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"What kind of monster is this! I can't break it!" Jop aimed his M2 heavy machine gun at the KMF's torso. The enemy was leisurely changing its magazine, while he could only fire sparks at its chest.
"Aim from a different spot! Its chest is its hardest spot!" Samuel was still on the radio when Sergeant Lewincht, the machine gunner on his left, answered him. As he spoke, the sergeant had already disarmed the pursuing dummy on his left, forcing it to retreat in a huff.
"Other places?" Before Jop could fully grasp the meaning of those words, the captain had already positioned the belly of the PBY, which was flying at full speed, on the water. With this up-and-down motion, the corporal's gun barrel swayed up and down, instantly sending a big golden flower flying into KMF's head.
"I shot it? I took it down?" Jop couldn't believe his eyes. As the captain flew the plane under a highway bridge, the doll seemed to freeze, crashing into the bridge railing and shattering into pieces that fell into the water.
"Don't let your guard down, Corporal, the battle isn't over yet!" Lewincht shouted warily, but just as he was anxiously watching several more KMFs rushing towards them from the sky, a few strangely shaped three-crown aircraft arrived and rescued them.
……
“I see a large hole in your wing, pilot.”
"We've already thrown away what we could, so it's fine for now." Captain Goodlson looked at the Saab 21 fighters whizzing overhead—these new aircraft, resembling the American P-38s but with a single propeller mounted behind the cockpit for reverse thrust, were only started by the Swedish military industry at the end of last year. Today, it seemed they could finally form a squadron for combat.
“We can no longer see any enemy aircraft hovering over Stockholm,” said the Saab 21 leader. “Can you contact Zoningholm Palace?”
"I'm sorry we can't help, but we just passed by there. The palace wasn't on fire. We suggest you linger for about 10 kilometers in the southwest suburbs of the city."
"Thank you." The Saab 21 squad turned and left. "I have another favor to ask: we saw a group of civilians surrounding a stranded destroyer on the riverbank east of the city. They look like they need help."
“I understand.” Goodlson tilted the fuselage and looked around, but first noticed a pile of black cylindrical objects on the shallow pebbles beneath him. “Are these cannons from a sailing warship? What the hell, did the Britannians blow up the Vasa underwater?”
……
Of course, they found the Joaquin, which the Saab 21 leader had mentioned, without much effort.
Captain Lunger still had a heartbeat but was still unconscious. The first mate led him to shore by rope. After counting, of the approximately 90 people on the ship, less than 20 were still able to leave the deck, barely breathing.
The stairs leading from the sailboat dock to the breakwater were also destroyed. The civilians used the sign of a factory building that had been burned and charred to make a slide down the slope. The only recognizable things on the sign were the initial "P" of the company that owned the factory and a platypus fossil shrunken into a ball, which served as its trademark.
PBY Catalina stopped at the shore. The captain carried out the still conscious torpedo boat crew members and put them together with the other exhausted and wounded destroyer crew members.
"I apologize for what happened to you, sir." Goodelson wiped his sweat, greeted the first mate, and went straight to the point, "Is anyone here still able to move?"
"Your planes can't fit anything on this ship, whether it's movable or immobile, can they?" the first mate complained, letting out a disheartened laugh. "Look at our situation, Captain, what else can we do?"
"I can understand if you can't fight for your country, but at least let me see that you are willing to work hard to save more of your people." The captain gently put his hands on the first officer's shoulders, then pointed to the civilians—without exception, they all had scratches from the fire, but without exception, they were all either wearing bandages or carrying shovels and pickaxes used to put out the fire.
“There are many more people who need us, who need you!” Everyone on the plane disembarked, and Goodelson led them to the road above. He saw a pile of barrel-shaped objects on the road. “Send a few more people! Help us empty these barrels and fill them with water!”
……
The occasional rumble of Saab 21 fighter jets and KMFs echoed overhead, and the Stockholm firefighters were getting restless. Many of the fire trucks they had foreseen at the start of the bombing had been driven out of the city, only to be driven back as soon as the bombing ceased.
