81_81266 Montgomery faced a number of difficult problems, the first of which was how to prevent the German forces from crossing Great Yarmouth and capturing the important port city of Lostoft. Once the Germans captured Lostoft, not only did they get an important loading port, but they also shortened the route of sea transport, and the British would be even more passive.

Now, there is the 5th Division of the 5th Army in the Lostovt area, as well as an armored unit of Montgomery advancing there along the coastline, and the defense force can be regarded as quite strong, and the defense of Norwich is responsible for part of the 4th Army and most of Montgomery's Panzer Army, which is also relatively stable, and now only the northwest of the entire defense line is reassuring.

If the Germans cut all the way into the northern regions along the weak points of the British defenses, then Wells, New Henstanton, Kingsling, Swarfholm, East Direham, and even Wiesberg and Doneham Markit would be quickly occupied by the Germans, and then Norwich's flank would be wide open, and he Montgomery would not be able to hold Norwich even if the god of war came into the world.

After thinking about it, Montgomery decided to order his troops to reinforce the defensive line near Wells. He was reluctant to lose any of his defensive fulcrums, hoping to hold on to his current position before a turnaround came. As long as they held these positions for a few days, the British defenders would not necessarily be able to turn defeat into victory and drive the Germans out into the sea. Even if handled properly, it was possible to completely annihilate the German Army Group A.

Cutting off the German supply lines at sea and depriving the superior Luftwaffe of air supremacy, which neither the British Royal Navy nor the Royal Air Force could do, was completely impossible. Montgomery pinned his hopes on the sudden weather conditions in the English Channel, as soon as the weather changed from sunny to bad in recent days, the Luftwaffe would lose its advantage, and it would be difficult to replenish at sea, and the time would come for the British to counterattack.

After studying the map for a long time, General Rundstedt came up with what he thought was the most secure offensive plan: the 2nd SS Panzer Division of Army Group A, which had just landed on British soil, gave up its plan to attack Wells, and together with the 1st Infantry Division as a general reserve and the 2nd Panzer Division drawn from the front, formed an assault force and crossed the river south to attack East Direham.

This plan was very bold, abandoning Wells, who was determined to win, crossing the river south to East Direham twice in a row, directly threatening Norwich's flank, giving up New Henstanton, Kingsling, Swarfam and other areas, playing with a time difference to directly capture Norwich, and then swinging the division to continue eastward to capture Lostoft in one breath - crushing the British siege strategy with a right hook operation, and rushing to destroy all British counterattack positions before bad weather came.

The German forces began to move south that night, engaging in fierce fighting with the local British defenders. The Germans forced their way across the river under the cover of night, while the British defenders fought back violently with improvised fortifications. The two sides fought for nearly half an hour near the first river, but the German forces won by relying on their numerical superiority and crossed the river and continued southward.

East Direham, the general headquarters of the 4th British Army. The British* team, which was attacked by the Germans, was in disarray and was trying to stop the counterattack. The information they have now is not complete, and the German team uncharacteristically launched an attack in the night, which also caught everyone by surprise. While organizing troops to counterattack on the spot, Powell grabbed the phone and called for help.

"Hey, I'm General Powell! I'm in East Direham! I've just received the news that the Germans have crossed a tributary south of Cromer and are storming my side, and I need reinforcements now! Reinforcements are needed!" Originally, as the supreme commander in this area, he failed to block the German landing, and he was already very wolf, and if he lost the river bank defense line again this time, he would have no face to continue to live.

So after he dropped the phone, he called his own adjutant: "You! Immediately take the reserves! Rush to the embankment to strengthen the defense of the entire riverbank! Defend every inch of land, even if you die in battle!"

The difference in combat effectiveness between the two sides was very significant: the Germans were almost a full 2nd Panzer Corps, and the British were an infantry division plus a regimental garrison. So when the German tanks poured over the pontoon bridge and the captured stone bridge to cross the first bank line and approach the second parallel bank line, the British still could not get much decent resistance.

German sappers soon began to erect pontoon bridges on the opposite bank of the main river, while rubber boats and assault boats were pushed into the river under the cover of machine guns. The fire of the British was not so much a counterattack as a groan, and as soon as a machine-gun position opened fire, it was suppressed by two deers.

The remnants of the British 4th Army, already at the end of their strong, were not able to show the same level of ferocity they had had done against the German paratroopers the night before, and were routed with a slight resistance to the lines along the river. The German tanks crossed two rivers that the British considered a strong barrier, and made a rapid advance towards East Diream, which had been chosen.

