Re: Blood and Iron - Chapter 762: The Battle for Manila Continues
Chapter 762: The Battle for Manila Continues
The doors to the Tyrolean War Room opened with a hydraulic sigh, the sound swallowed by the low thrum of generators beneath the Chancellery complex.
Bruno stepped inside wearing his formal field-gray uniform, Not gilded. Not ceremonial. Just the uniform of a man who had work to do.
Officers rose instinctively.
He waved them down with the smallest flick of two fingers.
“Sit. What do we have?”
The room was cold; the air recycling system always made it so. Teleprinters clattered along the far wall, feeding out lines of battlefield updates from Manila and its surrounding districts.
An aide hurried forward with a fresh packet of reports, each page still warm from the machine.
Bruno took them, scanning without expression.
“Initial airborne deployment successful,” one officer summarized. “Oberleutnant von Zehntner’s battalion is dispersed but operational As is the brigade it is attached to. They secured three intersections in the Sta. Mesa district.”
Bruno nodded. That was expected.
Another officer swallowed hard. “Sir… the Liberty Tanks are in play.”
The words hung like lead.
Bruno didn’t flinch, but he remembered.
The Sicilian beaches, the way German forward companies were driven back not by superior tactics, but by the brutal simplicity of American armor massed in numbers no sane commander should have thrown into a landing.
While individually quite tame in comparison to the Reich’s armor. The real threat came during operations like this where sufficient armor was often lacking for airborne forces.
Or against entrenched defenders whose anti-armor defenses were not adequate enough to scrap such overwhelming numbers.
He flipped to the next sheet.
“Airborne IFVs reporting ineffective fire beyond 300 meters,” the officer continued. “Thirty-millimeter autocannons are struggling to penetrate frontal armor.”
“They won’t,” Bruno murmured. “Not at range, not even at sub-100.”
He tapped the page.
“But the panzerfaust detachments?” he asked calmly.
“Operational. They’ve already destroyed eight enemy vehicles. The Liberty is vulnerable to top-attack or close-flank shots. Sir… your grandson has already ordered infantry to pair with IFVs for urban-angle ambushes.”
Bruno almost smiled.
“Good,” he said. “He’s learning.”
The room exhaled as if it had been holding its breath for ten minutes.
But Bruno continued reading.
Loss listings.
Damage reports.
Scattered platoons.
One light tank company pinned by three Liberties blocking a main avenue.
Dozens of micro-engagements playing out across a city still half-asleep.
The war in Manila was young, but it was already showing its teeth.
“Put the map up,” Bruno ordered.
A projector hummed to life displaying a topographic layout of Manila. Pockets of blue showed German airborne positions.
Red markers indicated confirmed Liberty Tank sightings, too many clustered near bridges and wide avenues.
He stepped closer, hands behind his back.
“The Liberties are behaving like a wall,” he observed. “Deliberate. They’re not chasing kills. They’re blocking maneuver lanes. That means American command is expecting a breakthrough attempt from outside the city.”
He pointed at the Pasig River.
“They’re anchoring here.”
A colonel cleared his throat. “Sir, suggestions incoming from the Manila forward HQ include…”
Bruno cut him off with a raised hand.
“Let me guess. Heavy bombardment?”
The colonel nodded.
Bruno shook his head.
“No. You’ll flatten half the city and kill as many as our own as you would the enemy. Besides urban rubble gives the Americans more chokepoints, not fewer.”
Another officer spoke up. “Pushing the heavy tanks through the north access roads…”
“No,” Bruno said again. “That puts them into Liberty kill zones. The Americans built that tank to fight at range. It utilizes a 90mm main gun which is capable of dealing with armor below the E-50 class. And has enough armor to protect against anything below a 75mm…”
He turned slightly.
“Inform our airborne infantry to deploy from their armored vehicles, and begin the assault on foot. As for the IFVs and Light Tanks, unless they’re equipped with an ATGM, they are to provide fire support only. I don’t want anyone needlessly risking their lives, or my machinery for a sake of an iron cross. The officers in the field know what to do, not tell them to get it done…”
The room absorbed that.
A major frowned. “Sir, what of the airborne light tanks? They carry seventy-five millimeter guns. Surely with the 75mm gun and APDS rounds they can…”
Bruno cut the man off instantly, his gaze narrowed like a pair of hungry daggers.
“My orders have been given, your input is not required.”
A silence thickened.
He walked toward the central table, fingers brushing past the scale model of an E-10 chassis, mocked-up with current 30mm turret.
Bruno’s eyes lingered.
“The enemy’s armor has outgrown our airborne turrets,” he said. “And that is my failure, not theirs.”
Several officers protested instantly, but Bruno raised his hand again and the noise died.
“We built thirty-millimeter systems for mobility,” he said. “For suppression. For anti-transport roles. And for elimination of light armor. They were never meant to punch through a Liberty.”
He tapped the E-10 model.
“I had not anticipated so many liberties being ferried over to Luzon so quickly. When our airborne brigade met with the American 3rd Army at the start of this conflict they were still primarily equipped with the older AMC-32 Tanks. Yet we keep asking these vehicles to perform anti-tank work they were never designed for.”
He straightened.
“After Manila, we will fix that.”
The officers leaned forward.
Bruno continued:
“We need a turret capable of dual-role engagement. A low-recoil large-bore gun… eighty-five or one-hundred-five millimeters paired coaxially with a high-rate thirty-millimeter autocannon. Both stabilized. Both modular. Both small enough for air-drop and light enough for rapid deployment.”
He paused.
“If the Americans wish build bigger tanks. Let them. We will build smarter ones.”
The teleprinter chimed again. An aide tore off the fresh strip and rushed it to Bruno.
He read it silently.
Airborne companies holding.
Liberty advance slowed.
Panzerfaust ambushes successful.
Casualties still mounting, but the line has not broken, and our forces are not encircled.
He folded the page.
“Send word to the Manila command,” he said. “Maintain distance. Harass. Strike flanks. Avoid frontal engagements entirely. Delay until the armored spear arrives.”
“Yes, sir.”
Bruno looked back at the wall-mounted map.
Red flickered.
Blue repositioned.
Little arrows danced and stuttered as the city became a living battlefield.
He spoke without turning.
“Prepare a memorandum to the design bureaus in Berlin and Stuttgart. They are to begin conceptual work tonight.”
The officers exchanged glances.
Bruno continued, voice steady:
“A new turret system for our airborne armor. One that can fire airburst, APDS, HE, and anti-structure rounds. One that can break a Liberty Tank without relying on proximity or miracle angles.”
He placed the E-10 model down with a soft click.
“And one that ensures our airborne brigades are never asked to hold back an armored tide with inadequate teeth again.”
He exhaled once, slow.
“War evolves. We evolve faster.”
A long silence settled as officers absorbed the meaning, the reassurance, the threat, and the promise all at once.
Then Bruno turned toward the exit.
“Execute.”
The doors slid open, the cold Tyrolean air drifting inward.
He stepped through without looking back.
The map kept shifting behind him.
The future of armored warfare had just changed.
And Manila, win or lose, would be its proving ground.