Fortunately, the riverbank was just a short walk away. A water pipe was placed in the river, and several firefighters used a hand-cranked air pump to pump water up, allowing the others to aim the water guns at higher points in the fire.
"Do you need help?" Before long, the firefighters saw a lifeboat from a warship or a civilian sailboat floating on the river, with several people dressed as naval crew members on board.
After realizing the fire was causing some trouble, the crew on the small boat took out a piece of broken glass the size of a license plate and shone it back at the PBY Catalina plane that had taken off again. Soon after, the plane would fly over to the fire and drop barrels filled with water from the machine guns of the self-defense gunners, drenching the burning building from top to bottom.
After confirming that the Britannians would not return, in addition to contacting the fire brigades of the nearest city, the next step was to mobilize as many civilians as possible to extinguish the fire.
The roads leading into the city were mostly blocked by the fire, and the only option was to use high-pressure water cannons to slowly create passages from the city's outskirts. This not only made firefighting more difficult, but also meant that there were many theaters and performance venues in the city where civilians had taken refuge, and no one knew whether they were alive or dead.
The flames burned relentlessly for eight hours. As the night drew to a close, the 5400 square kilometers of Stockholm were still ablaze under the night sky like a bonfire. The only good news was that the fires were mostly concentrated in the city center.
During this time, Goodlson's planes smuggled in everything that could hold water from all over the city—barrels, fish tanks, large ceramic jars—and wherever a fire faced difficulties, they were there to drop "water bombs." PBY Katrina's ample fuel tanks kept them afloat over Stockholm, ensuring they never had to return to the airport.
"Captain! Captain!" The first mate of the Joaquin was also running around contacting firefighters and civilians in the streets. "A factory near the Royal Institute of Technology has suddenly caught fire again!"
"We're on our way." PBY had just returned to the riverbank, loaded up the barrels and fish tank, and hurriedly took off. Elonora, in the co-pilot's seat, used binoculars to identify the target. "First Officer, I can see a factory engulfed in flames through the binoculars. The sign on its roof still has the letters DICE."
"This is it... Oh my god, everyone! Run!"
Before they could even comprehend what was happening, a massive mushroom cloud tore through the factory ceiling, sending rubble and debris, engulfed in flames, hurtling into the sky and the surrounding city. Jop and Lewincht, positioned at their machine gun positions, lost their footing, and the fish tank they were holding fell from the plane. PBY Katarina was nearly torn apart by the intense explosion and the heatwave. Looking back, the four letters remaining on the factory building had also fallen into the ruins and turned to ash.
"Good heavens!" Elanne exclaimed in horror, pressing her face against the window. "Could that be a place that deals with arms?"
"Let's go." The captain took off the hood of his flight suit. "After this flight, we'll rest. We won't have to work all night and lose sleep."
He gestured with his chin toward the street beneath the plane's belly. Through the smoke and flames, the previously dark and powerless city of Stockholm was now filled with the headlights of countless cars pouring in from outside the city, heading toward the flames stubbornly resisting in the city center.
PBY Katarina flew over Dorningholm Palace once again—the palace was still completely dark, but a star twinkled on one of its balconies.
That was King Gustav V. His Majesty stood there alone, holding a candlestick that swayed in the wind, waving like the North Star in the hazy night sky, watching them fly back to their base in the south.
……
Late at night, the fires in Stockholm finally died down. At that moment, Marshal Alexander was in Copenhagen, talking on the phone with Admiral Cunningham, who was resting in Hamburg.
“The near miss didn’t do much damage to HMS Illustrious’s hull,” Cunningham said meaningfully, referring to the damage to the Royal Navy’s aircraft carriers. “But HMS Formidable’s deck will take at least three weeks to repair, and HMS Victory’s bow was also damaged by that suicide attack bird and it can’t move at its maximum speed of 30 knots, so it also has to go into dry dock.”
“I understand what you mean, sir. Although I think that when the Pacific was facing the Japanese, the Illustrious-class destroyers shouldn’t have given up so early.”
