Soon, some No. 4 tanks arrived on the bank of the river (there were about 20 of them in the 17th Division) and began firing at French firing points less than 100 yards away. The effect of the suppression was obvious, the French firepower weakened, and the crossing of the river slowly began again. "Flender was everywhere, he was everywhere, he was giving the tanks a point, he was working with the sappers, and he was encouraging the morale of the infantry......" Flender then followed the first group of rubber boats across the river to one of the first companies to cross the river. There, he found that they were making rapid progress. It was at this time that it was reported that French tanks had been spotted ahead, and at this time, the Germans still did not have anti-tank guns crossing the river. Flender immediately ordered to fire at the tanks with small arms, the deception tactics clearly worked, and the French tanks retreated.

Flender then returned to the east bank of the river and again came to the crossing point of the 6th Infantry Regiment. By this time, the crossing of the river was in full swing. Here, 20 anti-tank guns have already crossed the river. Sappers were erecting 8-ton pontoons, and Flender ordered to rebuild 16-ton ones. The sappers fought desperately, and the commander of the engineer battalion and many soldiers were killed. Flender was overly optimistic at noon and ready to move on before consolidating the bridgehead. However, due to the shelling of the French army, it was not until the evening that the first batch of tanks began to cross the river. At this time, it seemed that the French army was about to launch a counteroffensive against the bridgehead again. The situation was dangerous for a while, and Flender went to the west bank again, and after understanding the situation, he returned to the east bank and ordered the tanks to continue crossing the river at night to support the west bank

So, what did the French army on the other side of Flender do? Judging by Flender's account, the resistance of the infantry of the 1st line of the French army was stubborn, and until the night of the 13th, small French forces held out on the west bank (behind the German river-crossing troops). However, the performance of the French army's support units and chain of command was problematic. From now on, we will continue to see that the French side will miss one opportunity after another until it falls into the abyss because of the loose discipline, lack of enterprising spirit, the lack of communication and the outdated thinking of the command staff.

In fact, on the 13th, the main forces of the Luftwaffe were supporting Guderian, and there was little support for Flanders. Therefore, the reason for France's defeat in this region can only be found in itself. The first problem of the French army was that the Germans were too fast, and the 18th Infantry Division (66, 77 and 125 regiments), which was responsible for defending the river bank, was not all in place. The 66th regiment in the face of Flender was particularly thin. Secondly, the French army was slow to react due to the collapsed communication system. At 1 a.m., the commander of the 5th Motorized Division learned of the German crossing from the 1st battalion defending Hauckes, and five hours later he was unable to contact the battalion, despite the fact that his headquarters was only 10 miles from the front line. In desperation, he sent a team of motorcycles and several lightly armored vehicles to reconnoiter the riverbank.

At 10 a.m., the 5th Motorized Division decided to use its 129th Regiment to counterattack the Germans crossing the Hauckes River at 1 p.m., but the regiment did not begin its operations until 2 p.m., which was almost immediately delayed by the threat of enemy aircraft. The task of counterattack was then taken over by an elite motorized dragoon regiment of the 2nd Infantry Corps. But the regiment reported that they = could not be ready until 8 p.m., and the attack was postponed until the morning of the second day - all this was the best effort of the best units of the French 9th Army.

For the French 18th Division, the connection between its 3 regiments was almost broken. The commander of the French 11th Army, General Martin, had to come down at noon to the headquarters of the 18th Division, where General Martin met the commander of the 39th Regiment, and he actually reported to General Martin that he had encountered German scouts eight miles from the Metz River. General Martin then ordered the 39th Regiment to counterattack to the river, "throwing the Germans into the river." The counterattack was to be supported by a company of tanks and 3 artillery battalions, and the offensive was launched at 7:30 p.m. At the same time, the 66th Regiment reported being exhausted, the 77th Regiment was on the run, and the 125th Regiment could not be contacted. All this was only the result of several infantry companies in Flender, who did not yet have any heavy weapons to support them.

By half past six in the evening, the 39th regiment reported that the regiment could not arrive on time, and the counterattack was postponed until 8 o'clock. However, by 7:45, the regiment again reported that it was unable to advance. So the tank company had to attack alone. The tanks easily swept the Germans in front of them, but without infantry support, the tanks could not hold their positions and had to retreat before dark - this was all the efforts of the French army against the German bridgehead. If it weren't for Flender's presence at the front, if the French army had a little more aggressiveness, history might have been rewritten, at least, if the German bridgehead could have been wiped out, although the German army would have inevitably strengthened again subsequently, it would undoubtedly have bought time for France. At this time, the German bridgehead had only a small area, there were no heavy weapons and anti-tank guns. A company of tanks can already sweep everything.

All night, the German tankers waited anxiously for the sappers to build the bridge. At this time, news of the strength of the German forces on the Mes River began to slowly reach the headquarters of Ganmalin. First in the Haucks area, followed by the counteroffensive of the French 9th Army, there was no news for a long time. Until 4 p.m., snowflakes of news about Sedan (Guderian) came from the 2nd Army. The French chain of command apparently did not realize the seriousness of the problem. General George briefly told Ganmalin that the front in the Setang area was under slight pressure!!

