New World War II Eagle Strikes the Sky

When that earthen wall appeared in Wittman's vision, he instinctively felt a kind of fear.Wittmann believed in his intuition very much. In the contests on the Eastern Front, especially when facing the Soviet anti-tank artillery positions, this intuition saved his life countless times.And this sense of fear has never been so strong when facing this wall.

At this time, there was a burst of gunfire behind Wittmann.This is German artillery preparing for artillery fire before the attack is launched.Considering that there are still British bombers active in the sky, compared with daytime, the flames emitted by the artillery fire will be more obvious at night, and enemies in the air can easily see them from tens of kilometers away.When the German artillery fires at night, the muzzle flames will attract bombers to them as a lamp attracts moths.

At this time, the shelling of the German artillery can be described in the four words of sacrificing one's life.In fact, the bombardment began to weaken significantly after less than 15 minutes, and by 10 minutes, the artillery fire had completely stopped.As for the reason for the stop, the sound of bombs exploding from behind Wittmann was the explanation.

"Attack!" Wittmann saw that the grenadiers had started to move forward, so he gave instructions to his subordinates, then got into the tank and closed the top cover.Then his tank started to start and drove towards the British position.

The shelling, and the rumble of tank engines and tracks, had long announced their presence to the British.The British began to continuously fire flares towards the front of the defensive position. The front of the British position was almost as bright as daylight, and the entire attack cluster was revealed in front of the British.

The British 25-pound howitzers fired first, and the shells continued to explode between the grenadiers and the tanks.Although the firepower was not too intensive, the artillery fire of the British Navy also joined the chorus.The 6-inch guns and 9-inch guns of the British cruisers fired continuously.However, in order to avoid accidental injury, most of their shells hit a more rearward position in order to block possible follow-up troops.

When Wittmann's tank advanced to a distance of about 1000 meters from the earth wall, the British's direct fire began to attack.The first to fire was the British "Firefly".At this distance, the 17-pound gun it is equipped with can easily tear apart the frontal armor of any German tank except the King Tiger.However, the accuracy of this kind of artillery, especially after using gold coin bullets, is not particularly good.Therefore, the first round of shooting by the "Fireflies" only hit two targets.A Panzer IV to Wittmann's left had the misfortune to win the lottery when an armor-piercing shell hit its front and the tank stopped immediately, belching black smoke.Two tankers with their bodies on fire jumped out of the destroyed tank. They didn't care to extinguish the flames on their bodies, so they ran wildly to stay away from the tank.And these two obvious targets became the focus of the British Bren machine gun. One was knocked down directly, and the other also fell to the ground, but it seemed that they were lying down on their own initiative.Moreover, he rolled on the ground after lying down, extinguishing the flames on the trousers.

The infantry mortar unit accompanying the tank troops began to fire flares at the earthen wall of the British army. Under the light of the flares, Wittmann saw a round turret appearing on the earthen wall in the direction of two o'clock Above, the barrel of the black hole is pointing at his tank.

"Brake!" Wittman yelled.

His Tiger tank immediately slammed on the brakes, and almost at the same time, the "Firefly" with a turret exposed on the earth wall also fired deadly shells.Due to the timely braking, the shells fired by the "Firefly" failed to hit Wittmann's tiger.Wittmann also hurriedly commanded the tank to turn its artillery towards the tank. However, the tank disappeared behind the earthen wall before the barrel of the Tiger tank turned over.

"Damn it!" Wittman yelled.He knows that the current environment is so dangerous.The enemy must rely on a hidden observer to observe its own position data, and then notify the "Firefly".And those "fireflies" must also be using the combat mode of getting ready-fire a shot-retract and prepare-fire a shot.The shooting time left for him was pitifully short, not even enough for him to turn the barrel over.

"If this continues, I will definitely be hit!" Wittman thought, "I must do something to change this situation."

He opened the hatch on the turret and risked poking his head out.Doing so was dangerous, as shrapnel flying across the battlefield and bullets from enemy machine guns and rifles could kill him.But doing so will give him better vision, giving him more chances to spot enemies before they fire at him.

More than ten seconds later, on the front left, Wittmann found another exposed turret. This "Firefly" did not fire at Wittmann, and he quickly fired at a Leopard on Wittmann's left. Cannon, and then immediately disappeared behind the earthen wall, and the whole process took less than 20 seconds.

