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Yamashita, carrying his luggage, turned out from the street corner and blended into the flow of people, unnoticed by anyone.
On the streets of the Tokyo Concession, soldiers carrying assault rifles were everywhere, and the KMF officers on guard at the intersections were nowhere to be seen, even though their firepower was "weak".
The entire city gradually grew cold under Mariebell's rebuke and the martial law imposed by the Britannian army, and more and more assault guns appeared in the traffic on the streets.
He calmed his racing heart, glanced at the wanted posters for "Kuroshin no Izanagi" plastered on the roadside wall and telephone pole, and silently headed towards the place he intuitively knew they would appear.
Chapter 384, Section 487: The Wolf Pack Takes Over
Landing on the Swedish coast, driving away the British carrier battle group, sweeping through and swallowing the province of Skåne, and besieging Malmö and Helsingborg—under the command of General Trossa, more than 100,000 Britannian troops, in these four moves and in less than a week, turned their initial disadvantage at the Baltic pass into a situation where they had the initiative on equal footing with Britain and the United States.
The only downside was that it forced the opposing frontline naval forces to reshuffle. They drove out the Royal Navy's four Illustrious-class destroyers and their fewer than 150 carrier-based aircraft, but just a few days later, the US Navy sent five Essex-class destroyers, fully loaded with nearly 500 fighter jets, into the Kattegat Strait to take over the Royal Navy's duties.
This particularly frustrated General Trosa. In the initial days of the landings, the Seafire's machine guns and Barracuda's bombs were barely enough to hinder the landing forces on land. But what happened when the Americans came? They replaced all the Seafire fighters with F4U Corsairs and F8F Pandas, aircraft capable of carrying at least 500 kilograms of ammunition. They multiplied the number of fighters by three. Imagine the feelings of the landing troops after a few days of relative comfort.
"I went through all that trouble with you to drive away the British aircraft carrier, not so that the soldiers landing in Sweden would be bombed by even more planes, right?"
When this reached the ears of Duke Rabinowicz, who commanded the expeditionary fleet, it was naturally not a pleasant story. In fact, the Duke was well aware that if it weren't for Her Highness Elizabeth's foresight in helping with the issues of ship numbers and anti-aircraft firepower, American carrier-based aircraft might have actually dared to fly directly to the middle of the Baltic Sea south of Sweden and blow up the keels of the transport fleet right in front of them.
……
Thus, the fighting outside Malmö and Helsingborg reached a stalemate.
The British troops, holding their ground here, relied on increasingly sophisticated fortifications. American carrier-based aircraft could besiege and intercept reinforcements during the day. The two cities behind them, along with Copenhagen across the strait, formed a deadly air defense triangle. Searchlights and anti-aircraft guns were scattered throughout the city, and radars were built overtime. Even bats dared not fly over here at night.
With Nuremberg just captured, and facing the American forces holding out in Stuttgart and Munich in southern Germany, even Her Highness Elizabeth dared not relax her vigilance. Therefore, it would be difficult for General Trossa to receive another air support of a scale greater than the bombing of Stockholm in the short term.
Helpless, they could only rely on Duke Rabinowitz—thankfully, the Northern Alliance could only turn the night sky of three cities into daylight, otherwise the Duke probably wouldn't have approved the plan to have warships bombard the shore at night.
In recent days, every time the sun sets and the US carrier-based aircraft return to their nests to rest, three or four missile destroyers set sail from the shore of Bornholm Island, quietly skimming along the Swedish coastline to Hel Bay, 20 kilometers south of Malmö, and aimed their guns at the British positions on the outskirts of the city and the city center, unleashing their full firepower.
This did provide some assistance to the expeditionary force on Swedish soil; at least in nighttime operations, they still had a certain advantage. As long as not a single plane from District 45 dropped flares over the warships, the British forces would have to retreat in their presence.
A few days later, three guided-missile destroyers carried out their usual nighttime bombardment mission, but something was amiss in Hur Bay that night.
The ship's guns kept firing into the distance, and the people on the deck looked at the calm sea with doubt and unease. If it was the first time the North Union had not anticipated the night bombardment, it would be understandable. But today, the destroyers and the Danish sailors' torpedo boats had launched several surprise attacks and counter-attacks in the past few days.
