North Africa, Convexis.

The sudden explosion outside the window caused Lilith to scream.

"What, scared?" Lin Youde glanced up at his daughter and said in a joking tone.

"Cai, Cai is not afraid!" Lilith frowned and retorted loudly, "I was just taken aback!" ”

Lin Youde also smiled, lowered his head and continued to study the map.

Lilith continued, "Dad, are we too close to the front line, it was the enemy's shelling just now, right?" The enemy's artillery is coming, so let's move back, right? ”

"Lilith, the entire coastline is within the range of the enemy's naval guns, no matter where we go, the enemy can still blow us up, unless we leave the coastline and go inland."

But it is impossible to leave the coastline and retreat inland, as is the case in North Africa, where important strongholds and communication routes are on the coast, most of which are within the range of naval artillery. In addition, although Lin Youde swore to block the enemy's attack, he could not help but plan for the worst, once he could not stop Patton's offensive, he would have to retreat from the sea, and from this point of view, he could not withdraw the headquarters inland.

Fortunately, Lin Youde had Oh sauce by his side, and the enemy did not dare to put the battleship very close to the shore, so the fleet's ability to support the shore attack was weakened, but from time to time the enemy would still drive to the shore offshore to carry out several rounds of long-range artillery bombardment, and then quickly retreat to twelve nautical miles away.

Lin Youde and his ground troops were tired of this kind of shelling, so he sent the air force many times to send those American Iron King Eight to the bottom of the sea, but the British and American air forces desperately protected these slow battleships, so the effect of air attacks was not particularly significant, several attacks Lin Youde lost nearly 300 bombers, but only heavy damage to the two battleships of New Mexico and Colorado, and damaged the Arizona, Maryland and Marseilles at the same time, so that these three ships had to return to Gibraltar for major repairs, Intelligence estimates that all heavily damaged and damaged ships will not be able to return to combat for half a year.

It should be noted here that the South Dakota-class battleships in this world are not the South Dakota-class in another time and space, and the U.S. government was originally ready to continue to build the South Dakota-class super-dreadnought after completing the Colorado class, but because of the signing of the naval treaty and the arrival of the naval holiday period, this type of South Dakota-class battleship was canceled construction, and all the completed hulls were demolished. Become the most famous air defense battleship in history (unmistakable).

And in this time and space, there is no naval holiday, so the three-year shipbuilding plan of the United States has not been abolished because of the signing of the naval treaty.

So in the early 1920s, the Americans built 12 Lexington-class battlecruisers, 4 Colorado-class battleships, and six Colorado-class enhanced South Dakota-class, which scared the British to the core. In another time and space, the Americans completed only three Colorado classes, and all but two of the twelve Lexington classes were demolished.

To the relief of the British, the Americans had exhausted their financial resources after completing so many battleships and battle cruisers, so they soon had to retire all the capital ships built before this to save money, so the British Empire's navy still maintained the face of an old naval power in terms of the number of capital ships - but in fact, the old R-class battleships in the British Empire's battle sequence were only hanged in front of the Americans' new warships.

But now, the British must be very glad that the U.S. Navy has such a strong strength, and after changing the Royal Navy, Lin Youde sent five capital ships into the dock at once, so there was basically no fighting.

In addition to the air force, the attack of the German submarine force did not have much effect, the main fleet of the British and American coalition was equipped with a large number of escort ships, and their escort force was so large that they could deploy a three-layer anti-submarine network, and most of the German submarines failed to seize a suitable attack position, so they could only retreat to attack the escort ships on the periphery. Since Patton began his new offensive, German submarines have reported sinking eight light cruisers, but the German submarine force has also lost five submarines - which is generally destroyed.

Lin Youde could only abandon the plan to weaken the enemy's fleet with submarines, and let the submarine force turn to attack merchant ships, in order to cut off Patton's logistical supply.

However, German submarines have been attacking the Anglo-American merchant fleet in the Mediterranean, and although German submarines have sunk millions of tons of merchant ships since the start of the war in North Africa, they have not been able to effectively cut off the logistics supply of the Anglo-American coalition.

After all, the Mediterranean Sea is too small, and the routes of merchant ships are not long, and the longer the route, the more obvious the effect of sabotage warfare, and conversely, the shorter the route, the higher the "resistance" to sabotage warfare.

Lin Youde also thought about letting the Franco-Italian fleet attack from the Adriatic Sea, just facing the Anglo-American fleet on the sea, but there was still a considerable gap between the number of capital ships of the Franco-Italian fleet and the Anglo-American fleet -- even if the five battleships that were sent back to the port by the air force for repairs were removed, this gap still existed, but it was only narrowed.

Unless Lin Youde could allow the Ming fleet to enter the Mediterranean through the Guò Suez Canal, the risk of a decisive battle at sea would be too great. However, the British chicken thieves did a great job of blocking the shipwreck, and Lin Youde's engineering troops reported that it would take at least two months to completely dredge the canal nullah, in other words, the Ming Imperial fleet would enter the Mediterranean Sea to join the battle in January next year at the earliest.

As a result, Lin Youde could only resist Patton's ferocious attack while guarding against the artillery bombardment that came from the sea from time to time.

Patton had already broken through Lin Youde's first line of defense, but Patton had not taken all the support points on the first line of defense, obviously the fierce general did not know enough about Lin Youde's elastic defense doctrine, and he did not think about how much trouble these support points of omnidirectional defense would cause to his follow-up troops.

He was only commanding his troops forward, and it was clear that the target of Patton's offensive was the city of Tabourbai, about twenty kilometers west of the city of Luenis, which was the intersection of two roads, and the capture of it would cut off the connection between the city of Lunis and the Confederate clusters deployed on the eastern shore of Lake Balagisdi.

Of course, Lin Youde would not let Patton succeed, he had already transferred a considerable number of troops to Tabourbay, and gave orders to the French army defending Tabourbay to defend it. At this moment, he is so focused on studying the map, thinking about the plan of counterattack - according to Lin Youde's theory of elastic defense, every successful defensive battle ends with an excellent counterattack.