Before dawn, Zhou Youfu's artillery fire was ready to begin, and the artillery indiscriminately attacked all areas of the city except for the imperial palace, seemingly aimlessly, the purpose was still to confuse the enemy's judgment, and at the same time cover the loud noise of the tank engine.

His two hundred tanks of various types, wheeled combat vehicles and more than a hundred half-tracks, as the first attack wave, began to launch a sneak attack. This was followed by the trucks of the engineers laden with gravel and prepared to build a road. Behind them are the tank repair troops, because it is expected that many vehicles will be stuck in the mud and will not be able to get out. The last in line is the second wave of infantry.

There was constant news that tanks or wheeled reconnaissance vehicles were stuck in the mud and could not be driven, but Lao Zhou was unmoved, because he had already been mentally prepared. His worst-case scenario would be to get half of the vehicle trapped, but only if it progressed fast enough. It is still possible to suddenly divide Phnom Penh by surprise in the form of a north-south attack. The command under the mountain, right on his offensive line. If Yamashita sees his troops killed in front of him, he will probably commit suicide. So that he would be able to harvest the head before noon.

War itself is a contest of adaptability. Yamashita once used his bicycle troops to make it impossible for the Allies to adapt, and he earned the title of the Tiger of the Malays. But this time, Zhou Youfu wanted to use his own tank vehicle to make the opponent at a loss. Before, he was constantly encroaching on the periphery, and the troops under the mountain gradually became more flexible and began to adapt to this style of play, but now Lao Zhou has changed the way and rhythm of attack again.

At four o'clock in the morning, when it was dark, the Japanese realized that the Chinese troops had crossed the swampy area. The slow-, muddy Stewart tanks and Greyhound wheeled reconnaissance vehicles popped up and looked a lot bigger. In a hasty counterattack, the troops began to report to the Yamashita command that they had discovered the enemy. However, it was dark, and the report did not confirm the model of the enemy's vehicle, but only used ambiguous words such as "unrecognizable, very massive", and so on, and gave a vague description.

Yamashita realized that the enemy might have used some kind of amphibious vehicle with reserve buoyancy to carry out a small-scale sneak attack. In the battle for some islands in the Pacific, the U.S. military has put in a number of bizarre amphibious vehicles that can travel between islands or set sail from landing ships. Of course, this shows the talent of the Americans for whimsy, and sometimes Yamashita will envy the endless new toys of the US military, and if he has mobility equipment other than bicycles, he is confident that he can play more tactics, but the number of vehicles provided by Japanese military enterprises is not only limited, but also so few.

Of course, he has already studied that amphibious vehicles such as LVT or DUKW of the US military cannot be considered combat vehicles and do not have enough firepower and armor, and he judged that Zhou Youfu invested such equipment in order to divert his attention. Prepare for his frontal assault. Immediately, he ordered the staff officer to tell the 53rd Brigade to hold on. But before the order was given, the telephone line was broken (the rear telephone pole was hit by a Greyhound reconnaissance car).

This miscalculation led to his eventual defeat.

The first to break out of the mud was a Greyhound chariot. The lighter body, as well as the commander's divine judgment of the route, allowed the armored car, overtaking the rest of the tanks, to rush to the front of the position.

The tanks that were left behind had to face the increasingly sparse roads that were crushed by wheels and tracks, but fortunately, Zhou Youfu was quite experienced, and his infantry vehicles were loaded with branches and constantly thrown into the muddy pond as a temporary measure. Behind the assault team, a large number of trucks, carrying sand and gravel, waited for a temporary road to be laid. The paving of roads is carried out in parallel with the transportation of baggage. As a rule of thumb, once the mud gravel pavement is formed, the continuous passage of vehicles will form an effective tamping effect, omitting the hassle of slow rollers and occupying the road.

Of course, there must be the constant landfilling of the engineering units, the potholes and ruts left by the vehicles.

Lao Zhouyi came here from the mountains of Myanmar, and there were many ways to bypass the lack of construction machinery. He focused on how to effectively arrange the sequence of attacking troops and sappers so that all units could function efficiently at the same time.

The repair units of the 202nd Division were also on standby in the rear of the sappers, ready to put in powerful tractors to save the vehicles that had fallen into the mud. Zhou Youfu didn't do it all night, just planning the details of the army's simultaneous road construction. As for the attack, he didn't worry too much about it, he knew that as long as the big strategy was right, a few experienced troops could complete the task on their own, and as for the inexperienced troops, he didn't expect them too much.

Breaking through the first line of defense, the Greyhound reconnaissance vehicle quickly cut through the thin, winding trenches of the enemy, and its mission was to mess with the enemy's lines and, if possible, disrupt their communications. Yamashita had just completed the entire defense of the telephone network, using underground lines in the front and telephone poles in the rear, and he was indeed preparing for a long-term confrontation.

The chariot slammed into the bare, crooked telephone poles, knocking them down one after another.