As far as the eye could see, there was not a trace of a ship's metal hull, nor the roar of propellers in the sky. The KMFs escorting them in the air, armed with machine guns and recoilless rifles, could not detect any trace of war machines.
The final warning came from the bridge. As the captains of the three warships anxiously looked out of their portholes, the sonar operators reported the "long-awaited" anomaly one after another.
"Friendly ship reports: there is propeller noise below the surface, Your Excellency!"
"A submarine?!" The entire bridge crew gasped in surprise. "Is that what people from Japan always like to play with?"
"Sir, sonar has confirmed again that the propeller noise of the unidentified underwater object is located at bearing 260, about 1000 meters away from us, and is moving at full speed toward the rear of the fleet."
"Stay alert! Report immediately if torpedo launch sounds detected! Full fleet armed and targeting area 260 degrees, prepare for counterattack!"
In an instant, the three guided-missile destroyers turned on all their searchlights, turning the originally coal-black sea waves into a flour-like white. The KMF escorting them in the sky no longer cared about the movement of enemy vehicles; all their light sources, along with their gun barrels, were pointed at the sea surface.
"There! The periscope!"
"Is there only one submarine?" Several captains were busy directing their crews to prepare the anti-submarine rockets in the vertical launch system, while constantly confirming with the sonar personnel.
"Sonar has no other activity so far, sir. But we can't determine the size of this thing until Portman dives into the visible area... Wait, sir, we've caught the sound of a torpedo being launched!"
"All Portman Squadron members, commence evasive maneuvers immediately upon entering the water! Anti-submarine rockets, awaiting my orders!"
As soon as the white line appeared in the water, the roar of guns and cannons echoed throughout the bay, all eyes fixed on the warheads of the four torpedoes—"What kind of submarine dares to provoke three fully armed destroyers? Is this something the people of District 45 would do?"
"Enemy submarine is turning away, bearing 205! ... Torpedo launch detected again, it also has launch tubes at the stern!"
"Stay calm and deal with it!"
The dozen or so Portman drones that had submerged in the water watched from the sea as the ammunition belts of machine guns and the warheads of KMF recoilless rifles pierced the water's surface, chasing the torpedoes at full speed until they were torn apart or detonated.
The fate of the warship was in the hands of their teammates; their mission was to catch up with the enemy who had failed in their surprise attack at sea and fled in disarray.
However, just as they could vaguely see the bubbles of the submarine disappearing into the distance, the crew of the destroyer suddenly erupted into chaos for some unknown reason.
"New unidentified underwater object! Bearing 030! ...Another one, at bearing 340!"
"Captain, a new noise source has been detected at bearing 035! ...They have launched torpedoes!"
"Bearing 340, torpedoes approaching! Two, no, three! Three torpedoes!"
Even though Portman's pilots knew it was all too late, one after another, submarines that suddenly appeared had blocked the three destroyers' way back. In an instant, five torpedoes came from the dark depths of the sea, circled around these underwater humanoid weapons, and headed straight for the warships.
"Let's do our own thing!" Portman's team leader reassured everyone, chasing after every submarine they could possibly catch based on the direction the torpedoes came from, completely ignoring the splashes of water left behind by what looked like enemy aircraft along their path.
"What is this?" They had finally caught up with a submarine that was retreating at full speed. Its hull, only fifty or sixty meters long, looked as small and exquisite as a Swedish destroyer. At this moment, the Portman technicians discovered that there was a machine gun on the submarine's conning tower, firing precisely in their direction.
They then realized that the propeller planes that had just flown away had not dropped any bombs, but rather buoy-like objects floating on the sea. The next planes that dropped them were oil drum-shaped depth charges.
……
Without bombers or torpedo bombers, without the firepower of surface ships, and even without the sound of coastal defense artillery, the three destroyers managed to pull two of the submarines from District 45 into the Baltic Sea in the blink of an eye.
