Four Hundred and Twenty One Second Night

There are many problems before Montgomery. The first is how to prevent the German troops from crossing Great Yarmouth and capturing the important port city of Lowestoft. ∷Once Germany captures Lowestoft, it will not only get an important port of loading and unloading, but also shorten the line of sea transportation, and the British army will be more passive.

Now, there is the 5th Division of the 5th Army in the Lowestoft area, as well as an armored force that Montgomery advanced there along the coastline. The defense force can be regarded as quite strong. It is also relatively stable to be in charge of most of the Montgomery Armored Army. Now only the northwest region of the entire defense line is worrying.

If the Germans go all the way to the north along the weak points of the British defense, then Wells, New Hunstanton, Kings Lynn, Swaffham, East Dereham and even Westbach and Downam Kit will be quickly occupied by the German army. At that time, Norwich's side will be wide open. He Montgomery will not be able to defend Norwich even if the god of war comes into the world.

After thinking about going to Montgomery, he decided to order troops to strengthen the defense line near Wells. He is unwilling to lose any defensive fulcrum, and hopes to hold on to the current position before the turning point comes. As long as these positions are held for a few days, the British defenders may not be able to turn defeat into victory and drive the Germans into the sea. Even if it is handled properly, it is possible to wipe out the German Army Group A.

It is not impossible for the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force to cut off the German sea supply line and make the superior German Air Force lose its air supremacy. Montgomery pinned his hopes on the sudden change in weather conditions in the English Channel. As long as the weather turns from sunny to bad in recent days, the Luftwaffe will lose its advantage and sea supplies will become difficult. By then, the time for the British army to counterattack will come. up.

After studying the map for a while, General Rundstedt came up with what he thought was the safest attack plan: the 2nd SS Armored Division of the 2nd SS Armored Division of the 1st Armored Army of Group A, which had just landed on British soil, gave up its plan to attack Wels, Together with the 1st Infantry Division as the general reserve and the 2nd Armored Division drawn from the front, they formed an assault force and crossed the river south to surprise East Dereham.

This plan was very bold. It gave up Wells, which was determined to win, and crossed south to East Dereham twice in a row, directly threatening Norwich's flank, at the cost of giving up New Hunstanton, Kings Lynn, Swaffham and other areas Play the time difference to capture Norwich directly, and then continue eastward to capture Lowestoft in one breath-with a right uppercut, smash the British siege strategy step by step, and destroy all British counterattack positions before the bad weather arrives.

German troops began to move south that night and fought fierce battles with the local British defenders. Germany forcibly crossed the river under the cover of night, while the British defenders used some simple fortifications to fight back fiercely. The two sides fought near the first river for nearly half an hour. As a result, the German troops won by relying on their numerical superiority, crossed the river and continued southward.

East Dereham, the headquarters of the British 4th Army. The British army attacked by the Germans was in a mess, trying their best to prevent the counterattack. The news they got now is not complete, and the German army launched an attack at night uncharacteristically, which caught everyone by surprise. While organizing troops to counterattack on the spot,

Powell grabbed the phone and called for help.

"Hello? I'm General Powell! I'm in East Dereham! I just got the news that the German army has crossed the tributary south of Cromer and is attacking me. I need reinforcements now! Need reinforcements!" Originally, as the supreme commander of this area, he failed to block the German landing, and he was already in a very embarrassing situation. If he lost the river bank defense line again this time, he would have no face to continue living.

So after he dropped the phone, he called for his own adjutant: "You! Take the reserve team immediately! Go to the embankment and strengthen the defense of the entire river bank! Defend every inch of land, even if you die in battle!"

The combat effectiveness of the two sides is very different: Germany is almost a complete 2nd Panzer Army; the British are an infantry division plus a regiment of garrison. So when the German tanks surged across the first river defense line on the pontoon bridge and the captured stone bridge, and approached the second parallel river defense line, the British army still failed to put up much decent resistance.

German sappers soon began erecting pontoon bridges on the opposite bank of the main river, while pushing rubber boats and assault boats into the river under the cover of machine guns. The firepower of the British was more like moaning than counterattacking. As soon as a machine gun position opened fire, it was suppressed by a firepower network composed of two German machine guns.

