"Boom! Rumble! Rumble! A series of explosions followed, and the earthquake-like movement soon brought the resting British troops back to reality from their sleep.

A British commander with the rank of major rushed out of the field tent while wearing a coat in embarrassment.

"What's going on? What's the situation? He asked, grabbing a soldier who had passed by him.

"Mr. Battalion Commander!" The soldier saluted, "The Germans just suddenly launched an air raid on our positions!" ”

"Air strikes?" The Major frowned deeply as he looked at the burning positions that had been blown up by napalm.

After thinking about it, he patted the soldier on the shoulder and instructed: "You go to the communications platoon of the battalion headquarters and ask the people at the communications office to remind the various companies to enter the position and prepare to resist the night attack of the German ground forces!" ”

"Yes! Battalion commander! The soldier saluted and hurried to the tent where the communications platoon was not far away.

As the British commander had thought, the German air raids were just the appetizer of the night, and the umbrella flares fired by the ground forces were still in action, and together with the sea of napalm ignited by the fire, they pointed the target to the German ground forces in the night.

Just as the British army units were ready for battle, a sharp-eyed British soldier spotted a familiar dark shadow not far away.

"German tanks!"

He shouted.

"Free Fire!" The platoon commander of a British infantry platoon was responsible for defending the position, and when he saw the tank, he immediately pulled the trigger in his hand and signaled a counterattack to his soldiers.

"Woohoo!" "Dada-da-da!" Gunfire rang out from the British positions like fried beans, but it was useless to hit the German tanks.

Soon, another German tank appeared, then a second, a third!

By the end, a total of five tanks appeared in the eyes of the British soldiers.

It was a platoon of German tanks attacking, and behind these tanks were more than 60 German infantrymen.

"Anti-tank guns! What about anti-tank guns?! Seeing the German tanks getting closer and closer, the British platoon commander shouted anxiously.

"It's coming!" Several soldiers from the company's artillery squad worked hard to remove the anti-aircraft camouflage from a two-pounder anti-tank gun with an MKIV-type mount.

The British Army's two-pounder anti-tank gun with a caliber of 40mm and a magnification of 52 was a standard small-caliber anti-tank weapon.

However, although it is positioned as a small caliber, its weight is not "small caliber" at all, the total weight of the British two-pounder gun reached 797 kg, while the total weight of the German Pak37 anti-aircraft gun, which was the same as it, was only 432 kg.

In fact, in fact, its designers did not require it to be able to maneuver quickly, but recommended that front-line soldiers place it in a prefabricated position as a fixed battery - the two-pounder gun with the MKI gun mount can even fire 360° ring!

This design is contrary to the combat concept of anti-tank guns, and an anti-tank gun, if it cannot conceal itself well and cannot move quickly, then it is no different from a target - about this, hundreds of British anti-tank fighters in heaven agreed.

Fortunately, it was night, and the night was a good cover for the British army.

After leading everyone to remove the disguise, the loader quickly pulled an armor-piercing bullet out of the ammunition box and pushed it into the gun chamber, and then patted the gunner on the side to signal that the loading was complete.

"Phew!" With a muffled sound, a 40mm armor-piercing projectile came out of its chamber and spun at high speed towards its target.

The night was not only covering the British anti-tank guns, but also covering the German tanks, although there were flares hanging in the sky, but after all, they could not be compared with the day, and the German tanks were still more than 300 meters away from the British positions.

So this armor-piercing bullet missed unexpectedly, only to kick up a cloud of dirt more than ten meters in front of the left side of a No. 2 tank.

"They have anti-tank guns!" The commander of the No. 2 tank was taken aback by the gun, after all, he was driving the thin-skinned No. 2 tank instead of the Tiger tank, which had thick main armor and was immune to all the anti-tank guns available to the Allies.

Although the British two-pounder anti-tank gun was designed to be rubbish, it had a solid penetration, with a penetration depth of 51mm at a distance of 600 yards (about 548 meters), which was not blocked by the 30mm thick and 50-degree inclined main armor of the No. 2 tank.

And the reason why the Germans would send the weaker No. 2 tank to be responsible for the attack, instead of the more protective and powerful No. 3 and No. 4 tanks, was actually a special order from the high command.

In the original history, after the Germans besieged the Allies in Dunkirk, Hitler issued a special order - all troops to stop attacking - and it was because of this order that the British government had enough time to recruit domestic civilian ships and completed the feat of evacuating 338226 men in Dunkirk in nine days.

Many later scholars believed that Hitler's decision was a complete mistake, allowing Britain and France to successfully retain more than 300,000 elite troops, laying the foundation for the later Normandy landings. And this command is not as bad as they say, because it is considered in many ways.

First of all, the topography of Dunkirk is low-lying and waterways, which is really not suitable for the offensive of armored forces.

Second, at that time, Rommel's 7th Panzer Division was counterattacked by Allied tanks and two infantry battalions in the area south of Arras, although this counterattack did not cause much damage to the 7th Panzer Division, but it also showed from the side that although the Allies were defeated all the way, they basically had the equipment they should have, and they could still pose a sufficient threat to the German armored forces.

Moreover, at that time, more than 400,000 Allied troops were besieged in an extremely narrow area (consisting of a small half of the Calais Strait Province, Dunkirk and Stenford in the Northern Province, and a small area of land south of the mouth of the Vliesingen Sea in the west of the Belgian city of Ghent), and the density of troops and anti-tank fire was unprecedentedly high. At that time, the High Command was already drafting the "Alto Plan (later renamed the Barbarossa Plan)", and the main opponent of the German army was the giant bear in the east, so the high command had to preserve the precious armored forces.

Third, because Goering patted his chest and gave Hitler assurances that the air force alone would be enough to destroy the Allies in Dunkirk. In fact, Goering's air force did blow Dunkirk to the ground, and a lot of infrastructure, including the docks, was blown to pieces, but people are not immovable buildings after all—people can find cover. In addition, Dunkirk's anti-aircraft fire was actually not weak but rather dense, so Goering's air force was not able to destroy the Allies alone, as he said.