"Your Majesty," his throat was dry and he mustered up the courage to say, "The Ming... Ming army launched a sneak attack. Most of our planes didn't take off and were blown up on the runway... So, more than five... five hundred

, is completely...possible..."

The smile on Emperor Guangwu's face froze. He picked up the report again and read it carefully. The more he looked at it, the whiter his face became, and finally his hands were shaking.

He covered his forehead and murmured:

"So... this could be true?"

The air force staff officer nodded with a pale face. He immediately followed up with:

"Your Majesty, this servant is not clear about this matter at all. Maybe they made a mistake, or maybe..."

Emperor Guangwu held his forehead, waved gently, and handed him the report:

"Go and check again..."

Suddenly, he seemed to hear a strange sound of cannons coming faintly from outside the fortification. This was very different from the sound of cannons that had been going off all day.

Anti-aircraft guns?

Before he could react, the fortification seemed to have been hit hard. Amidst the huge vibration, the light bulb went out and on again, and a large amount of dust fell from the top.

Several officers rushed in and shouted:

"Your Majesty! Your Majesty!"

Emperor Guangwu staggered up from the ground, his ears still ringing, and he asked in a daze:

"What, the fortification was hit by a shell?"

When the officers saw that he was fine, they were overjoyed and stepped forward and said:

"Your Majesty, it's great that you're okay!... Your Majesty, it's not a cannonball, it's a bomb!"

"bomb?"

"Yes, Your Majesty, the Ming Army's planes are coming for air raids. You must not go out!... The bombings are going crazy outside. I have never seen such a bomber! Such a small plane can bomb so accurately!"

Emperor Guangwu straightened up and said angrily:

"Where are our fighter jets? Shoot them down!"

Several officers looked at each other, and then one of them said:

"Your Majesty... who... who knows, there is an explosion outside..."

Emperor Guangwu said nothing, grabbed the phone, shook it a few times, and said:

"It's me. Pick me up at Pukou Airport right away."

After a while, the operator's panicked voice appeared again:

"Your Majesty... the phone line was blown up. Your Majesty... Your Majesty, please spare your life..."

Emperor Guangwu hung up the phone silently, touched his forehead, listened to the muffled sounds of explosions outside from time to time, and the constant vibrations under his feet, and let out a long breath:

"Can we still win Nanjing tonight?"

…

150 Osprey dive bombers were divided into three groups. The first group bombed several thousand Qing troops in the zoo in the northeast corner of Nanjing City.

The second group flew to the Zimuzhou area and bombed the Qing troops who were in a stalemate with the garrison there.

The third group was the largest, with a total of 100 aircraft, and it continuously bombarded Pukou's docks, military camps, train stations, and six heavy artillery positions a few kilometers to the west.

Thousands of Qing soldiers gathered at the military camp and docks fled in all directions. They watched in horror as the bombers roared down from the sky. First, they fired with machine guns, dozens of people fell into a pool of blood, and then a black thing

When it fell, there was a loud noise in the crowd, and countless flesh and blood limbs were thrown up.

The problem is that there is no escape. This thing in the sky explodes so accurately. Just go wherever there are people. Hundreds of thousands of Qing soldiers gathered in Pukou, which is already dense enough. Originally, we only needed to consider the issue of artillery fire from the other side.

.But the artillery on the other side couldn't see this side at all, so they could only fire randomly based on estimates, not even indirect aiming, and there were not many casualties.

But now 100 dive bombers are hovering overhead, waiting for the opportunity to pounce on people, which is equivalent to 100 cannons mounted directly overhead. And the "giant shells" fired are 220 kilograms...

In this case, the mental impact on the Qing army was much higher than the actual number of people killed. When the bombers roared down, every Qing soldier on the ground thought it was coming for them, and they scattered with their lives.

Escape, all structures were disrupted, and everyone just wanted to survive.

At first, the anti-aircraft artillery position was still firing tenaciously, but later it was discovered that it was difficult to hit an aircraft with an anti-aircraft gun that flew down vertically at more than 80 degrees. Large and medium-caliber anti-aircraft guns were simply impossible, and even small-caliber rapid-fire cannons required very high skills.

When this kind of aircraft swooped down, it continued to fire. Those artillerymen who insisted on shooting always suffered heavy casualties, while those who abandoned the anti-aircraft guns and ran away survived. Soon, no one cared about the anti-aircraft guns anymore, and all the artillerymen also

Like the infantry, they looked for places to hide, hoping to survive this disaster.

…

Pukou Airport was a small airport with more than twenty Jebie fighter jets, but it was so close to the Yangtze River that it was destroyed on the runway without even a minimum warning time.

Now that the Ming Army's aircraft have experience, it is sometimes more efficient and economical to use strafing to deal with aircraft parked on the runway than to drop bombs. The bombs are reserved for dealing with some high-value hard targets, such as hangars and train stations.

Such.

After twenty Ospreys "swept" Pukou Airport, they turned around and bombed the train station.

The piercing sirens of Pukou Railway Station rang in the sky, but there were neither anti-aircraft guns nor Qing fighter jets around. I watched helplessly as swarms of bombers roared down and fireballs rose up from the ground.

The bombing targets were all the buildings, all the trains parked at the station, and the shiny rails.