“I’m buying the pilots some time to rest. It’s time for the Americans to step in.” Canning paused. “Sweden needs aircraft that can also provide ground support more right now. Besides, we can’t let the Americans’ Essex and Midway suffer from flooding while we’re starving.”
“Alright.” Alexander nodded over the phone. “By the way, in two more days, the air defense fortifications around the Øresund Strait will be basically complete. Could you bring the HMS King George V and the HMS Howe back?”
“The four King George V-class ships are currently undergoing major repairs and refits in Scapa Flow and Portsmouth. I’ve reassigned HMS Vanguard to escort the US aircraft carriers,” Cunningham said apologetically, then smiled. “But soon, you’ll see some familiar yet unfamiliar warships, not belonging to the Royal Navy, coming to the Channel to help you out.”
Chapter 470, Summary Part 10: The Norse Campaign - Phase One
From the plundering of its own fishermen at sea in early 1946 to the gambling and risky intelligence-sending before the Battle of Rügen, Sweden, which had been confined to a corner of the world during the two world wars, seemed destined to have its decades-long peace disrupted ever since the Britannian Empire made its way into the Baltic Sea.
On May 21, 1946, Britannia suffered a major defeat in the Battle of Hamburg, and its plan to seize the Jutland Peninsula by land and control the entrance to the Baltic Sea completely failed. The expeditionary force was left with only two options: either to invade Denmark or to pass through Sweden.
On June 5, two months after Sweden officially joined the North Atlantic Strategic Defense Alliance led by the United States and the United Kingdom, the Britannian Empire launched a large-scale air attack on the Swedish Royal Navy's naval base in Karlsruhe.
In addition to the sinking of four of the five US-supplied escort destroyers in territorial waters, all three destroyers on guard duty at Bornholm Island were also lost. Eight warships in the naval port were sunk on the spot, and more than ten other active vessels sustained varying degrees of damage. In almost a single day, the Royal Swedish Navy transformed from a strategic force into a mere bystander in the Baltic Sea theater.
[Note 022: In reality, the Karlsruhena naval base was built in the late 17th century and has never been damaged by war. It was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1998 and is one of the few remaining ancient naval bases in the world.]
而之后的6月8日南斯堪的纳维亚大海战后，瑞典海军在美英与布里塔尼亚帝国大规模交锋期间，得以将残存的海上力量分两个方向转移：4艘海防舰、1艘布雷舰和11艘驱逐舰安全前往了斯德哥尔摩方向；1艘巡洋舰和6艘驱逐舰撤出波罗的海前往哥德堡方向，但期间有4艘驱逐舰被击沉。
[For details, please see "Complete Collection, Volume Nine: The Great Naval Battles of Southern Scandinavia"]
Although the Britannian expeditionary fleet achieved considerable success against the British and American fleets, it was also an objective fact that the fleet was severely weakened during the battle. As a result, the landing force was not sent to Bornholm Island until five days after the end of the naval battle. By this time, most of the Swedish officers and soldiers and heavy weapons guarding the island had been withdrawn, leaving only less than a thousand officers, soldiers and civilians under control.
After taking control of the entire island on the 16th, although the attack on the US forces in the direction of Nuremberg was already unstoppable, in the Baltic Sea, Britannia had to clear the destroyed ports and channels to facilitate sea transport, and at the same time, it also had to deal with the harassment of the Northern Union Air Force.
By July 2nd, after fully preparing its forces in all directions, the Britannian Expeditionary Force deployed 8 destroyers, 19 transport ships, and over 7 airborne sorties to the coast of Ystad, officially launching its land offensive against mainland Sweden. [Chapter 365]
In the first 12 hours of the landing operation, Sweden, with the help of British carrier-based aircraft and Finnish and Soviet air forces, carried out a relatively effective attack on the Britannian landing fleet, sinking one missile destroyer and four transport ships.
Meanwhile, the ground forces also encountered some difficulties. The airborne troops around Kristiansund were scattered and unable to unite their forces, so they had to fight independently and could not help the landing troops coming from Ustad to open a passage to the north; and on the way to Malmö, they also made great progress due to the obstruction of the British forces that came to defend the city.
