afterglow

Chapter 50 Bloody Night Battle
At the risk of being hit by stray bullets, Sergeant Davis opened the hatch and poked his head out of his car. As soon as he turned his head, he saw two "light rays" hitting another A9 next to him. The cruiser tank, the parallel machine gun that was still firing just now, suddenly misfired.

Davies, startled and frightened, immediately lowered his head and shouted, "Damn it! Back up! Back up! We can't..."

His words came to an abrupt end, because a 25.6mm armor-piercing tracer bullet happened to hit the edge of the turret at a large angle of incidence. When it bounced off, it just passed over the top of the turret and shattered like a hammer hitting a watermelon. Davis head.

His headless body plopped back into the car, and the gunner next to him screamed in fright.

The fierce battle is still going on. The so-called "darkest before dawn" is the most appropriate description of the psychology of the British and Indian troops in the circular position at this moment.

Obviously, fighting at night is a test of the quality and organizational capabilities of an army, so most armies actually try to avoid large-scale field battles at night, and usually only send a small number of elite units to perform infiltration and detour tasks.

Although the offensive of the Mixed Third Brigade was good at the beginning, it soon became disorganized due to fierce fighting, poor visibility, and chaotic communications.

Zhou Changfeng, who watched the whole game, felt regretful and helpless—don’t do porcelain work without diamonds!
It is entirely possible to send several company-level units to penetrate in depth, delaying and delaying the enemy's retreat, while large forces wait until dawn before launching an attack. This is obviously a better choice.

Looking through the binoculars, the entire battlefield has become a mess.

The main attack, feint, assist, containment, detour, etc. planned at the beginning have all been thrown out of the blue by the various departments, and even the echelon is ignored.

The battalions and teams launched uninterrupted attacks from all directions, repeatedly testing the joints of the enemy's defense lines, and once they found a weak point, they swarmed up like sharks smelling blood.

After destroying and forcing back most of the tanks, the artillery pushed the anti-aircraft guns to the starting position of the impact, and directly bombarded the enemy's machine gun bunkers and command posts at a distance of less than 200 meters from the enemy, and even opened fire on individual soldiers.

The 64mm mortar shells also continued to fall, and the British and Indian soldiers on the front line of the circular position were blown up.

Amidst the piercing whistle and the piercing suona, waves of soldiers of the Ming army leaped alternately against the bullet rain. , After a series of bangs, an intensive attack was launched, using submachine guns and bayonets to kill the stubborn enemy troops on the ground.

"Sir, area B4 needs support, there are too many of them!"

"East... A1 has fallen! Are we going to organize a counterattack?"

"Please order the tanks to come up and help, those cowardly cowards!"

All of a sudden, there was an emergency everywhere. In the command post on the back slope of No. [-] Heights, the field phone calls almost never stopped. The few platoons that were sent out just now were the last reserve team in Wilson's hands.

He, who has always been kind, has no choice but to order the tank to rejoin the battle at this moment, otherwise he will have to be court-martialed.

Although some people refused to return to the battlefield chanting "I would rather be judged than go to the front line", most of them sat in the tank again with the look of a dead mother.

The precarious position was barely stabilized because the tanks rejoined the battle. A team of the Ming army that rushed to the eastern position suffered heavy losses under the intensive firepower of several tanks. The British and Indian troops also took advantage of the situation to launch a counterattack. They were forced to Withdrew again.

The Imphal Air Force Base was brightly lit at the moment, and more than a dozen planes slowly approached the runway, with the roar of engines. Although the Air Force refused to participate in the night battle several times, the severe situation facing the Wilson Task Force could not prevent them from refusing.

Half an hour later, nine Furious fighter jets and six Vincent bombers approached the sky over Dmagee, and the navigators noticed the flickering flames from a long distance away.

After arriving at the sky above the zero height, more than a dozen planes circled up, and two fighter jets dropped large aviation flares. The luminous intensity of these big things is not comparable to that of small things fired by artillery.

A lighting tube like a small sun is hung under the parachute, illuminating the entire battlefield as if it were daytime!

The pilots were also shocked by the scene below and almost went into cardiopulmonary arrest - the circular position of the Wilson Task Force with Height Zero as the core is like an isolated island in the ocean, surrounded by densely packed Chinese troops!

The air defense team of the brigade did not intend to let the British and Indian air forces show off their power. Under the unified command, the six cannons arranged in a staggered manner opened fire immediately.

A round of 20.8mm high-explosive fragmentation rounds and tracer rounds roared out, like light arrows piercing the night sky!

A Vincent bomber that was under fire was torn to pieces by more than a dozen shells almost instantly. Before the other planes could react, the right half of the right wing of another Fury fighter was completely cut off.

The six Type 4 and [-] anti-aircraft guns showed their prowess. In just [-] minutes, they shot down three and damaged five. The anti-aircraft artillery even felt that it was easier to deal with these low-speed and low-altitude biplanes than usual training and shooting?

As a cutting-edge anti-aircraft weapon, the Type 30 and 60 anti-aircraft guns were the result of the Ming army's dissatisfaction with the Oerlikon MS-cal.5 anti-aircraft guns and the Suroton ST-20.8 anti-aircraft guns after the 20s. They were independently designed and finalized by the Shenyang Arsenal, with a caliber of six and a half , That is, 45㎜, air-guided automatic principle, fed by [-]-round magazines or [-]-round drums.

Both the Military Bureau and the army are full of praise for its performance. However, due to the use of the principle of air conduction, its process is complicated, production is difficult, and the cost is high.In contrast, the Oerlikon of the free bolt-front shock, the Suroton and the Madsen of the barrel retreat are all simpler and cheaper.

Although the support of the British and Indian Air Forces has hardly had any effect, the large-scale offensive of the Ming army has still shown a certain decline, mainly due to organizational chaos.

After the initial assault, subsequent echelons and support became messy and inefficient.

"I'm convinced, it's a mess!" Zhou Changfeng, who was bowing in front of the artillery mirror to observe the situation on the battlefield, couldn't help complaining.

Why isn't the artillery battalion in place yet?Now that both the enemy and the enemy have reached their limit, if there is a large-scale fire attack at this time, the British and Indian troops will inevitably collapse first.

It just so happened that the telephone line had been laid out, and the communication platoon had just adjusted the telephone exchange, so Zhou Changfeng made a phone call to the artillery command post.

"Hey, I'm Zhou Changfeng, the first battalion commander. What's the matter with you?! Not in place yet?!"

It sounded very noisy on the other end of the phone, and a somewhat sissy voice replied, "Oh! How are you, Brother Zhou? Brother, I'm so worried!"

"Fuck! I asked you when the artillery support will start, don't be so nonsense!"

"Okay, okay, the command post and the guns have just been put in place, now we are waiting for the subjective and side view to pull the telephone line over, let's wait another quarter of an hour."

"I can see the battle situation on the front line clearly, and I can't wait for a minute." Zhou Changfeng, who was speechless, looked up and glanced at the distance, and said anxiously: "I can't wait, shoot indirectly, the firepower of the whole brigade is under my command! "

(End of this chapter)