Before the first wave had travelled more than a few kilometres, they were passed overhead by twenty SH-6C attack helicopters of I./SHG2, chin turrets armed with cannon and machine guns and their wings laden with rocket pods. The gunships circled around ahead of the assault force once before breaking into four-ship sections and also taking up positions in escort of each of the five waves of assault craft. By the time the head of the invasion force had reached the half way point of the journey, several flights of S-2D attack aircraft had also roared past overhead in finger-four formation.
The Lions flew on ahead, disappearing into the haze of the smoking beaches and pounding the remaining defences with napalm, high explosives and cannon fire. Long, yellow fingers of tracer reached up into the sky from various points as anti-aircraft guns attempted to engage, downing two of the attacking aircraft and sending them into the ground in flames. The victories were short-lived however, as further waves of S-2Ds pinpointed and destroyed each weapon that fired in turn.
Even for seasoned veterans like Schmidt and Wisch, the display of force was somewhat unsettling, and it was difficult to imagine anything surviving such an attack. Yet there were definitely survivors for all that, and as they drew to within a few thousand metres of the coast, they began to come under the fire of enemy artillery positioned further inland (and therefore more difficult to locate and destroy). Geysers of water sprayed high into the air around them as they charged on toward the beach, but the British gunners were fighting a losing battle. Taking their aim second-hand via radio from forward observers, neither those observers nor the gunlayers had any experience in firing on such fast-moving targets. The inevitable delays in the relay of information meant by the time any changes to traverse or elevation had been made, those new coordinates were already well out of date.
The first few waves of the invasion force swept on through the scattered artillery fire into relative safety, although several of the ACVs in the rearward echelons were destroyed by close or direct hits. Two were struck squarely by shells from 60-pdr artillery pieces and were blown to pieces, men trapped inside their fighting vehicles as the 30-tonne APCs instantly sunk to the bottom of the Channel. Few defenders made any attempt to open fire on the approaching hovercraft as they neared the beach between St Mary’s and Littlestone-on-Sea, few capable of actually seeing anything through the smoke of the bombardment. Gunships dealt harshly with any who did make an attempt at engaging the approaching force, as did the four-barrelled 23mm cannon of the Typ-4 assault craft at either end of the first wave. One of the Typ-4s to the south also ripple-fired its entire load of 100mm artillery rockets from the modular nebelwerfer mounted between the pair of large propulsion fans at the rear of the craft.
They hit the beaches with little real opposition in the end: three months hadn’t been anywhere near enough time for the British to rebuild following the loss of over 300,000 men at Dunkirk, and total Luftwaffe air superiority had in any case made reinforcement of the beach defences a task not unlike outright suicide. Those men that were available to man the trenches and emplacements were thinly spread, poorly armed, and were in most cases unable to get a clear view of anything to shoot at anyway through the smoke and dust.
It was in those moments that the utility of those hovercraft truly became apparent. Instead of being forced to land on the beach itself, as would’ve been the case with landing ships or barges, the drivers of the Typ-2s were able to continue on unimpeded, generally able to ignore the shattered remnants of barbed wire and anti-tank obstacles as they thundered up onto the sand at high tide. One or two in the first wave were savagely and rather suddenly brought to a halt as the remains of concrete bollards or welded masses of angle iron ripped through their air cushion skirts and tore through the delicate lift fans and machinery beneath, but most were able to run straight up the beach and onto solid ground beyond, leaving the SS commanders the luxury of deciding on a disembarkation point that was suitable to themselves rather than the British defenders.
The bulk of the first two waves continued inland for the better part of a thousand metres, bypassing the ruins of the Littlestone Golf Course and sweeping over the raised tracks of the Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch tourist railway that ran slightly inland along that part of the Kent coast. Only one of the few craft disabled at the sea shore was too damaged to unload its cargo of men and armoured vehicles, most also able to join the battle with few casualties as tanks and infantry fighting vehicles made their way up the beach toward the rest of their comrades.
Panther-321 surged down the loading ramp the moment the Typ-2 came to a complete halt, blue clouds of exhaust billowing into the air as the panzer was quickly joined the rest of Schmidt’s 3rd Platoon. Seventeen main battle tanks and five of the smaller, lighter P-1C Wiesel light tanks broke clear onto English soil in a rush supported by Marder infantry fighting vehicles filled with mechanised infantry, three Wirbelwind self-propelled flak, and a pair of Nashorn assault guns. The armoured assault spread out in a practiced, pre-planned manoeuvres and deployed to an initial defensive perimeter between the railway line and the Dymchurch Road that ran parallel beyond.
There inside of the tank was a raucous symphony of noise as Schmidt turned his commander’s episcopes this way and that in search of a target. Rifle and machine gun fire rattled and whined against the P-40A’s hide to no effect whatsoever: with armour as thick as 150mm in places, rifle-calibre ammunition was no more dangerous than a passing breeze, although the deafening environment it created was annoying to say the least. Mortar fire began to fall around them sporadically, the danger small for a main battle tank, although a three-inch mortar bomb could destroy one of their thin-skinned Wiesels with a direct hit. All the while, constant air patrols ensured heavier enemy artillery in the area never managed more than a few initial shots before the guns were taken out of action by bombs and cannon fire.
There was a deafening clang against the right side of Panther-321’s turret that could mean only one thing, and Schmidt quickly picked out a sandbagged anti-tank emplacement, 400 metres to the north-east at a point where the railway line and the Dymchurch road crossed. His low-magnification cupola optics easily spotted the low, squat shape of a shielded two pounder gun as it fired again, and for a second time a 40mm projectile of solid steel shot ricocheted uselessly away from Panther-321’s tough hide, this time deflecting off its thick glacis plate.
“Load sprenggranate…!” Schmidt called sharply into his throat microphone. “Target… four hundred metres… pak-kanone…!”
“Sprenggranate ready…!” Loewe, his loader advised a moment later, accompanied by the metallic rattling of the main gun’s breech slamming home on an 88mm shell.
“Pak-kanone, four hundred metres,” he heard Wisch confirm a few seconds later as the turret turned in the appropriate direction under his control, accompanied by the whine of electric motors. There was a loud hammering below him in the turret as Wisch also opened up with the MG3C mounted coaxially beside the main gun, hosing the sandbagged area around the AT gun with 7.92mm tracer and keeping the enemy’s heads down.