69novels Chapter 372
Chapter 372
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: 0.092s Scan: 0.055sThe attacking artillery destroyed 35% of the tanks deployed by Mainz in front, severely damaging the defense.
However, Mainz’s counterattack was also quite swift. The attacking artillery was severely damaged, and several artillery positions were directly overturned, which caused them to lose a large part of the artillery fire support! The
Siegfried Line has large-caliber fortress artillery and perfect permanent fortifications. If they start artillery bombardment with them, it will be obviously very disadvantageous for the attacking party!
Therefore, Guderian immediately ordered an attack, not giving the other side the opportunity to use artillery fire to consume their own side.
The offensive of the First Army was swift and fierce. Because they had an advantage in manpower, they concentrated two armies to attack a weak point of the defender, trying to open a gap from here, penetrate and tear the opponent’s entire defense line!
While Guderian was acting, Manstein and Kesselring also sent troops from the north and south to make feints to cooperate with the actions of the First Army!
The initial offensive of the German army was very successful. They occupied a large number of positions and strongholds, and gradually approached the core area of the Siegfried Line!
When facing such a rapid attack, the defending side was very slow, and it seemed that every step was half a beat slower.
Seeing that the blue army’s battle flag had already advanced to the red army’s position, the faces of the Gauls watching the battle in the rear suddenly became extremely ugly!
The Siegfried Line here represents the Maginot Line. If the German army can easily and smoothly break through the Siegfried Line, they will probably be so relaxed and happy when facing the Maginot Line in the future!
For Gaul, the Maginot Line is the hope of tens of millions of people in their entire country. It is the last hope of the whole village. Once it is broken, then across the mountains, the German army will deliberately attack the native hinterland of Gaul from a high position. At that time, Gaul will not be able to resist the German attack at all!
However, just when the Gauls were terrified and worried, the situation on the front battlefield began to reverse!
The attack of the First Army was quickly blocked after encountering the counterattack of the heavy tanks hidden in the tank bunkers!
Originally, Guderian was still wondering why General Mainz deployed such a valuable armored force on the front battlefield. In his opinion, this was completely a cannon fodder job. It was a huge waste to let the precious armored forces do this kind of thing!
However, when he encountered the counterattack of this weapon during the attack, Guderian’s impression was completely reversed!
Boom!
The heavy tank converted from the tractor tank continued the excellent protection performance and relatively slow mobility of the tractor tank, and also installed a 75mm short-barreled gun!
This short-barreled gun is powerful, and the barrel of the tank gun is relatively straight, which can be directly aimed and fired. It is almost a fixed-point shooting. Whatever you see, you shoot!
When the troops of the First Army attacked, they had almost no power to fight back against the direct aiming and shooting of this artillery. Even if they pulled up their tanks, they were not opponents at all!
Even if it was a heavy tank of the same model, the defense could still maintain a 1:1 battle loss ratio!
Destroy three enemy tanks, and they will lose only one!
Such an exchange ratio is totally unacceptable to Guderian. Even if their troops have an advantage, if they continue to fight like this, his troops will be the first to lose their combat capability and have to withdraw from the battlefield!
“What happened? Why did our losses exceed theirs?”
Guderian was very anxious watching from the rear, and rushed to the front line from the rear at great risk, wanting to find out the truth of the matter!
“General, General Mainz and his tanks have used a new tactic!”
The commander on the front line said with a gloomy face. They didn’t realize anything when they rushed up in the first wave, but they realized something was wrong after suffering heavy losses.
Fortunately, they reacted quickly enough and immediately ordered a pause in the attack and began a serious investigation, which reduced the huge losses that might occur later and also helped them understand the tactics of the defenders a little bit!
“What tactics?”
Guderian also felt that the opponent’s tactics must be unusual to be able to play such an exchange ratio, but he never figured out the opponent’s intentions, so he couldn’t detect the opponent’s specific tactics!
“Their armored forces are divided into two. One is the heavy tank force that we see deployed on the front-line positions, and the second is the mobile tank force deployed in the rear. The two forces have a clear division of labor. The heavy tanks in the front act as mobile firepower points, specifically attacking our tanks and the heavy weapons carried by our infantry, such as field artillery, infantry guns, mortars and machine gun positions!”
The power of the tractor tank’s 75mm smoothbore gun at this time was really too much for the attackers.
Although this type of artillery was a short-barreled gun with a caliber ratio of less than 30, its range was still more than two kilometers. At this distance, most of the attackers’ equipment would be threatened by it, and combined with the artillery fire from the permanent fortifications on the fortress, the attackers simply could not organize an effective counterattack to destroy these tanks.
More importantly, the defenders also dug special tank bunkers for these tanks. The depth of this bunker was about 1.5 meters, which was just enough to protect the front and sides of the tanks, leaving the tank’s turret exposed to the outside, so that the turret could be rotated at will to attack enemies from all directions!
Moreover, there was a slope behind this bunker. Once the enemy got too close, The tanks in the bunker can also leave from the slope, quickly move to the next bunker, and continue to attack the attacking forces.
For the attackers, because the enemy tanks have bunkers, it will be much more difficult for them to hit the enemy tanks. They can only aim at the turret part of the tank and cannot attack the body part below the turret.
In this case, the strike area and height of the tank will be several times lower than normal. If it were not for the fact that they have far more tanks than the defenders, they may not even be able to achieve a 3:1 exchange ratio!
These tanks play the role of mobile firepower points very well. Compared with fixed firepower points that do not move, they are more flexible and more difficult to deal with, so they are obviously more threatening to the attackers!
Therefore, the attackers’ attention Their attention was inevitably attracted by these more threatening tanks, and their focus of attack was also concentrated on these tanks.
At this time, the bunkers, fortifications and firepower points on the Siegfried Line that they ignored could cause a lot of casualties to them!
That’s not all. When they advance to a certain distance, the enemy’s mobile forces hidden behind the front line will quickly attack and counterattack them. The attackers failed in their first attack because they were defeated in a daze under such a combination of attacks from the defenders! After
Guderian heard the description of his subordinates and went to check out the bunkers built by the defenders for the tanks, he took a breath of cold air!
He began to realize that all the tactics they had discussed before might become ineffective. Because the opponent’s tactical core is not this line of defense, but this armored unit in the line of defense!
If they can’t destroy this armored unit, it will be difficult for them to conquer this line of defense!
Even if they continue to fight like this, once the armored units of their attacking side suffer too much loss, then they are very likely to hand over the initiative of the battle to the opponent, and then the opponent can even assemble their armored units to counterattack them!
Thinking of this, Guderian picked up the telescope and looked at the side and rear of the enemy’s position.
Although it looked very calm over there, as if there was nothing, he instinctively sensed the danger.
If it goes as expected, the enemy’s tanks retreating from the front line should be hiding and waiting at that position, ready to counterattack their flanks at any time!
Thinking of this, Guderian was immediately scared and broke out in a cold sweat!
“Stop the attack immediately, strengthen the flank defense, transfer the armored forces in the rear, strengthen the artillery firepower in the next attack, and focus on attacking the enemy’s tanks!”
After making these deployments, he was still a little worried, so he hurried to find Manstein and Kesselring to discuss countermeasures!
With a three-fold advantage in manpower, it was so difficult to fight against a weak enemy, which made Guderian feel very embarrassed!