Chapter 138: Trans-sea Bombardment, Precision Strikes
After discovering the threat posed by the enemy’s latest anti-aircraft measures to the airship force, the Germania Naval Ministry convened a meeting and concluded:
All daylight bombing will cease starting August 1st. Indiscriminate bombing of London’s urban areas at night will be extended until January 1st, 1916, after which it must also stop.
The Naval Ministry’s assessment reason is that by early 1916, with technological advancements and further exploitation of enemy and our own aircraft engine technology, enemy reconnaissance fighters equipped with new firearms may be able to shoot down airships above 5000 meters by firing upwards at their maximum altitude.
Therefore, by 1916, all remaining airships will be permanently transferred to reconnaissance duties and will no longer be used for any attack missions.
In fact, after these successive losses, the Germania Navy does not have many airships left to use.
Two months ago, during the Lviv airdrop/Lviv bombing mission, the airship force reached its peak of 71 ships. Later, 2 were lost for various reasons during missions, and Major Peter Strasser’s airship crashed into the ammunition depot of Lviv Train Station.
Before this round of great bombardment began, Germania had only 68 usable airships in total. As a result, 30 airships were deployed for missions on both the Eastern and Western Fronts. After a few rounds of bombing on the Eastern Front, 21 remained, and of the 30 on the Western Front, only 23 remained, with several more suffering structural damage and mechanical failures due to storms and other reasons.
Ultimately, Germania’s airship inventory decreased from 68 to 52. The Navy also announced the cancellation of all subsequent airship construction plans, and the remaining 52 will all be converted to reconnaissance use in 1916.
The saved resources will still be used for aircraft research and development, as well as the improvement and design of surface vessels.
Regardless, Germania built 50 fewer airships than in the historical period, saving the budget and resources equivalent to 3 Mackensen-class battlecruisers.
The direct and most significant reason for all of this is undoubtedly “the enemy’s combat aircraft developed a tactic of using machine guns with white phosphorus shells to attack airships.”
However, this is not the entire reason.
Another, somewhat secondary reason is that precisely in the days after July 28th, another surprise operation by the Imperial Navy against the Britons achieved final results that far exceeded the daily air raids by the airship force.
It was precisely this suppression of results that diverted a considerable portion of the high command’s attention away from the airships.
And all of this dates back to a few months prior, before battles like the Gorlice Breakthrough Battle on the southern sector of the Eastern Front—
At that time, to conceal the important fact that he and the main force of the 6th Army Group had already moved to the Eastern Front, and to keep the enemy on the Eastern Front complacent, Lelouch asked the commander of the 4th Army Group, the Duke of Württemberg, to launch a feint attack on the area controlled by the Franks in Calais.
In the end, the feint attack turned real, and Calais was captured, leading to subsequent developments.
…
Each flower blooms separately, each tells its own story.
The timeline returns to July 28th, 1915.
That is, the first day of the great bombing operations on both the Eastern and Western Fronts.
It was also during the early morning hours of that day.
Cape Gris-Nez, near Calais Port, which had been occupied by the Germania 4th Army Group for just over three months.
On the mountainside of a white cliff section facing northwest, two rows of a total of 8 twin-barreled 380mm armored gun turrets had pointed their dark, metallic muzzle barrels towards the Dover Port anchorage, 37 kilometers to the northwest-north.
Without a doubt, the civil engineering work for these 8 coastal defense gun turrets began more than three months ago, shortly after the Germania Army captured Calais.
Initially, they simply dug open some areas in the naturally recessed and soft parts of the cliff to accommodate the turrets. This was followed by extensive excavation for shell hoists and railway tunnels up the cliff.
Finally, more than a month ago, when Krupp confirmed that the new gun barrels forged from the new steel refined by Colonel Lelouch’s three-phase electric arc furnace steel mill were completely successful and could replace the old guns.
Krupp then transported the 16 old large barrels originally intended for the battleships “Baria” and “Baden” to the Calais front for final turret installation.
The commander of the 4th Army Group, the Duke of Württemberg, provided full protection for this secret project, ensuring secrecy and blockade, and also organized engineer corps to help with the work.
However, the Duke of Württemberg’s engineer corps alone could not complete this task in time, so the construction party also secretly conscripted some Frankish and Belgian prisoners of war who refused to surrender to perform hard labor here.
The specific organization of labor and engineering machinery was the responsibility of Mr. Guilford, Lelouch’s brother-in-law, the Economic Coordinator for the West Belgian Occupied Zone.
All of this ensured the final completion of this project on schedule.
And of course, the planning for this project involved consulting Lelouch’s important opinions, as the idea of “bombarding the opposite shore’s Royal Navy Channel Fleet’s home port across the strait” was originally proposed by Lelouch.
Later, Vice Admiral Hipper of the Navy, the Duke of Württemberg of the 4th Army Group, and Duke Rupprecht of the 6th Army Group, discussed this briefly and secretly in three parties, and finally decided to implement it. The specific details were naturally left to Lelouch, the originator of the idea, to plan.
Lelouch initially considered directly applying the experience of “railway guns anti-ship” from the previous Battle of Dunkirk.
However, after consulting with Krupp’s technical staff, his brother-in-law Guilford, and Colonel Wilhelm Keitel, the artillery officer in charge of the bombardment mission at the time, Lelouch changed his original idea.
The experience of the previous Battle of Dunkirk proved that the rate of fire of railway guns was ultimately too slow! Even with the maximum elevation angle limited, they could only fire one round every minute and a half.