The Japanese were completely unable to catch up with the reconnaissance vehicles that had slipped to the rear, and then the Stuart tanks in the rear also appeared. Some of the infantry mounted on the tank jumped off the tank and started the battle, the purpose was to secure a gap and the commanding heights on both sides, and it was also necessary to find out the actual enemy situation in person (after all, Chu Tingchang's bag did not write down the enemy number). Among the first to arrive were artillery crews, who, armed with optical reconnaissance and communications equipment, quickly seized the high ground where the headquarters of the enemy's brigade was located, and immediately began to direct artillery fire in depth.

At 5 o'clock, Yamashita realized that the enemy's attack in the north might not be false, and that the 53rd Brigade might have collapsed, and that he could hear the enemy's artillery concentrated in the south at the headquarters, and that the people sent to check the line were gone, and that his staff officers tried to call the brigade by telephone and radio at the same time, but could not get in touch (drones began to interfere with its radio communications).

He urgently mobilized reserves to create a second line of defense. But it was too late. By 5:30 a.m., about 15 armored vehicles were within range of what he could see. Greyhound's 37-mm guns have already begun firing at the palace, with a white flag. The enemy came so quickly as Yamashita had not expected, and he had never seen such a fierce and deadly attack in his life. Almost straight to the point.

The last reserve of the 5th Division was quickly thrown into the battle to intercept the enemy. Yamashita watched the projection of troops from the enemy's rear through the binoculars, and saw a steady stream of half-tracks coming. For the time being, he has not given up hope, if the enemy only uses these off-road vehicles to transport troops and ammunition, it will not be able to hold out for long. He needs to fight back quickly.

At this moment, he can still maintain the command, it is already Zhou Youfu who let him go, otherwise Lao Zhou's artillery fire would have covered this obvious target and collapsed him. There were no reserves at the foot of the mountain, so the 4th Division in other directions could only be quickly mobilized, and a brigade from each of the two wings could be drawn to support the north.

When the Japanese army began to jump, He Bisheng's synthetic brigade began to move slowly, which was the "main soldier" of the entire campaign, and this unit launched an attack at the end. He Bisheng has the most powerful mobile force of Chu Tingchang at this moment, this new establishment within the 5th Army, Chu Tingchang's concentrated use of tanks is a concentrated embodiment of the idea of using tanks, of course, American assistance is not enough to establish an armored division, so he saved up such a composite brigade. The programming of this brigade is also very peculiar, concentrating tanks, self-propelled guns and mechanized infantry, there are no motorized infantry and towed artillery, even the most elite armored divisions of various countries are not so ahead of the times, of course, this is also thanks to this brigade-level unit, which is relatively small.

Two companies of Sherman tanks were the first to attack, supported by the "Wolverine" and "Priest" self-propelled guns in the rear. The enemy's machine gun unit, using 20-mm cannons, fired from concealed positions, which were continuously concentrated in front of the Sherman tank, with 5-centimeter-thick steel plates with a pronounced inclination. The tanks unhurriedly adjusted their guns for roll call, and the artillerymen found the emerging troops and desperately tried to tow away the weapons, so it was inevitable that the artillery and people would be reimbursed on the position. The Japanese did not have sufficient firepower and could only use infantry guns to fire at direct sight, but this fire could not hit the moving target at all.

However, the 4th Division was a master of repairing fortifications after all, and the trenches were staggered, and once the tanks approached, they faced crossfire everywhere, but unfortunately it was difficult for the Japanese fire to even threaten Sherman's side armor. Even if quite a few experienced veterans were able to hit the side of the tank with a grenadier from a distance of 150 meters, they rarely caused damage.

Tanks are constantly next to shells and bullets of various calibers, slowly advancing in explosions, destroying the enemy's fire little by little with firepower, and at the same time destroying the enemy's psychological defenses. The lethal fire of the Wolverine destroyer, constantly firing enemy pillboxes from the rear and by small-caliber artillery fire. An average of two or three rounds to eliminate a pillbox, or artillery position. The 4th Division was completely unprepared to deal with such weapons, and most of the carefully protected and camouflaged belongings on the positions were quickly consumed.

The southern defense line of the Japanese army gradually showed a declining trend. Finally, at 8 a.m., it was broken through and the tanks rushed into the city. The urban area of Phnom Penh is very small, and at this time, the two armies of Zhou Youfu attacking from the north and south have been connected by artillery fire, and they are only two kilometers apart.

Yamashita realized that the place where the enemy would finally meet was near the Imperial Palace. In the past four hours, his defeat has been forged little by little, and now it is irreversible.

Chu Tingchang chatted with Brooke, who had been reunited for a long time, while observing the urban area of Cairo. Traffic control was already in place throughout the city, anti-aircraft gun positions were everywhere on the outskirts, and warplanes flew in the sky from time to time, and although it was difficult for German bombers to attack here, the British would be fully prepared.

Stalin was originally invited to this meeting, but because he wanted to discuss the situation in Asia, Stalin was unwilling to destroy the "Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact" signed in April the year before, so he did not come in the end. This has led to a shift in the tone of the meeting, which will be more Asian. And the absence of the Soviet Union also made Chu Tingchang's long-term planning easier. Obviously, in July 1943, there had not yet been a serious discussion among the Allied leaders about the post-war situation, and now was the perfect time to preconceive and instill some geopolitical concepts in favor of China in the American president.

Of course, Chu Tingchang is already proficient in this, and the key is to package his own interests and say that they are common interests.