However, on the morning of July 3, while the Swedish and British forces were still focused on counter-landing operations, Britannia launched a highly risky attack: more than 10 Britannian destroyers suddenly departed from Rostock and assumed combat posture, launching missile attacks on the British carrier battle group in the Kattegat Strait.
Because the missile attack was split between two relay groups from different directions, the British carrier-based aircraft, still focused on Stadt Beach, were unable to intercept the other group in time, leading to serious consequences. [Chapter 367]
Of the four Illustrious-class aircraft carriers of the British Navy, HMS Formidable suffered the most damage. Its forward deck was hit by three missiles in a short period of time, and its flight deck was severely damaged and could no longer launch or recover aircraft. If it were not for the US carrier-based aircraft on the other side of the Jutland Peninsula that managed to arrive in time to intercept and interfere with the enemy aircraft, it would likely have faced even more terrible damage.
In addition, HMS Illustrious suffered a near miss, and HMS Victory was also damaged in the bow by a wounded armed transport plane that launched a suicide attack, rendering it unable to maintain its maximum speed of 30 knots. Field Admiral Cunningham quickly ordered the four Illustrious-class battle groups to evacuate from the Swedish coast and return to Britain for refitting.
This was Britannia's first successful attack on a US and British aircraft carrier with ship-launched missiles. The expeditionary force quickly delivered the second blow to the landing in Sweden: more than 80 transport ships, escorted by 15 destroyers, launched an amphibious assault on Kristiansund in Hanne Bay.
Due to the lack of air support during the gap caused by the emergency withdrawal of British aircraft carriers to await replacement by American carriers, the isolated Swedish and Finnish air forces were unable to provide effective assistance, and the Swedish army, facing an overwhelmingly superior enemy, immediately collapsed into a complete rout. [Chapter 368]
From the landing in Stad on the 2nd to the 4th, the Britannian army almost completely occupied Skåne province, the breadbasket of Sweden, in just three days. Of the 19500 square kilometers of land, only a narrow strip from Helsingborg to Malmö remained under British control, and the situation of the Northern Union at the Baltic Sea hub was instantly put in an extremely passive position.
According to the initial plan of the Britannian Expeditionary Force, after landing in Scandinavia and occupying Skåne Province, there were two routes: to go west through the Øresund Strait to seize the Danish islands and then take the Jutland Peninsula, or to go north along the west coast of Sweden to Gothenburg and even Oslo, the capital of Norway, so as to control the Kattegat Strait and then advance towards the Skagerrak Strait. The occupation of the entire territory of Sweden was not the primary objective.
However, during the three-day landing operation, rumors began to circulate widely among the Swedish soldiers about the torture and killing of prisoners of war. After reading the accounts of some American prisoners of war who had participated in the Pacific War, and learning that the Japanese in Area 45 also took pleasure in torturing and killing prisoners of war, this news had a considerable impact on the high-ranking Imperial generals in charge of the Nordic front.
The generals began to feel worried and uneasy about Sweden, and this negative sentiment gradually evolved into the hypothesis that "even if Sweden can't stop us now, they might still launch a desperate, even inhumane, offensive in the future." Based on this possibility, the expeditionary force high command decided to use a method "characteristic of District 45" to thoroughly crush the morale of the Swedish resistance.
1946年7月7日中午12时30分，由300余架武装运输机组成的轰炸梯队从德国启程，在护航机队的陪伴下沿瑞典东海岸线北上，直指瑞典首都斯德哥尔摩。【第369章】
Due to the Royal Swedish Air Force's lack of preparedness for an air attack on the capital and insufficient aircraft, the bombing echelon encountered almost no effective air interception en route, and the capital's scattered ground-based air defenses were largely ineffective throughout the attack.
The bombing of Stockholm was the first large-scale attack launched by the Britannian Expeditionary Force specifically against civilian targets, and the worst urban destruction Sweden had suffered in over 400 years. Sixteen percent of Stockholm was razed to the ground, and 42% of the buildings were damaged to varying degrees. Numerous historic landmarks, including the Royal Palace, the Nordic Museum, the Royal Opera House, and Stockholm Cathedral, were affected.