All of this happened somewhat unexpectedly. In fact, Duke Rabinowitz had prepared a response plan for the US and Britain to play the submarine card, but they slipped away too quickly—after all, apart from the sonar installed on the missile destroyer, he didn't have anything better to catch these underwater wolves.
It seems that a major overhaul of the anti-submarine warfare plan for the entire expeditionary fleet is needed.
"Didn't we get our hands on an unexploded torpedo from District 45? Remove its warhead and test the mesh and strength of the anti-torpedo nets we've set up in Wismar and Rostock. This time it's a surprise attack on warships, next time it might be a surprise attack on port docks."
"You're right, sir, and it seems we could learn from the people of Sector 45 and hang hydrogen balloons on steel cables. After all, a few days ago, during the air raid on Malmö, one of the KMF escorts crashed into one and severed his own head. But, are we going to have to avoid these submarines from now on?"
"It's probably like the tanks built by District 45. They won't create something like Lancelot that can be invincible but is few in number. They build large aircraft carriers to carry more planes, large warships to cram in more cannons, and small submarines to annoy us and take advantage of our weaknesses."
"Then I will go and tell Her Highness Elizabeth that we are preparing to withdraw our forces from the British forces in the Malmö direction. When will Her Highness have the resources to help us and General Trossa take care of the defenses of those three cities?"
"Of course, after all, I believe we still have a few cards to play. Alright, I need to go to Oranienburg tomorrow morning. I heard that the missiles on the warships can be loaded onto armed transport planes."
Chapter 385, Section 488: Copenhagen Remains Peaceful
Anyone with a sense of national identity and patriotism would never consider it glorious for their country to surrender so swiftly in exchange for the safety of its territory and citizens. This is something that every Danish civilian who went to sleep on the night of April 8, 1940, and woke up to find the streets filled with German soldiers, deeply regrets.
However, the undeniable fact is that Denmark was not damaged at all during the entire World War. For five years, the only explosions on the country's land and coast were those caused by Danish sailors scuttling their warships in 1943 in resistance against German control.
Today, Britannia's ground forces that have landed in Scandinavia are already on the other side of the Øresund Strait, but Copenhagen remains fortunate to be safe and sound, protected by strong air defenses and the naval and air forces dominated by the United States and Britain.
The only ones most affected were the residents around Copenhagen Airport in the southeastern part of the city, who had to relocate to make way for the North American forces.
Under the guidance and supervision of government officials and military and police personnel, the citizens have gradually adapted to the frequent emergency evacuation orders. In the last two days, some citizens have even started moving back home from the air-raid shelters, eating and sleeping as usual, and occasionally greeting the Northern Alliance officers and soldiers at sea and in the air.
However, early this morning, residents of the capital discovered something unpleasant: a U-boat had somehow gotten stuck on the bank of the New Harbor Canal, which runs through the city, right in front of a shady lawn.
As a weapon manufactured by the Germans, driving it so fully armed into the city center canal was quite an eyesore! The dissatisfied citizens of Copenhagen spent the entire morning complaining to the stationed soldiers, and didn't even go to the riverbank once.
There was a housewife like that who would cut rye bread with a deep-seated hatred while cursing at lunchtime—don't ask her why, because German soldiers had stolen all her and her relatives' bicycles over the past few years.
The caviar was all opened, but then I realized my daughter was missing. I thought she was playing with the neighbor's child, but when I went next door to ask, their daughter had just run back, saying she'd gone to see an artist.
"Painting?" The housewife, filled with doubt and unease, was led to the riverbank by her neighbor's daughter. Following her daughter's gesture, she saw the U-boat with two men dressed as German sailors on the deck.
He was furious at the sight of German goods. Then he looked up and saw a large group of children, including his daughter, sitting on the lawn and under the shade of the trees directly opposite the U-boat.
But as she got closer, some strange conversations began to circulate in her ears.
"I want to put a bow in her hair! I love pink bows!"
"Okay!"
"Could you put a red ribbon on her arm, sir?"
"Like the one on your arm? No problem, little girl!"
Among the children were a few listless, ragged little kids; these must be the children of Swedish refugees who had come after hearing the news.
