Imperial Overlord

However, the attack of the German army has been higher and higher, and the British army has finally begun to have a tendency to be unable to hold it. It is an indisputable fact that the 2nd South African Infantry Division is collapsing.

The battle on the front line has been going on, and in the rear headquarters, as the commander-in-chief of the British North Africa front line, Aurekkin knew that if Rommel wanted to open up the current situation, he could only capture the transportation hub of Tanta.

And if the British army wants to continue to rely on the support of the Americans and stick to it here, it can only be on the premise of defending Tanta!

It was for this reason that O'Kleigin ended the mistakes of his former British commander, thinking that he should ignore other things and just focus on guarding the Tanta, and he would be able to respond to changes without change.

To be a tortoise, to be a tortoise that will not change for ten thousand years, this is O'Klein's plan, and this is what O'Kleikin is going to do.

He believes that as long as the British army stays the same, it can avoid all Rommel's intrigues and make the opponent's advantage unplayable.

Did Rommel prepare this way? of course not! When Rommel attacked, his main idea was to take Damanhur, but he had no intention of attacking Tanta.

As a frontline commander in Africa, he knew that if the British army held on to Tanta, it was possible to hold on for ten or even twenty days. In this case, it is not a wise choice to waste time attacking Tanta.

So what Rommel has to do is just to occupy Damanhur. Because of the occupation of Damanhur, the Allied nails on the west bank of the Nile were completely pulled out.

In this way, the German army can go down the Nile River and hit Cairo in one breath! Detouring to Cairo is a real problem that Rommel gave his opponents.

Because it is backed by two good ports, Alexander and Matrouh, Rommel's materials can be continuously replenished. In this case, the offensive power of the German army can be guaranteed.

As long as Rommel's armored troops advance along the Nile River and hit Cairo in one go, they can plunder the large amount of military materials hoarded by Cairo and obtain a large amount of supplies.

With these supplies, Rommel's Afrikaans Corps can continue to charge eastwards, and go directly to the Suez Canal, which is almost an undefended area. It is no different from rushing.

Once Rommel's army captures the Suez Canal from the south, it can block the transportation of American strategic materials and surround all British troops in Egypt!

This was Rommel's true intention in attacking Damanhur, which is why he sent his 21st Panzer Division to attack alongside the Italian army.

Rommel didn't want to affect his entire battle plan because of the ineffectiveness of the Italian troops' offensive. He wanted to use his own advantages to fight a gorgeous offensive operation.

As a general with his own independent tactical ideas, Rommel has his own tactical characteristics.

In his writings, his style of concentrating firepower has already been reflected. He once wrote: no matter how small the caliber of the weapon is, and no matter how small the number of weapons, it should be used as concentrated as possible.

Breakthroughs and detours are the core manifestations of Rommel's art of war. He likes to use a little breakthrough to drive the war situation, and he likes to use a wide range of detours to solve the enemy.

In the process of attacking, the side with the superior military force will always try to expand the contact area between the enemy and our army, so that it can give full play to its military superiority as much as possible.

Extending the front line can make the weaker side fall into a passive position. This is the core of Rommel's planned roundabout tactics.

This kind of arrangement that forces the enemy to disperse their forces and fight against our superior forces is not a simple dispersal.

For example, assuming that the two sides have a strength of 100,000 to 50,000, if the front is expanded tenfold, it will form a 10,000-5,000 advantage at various points.

However, if used flexibly, if only 7,000 are used to contain the enemy's 5,000 at nine of the ten points, then at a certain point, the force can be concentrated, forming an absolute of 37,000 against the opponent's 5,000. Advantage.

Of course, achieving this advantage is a very complicated process, and the party with fewer people also has many countermeasures.

What caused the British defense to fall into a passive position was actually the serious underestimation of the offensive power in Rommel's hands by the South African 2nd Infantry Division!

This is the biggest problem that the British army is still struggling to cope with the German attack at this moment.

Modern warfare is often a comprehensive and systematic war, and errors in estimation and prediction in each link may lead to misjudgments in the entire strategic link.

The problem facing the British now is that they closely monitored Italian ports in North Africa before the war, and they have very accurate data on the throughput capacity of these ports.

In their minds, Tripoli was too far away to have the slightest influence on the battlefield in front of them.

