This is indeed a helpless choice, but what can I do if my equipment is not as good as the enemy? I can only fill it with the lives and blood of the soldiers. However, what is admirable is that the soldiers did not retreat. They drove these planes with just one bomb and flew towards the enemy's warship without hesitation...

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Chapter 4 Airplane

The night sky in Shanghai is still as starry as usual, but the ground is fighting in a bloody battle!

In order to attract the attention of the Japanese army, the 88th Division located in the direction of Gongda Spinning Mill and the 87th Division of the Marine Corps Command were attacking the Japanese army with all their might. In an instant, the whole city was filled with shouts of killing and guns.

The 87 and 88th Divisions are the most elite troops in the national army. Their full-scale attack on the Japanese army in the dark will naturally put a lot of pressure on the Japanese army, so the Japanese did not dare to neglect the slightest use of all their solutions to defend. Isn’t that? Armored vehicles and tanks that did not appear during the day drove up, and several warships also entered the Huangpu River and fired rows of artillery shells at the front of the position. Even their planes took off in the darkness and bombed four times, which only made the flames on our positions shoot out a thick barrage with bullets and shells...

However, what Japan did not expect was that this time our target was not the Gongda Spinning Mill and the Marine Corps Command, but Huishan Wharf, which had not been attacked since the war started!

After Sun Yuanliang reported my suggestion, it was quickly recognized by the headquarters and started to deploy. I think the reason why they agreed with my plan so quickly and put it into effect immediately was that there were many Japanese spies within the national army, and they were worried that the plan would be known to the Japanese after a long night and dreaming for a long time. More importantly, the Japanese reinforcements would soon arrive in Shanghai. Even if our army had thousands of troops, we would not be able to take down the strongholds in front of us.

So our regiment and the 36th Division of the National Army took advantage of the night to sneak to Huishan Wharf and waited for the order to charge.

The 36th Division's unit is also a German division. It is far away from Shanghai when the incident happened... Do you remember the Xi'an Incident? Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng detained Chiang Kai-shek and asked the Republic to do it. This happened eight months ago, and the 36th Division was transferred by Chiang Kai-shek to Shaanxi to quell the rebellion.

It is precisely because the 36th Division was late and has the same reason as us - I had to rest for a few days on the train, so the 36th Division suffered no major casualties and maintained its morale and combat effectiveness, so I gave me a very important bargaining chip for the raid plan.

Speaking of a tough battle like this, if the equipment like the German Armored Division was not based on our regiment charge, I would not be very confident even if everything went well. After all, the fortifications of the Japanese were very strong, so we could not have to use a big knife and a bayonet to deal with their bunkers and tanks! But with the German Armored Division, I would feel much more relieved. Although their equipment was not very good, at least there were heavy machine guns, mortars, and mountain cannons!

Later I learned that Zhang Zhizhong attached great importance to this battle and was required to win in one battle, so he not only invested in the 36th Division in this direction, but also invested in the only two artillery regiments of the National Army in Shanghai, a flight brigade and two tank companies just arrived from Nanjing...

Of course, as a company commander, I don’t know all of this. I only know that I hold the rifle in my hand and stare at the relatively calm Huishan Pier in front of me, waiting for the moment when the upward peak gives us an attack order.

A fifty-man diving force has been sent out. They are warriors who are familiar with water selected from our regiment. The reason why we chose our regiment is because it is difficult for rifles to play any role in melee combat. In contrast, the big swords of our 59th Army have become famous for killing from Xifengkou in one battle, so these fifty men did not even bring rifles, and only grabbed a few grenades with a big sword on their backs and set off. Their mission was to dive to the Huishan Wharf under the noses of the Japanese warships, waiting for the attack signal to rush into the enemy group and attack inside and outside our army...

"Company Commander!" Li Wenxi next to him asked with some concern: "Do you think the Third Battalion Commander and others can successfully sneak to the dock?"

"It depends on their ability!"

"I don't think there is a big problem!" The old squad leader continued, "Didn't you see the Japanese warships just firing at our positions? They never thought that someone would come over the river!"

"That's it!" Platoon Commander Chi looked at me and smiled, "Of course, no one could have thought of this trick. It's our company commander's ability!"

A few "thump" sounds, and then two fiery red signal flares suddenly rose in the sky. Before we were mentally prepared, we heard a fire of cannons. Rows of shells passed over us with sharp roars and smashed them hard towards the Japanese stronghold at the dock.

