Bismarck

Although this small fishing village is small, its geographical location is very important - it covers the rear of Alexandria Port and directly controls two bays: Montaza Palace-Mamoura Bay in the direction of Alexandria, and Aboukir Bay on the back of the cape, facing Rashid. At the same time, it also directly controls the coastal road and railway from Alexandria Port to Rashid City.

It can be said to be a gateway near the Port of Alexandria that can be used for both offense and defense.

In fact, in 1798, the famous British general Nelson led the British Mediterranean Fleet to annihilate the Eastern Fleet of Napoleon's Egyptian expedition here, causing the Corsican hero's ambitious Eastern strategy to abort before it could be realized.

Because this is a strategic location, there have always been fortresses and garrisons here since ancient times. Even now, there are two ancient castles, two artillery positions, an anti-aircraft artillery battalion position, and a barracks.

And...for the past month, the six 155 fortress guns here have been the old rival of the destroyers and light cruisers that attempted to attack the Italian Navy.

As for the outcome of the confrontation between the artillery and the battleships…obviously, the Italian fleet lost more than it won.

Southwest of the fort, on the southwest side of the Mamura Bay, on a small hill three to five kilometers away from the sea, surrounded by square kilometers of gardens in a mixed Egyptian and European style, is a luxurious building full of Florentine style - the summer palace of the Egyptian puppet king Farouk I, MONTAZA GARDEN.

Just a few hundred meters away from the Montazah Palace is a small island called Tea Island, which has a breakwater and a land bridge. Together with the hill of the Montazah Palace, it forms a beautiful bay with a flat beach but a certain depth: Montazah Bay. Here is the private yacht dock and private beach of the puppet emperor Farouk.

The palace, which cost a huge amount of money to build, is located on the Mediterranean Sea and has beautiful scenery. If it were peacetime, it would definitely be a relaxing tourist destination. But now, inside and outside the Montazah Palace, it is a mess...

"Hurry up. Hurry up. Hurry up. You crude Egyptian camels, hurry up and put up the barbed wire for me..."

Under the new moon of September 23, a British officer in khaki uniform, with a team of soldiers armed with live ammunition, was shouting and yelling at the Egyptians to build fortifications here.

Although this is theoretically the palace of the King of Egypt, the Royal Guards are stationed here, and the King of Egypt is also the head of state. However, no matter how theoretically, Egypt is just a British colony.

Since you are the imperial army in the colonies, the British Empire doesn't care whether you argue with it or not.

In fact, if there was not a shortage of manpower and the Egyptian Royal Guard had to be used as strong men to build fortifications, these Egyptian camels should have been sent to Sudan long ago.

After all, these pagan followers of Muhammad dare to have a hostile attitude towards the British Empire. Even your King Farouk did not have the same attitude towards us civilized British gentlemen.

Isn't it better to be obedient citizens like the Indians? Why do we have to pursue national independence...

"Tsk, sooner or later I'll mess you up, so you won't be 'civilized' all the time. Universal values, no matter how universal they are, can't be applied to inferior people like you - I'm talking about you. What are you looking at Aboukir doing over there? Hurry up and work, don't try to be lazy!"

The British officer cursed and scolded the Egyptian soldier covered in dust, his heart full of disdain.

But soon, the British officers found something wrong...

"What is that? It's like a meteor, and it's still flashing in the distance... artillery fire! This is artillery fire! The direction of the artillery fire is... Aboukir Battery!"

The horrified officer looked back hurriedly and saw a cluster of meteors with dazzling tracers hitting the direction of the Aboukir Battery.

There was a loud explosion, flash and noise, bringing up a cloud of death and destruction at the Aboukir Battery.

More than 186 kilometers away, the battleship Tirpitz, surrounded by a group of Italian cruisers and destroyers, was moving lazily towards Aboukir. Behind her were more than a dozen requisitioned civilian ships carrying a full landing force. Above her head, the GR- night fighter squadron, under the command of an early warning command fighter incarnated as a sea attack suppression ship, began a CAP combat air patrol in this airspace.

"How was it? Did you hit it?"

On the bridge of the huge battleship, Lindemann grabbed a bag of snacks and looked at Tirpitz, who was leaning lazily on the cushion beside him with a black leather book covering his eyes.