This time the British 17-pound gun hit the target accurately.The Leopard's sloping frontal armor was actually thicker than that of the Tiger tank, and its crew also slung some road wheels and spare tracks to the front for added defense.But in front of the powerful 17-inch gun, these armors are like paper.The armor-piercing bullets easily penetrated the armor, and the gadgets hanging in front flew high like pieces of paper.Seconds later, the hapless Leopard exploded again.Flames shot out of Lao Gao from the muzzle and the top hatch.No one climbed out of the tank, and the Panther became a steel grave for its crew.

German tanks also tried to return fire.But the time for the target to appear is too short, and the target itself is too small. Even if it is in the daytime, even if it is fixed there, at such a distance, it is difficult to hit it with one shot. It's not easy, Wittmann felt that even his crew would never hit more than [-]% of such a small target at this distance.But in the current situation, the hit rate is probably not even [-]%.

In normal times, the German Tiger tanks are more willing to shoot at the "Firefly" at a longer distance, because the long-distance hit rate of the "Firefly" 17-pounder gun is not as good as that of the Tiger's 88mm gun. more favorable.But now, obviously, continuing to shoot at the enemy at a long distance is extremely detrimental to the Germans: this seemingly simple fortification adds too much to the defender.

Closing the distance can increase the probability of hitting such a small target, but it also means that the probability of the opponent hitting himself is also greatly improved.It was easier said than done to get close. The German army didn't know how many corpses they needed to drop before rushing up.

In front of the "Firefly", the difference between the tiger, the leopard and the thin-skinned No. 75 tank is actually not big, and the turret of the "Firefly" is not indestructible, and the 50 guns of the No. 2342 tank can also penetrate its armor.In this case, the German army made an adjustment to make the armor thinner, but there were more Panzer IV tanks, and even something like the sdkfz8 "puma" [-]-wheeled armored vehicle with a [-]mm gun rushed in. In front, tigers and leopards followed.Such a numerically disadvantaged British tank may fall into a situation of being overwhelmed.

However, when these No. 6 tanks rushed up, the British 6-pound anti-tank guns also began to fire.The British 57-pound anti-tank gun has a caliber of 100 mm and can penetrate 90 mm of armor at a distance of 2 meters.To be honest, this armor-piercing ability is really inferior to the zis-4 of the same caliber in the hands of the Soviets.However, it can barely be used to fight the No. [-] tank.

These towed guns are of course unable to use the "Firefly" tactics, but they are also difficult to deal with.The British dug a deep trench on the ground and placed the anti-tank gun inside.Most parts of the artillery are underground, only the barrel is almost flat on the ground.There is only a short section of shield above the ground.The British made a little cover for these shields, so that at night, if they don't fire, even if you press directly over it, the tank soldiers may not be able to find it.

However, the British also made a mistake at this time. They did not remove the brake on the artillery in advance, which caused the muzzle flame of the artillery to be particularly obvious when it fired.And this also pointed out the target for the tigers and leopards behind to fire on them.

The British anti-tank artillery failed to hold their breath, and opened fire one after another before the German Panzer IV tanks approached the optimal shooting distance.However, this cannot be entirely blamed on the British soldiers. At night, people's judgment of distance is always prone to problems.

Compared with the paper-like sides, the frontal armor of the German Panzer IV was passable, and the British's misjudgment also caused their first round of shooting to have a low hit rate.Many of the shells that hit failed to penetrate the Panzer IV due to the shooting distance and angle.And when they were preparing for the second and third rounds of shooting, the German counterattack quickly fell on their heads.

The 75mm grenade of the No. 88 tank and the Leopard, the [-]mm grenade of the Tiger, and the mortar shells of the infantry all fell towards the towed anti-tank gun position of the British army.At the same time, German infantry units were closing in on them.

The British began to suppress the rushing German infantry with machine guns, while the German tanks following the infantry attacked the British machine gun firepower with direct fire.Every second you could see German soldiers being knocked to the ground by machine gun and rifle bullets, and every few seconds you could see British machine guns, along with their machine gunners, being torn to pieces by German tank fire.

"Commander, should we replace the armor-piercing rounds with grenades?" asked Wittmann's gunner.

"No, we have more important goals!" Wittmann replied.