chinese Imperial Government.
Three hours later, Zhang Long finally determined that the enemy's main target was Saipan in the northernmost part of the Mariana Islands. Because the reconnaissance plane reported that the enemy fleet had begun to attack Saipan. So he ordered the air force formation
.While providing support to Saipan, report the news to the Imperial General Staff.
Dewey had the fleet stock up on fuel, fresh water and vegetables in the Marshall Islands, then advanced to the waters east of the Ruke Islands and dispatched two seaplanes to conduct a high-altitude reconnaissance of the Ruke Islands. After noticing that the situation was different, he ordered
The fleet retreated, and after several large turns in the sea, it quietly headed towards Saipan.
When he discovered that a Chinese Empire reconnaissance plane was hovering over the fleet, he knew that the fleet had been exposed. Therefore, he ordered a formation to form a formation and use landing ships to forcefully land on Saipan. He set up a landing beach in the southwest.
The frontal width of Chalankano is about 64 kilometers on the beach.
Although the landing was not as easy as expected due to the influence of the tide, the landing ships still maintained good order. The battleships, cruisers and destroyers responsible for naval gunfire support anchored only 1,000 meters away from the shore, with permanent firepower points on the beach.
Heavy bombardment of fortifications such as strongholds and camouflaged trenches;
The large guns of the escort fleet carried out extended fire suppression on the defenses behind the beach; the gunboats organized in the landing craft fleet provided accompanying fire support with 40mm artillery; under the cover of these light and heavy firepower, Uncle Sam took the first step half an hour later
A group of marine troops arrived ashore.
And accompanying the first batch of troops ashore, there was another secret weapon, which was a flash in the pan on the Somme battlefield. The John Bull Empire secretly modified the tracked 170 howitzer, imitating the Big Bear tank. Uncle Sam's
A huge investment was made at one time. There were 80 vehicles.
From this point, we can also see the depth of the 'cooperation' between the John Bull Empire and Uncle Sam's Country. We can also see the strong industrial production capacity of Uncle Sam's Country! It is really impressive to produce 80 vehicles in such a short period of time.
Not easy. But it's not easy for these bulky guys to get off the transport ship.
But Uncle Sam's country was well prepared. When the transport ships specially loaded with this type of self-propelled howitzer, which Uncle Sam called the Bear, hit the beach and ran aground on the bottom of the ship, in front of them, suddenly something like
It was opened from the inside like a door, and the plates with holes just formed a springboard...
It turns out that these transport ships are Uncle Sam's ships specially used to transport Bear self-propelled howitzers. The addition of Bear howitzers really added a lot of color to the first batch of troops. After all, the army can hide behind the armored vehicles to reduce the risk of being directly faced by the enemy.
The possibility of hitting.
However, the defensive artillery fire on the shore was quite fierce, and the sparse Bear armored vehicles were unable to cover the entire front, and were moving slowly on the soft sand. Under the cover of them and naval guns, Uncle Sam's Army could only carry out forced landings near the waterline.
Only 10,000 people managed to land on land in half an hour.
Due to Dewey's insufficient equipment for the Saipan landing battle, the landing plan was not comprehensive enough. The shore defense was only implemented by shelling the shore with naval guns. However, the Chinese Empire's position design on the island was extremely particular. Uncle Sam's country and
The John Bull Empire's naval guns cannot hit deep defensive positions at all.
Another point is that the range of artillery used by the Chinese Empire is farther than that of artillery in other countries in the world. After receiving Zhang Long's order, the Imperial Army on Saipan immediately evacuated the beach position and changed it to a depth defense position. So
Once the enemy's naval guns are unable to effectively threaten the deep defensive positions.
These deep defensive positions are now violently bombarding Uncle Sam's army on the beach. Although Uncle Sam's army successfully landed ashore, the beach is crowded with a large number of people and materials, and is under the threat of long-range artillery fire from the Imperial Army.
The situation is not favorable for Uncle Sam.
