Western Front, French theater.

In order to coincide with the imminent Battle of Tours, the British and French decided to conduct another landing operation in southwestern France to attract the attention and strength of the German army.

This time, after studying the situation, the British and French military leaders decided to land in southwestern France and then attack Bordeaux, which was occupied by the Germans.

Bordeaux is a city in the southwest of France, the fourth largest city in France after Paris, Lyon, and Marseille. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region and the capital of the Gironde department. There are a number of well-preserved medieval castles that are rich in wine and foie gras, and are wine country. Each Bordeaux wine estate has a different story to tell. The vast majority of wine is produced in family estates, with vineyards and cellars.

The Anglo-French troops landed at Sukla-sur-Mer, and the landing was not met with German resistance and counterattack, and the Allied troops went very smoothly, but when the Allied troops advanced to the northwestern periphery of Bordeaux, the Germans immediately moved, and this time the Germans did not take local defensive measures to resist the Allied attack, but launched a counterattack against the Allied troops who had just arrived on the northwestern periphery of Bordeaux.

The Anglo-French troops who had just arrived had not yet gained a firm foothold, and they were rushed to the front by the Germans without even having time to dig the trenches, and this time the Germans used a new piece of equipment, the A7V tank!

The use of tanks by the British and French forces in Normandy a few months ago had a very large impact on the German military, so the German General Staff put forward the technical requirements for the German tank, and commissioned the 7th Communications Department to formulate the design of the tank, which was named the A7V tank.

Due to the urgency of time, the offensive of the British and French forces was fierce. In order to curb the offensive momentum of the Anglo-French tanks, the Germans had to borrow the design ideas of British and Chinese tanks. The A7V tank was designed as quickly as possible. During these months, the German factory worked overtime day and night. Finally produced 100 A7V tanks, and immediately decided to put them into combat, and this time the German army in Bordeaux was allocated 30 A7V tanks, and the Germans attacked and sent them all into the charge at once.

With a combat weight of 30 tons, the A7V is characterized by the largest crew in the world, with a typical crew of 18 people, including signalmen and carrier pigeons. In World War I, pigeon communication played a very important role, and in fact, there were also pigeon crews in British and French tanks who were responsible for using carrier pigeons to transmit orders and messages. After all, radio communication has not yet been popularized in the military equipment of European and American countries, and now only China's Longzhan II and III tanks are equipped with radio communication systems.

The A7V tank is a typical box-shaped structure, and from a modern point of view, it is more like an armored transport vehicle. However, it has guns and cannons, and it relies on guns to develop firepower and break through forward positions, and from these aspects, it is still qualified to say that it is a tank. It's nothing more than an early tank in the world.

The weapon system of the A7V tank is "one cannon and six guns". 1 57 mm low-speed gun, 6 "Maxim" 7.92 mm heavy machine guns, the firepower is quite powerful. Its combined firepower was superior to that of the British Type I and Type IV tanks.

Its power plant is two in-line 4-cylinder, water-cooled, civilian gasoline engines, with a maximum power of 2×100 horsepower. The choice of two off-the-shelf civilian gasoline engines reflects the hasty design process and improvised improvise. The action unit was distinguished by the fact that there was already a coil-spring suspension, which was much stronger than the British Type I tank. The maximum speed of the A7V reached 10 km/h, which was slightly higher than the maximum speed of the Type I tank.

The entire hull is riveted with a maximum armor thickness of 30 mm. In terms of firepower, maneuverability, and protection, the A7V tank is superior to the British Type I tank. It was not a simple task for the Germans to be able to build a tank of such a level "in the first time" of the birth of the tank. However, the A7V tank also has a lot of problems, the body is tall and bulky; The bottom of the car is only 200 mm high from the ground, which is easy to support; Poor reliability.

When thirty A7V tanks rushed out of the German defensive positions in Bordeaux, followed by a large number of German soldiers, and the German rear artillery positions erupted into a burst of roars, and the overwhelming shells fell on the positions of the British and French troops who had just arrived.

"I'm grass, the Germans are rushing at us! Damn, the front can't stand it. Call me air support, call air support! The French general, who was in charge of directing the operation, shouted.