There are not many buildings on the train station, but they are all important. The dispatch station, control room, train warehouse, etc., successively collapsed in the explosion of the 220 kilogram bomb. To deal with the long train lying on the rails, dive bombers are most suitable

However, especially the kind of trains parked very densely in the shunting yard, a bomb will blow up a large area.

Several Ospreys noticed several very conspicuous carriages, which seemed to be armored and had turrets above them. They were very interested and thought they were worth bombing. Each of these Ospreys dived once and finally dropped a bomb on it.

Emperor Guangwu's armored train was blown into two pieces with a loud noise. The fire ignited the artillery shells in the turret carriage. As a result, a series of explosions ignited an arms train on the track next door. The explosion was earth-shattering.

In addition to several rows of flatbed trucks pulling cannons and container trucks pulling munitions exploding and burning at the station, the pilot also saw two rows of long flatbed trucks with tanks tied to them with steel cables. The pilot counted them.

There are hundreds of vehicles.

The team leader immediately judged that these were tanks that the Qing army had removed from various army units in order to deal with the People's Guard's armor advantage, and were preparing to transport them across the Yangtze River to attack Nanjing. He immediately called in twenty Ospreys and dive-bombed them in turn until

Every tank and train were blown to pieces.

…

These dive bombers continued to bomb, and after dropping the bombs, they immediately flew back to reload. The pilots did not even get off the plane, and then flew directly back to the battlefield.

At first, they were equipped with two 220 kilogram bombs. Later, hard targets such as train stations and heavy artillery positions were completed. Against the fleeing Qing infantry, this kind of heavy bomb was not effective, and the damage was not as good as that of fighter jets. In addition,

It was getting dark, and the accuracy of the bomb delivery was not very good, so they all went back one after another to replace the 100 kilogram bombs. Four of these bombs could be loaded at a time, and their killing effect on infantry was greatly enhanced.

Xiang Xiaoqiang kept seeing the latest battle reports in the fortress. When he learned about this situation, he immediately changed his mind and directly suggested that the Army Aviation Commander send horizontal bombers again to carry out extensive bombing of Pukou.

A few old men did some research and thought that now that they had absolute air supremacy and it was still dark, there was nothing wrong with being more aggressive, so they sent 50 more Swan bombers, each carrying 10 100kg bombs, to Pukou.

From the sky, conduct a thorough bombing of strategic areas such as the military barracks, dock area, station area, and warehouse area.

It was not until seven o'clock, when it was completely dark and precision dive bombing was no longer possible, that the Osprey formation returned. However, the bombing of Pukou had not stopped. More horizontal bombers were transferred from nearby airports to continue the night bombing. At this time,

There is no need to talk about accuracy, just drop bombs into the sea of ​​​​fire below. In the end, the number of "Swan" bombers and old-fashioned biplane bombers that participated in the bombing reached 150.

Pukou has become a sea of ​​fire. As a traditional military stronghold in the Northern Qing Dynasty, it has completely lost its value.

The dock area is completely unusable. The station area is completely unusable. The warehouse area is completely blown up. In the barracks area, not a single dormitory is on fire. As for the number of Qing soldiers killed by the bombing... there is no statistics yet. But

According to Ming Jun's estimation, it should be in five figures.

More importantly, this air raid completely destroyed the fighting will of the Qing army on the north bank. Emperor Guangwu's plan to capture Nanjing on New Year's Eve was completely bankrupt.

As burning as Pukou, there are also zoos and Qing army positions at Zimuzhou.

The zoo was littered with dead bodies, some of them animals, but most of them were human. People wearing Qing army uniforms. A bomb fell on the snake house, and hundreds of venomous and non-venomous snakes crawled out and scattered around every corner of the zoo.

In a corner, the Qing soldiers were all from the north, and most of them had never seen a snake before. They were terrified, as if these snakes were ten times more terrifying than the bombers in the sky. They yelled "Long worm", "Long worm" and ran away in all directions.

However, the Ming army is all from the south and knows snakes better. Firstly, they are not so afraid. Secondly, they all know that snakes are hibernating during this season. Now that they are woken up, they are not so active. If they pay a little attention, they will not be

bite.

But these snakes also caused some troubles to the Ming army. Many snakes got into the engines of tanks and vehicles of the Ming army in order to stay warm, and were twisted in. The engines always stopped working, and it took a lot of effort to kill them.

Get the snake out.

At eight o'clock in the evening, the People's Guard completely occupied the zoo and captured more than 4,000 remaining Qing troops. These Qing troops were the remnants of the Fourth Eight Banner Division. At this point, the second Eight Banner Division became prisoners of the People's Guard.

"Now," Xiang Xiaoqiang leaned back in his chair comfortably, took a deep breath, and said to himself with his eyes closed, "the battle to defend Nanjing is basically won."

After a while, he opened his eyes, looked at the big map, and asked Xiuxiu behind him:

"Hey, are the three floating bridges on Zimu Island still there?"

Xiuxiu nodded and smiled:

"Well, I still have it... Mr. Xiang, do you really think... that the Battle of Nanjing was not won?"

"What's true?" Xiang Xiaoqiang said with a smile, "I have to discuss the detailed plan with the old men...If I win, I have won a long time ago...But this battle is not over yet...I

I said, you can’t just let Qinglu go so cheaply.”
Chapter completed!