PS: There is a mistake to correct, the track width of the Haw Par tank in the structure of this book should be 680mm, not 580mm, thank you for the helpful readers. In addition, the maneuverability of a tank depends both on ground pressure and on tonnage power.

In less than 5 minutes, more than 20 tanks of the 24th Armored Brigade rushed to the front line were all hit and reimbursed, some of them were even on fire, some tank crews failed to escape, and a few who escaped were unlucky to be named by the machine gun bullets of the T-34 and fell directly on the yellow sand. In contrast, Collingwood's 35th Panzer Regiment suffered extremely minor losses, with the exception of 2 T-34s, whose tracks were destroyed and rendered immobile, the rest of the tanks remained unscathed. Now the tanks of the second line rushed out of the gap between the tanks in front of them when the tanks of the first line stopped and engaged, ready to launch a second round of attacks on the enemy's follow-up troops.

The British tankmen also knew that something was wrong, their guns could not hit the German tanks on the opposite side at all, and the enemy tanks either did not hit themselves, and a single hit was bound to kill. This kind of embarrassment of being beaten but unable to fight back is deeply pressed on everyone's hearts.

"Let the Shermans go to the front line, and the rest of the tanks make a detour and attack the enemy's flank." The commanders of the tank squadrons are still experienced, although they don't know why the enemy's tanks are so powerful, but they all have experience in using Matilda, and they think that tanks with strong firepower and hard armor must have defects, such as mobility will not be good, so they coincidentally made such a decision, "Close the distance, put it closer." ”

For Brigadier General Brown, the situation has reached the most critical juncture, the strange German tanks that appeared in the field of vision seem to have incredible magic, can easily bounce their own shells away, armor-piercing shells do not work, high-explosive shells have no lethality, the enemy can easily pierce himself, he has never seen such enemy equipment, this new tank is much more powerful than the usual No. 4, he is thinking hard, what kind of model is this?

The British tanks knew that they were surrounded by the front and rear, and if they could not repel the German tanks in front or the troops in the rear could not stop the German 15th and 21st Panzer Divisions, the whole brigade would have died here today, so they mustered up the courage to continue the battle, and the Crusaders and General Grant made a detour to the left and right flanks, while Sherman, who was named and asked to go up, increased his horsepower and advanced rapidly.

Brigadier General Brown desperately cheered up his men, almost shouting on the radio: "Hold on, stand up." The division commander has already come to our aid, and there is still an hour to go. Chief Montgomery also sent other troops to the rescue, and we are not alone. ”

I don't know if these words have played a role, after the first round of strikes, the British tanks have gotten rid of the panic and passivity of the war, the overall formation has almost formed, and the cooperation and cover between each other have also begun to be decent, if you look down from the battlefield, the remaining more than 50 tanks are about to form an irregular trapezoid. Sherman in the middle, the Crusaders and General Grant on the flanks.

"Want to fight us in close combat?" Collingwood keenly grasped the changes on the battlefield and gave the second order, "The enemy's artillery fire cannot move us at a long distance, be careful to keep your distance, do not fall into close combat, and deal with the tanks flanked first." ”

Brigadier General Brown was surprised to find that the enemy tanks were slowly retreating on the battlefield under the pressure of his own tanks, while always maintaining a distance of about 1,000 meters from the British tanks, while adjusting the turret angle to deal with the tanks outflanked from both sides, and his cunning behavior made him feel the urge to vomit blood.

"Hell, how the hell did they do it." Looking at the T-34's nimble and fast maneuverability, the British tank crews were once again dumbfounded, which was completely incomparable to the clumsiness they imagined similar to Matilda. Now those roundabout tanks are tragic again, and the German tanks they want to outflank are not slow to react at all, and with a slight retreat and a change of direction, they immediately get rid of the fate of being flanked, and even move much lighter than General Grant. The tanks that could not beat the Germans face to face were now good, and the British tanks after the detour exposed all their side projections in front of the Germans, and almost sent them to the door to fight others, and those far weaker than the frontal side armor could not withstand the blow, and one after another the tanks fell on the road to the side.

