According to the battle plan drawn up by Ding Zhennan, 0:00 a.m. on December 15 was the deadline for launching an offensive.

To this end, in the middle of the night on December 14, Fu Weimin issued an order to storm Jodhpur and the battle for Jodhpur began.

It's really an uphill battle.

Although before that, the firepower preparation had lasted for half a month, and the large-scale artillery bombardment was carried out for four days, using up tens of thousands of large-caliber rockets, and countless shells of various calibers, plus the air strikes that lasted for several days before, a total of almost 50,000 targets were destroyed, which was equivalent to plowing the urban area with bombs, rockets and shells, but after the 17th Panzer Division launched a ground offensive and began to advance towards the city, it was still met with stubborn resistance from the Van army, and it encountered trouble before attacking the city.

From the very beginning, the battle was fought very hard.

In order to storm the city, to be precise, to gain a foothold on the western outskirts of Jodhpur, the 174th Mechanized Infantry Brigade spent half a day under the direct cover of artillery. Next, it took several more hours to clean up the remnants of the enemy. It was not until the afternoon of the 15th that the 174th Mechanized Infantry Brigade gained a foothold.

By the time the 174th Mechanized Infantry Brigade entered the city, it was already the evening of the 15th.

The same was true in the other two directions, where the advance into the city met resistance and took much longer than expected.

Because of the need to attract the main force of the Van army to the decisive battle, the tactics of besieging but not attacking were adopted in the east of the city.

The basic tactic set by Fu Weimin is to encircle the point and send reinforcements.

Even if you don't bring in reinforcements, you can release the enemy in the city. It is certainly much easier to deal with an enemy who breaks through than to storm a city.

It must be said that Fu Weimin deeply understood Ding Zhennan's intentions, and knew that Ding Zhennan's real purpose for him to "fight steadily" was to annihilate the Vatican army on Jaipur's side, not that he must take Jaipur as planned, after all, it was the combat troops deployed in Jaipur that were used to support Decheng.

As long as the Vatican army can be annihilated, what does it matter where it is fought?

Comparatively speaking, Jodhpur is more ideal.

Because there is a desert between Jodhpur and Jaipur, there is no danger to defend at all, so for the Vatican army, Jodhpur must be defended to the death.

If you lose Jodhpur, you will definitely not be able to hold Jaipur.

The key is that after the fall of Jodhpur, the Vatican army deployed in Jaipur definitely did not dare to go north to support Decheng, and it lost its existential value.

From this point of view, as long as the Van Luo leadership still regards Jaipur's Central Army as a strategic reserve and has great hopes for it, it will inevitably allow the Van army to hold Jodhpur and reinforce Jodhpur at all costs, including the transfer and dispatch of Jaipur's troops.

Obviously, this is also the basis for Fu Weimin's tactics of encircling and sending reinforcements.

However, in order for this tactic to be effective, it was necessary to crush the defenders of Jodhpur and force the central army of Jaipur to come to the rescue.

It was precisely because of this that it took half a month to prepare for the preliminary fire.

Now, it still doesn't seem sufficient.

Even if most of the fortifications were destroyed, it did not break the fighting spirit of the Vatican army.

After the first day of fighting, Fu Weimin sent a telegram to Ding Zhennan, mentioning the situation of the battle and making predictions for the next battle.

Obviously, with Fu Weimin's cautious and cautious style of doing things, he will definitely exaggerate.

At the same time, on the Udaipur side, the combat units of the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division had already entered the city, and the siege operation was entering the final stage.

According to the judgment of the front commander, Udaipur will definitely be taken before the 17th.

The combat units of the Fifth Marine Division had also moved south, and the first main force had boarded the ship in the early morning of the 15th and sailed for the Bay of Benjamin as planned.

Not surprisingly, the main forces of the Fifth Marine Division were able to all board the ships by the 20th.

Late at night on the 15th, when he received Fu Weimin's battle report, Ding Zhennan was using a satellite phone to arrange a mission for Hou Chensheng, who was still organizing the Marine Corps in Baroda.

In the past few days, Ding Zhennan's energy was all focused on landing operations.

Just choosing the landing site gave Ding Zhennan a headache for several days.

According to the original plan, or rather Ding Zhennan's own vision, the 5th Marine Division would go ashore at Gar, the most important port city on the east coast of the Van Luo Kingdom, in the Gangaro Estuary Delta, and then capture this large city no less important than Mumchai.

The key is not only that Gal has the largest port on the east coast, but also that it is geographically located.

By capturing Garr, the Imperial Army would be able to swim up the Gangaro River and rely on inland shipping to solve logistical problems.