At 7:15 a.m. on the 13th, Guderian issued the final order on the crossing of the river. At 3 p.m., the 6th SS Panzer Corps was to cross the river from the Bar River to Bazeye around Sedan. The 2nd Panzer Division, if it could be reached, would cross the river at Dangchali as the right flank; The 21st Panzer Division was in the center, crossing the river at Torsi, slightly north of Sedan; The 22nd Panzer Division, on the left, crossed the river downstream of Torsi and seized the high ground on the opposite bank. The main attack was carried out by the 21st Panzer Division, which, after crossing the river, was to quickly take control of the road from Torsy to Bellevue and the surrounding heights, and uproot the French positions in the Sedan area. The 1st Panzer Division was reinforced with the "Greater Germany" infantry regiment, the heavy artillery battalions (150mm) of the 22nd Panzer Division and the 23rd Panzer Division and an assault engineer battalion. All fire is to be concentrated on a 2-mile stretch of breach. The crossing was carried out by 3 battalions of the 1st Infantry Regiment of Lieutenant Colonel Balk and 4 battalions of the "Greater Germany" Infantry Regiment. To encourage his troops, Guderian told the German soldiers that the Celestial Admirals had almost all of the Luftwaffe covering them, and that General Reinhardt's Panzer Corps (16th and 18th Divisions) would cross the river at the same time in the Bellevue area, and that the 14th Motorized Corps would be ready to expand the gains behind them.

In the early morning, under the cover of the morning mist, groups of upright, healthy and confident German soldiers with their sleeves rolled up approached the riverbank. Vehicles of all kinds finally got out of the traffic jam and parked near any suitable place for cover on the riverbank. The buzz of German planes was heard in the sky. At this time, the French began shelling. Soon the 21st Panzer Division reported that enemy fire made any movement impossible, and in order to cross the river, the Air Force had to destroy the enemy artillery group. German artillery, infantry and river-crossing sappers with their equipment, hiding as close as possible to the river bank, prepared for the storm. The opposite bank was much higher than this, and they were clearly aware that if this shelling continued, there would be serious losses in personnel and equipment.

The French troops on the opposite bank also clearly saw the German army, more than 200 tanks, countless vehicles, personnel and equipment, excellent targets. However, at this very moment, the French artillery received orders from the commander of the 10th Army to limit the consumption of ammunition to 30 rounds per gun. The main reason for the French restrictions on ammunition was not the lack of shells, (in a few days, a large number of shells would fall into the hands of the Germans). The reason for the limitation of ammunition by the commander of the 10th French Army, Grandesard, was that, according to the experience of 1914-1918, in 6 days, it was impossible for the Germans to cross the river. Therefore, he did not want to waste too many shells until the decisive stage came. Although he had witnessed the build-up and preparation of the German forces on the opposite bank, the commander of the 55th Division, which was about to be attacked directly, held the same opinion.

The reason for their argument was that the Germans could not prepare the large quantities of artillery and ammunition needed for the intensity with such rapidity. They were right, the Germans had only divisional artillery to follow, and each gun had only 50 rounds of ammunition, but, as the French could not have imagined and Guderian foresaw in his book Attention - Tanks, the bombers of the entire Luftwaffe would be more than enough to compensate for the lack of artillery power.

In the Battle of Sedan, the Luftwaffe concentrated 2 air corps and 1,500 aircraft in order to support Guderian. (The Luftwaffe had a total of 5 air corps on the Western Front) from 7 a.m., first of all, wave after wave of Dornier 17 bombers, the targets of the bombing were mainly the communications systems of the French army. The commander of the French 10th Army, Grandesard, soon discovered that the effectiveness of artillery fire was greatly reduced due to delays in communications. The 71st Division, which was on the march, was seriously affected, and the divisional telephone exchange was damaged. (Grandesa comforted the 71st Division, the Germans will not cross the river today!) The 55th Division complained to the commander of the 2nd Army, Hunter Zigger, that the air raids by enemy planes had seriously affected morale and asked for air support, and received the answer: they must be baptized by fire.

The lack of support of the Allied Air Force for the ground forces was due to a number of reasons, first of all, it was not until 09:40 on the morning of the 13th that the French Air Force received a request from the 1st Army Group to use the main forces of the Air Force in the direction of the 2nd Army. However, in the order, the urgency of the situation was not stated, except vaguely that the Germans could cross the river in the next 2-3 days. Until noon, the 2nd Army reported to the Air Force that there was an enemy tank group on the other side of the river, but, influenced by the tradition of 1914-1918, demanded that the Air Force not attack, so as not to affect artillery observations.

On the part of the Royal Air Force, the number of front-line bombers dropped from 135 to 72 as a result of the attacks on the German feints in the direction of the previous two days. The Air Force Headquarters expressed concern to the commander of the front, General Balart, that if the losses continued at this rate, they might not have enough strength until the "critical" moment in the future. (And when is more critical than the 13th) the result is that Britain did not send bombers on the 13th. In terms of fighters, due to the divisional defense method of the French Air Force, the French army could only use a limited number of fighters in this area, and only 250 sorties were used in the Sedang direction, which is almost a drop in the bucket.

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