A series of huge explosions shook the entire airport, and when the smoke and dust of the explosion cleared, Boeington saw that the entire airport had changed: on the 88-mm high-altitude gun positions on the left and right sides of the airport runway, the 88-mm anti-aircraft guns that had been erected there were overturned to the ground by the shock wave of the explosion, and some of the high-altitude guns were even thrown dozens of meters away from the position by the air wave, and an 88-mm anti-aircraft gun was thrown high, and then the barrel fell downward. The long barrel of the cannon is plunged straight into the ground, and the heavy turret is held high in the sky, which is in line with the famous sentence of the famous poet Zhang Bangchang of the Republic of China: "One day a rì is turned upside down, and the bottom is thin and the top is thick." ”

As for the German fighters that were originally parked on the tarmac, the situation was even more tragic. In this way, the plane is already light, plus wings, and the wind area is large, they are all blown tens of hundreds of meters away by the shock wave, and without exception, the wings and tail are broken, and the mailbox that has been filled up and fueled is even detonated in the explosion, so most of the fuselage is only a few fragments left.

"This airport is definitely not going to be of much use today." Boington looked down at the devastated airfield, shook his head, and said to the other fighters, "There's nothing left to do here, let's go back." Go back and hang up some bombs, maybe you will have time to blow up the German assault troops. ”

……

Although the Luftwaffe fighters did not arrive as promised, the German assault was already ready and had to be launched. It took so many sacrifices to be able to gather the strength of five armored divisions, how could they give up because of the setbacks of the Air Force. Besides, all the German commanders, from Field Marshal Kruger to any private in the German assault force, everyone knew that the air force was absolutely unreliable. Probably Hitler was the only one in the whole of Germany who thought that the air force could temporarily put up a protective umbrella for the assault forces.

According to the plan, the assault will begin in the early hours of the morning, and before the sky is fully dawn, it will break into the US military position and try to make a staggered situation with the US troops, so that the US heavy bombers will be completely useless, and the US and British attack planes will also have quite difficulty in operating in such a situation.

On the other hand, for this operation, the German army also greatly increased the number of high-hoe guns, especially self-propelled high-hoe guns, not only did their best to ship a lot of new self-propelled high-hoe guns from China, but also put the existing various towed high-hoe guns on all kinds of chassis they found, what half-track chassis, what 38t tank chassis, and even Opel truck chassis.

In addition to the Gao Shiè gun, a variety of machine guns were also fully utilized, and the MG-131 13mm aviation machine gun from the Air Force warehouse was welded into an iron frame and then loaded on the Opel truck as a Gao Shiè machine gun; In addition, the Army's own MG-34 and MG-42 were also mounted on high shelves, mounted on trucks and even BMW R75 motorcycles. Of course, the Germans also understood that the 7.92 mm machine gun shells of the MG-34 and MG-42 were now obviously not powerful enough, and using them to gnaw at those attack aircraft was basically not much different from tickling. However, considering that some P-51 fighters of the US military also like to come to make cameo attack aircraft, it is still very useful to use this to hit the P-51 if, in case, it hits the radiator on the belly of the P-51. Moreover, in order to increase the deterrent effect, the Germans also changed the ratio of tracer bullets to ordinary bullets, from 1:5, that is, one tracer bullet for every five ordinary bullets, to 1:3, that is, three ordinary bullets with one tracer bullet. This actually reduces the lethality, as tracer bullets are not as lethal as normal bullets. However, this would make the firepower of the high machine gun appear more dense, and thus more effectively interfere with the attack actions of the enemy's attack aircraft.

In addition, the Germans also brought double copies of various smoke generating devices. It's just that the wind is a little stronger in the preset breakthrough section on this day, and the wind force of about 3-5 is estimated to blow away the smoke quickly.

Although it is claimed that five Panzer divisions were involved in the counteroffensive, there were also quite a few Waffen-SS ace units. But in fact, in the previous battles and later transfers, most of these troops were seriously damaged, and the total number of tanks in the entire five armored divisions was only more than 300. But fortunately, judging from the results of radio listening, on the opposite side of them, the strength of the American army is not strong, and there is only one infantry division.

In order to achieve the surprise of the attack, reconnaissance activities that would normally precede a counteroffensive were also banned, so that the Germans had little knowledge of the forward deployment of American troops. In particular, there is absolutely no idea about how the minefields laid out by the US military.

At half past three in the morning, half an hour before the full-scale assault began, the Germans sent sappers to the American front to find and mark American minefields. Half an hour was clearly not enough time for such a task, so by the beginning of the attack, the German sappers did not find many minefields. This is also expected by the Germans, the US military, which is theoretically in an all-round advantage, should not sell as many mines as the Soviets did in Kursk, and in addition, the US military should not have time to set up so many minefields.

