The infantry carried by the half-track vehicles arrived close on the heels of the tanks, and the firepower of these vehicles was strong enough in the marching state, and the 12.7mm machine gun was almost invincible to the city that had not had time to be fortified.

The first to storm the palace gate turned out to be a half-track car that had been hit by mistake. The tanks outside were turning around the moat in a daze, and they couldn't find their door to enter for the time being.

The soldiers got out of the half-track and began to attack the palace. Japanese troops fired out from various windows on the second floor. The half-track returned fire with heavy machine guns, and the Japanese soldiers could not raise their heads. This machine gun has a strong ability to destroy buildings, usually brick walls and sandbags, which cannot stop its continuous fire. The shooter was very experienced, and did not shoot directly at the window, but at the wall on the lower edge of the window, and the kinetic energy of the bullet was enough to penetrate these walls and kill and injure the Japanese troops hiding behind them.

Shouichi Terauchi still did not escape in the palace, and now he no longer has to use binoculars to see the enemy, the enemy tanks are already under his nose. He originally judged that the enemy had no way to escape, so he entered Phnom Penh, and it was not important how they bypassed the defense and could not come, what mattered was how he escaped from here.

Terauchi knew very well that there had never been such a high-ranking army officer in Japan who had died in battle, and even if he did, it was not here. He had every reason to fear that if he committed suicide, the body would be turned over and over by American reporters to make a documentary, and he would use it to insult the Imperial Army and the Emperor.

For the time being, he had to order his troops to defend to the death, and his guard troops had some combat effectiveness, but they were also not heavily armed.

A succession of half-tracked vehicles rushed into the palace, and these vehicles played the role of infantry fighting vehicles and transport vehicles in Chu Tingchang's troops. The vehicle's open compartment also had some advantages over later generations of specialized vehicles, allowing soldiers to shoot from the outside with relative ease, less limited by range and field of view.

The first tank finally crossed the moat and crashed through a section of the palace wall. A Type 95 road and rail dual-purpose tank, which was galloping in the palace, remained in the city because of repairs, and became the only heavy firepower of the Southern Army at the moment.

The Japanese tanks were preparing to attack the incoming half-tracks, which were just right to suppress the half-tracks with their armor and firepower. But it happened to crash into the wall-piercing, behemoth-like Stewart tank.

The Chinese tankers were also taken aback by the strange shape in front of them, because they had never seen such a strange thing, the ship was not like a ship, and the car was not like a car.

Of course, on the armored battlefield, it is still the weight that is seen, and the peculiar appearance cannot be eaten. The 37-mm gun pierced through the small railway chariot in front of him, and then the tank lunged over and knocked over the Japanese light chariot with a high chassis.

Zhou Youfu's command vehicle overlooked the palace on a nearby high ground. He noticed that his men and horses surrounded the palace, but the enemy did not give up resistance. Fearing a loss if the infantry were allowed to attack, he ordered the tanks to attack the palace directly, followed by the infantry, who could use any means of blasting.

When he captured the bank in Calcutta, he once drove heavier self-propelled guns into the building, and in order to use the 105 cannon to blast open the door of the vault, these strange experiences of Chief Chu Tingchang made his thoughts on the battlefield unrestricted. Of course, on the other hand, the damage to ancient buildings caused by the battle will not be condemned by the Allies, and once the buildings are damaged, it becomes natural that some items will disappear inexplicably.

The Allied Command had already called him continuously to put a tightening spell on him, and some messages skipped Chu Tingchang and gave him directly. He was asked to ensure the safety of the Royal Palace, the municipal facilities of Phnom Penh, and the surrounding French military camps. In particular, the personal safety of King Norodom Sihanouk must be ensured.

The 22-year-old young king seems to have made contact with the Allies and is willing to cooperate with the Allies to free himself from the rule of Japan and the Vichy government. Of course, even Pavilion Chief Chu won't know about these secret deeds, let alone Zhou Youfu.

The Americans, from a strategic point of view, still want to deal with these weak kings. To some extent, these people are the easiest to control, like grass on the wall, always falling to the strong. Comparatively speaking, idealistic nationalists such as Ho Chi Minh or Son Ngoc Thanh can be bought for the time being, but they are more difficult to control.

Zhou Youfu did not buy these telegrams, and did not reply to any similar telegrams. He just wants to make holes in the palace and create a fierce battle. He never thought that Terauchi Shouichi was here, and the defense of Phnom Penh gave him a lot of misdirection, and he judged that there was a major general brigade commander who had died here.

The tank rushed directly up the steps and entered the palace, causing the defending Japanese troops an imaginary and unexpected panic, thinking that the tank would stop to form fire support from the outside, and the infantry would attack. But now these big guys have come up directly. Not only did they rush up the steps, but they also rushed into the palace.

The Stuart tanks were really suitable for such a task, they swarmed in, followed by infantry half-tracks firing from all sides.

The heavy machine guns placed by the Japanese at the entrance were quickly eliminated. The infantry dismounts and clears the floors and rooms. The troops used a large number of automatic weapons and * without restrictions, and after half an hour, the entire palace was smoking.