Regarding the people, although many buildings in the city were not entirely made of wood, the capital had previously received a large number of refugees fleeing from southern Sweden, most of whom were temporarily housed in the open. Furthermore, Stockholm did not have a subway network like London's (Stockholm's first subway line opened in 1950), and most of the newly dug air-raid shelters could not be fully utilized. As a result, during the bombing, which lasted for more than an hour, more than 15,000 civilians died and nearly 200,000 were injured. A significant portion of these deaths were due to poor coordination at the evacuation site, which left many civilians stranded in dangerous areas and trapped in fires.
In addition, more than 1000 civilian boats and vehicles were destroyed in the bombing. If Stockholm had not been located in an area with a dense network of rivers that facilitated firefighting, and if Britannia had not used weapons that were even more potent than napalm bombs as it did during the Tokyo bombings, the Swedish capital would have faced an even more horrific catastrophe.
With thousands of Swedish soldiers killed, wounded, or captured while defending their homeland, and hundreds of thousands of civilians injured or killed, the Nordic battlefield will become an even more brutal killing zone. Sweden, which has been in a state of isolation for decades or even centuries, will thus embark on a path leading to a different future.
-
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Episode 10: The Norse Campaign - Phase One, now concluded.
Chapter 371, Section 472: Children, Brothers, and Heroes
Hamburg, Bremen, and Hanover, three cities standing in northwestern Germany, resemble a triangular arrow pointing westward, or an open bag, guarding the vast plains north of the Fulda River valley and serving as a barrier to the Netherlands.
After the defeat in the Battle of Hamburg, with the concentration of US ground and naval forces, the possibility of Britannia achieving a major strategic victory there with great speed and a very high casualty ratio was extremely slim.
For the time being, only sporadic clashes remained along the banks of the Elbe River where the two sides were locked in a standoff. It wasn't until late June that the Imperial troops dared to continue their clandestine advance towards Hamburg.
During this period, they knew nothing about the city of Hamburg, only the dark blue US Navy carrier-based aircraft that they saw all the time.
After several artillery exchanges, several lightly armed infantry squads mounted their assault rifles and moved towards the other side on orders from their superiors, while KMFs and tanks remained hidden in the rear, ready to adapt to any situation.
As they walked, they saw a group of equally black figures approaching from the opposite side, and the two groups waved to each other simultaneously.
"Is everything alright?!" However, when one of the Imperial infantrymen shouted this in English, the two groups of people who had just waved froze.
Then, they noticed that the other side's black clothes were somewhat different from their own, and they hurriedly scattered to find cover.
Then, the ruins of the village became a battlefield of bullets.
The sounds coming from the other side were mostly the clicking of rifle bolts, which didn't sound like the aggressive American M1 Garand, but more like the British army's ten-bullet machine.
"Does the 'British imposter' think it can attack again just because it changed its clothes?" However, when the hot-headed Britannians approached, they found a half-track armored vehicle coming straight at them from the opposite side—it had a similar structure to the American vehicles, except that instead of an M2 heavy machine gun, an MG42 was mounted in front of the open rear compartment, a creation that fired like a chainsaw.
They had encountered this type of machine gun many times before and knew that although it could cut up corpses, it couldn't hurt KMFs. After figuring out the enemy's strength, they simply called up the KMFs and infantry fighting vehicles that were waiting in the rear.
The armed men from District 45, dressed in black, quickly retreated. Now it was clear that nothing on their bodies, from helmets to clothes, resembled theirs; there were even dark blue strips of cloth wrapped around their arms or hats.
The half-track vehicle was already on fire. Just as the infantry fighting vehicle rammed it aside and continued to advance along the road, a distant artillery blast brought it down. The strong smell of burning gasoline on the road was followed by the pungent odor of coking silicon wafers.
It was clearly a single tank or an anti-tank gun. The KMF following behind the infantry fighting vehicle used the optical camera that had popped open on its forehead to spot a reflective cylindrical opening in the hazy bushes in the distance.
