Chapter 52 Chinatown Artillery Position

  On the Australian mainland, the two most powerful armies were concentrated in the Melbourne area. In Melbourne itself, General Conan Doyle, commander of the Allied forces, had assembled two British divisional commanders and four Australian divisional commanders, as well as the commander of the Royal Australian Air Force, who had only 47 old Bulldog biplanes at his disposal.

  Of course, the old-fashioned ones are in the eyes of Red Alert soldiers. In Zhong Yi's view, all aircraft below the third generation belong to the old-fashioned machine. However, from the perspective of the British and Australian coalition forces, this is still a good fighter jet. The Royal Air Force also has many Bulldogs, which were not fully retired until two years later.

  The Anglo-Australian army had six divisions of ground troops, four infantry divisions and two cavalry divisions, with a total strength of 90,000 men. When Conan learned that the rebel forces were only around 10,000 strong, he was contemptuous of several Australian division commanders, feeling that they were humiliating the Empire. The Australian Army, which had nine divisions, was actually forced to seek help from an enemy force of less than 10,000 people. Oh, and those rebels also had some relatively advanced tanks, but didn't the Australians have the most advanced Mark II tanks in the Empire? Thinking about this made Conan a bit angry - such advanced cruiser tanks were only produced in small quantities domestically, not even enough for the Far Eastern garrison, yet Australia got two regiments. And with these advanced tanks, they still couldn't beat that rebel force of less than 10,000 people.

  Although they are the ancestors of the same race, after being exiled to Australia, these people have forgotten the glory of their ancestors and lost the good blood of the Anglo-Saxons. They are no longer worthy of calling themselves Englishmen. Conan really looks down on these Australians from the bottom of his heart.

  So, at the pre-war meeting, although the Australian side repeatedly mentioned the strength of the Red Alert army's armored forces, Conan still did not give it sufficient attention. He found it hard to understand that there could be such powerful weapons in this world as described by these cowards. Not even the Empire had them. Was a more advanced human civilization emerging in Australia, a place only suitable for grazing sheep? Nonsense, it was clearly just these cowards making excuses for their own failure.

  Don't think that Colonel's arrogance represents his incompetence. Having experienced the First World War, crawling out of the Somme River meat grinder, repeatedly making military achievements and being promoted to Lieutenant General, he is one of the few fierce generals in the British army. Leading an allied force of 90,000 men, he was able to remain calm and not launch a reckless attack, instead using defensive tactics against the Red Army's armored units, which is enough to show that his performance is just typical English pride, but absolutely not underestimating the enemy.

  "It's just a few tanks, isn't it? We'll dig more tank trenches on the front lines, restrict their advance, and then blast them with artillery. Two cavalry regiments will flank them from both sides, waiting for the opportunity to strike after the artillery has taken care of those iron beasts. Then our knights can harvest the heads of those yellow people with swords and bayonets. Don't worry, oh God! Don't you know how cowardly and stupid the yellow people are? Have you forgotten the two Opium Wars, when a few thousand imperial soldiers could conquer their entire country?" Conan gave a pep talk to "these cowards" after arranging his tactics. Almost at the same time, in the train station of Balran, the three regimental commanders of the armored brigade and Hans and Seier, the two guards brigade commanders, sat around a square table with a large Melbourne military map spread out on it. Many red and blue arrows had been drawn on the map, indicating the positions of the enemy and the routes that the Red Alert army would take to launch an attack. The red color represented the Red Alert army, while the blue arrows represented the British-Australian coalition forces.

  The Allied forces set up two defense lines in the suburbs of Melbourne, with each line having a three-meter-wide and two-meter-deep anti-tank trench dug out. Then, relying on the tank trenches, they built fortifications and constructed machine gun positions with intersecting fields of fire. Their artillery units were actually deployed within the city limits, where Melbourne's green spaces accounted for 40% of the area, with trees standing densely in the urban areas. The pilot of the reconnaissance plane, a B-5 bomber, descended to an altitude of one thousand meters, and the observer finally spotted the artillery positions in the city through binoculars. Now, this position has been marked with a blue bomb symbol, and a small red "X" has been drawn on it - the primary target for attack.

  Since Conan doesn't care about the lives of ordinary people, and dares to set up artillery positions in the city, then I'll do fifteen if you do one. Zhong Yi has ordered Yun Jiu, who is commanding at Horsheim airfield, that as soon as the battle starts, the J-5 fighter jets will use their two externally mounted bombs to first bomb the artillery positions, and then the bombers from Adelaide will come and finish them off. The bombers are all loaded with 500 kg medium-sized bombs, in Zhong Yi's words, "give me a good bombing", turn the British artillery positions into flat ground... no, into craters.

  The three battalions of self-propelled artillery were not tasked with this mission because the air force's bombing was considered more accurate. The Allied artillery positions are very close to Chinatown, within 500 meters of the nearest Chinese-owned shops. Unlike other Australian cities, many Chinese came to Melbourne for gold in the last century and called it New Gold Mountain to distinguish it from San Francisco in the United States. To this day, Melbourne's Chinatown is home to hundreds of thousands of Chinese people. Zhong Yi couldn't be sure if Ke Nan had deliberately arranged this or if his subordinates had acted on their own initiative, but the discovery still made several Red Alert officers furious. Guo Lin was even more enraged.

  "These damned foreigners, not a single one of them has a good heart... Oh, Hans, this doesn't include you, I'm cursing those damned foreigners in the city!"

  Hans was quite embarrassed, but also somewhat indignant at the British army's obviously ungentlemanly behavior. Zhong Yi had originally planned to arrange for Xiao Guoxing to launch a retaliatory bombardment of Melbourne's church district, but considering the overall direction of diversification and multi-ethnic unity, he endured it instead. He ordered Xiao Guoxing's third battalion to focus on bombarding the second line of defense of the coalition forces.

  Jiang Yunzhi didn't say much, his poker face was worried about the three-meter-wide anti-tank trench. In a high-speed breakthrough, these two trenches would bring great trouble, and if they relied on soldiers to fill them up, there would be inevitable casualties.

  Zhong Yi patted Jiang Yunzhi's shoulder, "Yunzhi, I know what you're worried about, don't worry, we have a way."

  "Oh, Commander, what's a good way?"

  "Haha, Ke Nan still thinks he's fighting the Qing army, and crossing the moat would cost lives. Yun Zhi, we're a modernized and mechanized unit, you can even flatten an airport, can't you just fill in these two small ditches?"

  "Ah? Ah——Commander Gao is great!" Jiang Yunzhi stretched out his thumb, "He's really great!"

  "Come on, poker face, if you keep this up with me, I'll turn against you, you're the little devil!"

  Tracked Multi-Purpose Engineering Vehicle: A lightly armored engineering vehicle that can be equipped with different components to give it various functions such as a repair truck, loader, excavator, bulldozer and road roller. Production cost: 5000. Production time: 4 hours.

  This section is from the base control panel, under the detailed description of the tracked multi-functional engineering vehicle icon.