The six-hundred-year-old imperial palace trembled in front of Zhou Youfu's eyes, he didn't care about any historical and cultural heritage, or the life of His Majesty the Emperor of Cambodia, he had to end the battle quickly and then ransack it.

At the same time, the main 200 division, which was rarely used by Chu Tingchang. Officially put into battle, it is no longer a surprise attack, but a frontal advance. He assigned a tank battalion and a self-propelled artillery detachment to the 200th Division, which was flanked by the main forces of the 202nd Division and the 203rd Division. He already knew that the commander of Benlei's 5th Division was Yamashita Fengfumi, and he just wanted to resist this hard bone.

The 5th Army and the 5th Division are old enemies, although Chu Tingchang himself did not get involved in the historical grievances between the two, but the veterans are holding back their strength to take revenge. If you calculate the history of the war, the 5th Army has never won the 5th Division, even though Kunlun Pass killed a brigade commander of the division in the first battle, but Kunlun Pass was finally completely occupied by the 5th Division.

Of course, now the situation has reversed, and there was a lack of heavy artillery and medium tanks in the operations of that year, and now the 5th Army has them.

The M7 Priest self-propelled gun, which arrived after the construction of a long railway line, is now coming in handy. Towed artillery is not easy to deploy in this area, and the enemy is very good at taking advantage of mountain cover to avoid curling fire as much as possible. This is where mobility comes in.

Of course, most of the artillery experts of this era have not yet understood the role of self-propelled artillery, because their reconnaissance and communication command capabilities have not yet reached the threshold and cannot launch short attacks with a short window.

Yamashita had two main forces at hand, the 4th Division, which had just retreated along the railway line due to the failure of the encirclement, and the 5th Division, which was not yet fully staffed. There are also two mixed brigades. His troops had no less than 150 howitzers. He thought that his troops were full of vitality and more than enough to defend, but the situation in Phnom Penh also distracted him.

Phnom Penh is an important stronghold. Half of the army's supplies arrived in Phnom Penh via Mekong shipping and then transported by rail here. Another part of the supplies landed in Nha Trang, Vietnam, and was transported by rail, and Phnom Penh is also a stop after all, it should be said that compared with the long supply line from the west coast of Myanmar last year, the supply line has been greatly shortened, but the enemy is still fighting on the vital point. Compared with these, the safety of Marshal Terauchi Shouichi is a secondary matter.

However, Yamashita is still fundamentally different from the ordinary officers who have a headache, and he still has his own opinions on whether or not to return to Phnom Penh.

The enemy has the upper hand for now, but its hidden intentions have all been revealed. Chu Tingchang's purpose is to cut off the retreat with a surprise soldier, and then push it head-on. If you disperse your forces, it is equivalent to the enemy playing into the hands of them, and even if you can retake Phnom Penh, the enemy's main force will follow closely under the city, and it is better to do the opposite.

He strictly ordered the 48th Brigade to return to the division to rescue Phnom Penh, and his two main divisions retreated to the point where Benlei could not move. Waiting for the old enemy Chu Tingchang, come to gnaw on the thunder. He has no rear now, so he has to rely on the materials hoarded at the military station on the railway line to maneuver with the enemy. If the enemy thinks that he will be unsustainable, he is very wrong.

After he took over this mess, the only thing that surprised him was the 4th Division's dedication to the construction of the military station. From all kinds of weapons and ammunition, sapper equipment, medical drugs to pots and pans, the abundance of materials is staggering. The division had been begging the command for all the resources, and then hid them on the edge of the railway line, although I don't know what he thought at first, but now these reserves can be used, and he can support them for a while.

Drones hover in the air, collecting enemy movements. Chu Tingchang also used the long-range fighters of the US Army Aviation (mainly the P38) to collect enemy intelligence, of course, the intelligence collection efficiency of each reconnaissance plane was only about one-2,000 times that of the UAV. They can only stay on the battlefield for a short time, and they do not have any advanced sensors except for the naked eye of the pilot, and they are easily deceived by the camouflage of the Japanese army. But the presence of these aircraft, which was necessary, provided him with sufficient justification for directing the artillery to launch an attack.

The Americans made mistakes and omissions in the air intelligence and Chu Tingchang pointed where to hit the artillery, which was his headquarters, except for Tao Mingzhang, no one could figure out how he turned decay into magic, and transformed messy and long-delayed intelligence into accurate firepower, in short, he could always do it.

His 24 priests, as well as a number of half-tracks carrying 75-mm mountain guns, were divided into three detachments, which were now making their way through the mountains, each with very little infantry for the sake of light carriages.

The troops advanced according to the route demarcated by the command, at the right time, underground in the appropriate place, and then the coordinates given by the command launched the fire. Target designation is so clear that it usually does not require observation and feedback from front-line observers on the landing point of the test-fired munitions, as well as up to several rounds of calibration and re-observation, if any, which is also meaningful.