"Liva!" The housewife found her daughter, knelt down to hug her, and was about to lead her away when she noticed a large patch of brightly colored things on the U-boat's control tower. Wait, isn't that the Little Mermaid?
Upon closer inspection, a dazzling tulle skirt hung from the barrel of the 88mm deck gun on the U-boat, and a hat covered in flowers hung from the Flak 30 anti-aircraft gun on the conning tower. A beautiful tanned leather dancing shoe was also placed on the aft deck. So all these children had come here this morning to watch two Germans recreate Andersen's fairy tales on a submarine with paint?
"Go home, go home for dinner."
"No, I won't go back!"
Just as the housewife and her daughter were arguing among the children, a German soldier squatting on the submarine, wearing clothes stained with paint, called out Riva's name in friendly Danish.
"Please eat your sandwich first, my dear little girl. We're staying here today, we're not going anywhere!"
……
In contrast, the Swedish civilians who fled here in panic a week ago are like frightened birds or stray dogs, while Malmö and Helsingborg across the strait are now under the bombardment of Britannia's ground forces.
The city was almost completely emptied of its inhabitants, a scene of utter devastation. The only vessels that could cross the strait were ferries carrying supplies, personnel, and the wounded; it was rapidly becoming a ghost town. Malmö, in particular, situated on the front lines of the Nordic theater, was being pulled from the brink of destruction by soldiers from five different countries using the grappling hooks of their war machines.
For Britannians, airplanes cannot easily intrude over these cities, because searchlights, barrage balloons, and anti-aircraft guns are everywhere, not to mention the carrier-based aircraft of the five US Navy aircraft carriers.
Under these circumstances, the ground forces' advance into the city center was extremely difficult. The closer they got to the coast, the more frequent the thunderous bombardments from the sea became.
Off the coast of Malmö harbor, three German destroyers, Z25, Z29, and Z33, flying the Danish Royal Navy ensign, had been firing a total of 13 guns at the city's outskirts for the past week. When the British commander relayed the coordinates to the newly arrived Danish sailors, the 150mm shells were unleashed, creating a cacophony of fire between the British 25-pounder howitzers and the rest of the fleet.
The warships are also part of the Øresund Strait defense triangle, thanks to the hard work and training of the Danish sailors over the past month and a half. While the three Z-class destroyers on one side are busy supporting the city's defense, the two Z-15 and Z-20 destroyers on the other side are on Copenhagen's east coast, constantly protecting the capital's airport, which serves as an air force base.
还暂处国土安全的挪威也有和丹麦相同的待遇，他们也分到了5艘Z驱。除Z34在奥斯陆维修待命外，一艘Z4和英军的利物浦号巡洋舰也在负责哥本哈根的天空，剩下的Z30、Z31和Z38则负责火力支援赫尔辛堡的守军。
It seems the Britannians have made another fortune today; they've started shelling the two city districts again, causing trouble for the frontline ground troops. As a result, the Z-Drives' firepower is somewhat stretched thin.
Therefore, not long after receiving the report from the front, Marshal Alexander immediately sent a telegram to the US Navy fleet in the Kattegat Strait to the north. However, it seemed that the carrier battle group had other plans, and what came to help was not a dark mass of carrier-based aircraft—the defenders of Helsingborg soon saw a row of huge figures swimming on the waves at the northern entrance of the Øresund Strait.
"HMS Vanguard, Royal Navy, calling Helsingborg. We have entered the firing course. Please move away from the danger zone as soon as possible."
The heavy 15-inch battleship main guns slowly turned to their firing angle, while before that, the 203mm main guns of the two heavy cruisers behind her, flying the Stars and Stripes, the USS Oregon and the USS Wichita, had already locked onto the enemy's direction.
Skåne province trembled under naval gunfire once again.
……
The battlefield calmed down. Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian troops were taking stock of supplies in Helsingborg, while the British troops defending Malmö continued digging fortifications inside and outside the city, turning the surrounding fields and plains into a network of tunnels and trenches.
Taking advantage of this period of peace, someone came to visit the British commander in Malmö. He was Captain Moyer, who had previously led the Swedish warships, led by the cruiser HMS Gotland, out of the Baltic Sea.