With one hand, the hamster lifted the book on his head slightly. He nodded lazily without even opening his eyes. At the same time, he stretched out his other paw like lightning, snatched the snack from Linderman's hand and poured it directly into his mouth. The stunned Linderman could only hear Shenhai Beizhai mumbling something while chewing the snack.

Listening carefully, it seems that what she said was: "Such a weak enemy, how boring?"

This girl has been very arrogant recently, Lindeman couldn't help laughing. It seems that the long battle has made her change her lazy habits.

Most of them just look lazy, but they are actually very serious.

"If you are weak, just fight hard and don't get hurt." Lindeman pinched her ear and said.

"Don't worry, don't worry. There's no way these people could hurt me. Don't worry."

"That's good. Don't ask me for food and comfort when you get hurt..."

He couldn't comfort a big battleship with snacks. Most of his salary had been turned over to her little belly recently, which made him feel distressed that he hadn't saved anything for such a long time.

She was not happy to hear this and glared, "As the captain, it is your duty to comfort the warship!"

What’s the difference between not comforting the captain of the battleship and being a salted fish!

Chapter 514: Montazah Landing Battle

The accuracy of naval guns decreases greatly as the distance increases. However, under normal circumstances, the targets fired at on the other side are all solid point targets such as bunkers and artillery positions.

You can't shoot without getting close...

If the army was attacking, they could always find a way to get close to the fortress and launch close artillery fire or even organize engineer blasting by relying on the complex terrain on land, trenches, tunnels, etc. However, it was not easy to get close to the battleships that were one or two hundred meters long and could be seen dozens of kilometers away in the vast sea.

Unfortunately, the 155mm coastal artillery has an effective range of kilometers, which is a tough opponent for light cruisers and even heavy cruisers. Even battleships will suffer if they are not careful.

However, if guided weapons are used to carry out surgical strikes outside the defense zone, and the detection and strike effects are also combined...

For the side with a shorter effective range and less powerful artillery, that would be a huge tragedy.

Although the main body of the ship was transferred here, Lütjens' headquarters was still set up on the Duke of Abruzzi, because this way he could coordinate the bombardment of the German and Italian warships nearby.

Bismarck, who was on the Duke of Abruzzi with his captain, commanding the Italian fleet's fire control bombardment on behalf of Tizi, couldn't help but think of a sentence: On the topic of ultra-long-range bombardment versus medium-range bombardment in a certain Mengli...

Ahem, we are still on the battlefield.

Now he had to command the 152mm main guns of the Italian cruiser to suppress the British artillery positions in Alexandria.

But you can't let your mind go off topic or anything like that.

He shook his head, operated the Italian fire control device, and began an Italian observation, aiming the next round of firepower at a newly appeared artillery position...

To fire at sea, the heavy artillery must be set up on the seashore. But in Bismarck's perception, the speed of deploying the heavy artillery is not as fast as the speed of her firepower transfer, so these heavy artillery are her food~

In the face of C3I, which integrates reconnaissance and strike, the traditional approach of simply piling up troop forces to gain local firepower advantages is nothing more than a sitting duck before it is deployed.

If, in the face of the integrated investigation and attack, you can still carry out - of course, Bismarck will not give them this opportunity.

Although she didn't really like fighting, she was used to this kind of situation where it was either you die or I live. On the battlefield, each of us fights for ourselves, and it's better for me to live than for you...

In Bismarck's view, these British soldiers were also quite miserable. After all, on a one-way transparent battlefield, their behavior was really... To be honest, sometimes Bismarck felt a little bit sorry for them, as it was close to a one-sided massacre...

Looking at the British artillerymen who were firing artillery on the temporary position behind the ruins and who thought they were doing it without anyone noticing, Bismarck numbly pressed the button to fire.

The ship's guns opened fire, causing a violent tremor.

Another artillery position was covered by fire and was completely destroyed in an instant.

Speaking of which, the heavy artillery that the British can still use in the city seems to be getting less and less after this month of brutal tug-of-war...

----

If the 152mm Italian cruiser, which cannot yet control its firing range, can fire so accurately, how could the 380mm main gun, which has retrieved its body and is firing with guided shells, be weak?