Benghazi's throughput is only 2,000 tons, and Tobruk has only more than 1,000 tons of unloading capacity.

There is little doubt that such a port would not be sufficient to sustain the present state of affairs of the German army.

It is precisely because of such an accurate judgment of the logistics and transportation capacity that the British army is sure that the German offensive will stop soon, or even just bluff.

But now it has been proved that this judgment is wrong. The German army obviously has the ability to supply, which is the most deadly key problem.

Before the Battle of Damanhur broke out, the British intelligence department inferred that the German-Italian coalition had about 300 artillery pieces that could break into the battle on the frontal battlefield, but this judgment was seriously wrong.

In fact, the Italian army had more than 300 artillery pieces of the frontal attacking force, which were thrown into the battle.

And less than 100 German cannons joined the attack sequence at the same time, which made the British army a little overwhelmed.

On the other hand, in the counterattack of Operation Compass, and the Battle of El Alamein, the Germans captured a large number of British artillery.

Originally, these artillery pieces did not have the possibility of joining this attack due to insufficient ammunition. But as Alexandria was occupied by the Germans, the Germans found a large number of British artillery shells here.

Because of this, including the artillery captured by the British, the Afrika Corps concentrated a full 700 artillery on the frontal battlefield.

It doesn't sound like a lot, but when you know that the 700 Axis artillery pieces were against the 21 cannons of the 2nd South African Infantry Division, the gap collapsed.

Even if the British artillery in other places is counted, the ratio of artillery between Britain and Germany is 7 to 1, and the United Kingdom is not a rival on a level.

To blame is that the British army had too much equipment captured before, so that most of the North African weapons and equipment accumulated over the years were lost to the Germans.

In the United States, the number of cannons in the transported supplies is very small. So apart from the artillery carried by the Australian 7th Infantry Division, the British did not add much artillery.

After all, the Americans sent more than 200 tanks to the British, and it would be an exaggeration to send hundreds of artillery pieces.

All the shells the Germans had in their hands fell on my position! This is what the current commander of the 2nd South African Infantry Division thinks. It was because of such a huge firepower gap that he lost two lines of defense in a row.

He had already abandoned the second defensive position and retreated to the real urban area of ​​Damanhur, but he still felt the fierce firepower of the opponent, as if he didn't want money.

Of course, this is free of money, because the artillery and shells were captured. Rommel meant that after the shells were fired, the British equipment would be scrapped.

So in a few days of attack, the Germans gave priority to firing these British cannons, the purpose was to run out of shells so they could be scrapped quickly!

"The German army's logistical supply is abnormal! This is definitely a problem! There is absolutely a problem!" Aurekkin drew a line on his map with a compass, looked at the radius, shook his head and said tangled.

"It's not Tobruk, even if Tobruk has secret material reserves, even if it is three times the total amount we knew before, it is not enough to support this German attack." As a general who has been in Africa for a long time, Oakley Kim is very knowledgeable about logistics.

It can be said that fighting in Africa and the Middle East is all about logistical supplies, and it is impossible to ignore them.

According to the traditional means of supply, it is absolutely impossible for the Germans to launch such a battle, and even the Battle of El Alamein cannot be fought!

Thinking of this, Aurekkin grabbed the report from Alexander in front of him, and glanced at it again: "The destruction of Alexandria, and the interference and blockade of the navy, is not Alexander!"

Alexander had already suffered a certain degree of damage when the British army retreated, although the British did not have time to destroy most of the buildings and warehouses, and spared a lot of materials.

However, there is still some damage to the port. At least in a short period of time, it will be difficult for Alexandria to return to the pre-war level.

Even if the Germans worked overtime to restore Alexander, there was still interference from the British fleet outside. In this case, it was unrealistic to make Alexander fully operational.

"It's not Benghazi, let alone Tripoli... It's too far from the battlefield, and it's impossible to transport the materials there to Alexandria anyway." The chief of staff said affirmatively.

"Bildi...too small..." Denying his own idea again, Aurekkin stared at the port of Matrouh.

Even with the exclusion method, O'Klein knew that there was only one suspect left. He didn't know what method the Germans used to turn a small port into a port that could support most of North Africa's operations. large port -

There will be an update in a while to compensate for what I owed yesterday...Thank you for your understanding and support...Thank you.