He raised his hand and fired an armor-piercing round from a recoilless cannon. The lush green grass and trees ignited, but what was even stranger was that two steel plates the size of adults were blown out of the muzzle by the explosion.
One of them crashed onto the clearing in front of the bushes, bearing a large black scar from the armor-piercing shell. Looking closer, it seemed the long cannon barrel was also gone. "What the hell? Are things made by people from District 45 this fragile?"
Taking advantage of their momentary lapse in attention, the "blue-striped" men hastily retreated, creating considerable distance between them. When the Britannians gave chase, the patrol had already vanished, but they had an unexpected find—the two steel plates that had been blasted apart by the armor-piercing shells belonged to a metal "skirt" belonging to a face they had never seen before.
This answer came to the reckless pilot when he realized he was being targeted by a cannon. Before he could even raise his hand to retaliate, the four-meter-tall humanoid figure was reduced to fragments and fell. In the end, he only saw a square tank with iron frames on both sides of its hull and turret, and a row of skirt panels neatly embedded in the frames like pieces of a tortoise shell—he shouldn't have rashly chased after the enraged tank after smashing off that large piece of the tortoise shell.
……
[022 Friendly Reminder: The following text can be enjoyed in conjunction with the "Main Theme" from the Band of Brothers TV series soundtrack. Remember to search for the album first before looking for the song title.]
"Tell all the artillery crews they can rest! Seriously, one Panzer IV tank solved the problem..."
More than 20 kilometers northwest of the village, a middle-aged man dressed in the uniform of a former German Wehrmacht lieutenant colonel, with blue bandages wrapped around his arms, breathed a sigh of relief and waved to each of his subordinates who were wearing German military uniforms with blue bandages.
He ran out of the house with an officer beside him and headed straight for a heavy firepower position not far away, consisting of five Flak 36 88mm anti-aircraft guns. Together with the artillerymen operating them, they covered the camouflage netting back up.
Since the American and British forces won in Hamburg, more and more men and boys who were born in Germany and almost died there have been called to the Allied positions in these three major cities to be rearmed.
Naturally, it was inevitable that the Britannians would occasionally engage in petty mischief on the front lines. Aside from a few brightly painted KMFs that came swaggering in and then fled in terror, it was mostly the infantry doing sneaky stunts. But a mechanized unit working so closely together like today was a first.
Not long after the message was sent to higher-ups, the lieutenant colonel received a phone call from Kiel.
"How many combat vehicles do you and I have here?" The lieutenant colonel leaned into the receiver. "If you include the three Marder tank destroyers that arrived half an hour ago, my unit and the nearby troops have eight Panzer IV tanks, thirteen StuG III assault guns, and eleven half-track vehicles."
"So," came the voice on the other end of the phone, a marshal nearing 60, "do you have the ability to completely breach the enemy's menacing defenses? Or do you know if you have the opportunity to launch a decisive counterattack?"
Just as the lieutenant colonel was about to respond loudly, he saw another German field marshal, now dressed in his uniform, enter through the door of his command post. Unlike generals like Guderian, the Nazi eagle insignia on his right breast was not angular and upright, but rather had a streamlined, upward curve—"Smiling Albert," was the nickname the British gave him.
“The person who answered your call has changed, Mr. Manstein.” He gestured for the lieutenant colonel to hand him the receiver, as if he already knew who had called. “I’d like to know if Hamburg and Bremen are marked as suburbs of Kiel on your map? Do you remember that Mr. de Gaulle told you that your only task was to ensure the security of Kiel?”
"The whole world knows what you did in Western Europe in 1940 and in Kharkov in 1943, and I also hope you remember what Patton faced during Operation Market Garden in 1944, and what the German children in the Ardennes Forest faced. Our task was simply to secure four cities, and following the big picture was more important than any tactical victory."
Air Force Marshal Kesselring, showing no mercy, put down the phone, revealing the eagle insignia on his right chest with the swastika covered by a white five-pointed star, and waved to the lieutenant colonel—indicating that he should forget about the phone call he had just made.