In fact, the Tang Army was also frightened by its losses: Bernard's face turned pale after he heard that the southern bombardment fleet had lost a battleship, two cruisers were injured, and two destroyers were seriously injured.
The Imperial Navy of the Tang Dynasty seems to have never suffered such huge losses since its establishment. Although the one that was hit hard this time was an old fleet that was taken over from the Chu Kingdom, it still bears the name of the Tang Navy.
More than 400 people were injured and killed. One battleship was severely rolled over and unable to continue fighting. Because of the serious water intrusion, even towing it back to the port for repairs was dangerous.
The situation of the other two cruisers that were hit by torpedoes was better, because these two cruisers were relatively new and were customized by Chu State later from Tang State Shipyard, so there was not much of a problem.
But even so, these two cruisers can no longer participate in the war: they must go back for overhaul, or simply be dismantled.
The other two destroyers were severely damaged because of their small tonnage. Their size meant that after eating a torpedo, they basically had no combat effectiveness.
The artillery fleet, which suffered heavy losses, has withdrawn from the battle, which directly doubled the combat pressure on the Tang Army's southern front.
The dwarves also smelled this fighter plane, and they assembled a large number of troops to try to counterattack from this direction. If the Tang Navy's carrier aviation had not focused on attacking ground targets here, the losses of the Tang Army might have been even higher.
The loss situation of the landing troops is not optimistic either. The Tang Army has now lost at least 300 officers and soldiers of the special forces. These are all precious little things. The loss of one of the elites of the elites will be heartbreaking.
The ordinary soldiers who came ashore suffered at least 4,000 casualties. This number greatly exceeded the expectations before the war. The tenacity of the dwarves' defense shocked the commanders of the Tang Empire.
In order to destroy the dwarves' airport runway, the Tang army prepared a special bomb called a saboteur to destroy the airport.
This kind of bomb is similar to a huge box, with upper and lower layers inside. The falling speeds of the upper and lower layers are completely different, and their effects are also completely different.
The lower layer is equipped with a small ground-penetrating bomb. They can smash into the solid runway of the airport and explode under the runway, causing greater damage. The runway blown by such bombs is full of large and small deep holes.
The hole is very difficult to repair.
The upper layer is equipped with trigger bombs with induction devices, and delay fuses with different settings are installed on them. This ensures that the enemy will not be able to send out engineers to repair the airport facilities destroyed by the bombs for a period of time.
An airport attacked by such a bomb will not be able to carry out repairs within 2 to 3 days. Even after two or three days, the delay fuse will occasionally be activated, triggering the bomb to explode.
Several important airports deployed by the dwarves behind the steel barrier have been destroyed by special airport destruction bombs called saboteurs. Planes will definitely be unable to take off for a while.
The aircraft deployed at these airports are also out of service, but the dwarves have been prepared for this.
The aircraft deployed by the opponent in these airports are all old models, because Moss's initial judgment was that the Tang Army would definitely destroy these airports located in the front and within the strike radius of the Tang Army as soon as possible.
Moreover, due to their location, these airports are tasked with attacking the Tang Army's maritime fleet. It is obviously useless to deploy air defense fighters. Instead, bombers and attack aircraft should be deployed.
Therefore, most of the aircraft parked in these airports are Saab bombers, as well as some MiG-3s and Il-2s. These aircraft are all outdated, and they are all used as recharge, performing ground and sea attack missions.
But now, these planes have been paralyzed at the airport, some are parked in hangars, and some have been destroyed on both sides of the runway, and are still covered with broken camouflage nets.
The Tang Army would not use this weapon to bomb airports close to the coastline, because this is an important area that must be captured quickly. Therefore, these weapons only attack airports far away from the coastline, and the delay fuses are not set for too long.
Anyway, the worst case scenario is just to bomb again with similar weapons in a few days. The Tang army will not cause much trouble for themselves.
At this moment, at the end of the destroyed airport runway, next to a bomb crater, in an anti-aircraft gun position made of sandbags, a group of dwarf soldiers were setting up a temporary defensive position.
They set up a Maxim heavy machine gun in the gap between the sandbags. The ammunition feeder pressed the bullet chain into the bolt and looked nervously at the direction where the Tang army might appear.
These dwarf soldiers were temporarily transferred here. They were ordered to hold on to the airport and repel the Tang army who tried to seize the airport.
The dwarf archers were also very nervous. They were ordered to set up a temporary position here and heard that the Tang army had begun to move around.
An infantryman opened an ammunition box beside them and opened the paper used as a buffer inside, revealing a neat row of grenades.
The surrounding riflemen hurriedly took out grenades from the ammunition boxes and piled them in convenient locations. The commander looked at the broken Bofors anti-aircraft gun and ignored the grenades scattered at his feet.
Anti-aircraft gun shell casings.
"I heard that the Tang Army had occupied some trenches on the second line of defense. How come they were lost so quickly?" a dwarf soldier asked his comrade beside him, his beard trembling slightly on his chest in response to his voice.
"Who knows?" Another soldier replied in a low voice. As he spoke, he loaded a new drum cartridge into his Bobosha submachine gun.
"If Tang Army soldiers come up from here! Fire to suppress them and push them back!" After analyzing some terrain, the commander said to the machine gunner: "Force them to leave the trenches and move!"
"When they get close, use grenades to eliminate as many enemies as possible! After knocking off their attack, we will fight back..." As he spoke, he pointed to the open space in front of the anti-aircraft gun position.
Just as he was speaking, a burly infantry fighting vehicle rushed up the slope, revealing its sharp front. It was an eight-wheeled armored vehicle with a machine gun turret on it.
Before the group of dwarves could react, a second armored vehicle rushed up. The turret on it was horizontal and spitting tongues of fire to the other side.
Immediately afterwards, everyone could feel the ground beneath their feet shaking slightly, and soon the long barrel of a Type 96 main battle tank stretched out from the horizon. What rushed out immediately after was its huge and solid tank.