The two forts at Aboukir were built on two 19th-century bastions, which provided a certain degree of defense even against 203mm main guns. But the problem was that both forts were open-air structures...

If it is a conventional artillery shell, there is no way to suppress the dispersion to the gun position shelter, then guided high-explosive bombs are a completely different matter.

In less than half an hour, the six 155 coastal guns of the two batteries were blown into six pieces under the muzzle of Tirpitz.

After destroying the artillery, Tirpitz was not satisfied and turned his guns to bombard the nearby British barracks. On the other side, Bismarck also commanded the Italian cruiser, and after clearing out the few remaining heavy artillery of the British in the city, he began to bombard the British positions near the Montaza Palace.

The artillery positions were destroyed, the heavy howitzers were suppressed, and after confirming their safety, the Axis fleet began to slowly approach the coastline of Alexandria Port.

Under the cover of the bombardment, the dozen or so requisitioned fishing boats and civilian ships, under the cover of the destroyers, had already separated from the Axis fleet at some point, and quietly, under the cover of darkness, slowly sailed towards the Montazah Palace.

----

At the same time, under the beach on the sea side of the Montazah Palace, several divers who had just climbed down from an underwater vehicle, dressed in black, carrying oxygen tanks and wearing flippers, were taking advantage of the gap when the British positions were suppressed. They were desperately grabbing various handholds on the seabed underwater, and crawling over little by little, despite the powerful pressure of the autumnal equinox tide that was rushing towards the beach along the wind direction, which could easily make the heavy manned torpedoes sway.

Their task was to lay waterproof explosive packs in the locations of the underwater barbed wire and anti-landing pile obstacle areas that the British Army had forced the Egyptian Royal Guard to hastily lay out.

Fortunately, the British hastily arranged their positions in the past few days, and the main force of the British army on the southern front suffered a disastrous defeat, leaving Litchi no time to take care of this place, so the British position deployment is still very imperfect...

But even so, we still have to hurry up.

After all, as Lütjens' secretary ship in this life, with her naval knowledge, it is easy for her to calculate the tidal information.

The end of March and the end of September are the biggest astronomical tides of the year (the spring equinox and the autumn equinox). According to naval experience and relevant intelligence, today's high tide should be around 2:30 in the morning and 3:00 in the afternoon, plus or minus half an hour.

If they force a landing at night, because of the unclear vision at night, flares and searchlights may even exacerbate the observation errors of the human eye. Even with special training, mistakes will basically be made in such situations.

Generally, the landing time is during the day, but if it is a high tide at 2:30 in the morning, the time is calculated based on the same length of time between day and night on the autumnal equinox... At dawn, the tide is almost at the bottom. And at around 9:40 in the morning, the tide will start to rise again.

Although the entire beach here is in the direction of the wind, the waves are already large, and it is still easy for the boat to lose control due to the tail waves when landing - small boats like speedboats are easy to lose control.

The most important thing is that today is a high tide day, and the tide is the strongest throughout the year.

We can console ourselves by saying that if we land at low tide, at least we don’t have to worry about the fragile speedboat being overturned by a wave, right?

Besides, if they couldn't get up, they could just hold on a little longer and take advantage of the rising tide to get on assault boats and transport ships to retreat - if they hadn't been blown up by British artillery fire...

Although, this is considered self-mockery... Bismarck, who was distracted and daydreaming, couldn't help but reveal his signature silly smile...

---

Just as Bismarck was distracted, there was a flash of artillery fire on the other side of Alexandria Port. Bismarck knew that Rommel was commanding the troops in the direction of the western port and was starting a second round of offensive in the direction of Alexandria Airport, intending to open up the road to the 164th Division's position.

Now it all depends on which side Litchi, who is already overwhelmed by the defeat of the British armored division on the southern front, will mobilize his troops to rescue first.

The sky was already turning pale, and in accordance with the combat plan and coordination requirements, the firepower of the Italian cruisers had begun to turn towards the direction of the Montaza Palace.

And in Bismarck's perception, under the receding tide, anti-landing piles with hideous looks and even mines and barbed wire hanging on them began to gradually emerge from the water - and less than half a meter underwater, several divers were trying hard to resist the pull of the receding tide, struggling to tie the last few packs of explosives to the pillars of the obstacle.

