The decisive battle against the Third Reich

The gunfire started the moment the flares came on.

The German tank guns, anti-tank guns, howitzers, mortars, etc., fired a barrage of shells at the British self-propelled howitzer position.

As a howitzer, the M7 self-propelled howitzer has excellent protective capabilities. Its frontal armor is 51MM thick, which is even more than the frontal armor of the German "Plank III" tank.

This is one of the reasons why General Strike wanted to encircle and destroy the 5th Artillery Regiment...

The M7 self-propelled howitzer has the advantages of long range, thick armor and quite good maneuverability, which determines that it will pose a considerable threat to tank battle groups.

If a tank battle group collides head-on with an M7 howitzer group, the tank group must be close to about one kilometer to pose a threat to the M7 howitzer group. In principle, the M7 can attack the enemy tank group with artillery fire from 11 kilometers away.

Coupled with its top speed of 42 kilometers per hour, as long as the M7 is willing, it can always keep a distance from the German "PzK3" tank, forming an advantage of "I can hit you but you can't hit me."

In the end, even if they came face to face and entered each other's firing range, the M7 was not without its strength relying on the thickness of the frontal armor.

Of course, no equipment can be perfect.

The shortcoming of the M7 is that the armor is open, that is, there is no armor on the top. The side armor is not only thin but also full of artillery shells... This is actually a last resort. The most important criterion for artillery is artillery shells, and self-propelled artillery is for To achieve the purpose of being able to hit and go, the shells must be loaded into the gun body.

This problem existed during the trial production of the M7... It could only hold 24 rounds of artillery shells, and it had to replenish ammunition when it stopped firing. This gave it not much advantage over the towed artillery.

So, the Yankees abruptly modified the M7 to be able to carry 69 rounds of artillery shells...

caliber shells, so that the sides of the gun body and even the gunner's feet are covered with shells, and the crew can be said to be sitting on an ammunition stockpile.

This is undoubtedly very dangerous in actual combat. Just like now, a German high-explosive armor-piercing projectile penetrated a self-propelled howitzer and immediately caused the shell to explode. With just a "boom", a majestic steel monster instantly disappeared from everyone's sight and turned into a ball of flames.

And because the self-propelled howitzer is an open type, the exploding shrapnel flew randomly on the battlefield, causing heavy casualties to the gunners of several nearby self-propelled howitzers.

The German mortars and howitzers did not show weakness. They poured raindrops of artillery shells at the British army at the fastest speed, and the howitzer position was instantly blown into a pot of porridge.

The British army had no power to fight back... Large-caliber artillery is always suitable for long-range shooting, and the M7 is no exception. Its artillery firing angle is 35 degrees, which gives it a closest firing range of 800 meters, and the German army is at this closest firing range at this time. the edge of. This allows the British army to use only the self-defense weapon in the upper right corner... the 12.7MM anti-aircraft machine gun.

But even this is of no help, because the huge car body will make them a good target for the German army, and once they are hit by the shell, they will disappear from the world in an instant.

But this seems to be a blessing, because at least they can die without pain... The violent explosion will tear their bodies and consciousness into pieces before they realize the pain.

This battle had nothing to do with the infantrymen like Qin Chuan, because compared to the violent explosions and the flames soaring into the sky, the rifles in their hands and the bullets they fired were really insignificant.

The bombing lasted for a full fifteen minutes. The British finally had the opportunity to raise the white flag and let the Germans see it, so the sound of artillery slowly stopped.

The German army had actually planned to capture this American equipment from the beginning... They have always been very interested in equipment with fast maneuverability. It's just that they must destroy the enemy's will to resist as soon as possible, otherwise things are likely to get out of control.

In the end, the Germans captured fifty-two self-propelled howitzers and twenty cars filled with shells.

General Strike found the captured equipment a treasure.

The reason is that the self-propelled howitzer is simple to operate. Although it uses the chassis of a medium tank, it still operates like a gun rather than a tank.

The difference between the two is that the tank requires the cooperation of the commander, gunner, etc., which is difficult to achieve without a few weeks of training. Even if it is reluctantly put into the battlefield, it will often become the target of enemy tanks due to poor coordination.

But this is not the case with self-propelled howitzers. It only requires one driver, and the others are actually gunners. It is not much different from operating a 105MM howitzer. The Germans even only needed to combine car drivers and gunners.

So General Strike immediately handed over the captured self-propelled artillery to the artillery regiment, and ordered them to adjust the gun crew members themselves and learn to operate them in the shortest possible time.

Facts have proved that General Strike's approach was very correct. In the subsequent battles, these self-propelled howitzers relied on their excellent mobility to provide powerful artillery cover for the 21st Armored Division. They cooperated with other German artillery. , and even suppressed more than 300 artillery pieces of the British army from daring to act rashly.

Then General Strike did not dare to delay any longer, and he commanded the 21st Armored Division to attack Alexander.

General Auchinleck on the other side felt ashen as if the sky had fallen when he heard the news.

In fact, he did not get the exact news until half an hour later... The Indian 4th Infantry Division and its headquarters were buried, and the 5th Artillery Regiment headquarters was blown up immediately. They had no time or opportunity to attack Austria. Chinlek reports.

It was not until the British scouts encountered the fleeing Indian soldiers and asked about the situation that they discovered that the situation was much more serious than imagined.

This is the charm of speed, and it is also one of the reasons why the German "Blitzkrieg" has often achieved miraculous results on the battlefield... Rapid strikes often leave the enemy with no time to react, because the enemy always encounters such and such problems in communication, coordination, etc. This is a problem, especially for complex troops, and even worse at night when communication is inconvenient and fighter planes cannot take off.

"General, what should we do now?" Major General Rich asked anxiously.

General Auchinleck shook his head slightly, he didn't know what to do.

Because he didn't even know the location of the Germans, which meant that he couldn't determine the direction of the German attack... So the Alamein defense line was full of loopholes and had to be defended at every turn.

After thinking for a while, General Auchinleck set his sights on Alexander.

"Alexander!" said General Auchinleck. "They will attack Alexander!"