The 12th Army of the Yanzhou Regiment then joined the boarding procession. No one knew the specific tasks of the Yanzhou Army, Marshal Jiang Yunzhi did not say it, and General Sun Liren did not mention it.

Operation "Big-Eared Fox" began on time on January 15, 1943. The convoy carrying an entire corps of legion-states/armies, escorted by the aircraft carrier squadron Ziming of the Northern Fleet, crossed the Gulf of Sirte and arrived at the Gärganai Islands.

Taking advantage of the darkness of the night, Sun Liren sent a landing force to storm the largest East Island with the fire support of naval guns, and established a temporary base and a Sfax Theater Headquarters overnight.

The British defenders of more than 4,000 men on the East Island were almost completely annihilated. Under the blow of large-caliber naval guns, the fortifications built in advance by the British did little effect, and the landing force of the 42nd Division of the National/Army only paid more than 300 casualties.

But Sun Liren knew that this did not prove anything, in order to successfully seize the East Island, the commander-in-chief sent six Demon Wind-class transport submarines to board the Navy SEALs of the special operations squadron. Some strategic points are almost all the credit of the Navy SEALs. In the Battle of East Island, 22 Navy SEALs were killed and 11 wounded were carried off the battlefield.

Dozens of casualties, among ordinary troops, are not worth mentioning. But among the SEALs, this is already the largest casualty in a single battle since the team was founded.

They are a bunch of unsung heroes. After the battle, take the remains of the wounded and comrades-in-arms and return to the submarine in the night to leave! After going ashore, Sun Liren only had time to salute their backs on the beach.

Leaving quietly, just as they came quietly, wiping the oil paint on their faces, it was actually quite white......

The sappers quickly set up a theater headquarters on the East Island, which was a semi-bunker-style concealed command center, although the command communications, food and lodging conditions were very complete. However, the Dahan engineering unit, which had fully realized modular operations, only used more than an hour to dig a half-person-high earth pit in the ground, and then took another half an hour to build the headquarters headquarters.

General Sun Liren, who has already led the commanders and staff officers of the Turkish Army, the Nanyang Army and other units to take command, really has no leisure to study whether the faces of the Navy SEALs are white or not! This time, he commanded the landing campaign, and he was even more nervous than when he was fighting the defense of Nanjing by the Tax Police Corps.

In that battle that was bound to be lost, Sun Liren was able to calmly analyze the situation on the battlefield, but when he arrived in Tunisia, Sun Liren suddenly became nervous!

After experiencing the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the Chinese Civil War, Sun Liren can be regarded as experienced in a hundred battles! Although in the two wars, the national/army did not perform brilliantly enough, but Sun Liren's troops were definitely an exception, whether it was fighting the Japanese or fighting against the People's Liberation Army, the troops under Sun Liren's command were more victorious and less losing.

But this time it was different, this time General Sun was really in command of an allied army, armies from multiple allied countries.

Across the Strait of Geelganai was the British 6th Army and Commonwealth troops such as Canada and South Africa, and intelligence indicated that there was also an Indian brigade.

Sun Liren's idea hit this Indian brigade.

After opening a breakthrough in the No. 7 position defended by the Asanmen, and then using naval guns to cut off the British reinforcement route, and stabilizing the No. 7 beach, it will then develop to the sides and in depth.

In the early morning of 16 January, under the command of Jiang Yunzhi, Field Marshal of the Han Empire, more than 1,000 fighters of the Allied Air Force took off in Sicily, Sardinia, Malta, and Benghazi, covering more than 1,200 warships and transport ships, escorting the Allied Army to land in the vicinity of Halegwadi in the Gulf of Tunis, Port Souss in the Gulf of Hammamet, and Sfax in the Strait of Geelganai.

For the landing in Tunisia, the Allies used a total of 30 divisions and 350 combat ships (including 6 aircraft carriers, 4 battleships, 8 light and heavy cruisers, and 64 destroyers). ）

The participating ships of the Northern Fleet are divided into three sub-fleets, mainly the unique two-aircraft carrier battle group of Dahan, each corresponding to a landing field.

Before Jiang Yunzhi ordered the landing campaign to begin in earnest on 16 July, 1,200 air force transport planes from Han, German, Italian, and Turkish countries had been assembled on the Italian islands of Sardinia and Sicily, and all the troops of the four divisions of the Han Guards Airborne 7th Army and the 8th Army were boarded to carry out the first batch of airborne missions. They targeted Kairouan, the transport hub in the interior of Tunisia, to receive follow-up forces and to instigate a landing force in the Gulf of Hammamet to attack the ports and airports of Sousse and Sousse.

Kairouan is forty kilometres from Sousse, but the two cities were previously served by rail. Whether the Guards Airborne Corps can press the airfield in Kairouan at the first time and take control of the railway station is the key to the success of the landing on Hammamet Bay.

In this area, nearly 100,000 Commonwealth troops were deployed here, and there were more than a dozen kilometers of extension lines of fortifications and bunkers on the beach.

If the gap could not be opened behind the Commonwealth troops, the Allies who landed head-on would inevitably suffer heavy casualties.

Almost all the officers of the Guards Airborne Corps participated in two large-scale airborne battles with Marshal Jiang Yunzhi that landed in Japan. In particular, the capture of Haneda Airfield was the time when the paratroopers quickly assembled the core of Japan's troops, creating a miracle in the history of paratrooper operations.

