Chapter 195 Death From the Sky

When the piercing air-raid sirens resounded throughout the pier, accompanied by the roar of propellers from far to near, the sky was torn apart. People who were busy running around on the pier finally raised their heads in shock and looked towards the distant horizon. When I went there, I saw a dense and dark group of aircrafts organized into tactical teams, flying straight towards the dock like locusts passing through.

"It's a plane! Those German planes! Everyone, hurry up and take shelter in the air-raid shelter, everyone! Move quickly!"

The political commissar of the Red Navy, holding a big iron trumpet in his hand, shouted loudly, and the pot exploded like a drop of water poured into a pot of oil.

Although a small number of Red Army soldiers from the army and navy stood guard on the dock and performed unloading tasks, they were basically able to stay calm and obey the instructions and stay calm in the face of danger. But ordinary stevedores, who accounted for the vast majority of the dock crowd, and civilians who came to participate in voluntary labor were not so calm.

Although these people who came to participate in voluntary labor on the logistics transportation line as ordinary people were full of patriotic enthusiasm, they were ultimately just civilians who had not experienced professional militarized training and air defense exercises, and had witnessed with their own eyes the bombs dropped by German bombers. How ferocious the bomb was. The crowd was in chaos almost instantly.

Malashenko, who was pushed and pushed around like a lonely boat in the sea, was almost unable to escape. He was trapped in the center of the crowd by the surging crowd and could not move. He originally wanted to command the troops to catch up with the German planes. Malashenko, who wanted to salvage important equipment before dropping the bomb, had no choice but to give up.

"Forget it, your life is at stake. If you are really killed by a German bomb, it will be useless to save the tank. Let's find a way to avoid it first."

Faced with these roaring gods of death coming straight from the sky, even the heavy tank troops as powerful as the King of Land Warfare were as helpless as lambs waiting to be slaughtered.

This has nothing to do with the quality of the equipment or the command level of the commander. It is purely a matter of the natural crushing advantage between the conflicting arms.

Just like lions and tigers at the top of the ground food chain, they cannot reach the eagle soaring in the sky, let alone pose a threat to it. These high-altitude aerial gods of death have undisputed control over ground targets. The right to life and death, even in war.

Malashenko, who was trapped in the middle of the crowd and trotted towards the dock air-raid shelter, wanted to contact his troops, but no matter how many times he shouted at the top of his lungs and repeated familiar names, the piercing air-raid sirens and the increasingly dull aviation The roar of the engine can always overwhelm it instantly and continue to increase the fear in people's hearts.

"Damn the Germans! There is no time for an air strike, but now! In half an hour I will be able to drive all the leading tanks out of the dock. How come these German air forces have noses sharper than dogs!? Is it so difficult? Isn’t it true that you are here for me?”

What Malashenko, who was complaining angrily in his heart at this moment, did not know was that the German air raid this morning was not actually aimed at him and the First Independent Heavy Tank Breakthrough Battalion, but an attack on Leningrad. A large-scale tactical air attack had been planned for a long time on the dock.

Regarding the fact that Leningrad, which was surrounded on three sides on land, was using the water route of Lake Ladoga for supplies, the German army, which had joined forces with the slave country Finland to start deciphering telegrams from the Soviet army, had actually done so a few days ago. Know.

However, the fierce offensive on the outskirts of Leningrad in the following days made it difficult for the air force under Army Group Northern, which was tired of ground support, to get away and did not have the spare force to organize a large-scale bombing, so it had to do better than nothing. Some small formations of fighters and bombers were dispatched in twos and threes to conduct harassment attacks over Lake Ladoga.

After the offensive of our own ground forces stabilized, the First Luftwaffe of the German Air Force, a subordinate of Army Group North, immediately deployed aircraft to form an attack group and formulated a large-scale tactical air attack plan targeting the Leningrad docks.

The ultimate goal of the plan is to completely destroy the Ladoga Lake Terminal in Leningrad and render it useless, destroy the terminal equipment, supplies, and transport ships to the greatest extent, in order to completely destroy this last hope connecting Leningrad. road.

In order to ensure that the power of this air attack was sufficient to achieve the expected planned goals, the German First Air Force still dispatched 12 Stuka dive bombers responsible for destroying transport ships.

Two other front-line main bombers, the Heinkel He-111 bomber and the Dornier Do-217 bomber, were dispatched as part of this large-scale attack, both in terms of bomb load and overall aircraft performance. The absolute main force of tactical air strikes came to carry out the bombing mission of the dock.

Compared with the Stuka dive bomber, one of the symbols of the German Blitzkrieg, which is more powerful and has a larger bomb load, the two twin-engine bombers, the Heinkel He-111 and the Dornier Do-217, are undoubtedly The absolute main force of the Luftwaffe to destroy large-scale ground targets.

A total of 38 of these two types of front-line twin-engine main bombers were dispatched at one time, which is enough to show that the Germans are determined to win the Ladoga Lake pier.

The Heinkel He-111 (H-6) bomber, which was born earlier, can carry up to two tons of bombs, and different bomb mounting plans can be changed according to different needs of the mission.

From the smallest 50 kg aerial bomb to the largest one-ton aerial bomb, the Heinkel He-111 can carry all bombs and can carry a full cabin of aerial bombs to perform ground attack missions without exceeding the maximum load.

The Dornier Do-217 heavy bomber, which was born at the end of 1940, is undoubtedly the most advanced front-line main bomber model in the current German Air Force.

Its two BMW 801ML fourteen-cylinder radial air-cooled engines are powerful and powerful in the air. The maximum output power of a single engine is as high as 1580 takeoff horsepower, which was truly an absolute powerful force in 1941.

The surging dual engine output power gives the Dornier Do-217 an unprecedented and amazing weapon mounting capacity.

Its maximum bomb load under full load reaches an astonishing 4 tons, although doing so will greatly reduce the maximum flight range of the Dornier Do-217.

But its horrific bomb load even surpassed the B-17 "Flying Fortress" heavy bomber, one of the symbols of the US strategic bomber force.

Such a huge weapon load plus the abundant power output brought by the powerful engine horsepower created such an air monster whose flying speed was even far higher than that of the Stuka.

And now, these German bombers, which were rushing towards the Ladoga Lake Pier in a mighty formation, had opened their bomb bays to reveal the fully loaded aerial bombs shining with a dark luster. The hot pier tumbling in the flames of hell was no longer far away.