Despair! There is only deep despair!

The 24th Panzer Brigade still has fewer and fewer tanks to operate, at first it was a one-on-one fight between the two sides, and after the detour tactics went bankrupt, two German tanks against a British tank, and even several tanks were hit by multiple German tanks, and some T-34s who could not find a target to attack simply switched to high-explosive shells against those British armored vehicles that were visible on the battlefield. One of Brown's three tank squadron commanders with the rank of lieutenant colonel died on the spot, another was wounded and barely escaped, and the other was missing. Even several shells fell near his own command vehicle, and if it weren't for luck and the agility of the driver, he would have been doomed.

Now he doesn't know what to do, there is no way to retreat, the attack is weak, the outflanking is incompetent, no matter how you look at it, it is a certain death, and there is at least one and a half hours before the division commander said that the siege will be lifted. The driver scrambled around in the command car to dodge the shells, and Brown's mood swayed with the antenna behind the armored car, and he was extremely frustrated.

In the second round of firefighting, the exchange ratio between the two sides was not better than the first round, and the M4 Sherman, who was praised by Brigadier General Brown as the backbone of the armor and "the best tank on our side", could not do the new tanks of the Germans on the opposite side in a head-to-head duel, but the situation was much better than that of the Crusaders or General Grant, at least 2 T-34s were successfully destroyed in the sports battle, and the Shermans' own survival rate was much higher than that of other tanks, and there were still 16 tanks that could be driven.

Now the remaining 30 or so British tanks can only delay time by constantly maneuvering and driving, and they use their frontal armor to carefully point at the enemy tanks, releasing smoke while constantly changing positions, and never dare to stay still - that is just looking for death, and even if they fire, they are not aiming to hit the opponent, but to interfere with the opponent's line of sight and disturb the opponent's formation, hoping to use this means to hold out until the arrival of reinforcements. These tanks did not dare to show their rear even if they had the heart to retreat, where the armor was so weak that they would be finished with a single blow from an enemy tank.

Collingwood smiled at the corners of his mouth, now that the enemy no longer dared to force into battle, they could only hide around like rats, but didn't they know that there was no ideal shelter in this open field? The 35th Panzer Regiment's battle formation had changed again, and now it had converged into a huge arc, ready to encircle the remnants of the British tanks like a ferrule, and any British tank that tried to break out of this encirclement would be mercilessly killed by the superior German tanks—they were too few to dodge this German tank, but not the other.

The time for the decisive battle finally came, Collingwood didn't want to fly the last British tanks slowly, he had more important things to do, he set the throat transmitter and shouted: "Assault the whole army!" Charge! ”

"Ulla!" All the commanders received the signal, and a neat and loud answer sounded in the headphones, and then they increased their horsepower and began to charge.

Collingwood was taken aback by this "Ula", two days ago he joked with Guderian that the regiment was qualified to play the tank guards, but I didn't expect this to spread out somehow, and today I played with him like this, he laughed and scolded: "Damn...... These little bunnies, the political commissar didn't speak. ”

Guderian, Mei Linjin and others, who were watching the battle in the back, also heard these words, and everyone laughed so happily that they almost couldn't straighten their waists.

In the face of the enemy's large force of charge, the British tankmen's hearts were full of despair and helplessness, Brigadier Brown saw a Sherman probably fed up, it broke away from the overall formation and bravely rushed forward, like Don Quixote vs. windmills, launched a desperate assault on the T-34s, this best tank in the hands of the British began to fire from 900 meters away, until it was close to 600 meters, it ignored the crossfire from the side, almost with a desperate bayonet stance aimed at the frontal enemy tank to sprint, However, this desperate and desperate action still failed to cause substantial damage to the opponent, and was instead blown up by the T-34 with a single shot, and none of the crew members escaped.

Brigadier Brown's vision was now full of German tanks, and his courage was lost in an instant, and he knew he would never have the chance to wait for reinforcements again.