Accompanying the colonel were warships, but this time they weren't the Swedes' own ships. The colonel had been busy supervising the newly commissioned Swedish sailors, which was why the Swedes arrived today in their newly acquired American-made escort destroyers, standing alongside the Danes and Norwegians' Z-class destroyers.
At this point, the British commander revealed a coded intelligence to him: tomorrow, the North Atlantic Combined Fleet will send another fleet, centered around three battleships and three cruisers, to join the defense of the entire west coast of Denmark and Sweden.
"Look, we're all working together to protect this land." The British commander smiled and patted the colonel on the shoulder. "We have American carrier-based aircraft, food provided by the Danes, warships operated by the Norwegians, and our lads from the British Isles. We'll hold them off their next attack and then drive them back."
But Moyer remained unmoved. He walked with the commander through the streets of Malmö, looking at the rubble and broken tiles everywhere, at the ruins stretching as far as the eye could see, while the British Union Jack flew over the square behind them.
“It shouldn’t be like this. This land belongs only to the Swedes.” He blurted out this sentence unintentionally, which surprised the British commander.
The colonel realized he had said something wrong and apologized to him.
"Please forgive my previous statement. As a Swede, I am sincerely grateful for your help... but as a Swedish soldier, accepting your help under these circumstances is an encouragement, even a disgrace."
……
This is a perfectly normal thought for a proud Swedish naval fleet commander.
He certainly wasn't representing the Swedes' reluctance to stand with their allies from other countries, because everyone on the European continent was now preparing for the next step in dealing with the extraterrestrial visitors from Berlin.
While the two were talking, a group of Britannian expeditionary force generals were gathered at Oranienburg, a suburb of Berlin, where expeditionary engineers were testing and demonstrating new weapons.
Before everyone's eyes, a truck that was originally transporting ammunition for ships in the naval port slowly reversed and drove into an armed transport plane with its rear door wide open.
The truck obscured everything inside the cabin, but the engineers had already demonstrated the next steps to them: the bomb and rocket racks on the bomb bay doors of the armed transport plane had been replaced with four brand-new openings, where the missiles from the truck would be loaded.
Chapter 386, Section 489: Aiming at that "battleship"
The waves of the Kattegat Strait crashed against the coast and the steel bows of ships, but could not drown out the roar of cannons deep inland.
The five Essex-class carrier strike groups were originally stationed here, but due to the need for some to retreat for resupply, they inadvertently gave the unsuspecting Britannians an opportunity to take advantage of the situation.
This morning, the Britannian ground forces that had landed in Sweden suddenly shifted their focus away from the Øresund Strait and, under the cover of bombing raids by armed transport planes, launched a large-scale offensive deep into northern Swedish territory. Even though only three aircraft carriers are currently available, US Navy fighter jets have to be deployed to assist.
Should we be afraid of the Britannians attacking from both sides? Of course not, because several red, white and blue tricolor flags have arrived from the North Sea, and everything is proceeding as planned.
This was a formidable force newly dispatched to the Nordic front by the North Atlantic Combined Fleet Command. The French Navy's five destroyers, led by the two Fantasque-class Vicious and Terrible, followed by the three Buran-class, and brought to the rear by the heavy cruiser Suffren and the German Leipzig.
This was just one column of the fleet advancing in double columns. At the end of the column furthest from the coast was the battleship Richelieu, in front of her were the two Italian Veneto-class battleships, and leading the way was the German heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen.
All the questions are now clear. Why did the British and French go to Italy? Why did the Americans reunite the German sailors? Why did they send several warships that originally belonged to the Axis powers to the Portsmouth naval base in Britain for a complete refit? All of this was so that today they could fly the white star flag of the Northern Alliance and become part of the high-speed coastal fire support on the Nordic front.
As for why the Prinz Eugen, also a cruiser, didn't accompany the Suffren and Leipzig, and instead sailed ahead of the two Veneto-class cruisers, the reasons are twofold: firstly, its excessive length made it difficult to maneuver near shore; secondly, during the Portsmouth refit, the only brand-new American-made air search radar was assigned to her, while the Veneto and Littorio were fitted with refurbished, secondhand equipment.