Because the water volume is extremely abundant and the water level difference is not large, the 50,000-ton freighter can reach Patna, and the 20,000-ton freighter can reach Lucknow.

It can be seen that even without railways and roads, the coalition forces were able to advance inland along the Gangaro River.

More importantly, the Gangala Plain itself is the core of the Van Luo Kingdom, and almost all the major cities are located near the Gangala River. Controlling the Gangaro River is equivalent to controlling the entire Gangaro Plain and controlling the most fertile core area of the Van Luo Kingdom.

Of course, the throughput capacity of the Port of Gard cannot be ignored.

With this port, it is possible to eradicate all problems with shipping. Marines can also use the Garr as a springboard to sweep across the East Coast.

It's just that the problem of attacking Gal is also prominent.

The landing operation is too difficult!

Garh is actually Mumbai on the east coast, not only the largest city on the east coast, but also the second most populous city in the country of Van Ro.

According to Van Roe's official statistics, there are as many as 20 million inhabitants in Garh, second only to Mumbai and more than Decheng.

In fact, Garl has always been a historic city in the country of Van Luo.

More than 100 years ago, the colonists of the Bran Kingdom landed on the Southern Subcontinent here, and marched inland along the Gangaro River, controlling the entire Southern Subcontinent step by step by encroaching on whale swallowing and other means. In those decades, Garr was also the administrative capital of the Bufan Empire. It was during this history that Gard developed into the number one city on the east coast and the shipping center of the Gangaro River basin.

Capturing and controlling a city of 20 million inhabitants is definitely not an easy task.

Even if there is no stubborn resistance, 200,000 troops have to be committed.

In addition, the urban area of Gal is as high as tens of thousands of square kilometers, and the environment in the urban area is also extremely complex, and the urban transportation is very backward.

In such a large city, there are only three main roads, and the total number of urban roads is less than 500 kilometers.

In other words, the city is almost entirely filled with narrow lanes.

For mechanized troops, this is a living hell on earth.

Not to mention tanks, even ordinary military vehicles, may not be able to drive into those tunnels less than 3 meters wide, let alone turn to retreat after being attacked.

Obviously, any commander would do his best to avoid entering such cities.

If you have a choice, you will definitely besiege but not attack.

The larger the city, the greater the consumption, so total blockade and prolonged siege have always been the most effective tactics for attacking large cities.

If it is necessary to storm the city, it will also be fully prepared with fire, and then the way will be cleared with tanks and bulldozers.

It is a pity that in the course of a landing operation, especially in the initial stage, the main force has not yet come ashore and it is necessary to concentrate its forces to expand the depth of the landing ground, and there is absolutely no possibility of storming a large city, and it is even more unrealistic to spend a large number of troops to besiege a large city.

It is for this reason that, in a large-scale landing operation, the marines would rather build a port after going ashore than directly attack the city that owns it. In the latter part of the Second World War, the Liangxia Empire parted ways with the Manan Empire and abandoned the idea of attacking Nuland proper, that is, because it was too difficult to launch a landing operation on the densely populated east coast of Nuland, and would suffer heavy casualties, which led to serious disagreements between the two sides over specific tactics, especially the choice of landing sites, and finally broke up.

Even now, large-scale amphibious landing operations are still offensive operations of "hellish" difficulty.

Of course, Ding Zhennan initially chose Gal, in fact, he believed that the combat effectiveness of the Van army was very poor and would collapse at the first touch, so the difficulty of the landing operation was within an acceptable range, and the marines had a great deal of confidence in taking the port after going ashore to lay the foundation for the siege of Garr.

However, the battle in the west proved that the Vatican army had not yet reached the point of collapse at the touch of a button.

Even if the fighting power of the Vatican army was indeed poor, in Deogle, in Ahmedabad, and in Jodhpur, they all showed an extremely tenacious will to fight.

The second-rate troops of the southern cluster were able to hold out in the field for so long, and the Vatican army, which was fighting with its back to the big cities, must have held out even longer.

Those, it is inevitable that there will be a bitter battle in Gal.

It was precisely for this reason that when he began to draw up a specific battle plan, Ding Zhennan gave up the idea of attacking Gal and re-selected a suitable landing site.

In fact, this is also the reason why he let Liu Zunshan stay in Silan.

After all, there is a specialization in the art industry.

Although Ding Zhennan's command ability far surpassed that of Liu Zunshan, as an army general from the Northwest Theater, Ding Zhennan's worst thing was amphibious landing operations. In fact, among the major theaters, only the Northwest Theater does not have a decent amphibious combat unit.

