The British and Greek defenses on Crete soon reached a stage of collapse, although both the British and Greek forces tried to salvage the situation.

The attempt of the Greek army was to attack the "eight o'clock" heights together with the National People's Liberation Army, but their attempts did not work at all.

Qin Chuan believes that this has a lot to do with the supply distribution of the British.

Theoretically, even if the Germans were well-trained and occupied the favorable terrain of the heights, the combined strength of the British, Greek, and militia forces was at least five times that of the Germans...... More importantly, the Germans were surrounded on a high ground and could not move, and all their supplies had to be airdropped by transport planes.

So this is actually a very easy solution, that is, to compress the space of the German army as much as possible, so that it will be difficult for transport planes to airdrop supplies to the German-controlled area, and even if they are dropped on the British and Greek forces, they can be directly blown up with a fire blockade.

The problem is that the British army has the most advanced equipment in their hands but has little will to fight, while the Greek army has the will to fight but has no equipment in their hands, especially the Greek militia...... The militia fought bravely, especially at night, and several times launched a cluster charge towards the high ground where the Germans were stationed, but several times they were suppressed by the strong firepower of the German army. So much so that by dawn the next day, only more than 500 of the Greek militia of more than 1,000 people were still fighting power.

The slope of the heights was littered with the corpses of Greek militiamen, and to the disbelief of the Germans, many of them were not guns but spears and axes.

The Germans even launched a counteroffensive against the militia...... With the firepower of the militia, it was impossible to stop the German attack, so the Germans could easily get more space transport planes and take advantage of this time to airdrop ammunition and supplies.

It can also be said that the British army suffered on its own, and the British army did not actually have enough weapons and equipment for these Greek troops and Greek militia, but the British had their own small calculations...... They want to control these troops, so they don't dare to rest assured that they can equip these Greek troops with a strong sense of independence, especially the National People's Liberation Army, otherwise the equipment of the National People's Liberation Army will not be so bad.

(Note: This is also related to ideology, the "Greek National Liberation Front" was founded by the Greek Communist Party)

In other words, the British army, the Greek government army and the Greek militia actually had their own scheming and feared each other, although they had to resist the enemy together because of the German and Italian airborne, but they were separated from each other, which gave the Germans a chance to defeat them.

The efforts of the British military were to bring in the aircraft carrier "Indomitable".

Of course, this was the right thing to do, and Montgomery tried to alleviate the crisis and turn the tide of the war in Crete, as the biggest problem of the British army on Crete was that the airfields were blocked and could not exert air superiority, and the aircraft carrier was equivalent to an active airfield at sea.

The problem is that aircraft carriers are only small airfields, ultra-small airfields to be exact, which can only allow some fighters to take off and land at short distances and must have professionally trained pilots.

This made the investment of the "Indomitable" aircraft carrier not play much role: at this time, the British carrier-based aircraft were still relatively backward "Sea Fighter" and "Guanbi Yan" fighters, and these carrier-based aircraft were used to compete with Italy for air supremacy and sea supremacy, and the BF109 in the face of the German army was only beaten, among which the "Sea Fighter" was even an old-fashioned biplane.

On the third day of the battle, there was another exciting piece of good news on the German side: the Malemai airfield had been reopened under German control and emergency repairs.

Although it was only an airfield, it was of great significance for the battle, because it meant that German fighters could land at Malemai airfield for resupply, and then they could fully control the air supremacy of Crete.

So Montgomery had to bow his head and say, "We've lost, get the command out!" ”

The British have always valued interests and reality, so they announced their surrender after withdrawing the British 14th Infantry Division and several important generals of the Greek Army at the first time.

The Greek army also announced its surrender soon after.

Of course, the National People's Liberation Army will not surrender, they just choose to quietly withdraw their troops and then disperse and hide among the people.

There is also a small episode at the time of surrender:

The Italians were the first to surrender at the Iraq airfield, but Colonel Smith refused to surrender after consulting with the Greeks.

"Defeat our German army!" Colonel Smith said to the Italians: "So, we surrender only to the Germans!" ”

This made Colonel Ennio, the commander of the 1st Italian Parachute Regiment, angry, and a group of defeated generals still flaunted their might in front of the great "Lightning Division".

So he planned to break through as soon as he gave the order, but he didn't expect that the equipment of the British at the airport was not comparable to that of the Italian army, and they "rumbled" and drove out a few tanks.

Colonel Ennio was stunned when he saw this...... Most of the paratroopers are lightly armed, and they don't have an "iron fist" in their hands, so they can't compete with these thick-skinned "Matilda" tanks.

At this time, the staff officer gave Colonel Ennio a step down.

"Colonel!" The staff officer said: "If the Germans can make them surrender, there will be no more casualties......

Colonel Ennio gave a very ugly "um" and asked people to inform the German troops who were on the high ground.

The Germans did not dare to abandon the "eight o'clock" heights easily, because this was the main position for the blockade of the airfield...... They didn't want the British or the Greeks to take advantage of the German surrender and seize the "eight o'clock" high ground and lift the blockade of the airfield.

So in the end, the Italian army had to send a force to the "eight o'clock" high ground to replace the German army and surrender.

When the Italian soldiers walked up to the "eight o'clock" heights, they all looked in amazement at the overlapping craters on the high ground and the corpses and severed arms all over the ground, because the island was so humid that some of the corpses were already stinky and maggots.

"How did you do that?" An Italian captain asked the German soldiers, whose uniforms were torn: "You held out in this situation for three days?" ”

"Take it easy, Italian!" Alfredo replied, "It's not the harshest battle we've ever fought, and it's not as hard as you think!" ”

Alfredo was telling the truth, because the quality of the enemy was uneven, and the German soldiers thought they could deal with it.

But this was a bit ironic to the ears of the Italian soldiers...... Because they faced the same enemies, but they did not fight easily, and even the British troops who had taken the airport until now could not do it.