In addition, the same to ensure the suddenness of the assault, the artillery bombardment, which is indispensable when launching an attack under normal circumstances, was compressed. Under normal circumstances, to launch an assault of this scale, there should be at least an hour or so of artillery preparation, and if it is a Soviet, it is normal for the artillery fire to be prepared for up to 3 hours. But now the time of the shelling has been compressed to fifteen minutes. If the enemy had a little decent fortifications, it would have been almost impossible for such an artillery strike to cause much damage to the fortifications.

At 4 o'clock in the morning, the German attack officially began. The Germans concentrated all the artillery they could, and in addition to the conventional suppression artillery, even the 88 mm high shè guns and 75 mm anti-tank guns were used to rain shells on the American positions. The PAK-40 anti-tank gun had a limited elevation angle, which normally could not fire grenades far enough, so the Germans also built some inclined planes for this purpose, and placed these 75mm guns on top of it, relying on this method to raise the elevation angle of the gun to obtain enough shè.

By this time, the German infantry units had already entered the attack position, and they were less than a kilometer away from their target, so their various mortars also joined the ranks of artillery preparation.

The German artillery fire was short-lived, but very intense. Amid the roar of artillery, the trump card of the Germans - the Panzer Corps appeared.

Wittmann and his Tiger tank rushed to the front. His comrades spread out on the left and right, rushing towards the enemy position. The attack seemed to have exceeded the enemy's expectations, so his Tiger tank was not attacked until the first line of trenches. However, his teammates were not so lucky, as to his right, a Tiger tank ran over a mine, broke its tracks, and several load-bearing wheels were also damaged. It appears that the extent of the minefield improvisedly by the sappers is not accurate.

The Americans didn't seem to have many troops in the first line of defense, so the Germans broke through three lines of trenches in one go, and by the time the sun rose, they had already broken through the first line of defense of the American army. But this result did not make Wittman happy, on the contrary, he had an ominous premonition that the mouse was being targeted by the cat.

Compared with Wittmann, who had only a bad premonition, Field Marshal Kruger, known as "the clever Hans", had already determined that the Americans had already prepared for this desperate assault on the Germans and that his army had fallen into the trap of the Americans when he learned that the armored forces had broken through three trenches with little resistance, and that the defensive forces in the three trenches were about one to one and a half battalions. He was sure that somewhere in front, the Americans must have a real line of defense, and the road from the first line of defense that had just been conquered to that line of defense must be full of anti-tank mines, and by this time, the sky was already dawning, but the Germans had not been able to form a dog-tooth situation with the Americans as planned, and they would inevitably be attacked by the Allies from the air. If you are sensible, you should stop the attack plan now, quickly switch to the defensive, or even prepare to retreat immediately. But, but will Marshal Kruger be able to make such a decision now?

Kruger knew that he could not make such a decision, and if he had made such a decision, he would have withdrawn his troops across the Seine long ago. Now, even if they know that the US military is prepared, they can only do it head-on.

As Kruger had predicted, as the German panzers were advancing in depth, various minefields appeared first. The anti-tank mines were buried in the ground, and when the infantry walked over them, they did not respond due to the lack of pressure, and when the tanks pressed up, there was a loud bang.

And even worse, Allied bombers appeared. However, the Allies also seemed to have underestimated the speed of the German advance, so the four-engine big guys overtook the advancing vanguard armored forces and dropped their bombs behind them. Listening to the violent explosion behind him, Wittman secretly let out a sigh of relief. He had seen the power of these heavy bombers with his own eyes. If you are bombed like this, even a powerful Tiger tank can only be turned into parts again.

Weitmann also knew that the bombing of these bombers meant that the follow-up troops would never be able to keep up. As a result, it will be very difficult to break through if you encounter an enemy's defensive position.

The mines along the way caused the Germans to reduce their tanks, and the damage to these tanks was not serious, and if they were repaired, they could return to the battlefield in a few hours at most. However, Wittmann knew that these tanks would certainly not have such an opportunity. The Allied attack aircraft would certainly not let go of these tanks that had lost their mobility.

Along the way, the Germans temporarily lost more than 30 tanks due to mines, most of which were the more sharp Tiger and Leopard tanks that took the lead. The second line of defense of the US army finally appeared in front of them, and at this time, all kinds of suppressive artillery of the US army also began to hit their heads and faces. Wittman retracted into the turret, closed the canopy, and began to prepare to charge at his target.

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