"Boom..." A fire rose into the air in front of us. It was obvious that this time the Chinese army concentrated all the artillery fire to the dock, so this bombing was somewhat powerful. Heavy artillery, mountain cannons, and mortars, hundreds of large and small artillery shells exploded at the dock, and the dock was instantly blown to the flames.

The Japanese army did not expect that we would concentrate artillery fire to bomb the dock, so they were not prepared at all. Many Japanese soldiers were knocked into the air by shells before they could run back to the fortifications and then divided into several pieces and dropped back to the ground.

Before the soldiers could applaud, there was another roar of artillery shells, and the artillery shells exploded one after another in the dock. Just as I was surprised that the artillery fire of the National Army would be so powerful, a roar of an aircraft suddenly came from the sky. At first I thought it was a Japanese plane to look for concealment, but when I saw the biplane flying in the air in the flames and the hazy moonlight... I realized that it was a national army plane!

It was World War II at this time, and China is probably the only one who is still fighting with biplane fighters.

There are five aircraft in total, and they attacked the Japanese warship in the Huangpu River in the form of formation... At this time, I couldn't help but shouted in my heart. It was obvious that the large-caliber artillery on the Japanese warship would pose a considerable threat to our army's charge at any time. Although we were raiding, if there were warships... it would provide artillery fire assistance to the docks just to adjust the lower angle of the firing. The best weapon to deal with warships is the aircraft...

However, can five old aircraft blow up the Japanese warships? I am quite suspicious of this.

Later I realized that what I was worried about was exactly what Shangfeng was worried about, because although these five aircraft were already the most advanced aircraft of the National Army, it was still relatively weak - the American Hawk 3 biplane. It could only carry one 227 kilogram or 4 53 kilogram bombs at a time... The small bomb naturally could not pose any threat to the warships, so the situation at that time was that each of these five aircraft was equipped with a 227 kilogram bomb and set off!

They only have one chance to bomb, because the next time Japan will be prepared, and they will at least send some combat power to protect the warships. So in other words, whether our army can blow up this warship depends on these five bombs!

This is indeed a helpless choice, but what can I do if my equipment is not as good as the enemy? I can only fill it with the lives and blood of the soldiers. However, what is admirable is that the soldiers did not retreat. They flew these planes with just one bomb and flew to the enemy's warship...

Everyone's eyes were focused on these aircraft, watching them fly closer to the warship and then scatter to approach the warship from different angles... The combat power of this era is not as good as modern night vision instruments, so in order to accurately hit the target, they must fly at low altitude and approach the target. As pilots, they should be very clear, that is, there will be many anti-aircraft machine guns and anti-aircraft guns on the warships, which means that they are dangerous to fly at low altitude, but they still do this without hesitation.

"Boom!" As expected, the anti-aircraft guns on the warship quickly fired a shell at the plane. In an instant, balls of black smoke exploded beside the plane, causing the wings to sway violently. A series of bullets with light also rushed into the air, as if they were like several sharp swords trying to split the planes in the air into several pieces.

The pilots flexibly controlled the fighter planes to change their flight routes and avoided anti-aircraft guns. It can be seen that their flight levels were very high. The fighter planes suddenly rushed up and down and made it impossible to grasp their whereabouts. However, an aircraft still caused the stray bullet to blew up and smoke, and soon, it dragged its long tail and crashed into the river with a roar. A ball of fire broke out!

But the crash of this plane was not meaningless. The other four fighter planes took the plane to rush into the Japanese defense circle and came over the warship...

An airplane dropped a bomb, and the bomb was unfortunately not hit by an enemy ship.

Another plane dropped bombs... With a "boom", a fire broke out in the warship, and then another fire... Two bombs hit the warship one after another!

The soldiers shouted for the pilots to accurately drop bombs, but what was disappointing was that the destructive power of these bombs was too small, and the attack power of this warship as big as the Japanese army was obviously not enough.

When we put all our hopes on the last plane, we found that it had been hit and smoke was rising.

While the soldiers were disappointed, they were shocked to find that the plane rushed towards the warship with a roar as soon as it dived...

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I would like to pay tribute to the captain of the Second Flight Brigade Shen Chonghai and the co-pilot Chen Xichun in this chapter!
Chapter completed!