The Italians who sank two British battleships in Alexandria were said to be operating a torpedo and underwater demolition brigade. Their original record was reduced to one sank and one disabled by themselves and Zeppelin. But now, it seems that they have found a new career?

However, even if they don't explode completely, it doesn't matter. Tizi and I can still go and make the final move.

However, if one does not have one's own perception ability, this would be nothing but wishful thinking.

However, just as Bismarck was thinking about this and continuing to command the Italian cruisers to destroy the British positions with firepower, a deep and steady male voice suddenly came from behind him:

"It's half past five - pass on my order. The landing operation has begun. Bismarck, Tirpitz, prepare to carry out artillery coordination with the landing troops, and now continue to suppress the British positions."

Following Lütjens' order, the searchlight of the Duke of Abruzzi began to flash light commands.

The action has finally begun.

Everyone was excited.

---------

Following this order, the requisitioned civilian ships, and even the destroyers, either began to lower their boats or start their engines and rushed towards the Montazah Palace. These ships were loaded with 1200 officers and soldiers of the Italian San Marco Marines and 12 47mm anti-tank guns.

Their mission was to occupy the Montazah Palace, Montazah Bay and Tea Island under the cover of artillery fire, and then control the town of Mamura, one kilometer southeast of Montazah Bay, and cut off the last retreat route for the 20,000 British troops in Alexandria.

After all, no matter how fierce the firepower attack was, it was impossible to strike and cut off at any time in front of the British who still had a certain ability to fight back.

Although the firepower attack is brutal, only by finally occupying and consolidating the troops can we achieve final victory.

As the landing fleet got closer, Bismarck and Tirpitz directed their naval guns and began to hit the British targets one by one.

The firepower support points of the beachhead positions were destroyed, the obstacles in the minefields on the beach were violently cleared by artillery fire, and the enemy reinforcements who tried to gather reinforcements in the rear passage of the battlefield were covered by artillery fire at the assembly point when they saw the situation was not good. The British artillerymen who secretly set up artillery in various corners and tried to counterattack were too late to set up artillery in front of the cat-and-mouse sisters who could detect and strike at the same time, and they enjoyed the free delivery of various naval gun high-explosive shells, even with fuses and guidance...

In the face of the almost integrated C4ISR of command, control, communications, intelligence, battlefield surveillance, and target reconnaissance, as well as the precise strike efficiency of guided weapons, it is okay if the troop size is hidden. But if they dare to show their heads, it is basically a matter of firing another guided shell if one can't knock them down.

Everything is false, everything is allowed, under the guided artillery shells, all beings are equal...

When I think about it this way, it feels like a miracle.

As he was thinking, a certain Persian cat was distracted again, until - "Ouch."

A chestnut hits.

"What are you grinning about?"

The startled Persian cat turned around and saw his captain's depressed face...

"Don't be distracted during a battle. The San Marco Marines are about to land. Pay attention and don't get your own people killed."

"Oh, Captain, where did you see me hitting my own people? I'm not Italian~"

While the captain was scolding his own cat, he hit the Persian cat's head hard in annoyance.

Then, there was a slight click...

So, are you going back to Germany to see an orthopedic doctor?

Hehehe… Captain, this is your own fault for not being able to control the severity of the problem.

The Persian cat suddenly thought of a certain story and wanted to laugh again. Then he was glared at by Lütjens, who was covering his fingers and gasping in pain.

It was already dawn, and with the deafening roar of artillery fire on the sea and the hum of aircraft engines gradually coming from the sky, the dawn broke through the horizon. In the sky and earth that suddenly became bright under the brilliant morning glow, dozens of fighter planes, divided into several formations, flew over the heads of the fleet on the sea.

The warhawks, loaded with bombs and fighter cannon bullets, began to fly towards the distant Nile Delta on the African continent under the guidance of an early warning command fighter - that was the direction from which reinforcements from the Royal Air Force and the British Army might arrive.

As for the British communications, will they be disrupted by electronic jammers?

2333...

On the sea, the fleet was less than five minutes away from the beach.