Chapter 514: The Allied Forces Counterattack (Part I)
Li Mo handed over the 300,000 German troops blocking the Allied forces to General Viller, and went to Army Group B, which was the 800,000 elite German army commanded by Manstein, and this force concentrated 60 percent of the armored divisions in Li Mo's hands, reaching the size of 16 armored divisions.
And the Leopard tanks of these armored divisions are the main configuration, even the No. 4 tank is a very few, these armored divisions are Li Mo's heart, and they are also the essence of Germany on the Western Front, and the entire war process on the Western Front depends to a large extent on the performance of the 16th Panzer Division.
Maninstein's headquarters is located in a natural cave near the border of the Ardennes Forest, which is safe enough to be safe without any problems, except for a little dampness in the cave, which is a common phenomenon in the Ardennes Forest.
"Marshal Manstein, how is the situation?"
"Mr. Commander-in-Chief, this pocket formation of yours is really wonderful, and what impresses your subordinates the most is that you let us have no Allied planes in the sky, and our tanks can be said to be unstoppable."
"That's good, where did our troops assault?"
"Here, thirty kilometers away, the Dutch-Belgian border will soon be reached, and the Allied forces in these two places will soon be unable to escape."
"Marshal Manstein, you are the father of the blitzkrieg, I want to annihilate these 550,000 allied troops, that is certain, but I must make it clear to you, I can only give you ten days, so I will do my best to annihilate these allied forces with the most fierce attacks, we don't have much time. Because of the intelligence coming from the United States, the United States began to transport a large number of planes to Britain again. We can't afford to consume it, everything is for Germany, let's fight hard! ”
"Hey! Hitler, promise to complete the task. ”
Li Mo originally planned to go to the front line to have a look, but the next day, the Allies launched a large-scale air counterattack, and these counterattacks were the same as Li Mo, wanting to completely blow up some of the airfields built by Germany in the border areas first. However, the number of field airfields built by Li Mo was very large. The total number is no less than 500 field airfields.
Li Mo did not want to fight a large-scale air battle with the Allies for the time being, but the Allies did not give up, and the two sides were over the Maginot Line, in Belgium. Over the Netherlands. Everywhere in the air strangulation began.
According to Eisenhower. Uncle, I have an airplane, consume a batch, and immediately transport a batch from the United States. Eisenhower's idea was good, but Limer had already asked his father-in-law, Commander-in-Chief of the Navy Dönitz, to secretly mobilize more than thirty U2 submarines from Germany to the Norwegian Sea.
The route of the Allied convoy was of course highly secretive, but the American planes left the Bering Strait from the west, then hid the Russian coast to the Norwegian Sea, and finally to England, which was not boundless.
From Norway to Iceland was more than 1,500 nautical miles wide, and as long as Germany arranged hundreds of spy ships and fishing boats, the Allied fleet would definitely be discovered. In fact, the Allies were not afraid of the Germans discovering that as long as the fleet was not within the attack range of German aircraft, the escort of the US Third Fleet could completely guarantee the safety of the fleet.
What kind of result the US Third Fleet and Dönitz's wolf pack will do in the Norwegian Sea, no one knows now.
……
The SS2 Panzer Division was a very combat-ready unit, and Li Mo placed them in Army Group C for the task of holding back the Allied forces. At this time, more than 100 German troops had come out of the Ardennes Forest to attack the Allied forces in Belgium and the Netherlands, and even if Eisenhower was stupid, he knew that there could not be many German troops in the Ardennes Forest.
Then the German army will definitely use the Ardennes Forest as a logistics supply base, which is dense and dense, and the German army's logistics materials must not be found from the air, and Eisenhower wants to destroy the German army's logistics supply base, so he can only attack the Ardennes Forest.
Eisenhower's move was right, and there were indeed only 600,000 German troops here, 300,000 to block them, and the other 300,000 to be the reserve of the whole army. Li Mo will not use it easily.
The SS2 (i.e., the Imperial Division), which had just arrived from the Ardennes Forest, immediately reacted to the Allied attack by attacking the Allied left flank from near Sethern. The Leopard tanks of the 2nd Panzer Regiment of the 4th Panzer Regiment rushed to the front.
SS 4th Commando Captain Ernst Buckman nervously observed from his No. 424 Leopard tank, and soon the Allied armored forces exchanged fire with them, Buckman was the first to destroy one Sherman tank, and even the other brothers in the company also taught the arrogant Americans a hard lesson. The defeated Allied forces immediately called for artillery support, and the attacking ranks of the 4th Panzer Company were immediately covered by dense artillery and were forced to retreat after suffering losses.
The next day, the 4th Panzer Company engaged the Allies again, and Buckman destroyed two Allied tanks and crippled the other. No sooner had the than the battle on the outskirts of the village of Pokaki ended, when an infantry report was received that an Allied column was heading towards the area, and that anti-tank guns were still hanging behind the half-tracks.
Considering that the retreating Allies would certainly inform their allies of the location of their companies, Backman decided to use his tanks to actively search for the enemy around the assembly area. The Leopard tank encountered the Allied vanguard in the woods, and the American gunners had already set up the anti-tank gun, and an armor-piercing shell flew past the Leopard turret, but the Leopard destroyed it in one fell swoop.
Almost at the same time, an Allied 88mm shell "popped" a few centimeters under the lookout hole of the Leopard shield, the shell bounced into the car, the tank burst into flames, and several crew members fled the tank in a hurry under the orders of Buckman, and Buckman found that the gunner Bergdorf was missing, so he ran back to the tank and dragged the stunned gunner out.
Unexpectedly, the Allied army was filled with tiger and leopard phobia and retreated. The ammunition in the car did not detonate, so the tankmen extinguished the fire and drove the tank back to the repair company.
The next day, the Allied offensive, codenamed "Cobra", kicked off with a massive Allied air raid, which was followed by a massive Allied armored attack on Avranche.
The overwhelming number of planes circled over the German positions, dived and dropped bombs, and the German planes also came to help the war in a very short period of time, and from time to time there were planes planted in the sky, some of the Allies and some of the Germans, the Allies had a lot of money and were not afraid of consumption, even if there were German anti-aircraft guns on the ground and German planes in the sky, the Allies were still desperate to bomb the German positions, and it seemed that Eisenhower was in a hurry.
The Panzer Instructor on the front of the German defense had already lost most of its combat effectiveness, and the SS2 2nd Panzer Regiment was forced to retreat to fill the defensive gap left by the Panzer Instructor, and the Allied Air Force launched another 2 days and 2 nights of air raids on the SS2 Reich Division. (To be continued......)