Because it faces the broad sea and the wide sea is connected to the Boi country in the south, there is an amphibious unit of the army in the northwest theater.

The number of troops is pitiful, there is only one infantry brigade with less than 60% of the strength in peacetime, and most of the amphibious combat equipment is second-hand borrowed from the Marine Corps. Even after the outbreak of the war, the brigade had less than 5,000 officers and men, all of whom were integrated into the garrison of Astrakhan.

All in all, on the side of the Northwest Theater of Operations, there were no operations related to amphibious operations.

Of course, Liu Zunshan is an expert in amphibious warfare.

But the problem is that no matter how good an expert is, he can't get around the real problem.

If the strategic plan is not adjusted, there is no more suitable landing site on the east coast of Van Roe than in Garr.

The key is actually the strategic plan drawn up by Ding Zhennan.

According to this plan, the main purpose of landing on the east coast was actually to sweep the northern part of the Van Luo Kingdom, cooperate with the offensive operations in the west, and complete the strategic cutting of the Van Luo Kingdom. After sweeping the Gangara Plain, there was hope that the southern part of the kingdom would be dismantled by blockade and siege.

It can be seen that the core of this strategy is actually to swim upstream along the Gangaro River.

Then, the focus must be on the estuarine delta.

There really wasn't much else to choose from but Gal.

In addition, in the south, there are large cities in suitable places for landing, especially where there are ports, such as Cuttak at the mouth of the Mohanadi River, which has tens of millions of inhabitants, and Vissakapa further south has millions of inhabitants, and even Chennai has a population of more than five million.

Of course, these port cities are all far from the Gangaro River.

After the defeat, he still had to go north to attack Gar, and the difficulty of the battle did not decrease in the slightest.

After some tossing, it was finally decided to land near Garr.

However, it needs to be tactically worked.

To put it simply, it was a strategic deception of the Vatican army, convincing the top brass of the Vatican army that the imperial army would land elsewhere.

It is precisely for this reason that, in December, the coalition forces intensified their reconnaissance efforts in the Godavari estuary area, not only sending reconnaissance planes frequently to probe the positions of the Vatican army there, but also arranging for the reconnaissance unit of the Marine Corps to launch several small-scale attacks in the estuary area.

According to Liu Zunshan's meaning, make it look like you are going to land in Vishakappa.

It's also easy to understand.

If the Eastern Coalition does not go to Gal, it can be chosen, which is Vishakapa.

To put it simply, it echoes the attack on Vadodara and the action on the other side of the Narmada River. If the Eastern Coalition had landed at the mouth of the Godavari River and had moved inland along the Godavari River, it would have been able to coordinate with the offensive from the north and strategically cut off the southern region.

Most of the states in the South, especially the southernmost ones, will certainly seek independence.

From a strategic point of view, the Eastern Coalition Army can also rely on Silan to steadily control the southern region of the Van Luo Kingdom and ensure that the fruits of victory are swallowed.

On a tactical level, it was also relatively easy to attack Visakappa.

Among other things, the sea route from Silan to the front line can be shortened by thousands of kilometers, which means that the time it takes for transport ships to travel back and forth can be cut in half.

Obviously, in the midst of high-intensity landing operations, it would be a great deal to cut the shipping time in half.

The key point is that no matter how powerful the navy is, it is impossible to send all the landing troops, weapons and equipment, and combat materials to the beach at one time. Even if there were enough transport ships, it would not work at the tactical level, so the landing operations were divided into waves, sending troops, equipment and supplies to the beach in batches. This requires transport vessels to travel between the landing site and the rear port, and the duration of the round trip determines the frequency of the projection of troops. If the delivery speed is not fast enough, the ground battle after the landing will inevitably be affected.

If anything, this is also the number one problem for the landing in Gal.

It's too far away!

The shortest route from Slan to Garh is almost 1,800 km. If you want to avoid the Van Rowe Air Force, as well as small ships that are invulnerable to operations in the near sea, the route will increase to 2,400 kilometers. Even for a landing ship, it takes 5 days to lie down on a round-trip voyage. Switching to a slower civilian vessel would take at least 7 days. If you are in Vissakapa, you can shorten the round-trip sailing time to 3 and 4 days.

As for the other ports, they are not close to Garr.

For example, the ports in Myanmar, especially the deep-water port, have a distance of more than 1,000 kilometers to Garr.

However, at that time, the delivery distance was not the most serious problem.

The number one problem in front of Ding Zhennan and Liu Zunshan is still to choose a landing site, because there is no suitable landing site near Gar!