By the time Montgomery realized that the situation was not going well and wanted to reinforce East Direham, the Germans were less than two kilometers away from this important town. The 1st Infantry Division began to storm East Diream at 12:30 p.m. that night, and the British defenders had no way to retreat and put up desperate resistance. Hundreds of rockets landed on the British defenders at about the same moment, reducing the entire city to rubble.

German soldiers captured East Durham at 2:56 a.m., and the British defender commander Powell led the remnants to surrender. The British defence, which had been lost in East Dereham, was instantly cut north and south - the south with Norwich at the core and the north with Wells as the focus.

The 2nd Panzer Corps detached a grenadier regiment and led an armored battalion to attack overnight, capturing Sverfim, Dawnham, Makit, Kingsling, and New Henstanton, west of East Direham. With a beautiful roundabout attack, he copied the rear of the British defenders in the north, surrounded the heavily guarded Wells, and even threatened Thetford, a supply town in the rear of Norwich.

The other unit, the 2nd SS Panzer Division, followed the river eastward, striking 3 kilometers west of Norwich before coming to a halt, and Montgomery, who was in Norwich, even heard the sound of SS 150 mm self-propelled guns shelling British positions on the outskirts of Norwich.

At 4:30 a.m. that day. Norwich's British Montgomery Panzer Corps began to retreat, leaving the remnants of the 4th and 5th Corps to retreat south to Thetford and the lines of Berry, St. Edmunds and St Edmunds and Stomakit. The British 6th Army, which had just been drawn from elsewhere, was ordered to hold Bunge and Loostoft, and the 7th Army at Cambridge was ordered to hold the important city of Erie.

On the morning of 16 February, the bad weather that the British had hoped for did not arrive, and the third German landing force and supplies were sent to the British shore. The German force had been strengthened to 160,000 men, and Rundstedt already had three armoured armies, including the 5th Light Panzer Division, the 2nd Panzer Division, and the 2nd SS Panzer Division, and most of Army Group A had entered Britain. Moreover, the Germans were under the siege of Norwich and could attack an important British city near the landing site at any time.

At 10:50 a.m. that day, the 20,000 British defenders of Wales were forced to surrender after heavy Luftwaffe bombardment, and the fifth coastal town was taken over by the German landing force. However, the delighted Germans did not have the last laugh, and at 3:15 p.m. that day, the Combined Fleet of the Axis Powers paid a heavy price for its invasion of Worth Bay.

The Italian battleship Rome took the lead, but was attacked by British naval guns, and was seriously wounded and had to return to the Mediterranean for major repairs, unable to participate in the next naval operation. This was followed by the German Navy's aircraft carrier Bismarck striking a mine in the active sea area, and the entire battleship tilted 21 degrees before it was barely damaged and repaired, and almost capsized and sank off the coast of Britain.

The successive losses frightened the three old battleships of the French Navy, which were involved in the operation, said that they would not dare to approach the British coast again, and the plan to shell Lostoft all afternoon came to naught. These French warships originally came to make up the numbers with the mentality of taking advantage of the fire to rob, revenge for Brest, and soy sauce, after all, the German government promised that the cost of the French Navy's participation in the war could be deducted from the war reparations of 400 million per day.

Therefore, these French battleships did not work hard, and when they were in a good mood, they shelled some British positions to vent their hatred of being attacked by the British in the military port of Brest, and when they were in a bad mood, they used various excuses to be passive and sabotage. The German Navy did not bother to care about these French "accomplices", and allowed these French ships to serve as high-ranking escorts with high salaries. And after all, Lütjens did not dare to put these two-faced French navies too closely, for fear that they would one day not think of shelling Germany's fragile aircraft carrier fleet.

Compared with the devastation of the Luftwaffe and the bloody struggle of the German landing force, the appearance of this combined fleet can only be described as decent, after all, the Germans lack experience in the command of such a large-scale naval joint formation, and the sincerity of cooperation, including the Italians, can only be regarded as average, and it is already a very remarkable thing to be able to barely maintain its operation.

The Bismarck was forced to return to Wilhelmsport for overhaul, and the German aircraft carrier fleet was reduced to three. The British Navy began to move, and the new home flotilla, consisting of the two aircraft carriers HMS Ark Royal and HMS Fury, plus the battlecruiser Counter Attack and the battleship Queen Elizabeth, who had returned from the South Atlantic, began to play with the idea of a combined fleet of German, French and Italian