Therefore, the progress of Uncle Sam's army is very slow. What is even more serious is that the landing points of Uncle Sam's northern and southern armies have a huge gap of 1 kilometer wide.
We encountered strong tides and the course deviated.
According to Dewey's plan, Uncle Sam's army should occupy the hilly area several kilometers behind the beach on the day of the landing. However, under fierce attack from the Chinese Imperial Army's artillery positions, the furthest southern landing army advanced and a regiment of troops arrived.
Fina su su mountain.
However, the regiment was violently suppressed by the defensive artillery on the mountain, and had to retreat for more than a hundred meters. By nightfall, although the U.S. Army had only more than 30,000 troops on land, the number of casualties was as high as 2,000, and the landing site captured was only
If half of the plan is completed, it will be difficult to form an effective defensive posture.
The main reason for this phenomenon is that there are two types of troops in the landing army. One is the Uncle Sam Marine Corps.
combat capable troops.
Not only have they received special training in amphibious warfare, but their officers also understand that landing operations are back-to-back battles and must be extremely dangerous; every day of delay on land will cause additional losses to the fleet covering the landing on the sea;
The key to their victory is to act quickly and decisively. Based on this tactical thinking, their troops pay great attention to the cultivation of fighting style and the training of fighting will in daily training. Therefore, the Marine Corps has a tenacious fighting style and a tenacious fighting will;
They have always been among the best among all the ground forces of Uncle Sam's Army! On the other hand, the Army places too much emphasis on avoiding casualties in its daily training and relies too much on artillery support. When encountering strong obstruction, unlike the Marines, they either attack bravely or take detours, but stop.
Come down and wait for artillery support;
Sometimes even a single machine gun firepower point on the shore can stop a battalion of troops from advancing. This is the difference between the services. Although the Army seems to be very elite, it has not changed the Army's deep-rooted conservative tactics, so it was exposed in this battle
The most obvious.
If two different military branches, strong and weak, attack at the same time, the consequences will of course be completely different!
That night, the Chinese Empire's defense forces did not launch a surprise attack on Uncle Sam, who was fighting his last battle. However, Uncle Sam's army was afraid of the opponent. Since their landing site was small and their foothold was unstable, they launched a night attack. Therefore, the temporary defensive positions they made were very fragile.
concentrated.….
But what they did made it easier for the Chinese Imperial Air Force to bomb after dawn! At dawn, Uncle Sam's sleeping army was awakened by bursts of bombing.
In the evening of the previous day, almost all the air force formations commanded by Zhang Long returned to the air force airport in the Mariana Islands. However, Zhang Long did not order the air force to dispatch bombings of the enemy's temporary positions and warships that day, but instead allowed the pilots to rest for the night.
, the general attack took place at dawn the next day.
In addition, Ali also dispatched a formation of 500 Locust bombers from the southern theater to arrive at Guan Island that afternoon. Zhang Long ordered the short-range air force formations to move from Guan Island to the airports on Tianning Island, while the longer-range bombers were left behind.
Airports along Guan Island and Rota Island.
At dawn the next day, an air force formation taking off from Tinian Airport dropped small bombs one after another over Uncle Sam's army. For the first batch of nearly a hundred aircraft, Uncle Sam's army was immediately confused by the overwhelming bombing.
Got it!
And when other batches of bombers gradually came to Uncle Sam's army, the real disaster came. Hundreds of bombers dropped tons of powerful bombs on Uncle Sam's army, transport ships, and battleships.
The scene created by the explosives is truly amazing!
Among these bomber groups, the craziest ones were the 500 Locust bombers. Each of them carried one ton of high-altitude bombs, flew at ultra-low altitudes, and dropped one after another on Uncle Sam personnel, warships, and John Bull Imperial Navy warships.
of bombs.
The coalition forces of the two countries aimed small-caliber rapid-fire artillery, machine guns, machine guns, and even rifles and rifles at the aircraft in the sky. (To be continued...)