At the risk of being hit by a stray bullet, Sergeant Davis opened the hatch and stuck his head out of his car. As soon as he turned his head, he saw two "rays of light" hitting another A9 next to him. Cruise tank, the latter's coaxial machine gun that had been firing just now suddenly misfired.
Davis, who was frightened and frightened, immediately lowered his head and shouted: "Damn it! Back up! Back up! We can't..."
His words stopped abruptly, because a 25.6mm armor-piercing tracer bullet hit the edge of the turret at a very large angle of incidence. When it bounced off, it just passed by the top of the turret and smashed into pieces like a hammer hitting a watermelon. Davis' head.
His headless body sat back in the car with a pop, and the gunner next to him was so frightened that he screamed.
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, night combat is a great test of the quality and organizational capabilities of an army. Therefore, most armies will 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 missions.
Although the attack of the Third Mixed Brigade was good at the beginning, it soon became disorganized due to fierce fighting, poor visibility, and chaotic communications.
Zhou Changfeng, who was watching the whole battle, felt regretful and helpless - if you don't have diamonds, you can't do the porcelain work!
It is entirely possible to send several company-level detachments to penetrate deeply to delay and delay the enemy's retreat, while the large force waits until dawn before launching an attack. This is obviously a better choice.
Looking through the telescope, the entire battlefield has turned into a mess.
The main attack, feint attack, assist, containment, detour, etc. that were planned at the beginning have been thrown out of the window by all departments, and they don't even care about the ladder.
Each battalion and each team launched uninterrupted attacks from all directions, repeatedly testing the joints of the enemy's defense lines. Once a weakness was discovered, they swarmed up like sharks that smelled blood.
After destroying and driving back most of the tanks, the artillerymen pushed the anti-tank artillery to the impact starting position. They aimed directly at the enemy's machine gun bunkers and command posts at a distance of less than 200 meters, and even fired at individual soldiers. .
64mm mortar shells also continued to fall, and the British and Indian soldiers on the front line of the circular position were blown to pieces.
Amidst the piercing whistles and the sharp and heart-piercing suonas, waves of Ming soldiers alternately leaped forward despite the rain of bullets. During this period, they kept firing rifle grenades. When they got close to a distance of thirty or forty meters, they all threw them. After a series of blasts of grenades, they launched a concentrated attack, using submachine guns and bayonets to kill the stubborn enemy soldiers on the ground.
"Sir, area B4 needs support, there are too many of them!"
"East...A1 has fallen! Should we organize a counterattack?"
"Please order the tanks to come up and help, you cowardly cowards!"
Suddenly, there was an emergency everywhere. In the headquarters on the back slope of No. 0 Heights, field calls almost never stopped. The few platoons just sent out were the last reserves in Wilson's hands.
He, who has always been kind-hearted, had to strictly order Tank to rejoin the battle at this moment, otherwise he would have to go to military court.
Although some people shouted "I would rather be judged than go to the front line" and refused to return to the battlefield, most of them still sat back in the tank with expressions of dead mothers.
The precarious position was barely stabilized because the tanks rejoined the battle. A group of Ming troops who rushed to the east 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 a dozen planes slowly drove onto the runway, their engines roaring. Although the Air Force refused to participate in the battle at night several times, the severe situation faced by Task Force Wilson could not allow them to refuse anymore.
More than half an hour later, nine Fury fighters and six Vincent bombers approached the sky above Demaji. The navigators noticed the flickering fire even from a distance.
After arriving in the sky above Highland Zero, more than a dozen aircraft circled, and two of them dropped large aviation flares. The luminous intensity of these big things was not comparable to that of small things launched by artillery.
A lighting tube like a small sun was hung under the parachute, illuminating the entire battlefield as if it were daytime!
The pilots were also shocked to the point of almost cardiopulmonary arrest by the scene below - the circular position of Task Force Wilson with Highland Zero as the core was like an isolated island in the ocean, surrounded by densely packed Chinese troops!
The brigade air defense team did not intend to let these British and Indian air forces show off their power. Under unified command, six staggered cannons opened fire immediately.
Rounds of 20.8mm high-explosive fragmentation bullets and tracer bullets roared out, like arrows of light piercing the night sky!
A Vincent bomber that was focused on fire was torn into pieces by more than a dozen shells almost in an instant. Before other aircraft could react, the right half of the wing of another Fury fighter was completely cut off.
The six Type 34 anti-aircraft guns showed off their power. In just four minutes, they shot down three and damaged five. The anti-aircraft artillerymen even thought it was easier to deal with these low-speed and low-altitude biplanes than to practice target shooting?
As a cutting-edge anti-aircraft weapon, the Type 34 anti-aircraft gun was the result of the Ming army being dissatisfied with the Oerlikon MS-cal.60 anti-aircraft gun and Sulotong ST-5 anti-aircraft gun after the 1930s. It was independently designed and finalized by the Shenyang Arsenal, with a caliber of six centimeters. Half, that is, 20.8mm, gas-operated automatic principle, fed by 20-round magazine or 45-round drum magazine.
Both the Ordnance Bureau and the army are full of praise for its performance. However, due to the gas-guided principle, its process is complex, production is difficult, and the cost is high. In comparison, the free-action-forward impact-fired Oerlikon, barrel-retracted Suloton and Madsen are simpler and cheaper.
Although the support from the British and Indian Air Force had almost no effect, the Ming army's large-scale offensive still showed 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 chaos!" Zhou Changfeng, who was bending in front of the artillery mirror to observe the battlefield situation, couldn't help but complain.
Why aren't the artillery battalions in place yet? Now both the enemy and ourselves 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 happened that the telephone lines had been laid out and the communication platoon had just debugged the telephone switch, so Zhou Changfeng made a call to the artillery command post.
"Hey, I'm Zhou Changfeng, commander of the first battalion. What's wrong with you?! You're not here yet?!"
The other end of the phone sounded very noisy, and a somewhat effeminate voice replied: "Oh! Brother Zhou, how are you? Brother, I'm worried to death!"
"Fuck! I'm asking you when the artillery support will start. Don't talk nonsense!"
"Okay, okay, the command post and the artillery have just been put in place. Now we are waiting for subjective and side observations to pull the phone line over. Wait another quarter of an hour."
"I have a clear view of the battle situation on the front line, and I can't wait even a minute." Zhou Changfeng, who was speechless, raised his head and glanced into the distance again, and said anxiously: "I can't wait anymore, indirect fire, I will direct the firepower of the entire brigade! "