Staff report: "General, the coalition air base is too far from here to provide air fire support!" ”

The French general was annoyed: "Damn it. How did I forget about it? Why can't the Air Force build an airfield in Yasai? Why can't air airfields not be built in Rennes and Le Mans? If there was air support, we wouldn't be so embarrassed! Give me the order to hold the troops at the front. You must not take a step back, and those who violate the order will be killed! ”

"Yes. Checkmate! ”

The French were well aware that there were simply no positions and bunkers in the rear that could be used for defense. If he chooses to retreat at this time, he can only be driven into the sea by the German troops who rushed over, so he had to give a death order to let the front resist, as long as the forward troops withstood the first wave of German attacks, and waited for the trenches to be dug and perfected, he would not be afraid, and the rear heavy artillery would also be transported at that time, which could suppress the German attacking troops by artillery fire.

However, the French overestimated the fighting and combat courage of their own army, but thirty German A7V tanks lined up in a thick black smoke and rushed towards the British and French positions, and when a large number of tongues of fire continued to be sprayed on those behemoths, the British and French troops hiding in the shallow trenches immediately collapsed, and a large number of British and French soldiers dropped their guns and ammunition and turned around and ran in the opposite direction, while the Germans successfully captured the trenches that the British and French forces had not dug yet, and captured a large number of British and French soldiers who had not had time to escapeUnfortunately for the British and French soldiers who were killed in the process, these people died unjustly, after all, they could not have died.

After the Germans captured the trenches that had not yet been dug by the Anglo-French forces, they immediately organized their forces to pursue the retreating Anglo-French forces, and soon caught up with the retreat of the Anglo-French forces.

The Germans pursued the routers, and the machine guns and artillery on the tanks kept firing at the backs of the British and French soldiers who were fleeing in front, and large numbers of British and French soldiers were killed and fell on the way to escape.

Some clever British and French soldiers broke away from the brigade and fled to the local villages in the field, and these British and French soldiers fled to the local villages to hide, and the French people in the village saw that they were British and French soldiers and hid them so that the pursuing German soldiers could not find them, but these French villagers paid a heavy price for this.

The French villagers were reluctant to betray the British and French soldiers they were hiding, but they were soon accused of collaborating with the enemy and were shot and killed en masse, and were subjected to machine gun fire.

The news of the massacre of the French villages by the Germans soon spread, and this cruel move immediately frightened the other French villages, which no longer dared to take in the fleeing Anglo-French soldiers and drive them out, after all, no one was afraid of death.

The fleeing British and French soldiers had nowhere to hide, and soon they were all caught by the Germans one by one, the Germans chased from Bordeaux to Surak surak-sur-sea, hundreds of thousands of British and French soldiers were forced to the sea by the Germans, at this time the Germans sent more than a dozen fighters to bomb and strafe the hundreds of thousands of British and French troops who were forced to the sea, the British and French troops did not have time to retreat from the sea, and after a large number of bombardments and heavy losses, the French commander had to choose to surrender.

In this battle, the German army used tanks to take advantage of the unstable foothold of the British and French forces to launch a sudden attack, which caught them off guard, and the application of tanks also played a big role in this war.

The Anglo-French army used 200,000 men in this battle, but it was defeated before it reached Bordeaux, only 30,000 of the 200,000 allied troops withdrew from the sea, and 70,000 of the remaining 170,000 were killed, and 100,000 were finally captured by the Germans, which was the first large-scale defeat since the British and French forces opened up the Western Front, and lost 170,000 people, and the Germans captured more than 100,000 British and French prisoners again two years later.

The British and French military leaders originally wanted to use this military operation to contain part of the German forces in the southwest and south of France, and on the other hand, to attract Germany's attention in order to create the best offensive opportunity for the Battle of Tours, but they did not expect that this time it would be a waste of rice instead of stealing chickens.

Not only did it not complete the containment of the German forces in the southwest and south, but also put the 200,000 troops of the offensive into it, and it did not bubble up.

However, this time the British and French sides were not without gains, at least from this battle, Germany already had tanks, a weapon of war, and judging from the number of tanks dispatched by the German army in this battle, the German army has produced a lot of tanks, which should arouse the great attention of the high-level commanders of the Entente. However, the British and French high-level have always been arrogant, once people are arrogant, they will be careless, and the carelessness will inevitably give the opponent a chance, although they have learned that the German army has tanks, but the Allied high-level did not take it seriously, thinking that Germany is already a grasshopper after the autumn, and it will not be long before they jump, and they have suffered a big loss because of this. (To be continued......)