Landing in Tunisia, the Guards paratroopers were again pinned on high hopes. Suss was located in the middle of the three landing grounds, and Jiang Yunzhi made a request to the Airborne Army at the pre-war mobilization meeting, "fire the first shot, win the first battle"!

The Royal Air Force's mighty Y-41 "Tyrannosaurus Rex", the transport aircraft converted from the "Cerberus" medium bomber, the German "Junker Aunt", the Italian "Centaur", and even the only C-47 that Turkey purchased from the United States before the war also joined the battle sequence!

According to the plan of the Cairo General Command, the Allied air forces will seek to drop more troops at once in order to avoid paratroopers being surrounded by a rapidly reacting multinational force.

Therefore, a few hours before the battle began, General Long Xiaotian, who was in charge of air force support, asked the general headquarters to join the two paratrooper divisions of the Japanese Airborne Corps of the Dongying Army to the first batch of airborne troops.

Transporting six airborne divisions at once, the Allied transport fleet had already created an all-time first before the battle began.

With such a large and complex group, it took a lot of Commander Long's brain cells to make it. Depending on the difference in the speed of the aircraft, the first airborne troops were divided into three batches. On January 16, each transport plane flew more than three sorties.

The Luftwaffe cooperated completely and unconditionally, in their words: this is the operation that the Führer is watching! The performance of the Luftwaffe must not hold back the Allies.

Jiang Yunzhi was keen to see such a scenario, and when the dawn of winning the war gradually shifted in favor of the Iron Alliance, unity within the Allied forces was even more important.

The flight of the transport fleet through the Tunis Strait did not appear to be uneventful, and even after entering Tunisia, the Y-41 Tyrannosaurus Rex-dominated fleet was not too challenged. The Raptors who escorted the entire escort had already shot down most of the Allied interceptors, some of the old F-86 Sabres and F-88 Magicians, from beyond visual range. Since the "Raptors" and "Eagles" entered the war, and since the Han Navy and the Air Force changed over-the-horizon attacks to normal attacks, the multinational forces, which are absolutely huge in Africa, have suddenly become weak. Advanced fighters such as the F-102 "Triangle Javelin" and the F-105 "Lei Gong", which were still on par with the Han army, were completely lost under the blows of the Sparrow-7 and the Fire Phoenix-8.

Almost inadvertently, the skies of the Mediterranean and North Africa were no longer the air powers of the Entente powers, but became the world of the naval and air forces of the allies.

Of the more than 300 "Tyrannosaurus Rex", only one was lost before the start of the Kairouan airborne. Due to the bad weather on the day of the airdrop, the air flow over the southern Mediterranean Sea was quite unstable, and one Tyrannosaurus rex suffered a mechanical failure after entering a low-altitude flight. The pilot made a forced landing and crashed in Deshrai-bin Saidan, one hundred and sixty kilometers away from Kairouan. The 110 paratroopers and four crew members on board became the first Allied soldiers to die in the "Big Eared Fox" program.

And they, only fifteen minutes away from the airspace where the airborne landing began.

The 19th and 20th Guards Airborne Divisions were successfully airborne on the terraces south of Kairouan, the only trouble was that the terraces were overgrown with tall olive trees. In order to rescue the paratroopers who were hanging from the trees, the assembly of troops was delayed for more than two hours.

This made Major General Ning Shuxin, the commander of the 7th Guards Army, very angry. However, Commander Ning did not get angry at the paratroopers, because he himself almost hung on the olive tree several meters high when he was airborne, "Nima, if you really hang it, you will lose it!" ”

Throughout Tunisia, there are more than 4,000 olea europaea trees, which are an important source of vegetable oil in the Tunisian region.

The Tunisians were very lucky, because the first to be airborne was the 7th Guards Army, and the new commander of Ning Shu, who had been specially promoted by His Majesty, was definitely a Confucian general, although he was very annoyed by these olive trees, he had no other thoughts from beginning to end, but was trying to gather troops. If you change to the commander of the 8th Guards Army, Gao Zhanshan, who is called the tall beard, this olive tree will not be saved!

A fire burned out, but I don't know if they can be blown and reborn in the spring breeze!

After receiving a telegram from the commander of the 7th Army, Ning of the 7th Army, following the Tyrannosaurus Rex, the 8th Army, which was airborne half an hour later than the 7th Army, changed the airborne landing site in time and chose another depression, although some unlucky people fell into the shallow pit and wet their clothes, but in this perennially hot and dry Tunisia, it is not a bad thing, at least it is much stronger than the 7th Army hanging on the tree!

Airborne half an hour later, the speed of the whole army's assembly was even faster than that of the 7th Army, which fell first, which made Major General Gao Zhanshan very satisfied.

"This is my tall bearded soldier!"

Because of its inland location in Tunisia, Kairouan was the most important land transportation hub in Tunisia, but it was only garrisoned by a few thousand British troops.

At about five o'clock in the morning, most of the 7th and 8th Guards Airborne Corps had been assembled. Except for the nearly 100 fighters who died and were wounded in the olive groves, there was not much attrition. The standard individual communicator of the Guards paratroopers makes the assembly of paratroopers not so difficult.

Even though the paratroopers did not have heavy equipment such as armored vehicles and self-propelled guns to be received in the second batch of airborne advances, the two army commanders Ning and Gao decided to immediately attack Kairouan after waiting for most of the strength of the two paratrooper divisions in Dongying.

"Just a few thousand people, our 8th Army can get them!"

The tall beard bites the grass roots and grins loudly!