To bombard the Dover Port anchorage, 36-38 kilometers away this time, the elevation angle of the cannons absolutely could not be restricted. （The port itself has a depth of 2 kilometers, so the closest berths to the Cape Gris-Nez coastal defense gun position are 36 kilometers away, and the furthest berths are 38 kilometers away.）
The 380mm guns, same as the main guns of the Baria-class, had to achieve a 40-degree elevation angle during testing to hit targets beyond 38 kilometers. （The “Queen Elizabeth-class” main guns, modernized before World War II, had their maximum elevation angle limit relaxed to 40 degrees, with a maximum range of 35 kilometers. The “Baria-class” main guns were stronger than the Queen Elizabeth-class of the same caliber, adopting a high-velocity light shell route, capable of hitting 39 kilometers at 40 degrees and exceeding 40 kilometers at 45 degrees.）
Therefore, ultimately, the cannons bombarding the two ports on the opposite shore from Cape Gris-Nez in Calais would have their maximum elevation angle limit released to 45 degrees.
However, railway guns could only fire one round every minute and a half at a maximum elevation of 20 degrees. If raised to 45 degrees, it would take 4-5 minutes per round!
All of this led Lelouch to finally change his plan and have his brother-in-law find a way to procure engineering machinery and labor to rush the construction of these gun emplacements, shell hoists, fixed automatic elevating and feeding facilities within three months. The power would be entirely supplied by the local fixed power system.
This operation resulted in the constructed turrets being able to achieve a firing rate of one round every 20-odd seconds! Even a few seconds faster than those mounted on the “Baria-class” battleships.
While this construction was underway, Lelouch did not forget to make use of waste materials and instructed his brother-in-law to solidify the railway leading to Cape Gris-Nez, both for easy transport of ammunition and for the possibility of bringing the original railway gun groups over during wartime to contribute their remaining value.
Of course, those railway guns were also temporarily modified, and their maximum elevation angle limits were released.
And all of this did not even attract the attention of Britannian reconnaissance aircraft and spies—this might seem incredible, but it was actually the result of Lelouch’s meticulous design, because he sacrificed the firing arc of the emplacements for the secrecy of their construction, and their location was entirely unlike that of normal coastal defense gun fortresses.
In other words, normal coastal defense armored gun turrets, for a wider firing arc, would place the turrets as high as possible in open areas. And the highest point of each emplacement would basically have a 360-degree rotating, no-dead-angle armored turret, as was the case with the previous Dunkirk coastal fortress.
But Lelouch specifically chose the location in a recessed area of the Calais white cliffs, and on a sloping hillside halfway up.
That location was even more stealthy than the coastal defense guns on Iwo Jima on Earth. The ultimate price of all this was that these turrets had a total firing arc of less than 30 degrees.
However, this was enough! Because these facilities were not built to help the Franks defend Calais Port; their sole purpose was to bombard Dover Port on the opposite shore!
As long as they could harm Britain and disable Dover Port and its surrounding anchorages, it would be acceptable for everyone to perish together!
It doesn’t matter if Germania wins or loses in this world; it is very important that there are no Britons!
All of this contributed to the fact that during the past three months, when Britannian reconnaissance aircraft occasionally flew over the strait, they did not notice the construction efforts of the Germania side.
The two locations were only separated by a little over thirty kilometers, yet everything was accomplished so stealthily.
Of course, this also thanks to the Germania air force; on the Western Front, the fighter squadron commanded by Colonel Immelmann was very effective.
With German aircraft having a monopoly on gunnery coordination devices, Britannian reconnaissance aircraft that dared to fly across the strait were essentially killed upon arrival.
They didn’t even need to cross the strait; as long as Britannian aircraft dared to take off from the Dover airfield on the opposite side, German aircraft would proactively fly across the strait and intercept them above their own airfield.
…
Thousands of days of grinding the knife, used in a single moment.
Regardless of how much manpower, resources, intelligence deception strategy, and brainpower were invested to deploy these emplacements so stealthily and without notice.
In any case, today is the moment of truth.
All turrets, under the coordinated command of an experienced artillery lieutenant colonel, began to rotate, elevate their barrels, and fine-tune all parameters to a specifically calculated estimated value.
This artillery lieutenant colonel was Wilhelm Leb, transferred from the 6th Army Group on the Eastern Front.
The reason he was transferred was, of course, his prior participation in the Battle of Dunkirk bombardment, where he had practical experience operating coastal defense guns against battleships.
It would have been easy to find more skilled artillery officers with higher military ranks in the Germania Army, but finding someone who had heavily damaged a battleship with heavy artillery was very difficult.
“Pre-aiming is complete, please give the order.”
After operating, Lieutenant Colonel Leb signaled with lights towards the sky. Using a large communication focusing mirror, he directed a pre-arranged flashing signal towards an airship over ten kilometers to the north at an altitude of 4,000 meters.
“It appears the ground forces are ready, the target harbor has good visibility, permission to fire is granted.”
On that reconnaissance airship, another artillery officer with a higher rank than Leb, Colonel Wilhelm Keitel, was clearly assigned the role of “artillery spotter” today.
Colonel Keitel was also temporarily seconded from the Eastern Front; who else could it be, considering he had also heavily damaged the “Tired of War” with artillery groups last time.
Verifiable combat achievements are always an officer’s most formidable resume.
Leb, having received permission to fire, finally issued the official command to fire.
With deafening roars of “Boom, boom, boom,” the 8 twin-barreled 380mm turrets, 5 single-barreled 380mm railway guns, and 15 single-barreled 280mm railway guns,
fired their first volley towards the main anchorages of Dover Port on the opposite shore, in timed groups according to the predetermined order.