The remnants of the British 4th Army, already at the end of their strength, failed to show the level of ferocity they had dealt with the German paratroopers the night before, and were defeated with a little resistance along the defense line along the river. The German tanks successfully crossed the two rivers that the British regarded as solid barriers, and quickly advanced towards the long-selected target East Direham.

When Montgomery realized that the situation was not good and wanted to reinforce East Direham, the Germans were only two kilometers away from this important town. The 1st Infantry Division began to attack East Dereham at 12:30 that night. The British defenders were desperate to resist this time. The Friedrichshafen rockets originally prepared for the landing were not able to perform due to the severe sea shaking. However, at this moment, it left a deep impression on the British. The last rocket landed on the defense line of the British defenders at almost the same time, blowing up the entire city into ruins.

German soldiers captured East Dereham at 2:56, and the British garrison commander Powell led the remnants to surrender. The British defense line of the lost East Dereham was instantly cut into two sections, the north and the south-the south with Norwich as the core and the north with Wells as the focus.

The 2nd Armored Corps sent out a grenadier regiment and led an armored battalion to attack overnight, and captured Swaffham, Downham Market, Kings Lynn, and New Hunstanton, west of East Dereham, in one go. After copying the defenders in northern England with a beautiful roundabout attack, he surrounded Wells, which was heavily guarded, and even threatened Thetford, a supply town behind Norwich.

Another unit, the 2nd Armored Division of the SS, headed east along the river, and stopped 3 kilometers west of Norwich in one breath. Montgomery, who was in Norwich, even heard the party The sound of the Guards 150mm self-propelled artillery shelling the British positions on the outskirts of Norwich.

It was 4:30 am that day. Norwich's British Montgomery Armored Forces began to retreat, leaving the remnants of the 4th and 5th Corps behind, retreating south to Thetford and Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket. The British 6th Army, which had just been transferred from other places, was ordered to defend Bunge and Lowestoft, and the 7th Army in Cambridge was ordered to defend Ely, an important traffic town.

On the morning of February 16, the bad weather that the British were looking forward to did not come, and the first batch of German landing troops and supplies were sent to the British coast. The German army has been strengthened to 160,000 people. Rundstedt already has an armored force including the 5th Light Armored Division, the 2nd Armored Division and the 2nd SS Armored Division. Most of the Group A has entered the UK. Moreover, the German army is approaching the city of Norwich, and it is possible to attack an important British city near this landing site at any time.

At 10:50 in the morning of the same day, the 20,000 British defenders in Wells were forced to surrender after heavy bombing by the Luftwaffe, and the fifth coastal town was controlled by the German landing force. However, the happy and sad Germans did not have the last laugh. At 3:15 pm that day, the combined fleet of the Axis Navy paid a heavy price for breaking into Wash Bay to show off its might.

The Italian battleship Roma took the lead and was violently attacked by British naval guns. She was seriously injured and had to return to the Mediterranean for overhaul and was unable to participate in the following naval operations. Immediately afterwards, the German Navy's Bismarck aircraft carrier hit a mine in the active sea area. The entire battleship tilted 21 degrees before it was barely damaged and repaired successfully, and it almost capsized off the coast of the United Kingdom.

Successive losses frightened the French Navy's old-fashioned battleships involved in the battle, so they dared not approach the British coast any more, and the plan to bombard Lowestoft all afternoon came to naught. These French warships originally came to make up the number with the mentality of taking advantage of the fire, avenging Brest, and soy sauce. After all, the German government promised that the French Navy's participation in the war could be deducted from the 400 million daily war reparations.

Therefore, these French warships did not work hard. When they were in a good mood, they bombarded some British positions to vent their hatred of being attacked by the British at the Brest Naval Port. When they were in a bad mood, they used various excuses to slow down their work. The German navy didn't bother to take care of these French "accomplices", allowing these French ships to serve as high-level escorts with high salaries. And after all, Lütjens did not dare to put these two-sided French navy in a close position, for fear that one day they would not want to bombard Germany's fragile aircraft carrier fleet.

Compared with the devastation of the German Air Force and the bloody fighting of the German landing force, the performance of this combined fleet can only be described as quite satisfactory. After all, the Germans lack experience in commanding such a large-scale naval joint formation, and the sincerity of cooperation includes Italy. People can only be regarded as average inside, and it is already a very remarkable thing to be able to barely maintain the operation.

The Bismarck was forced to return to Wilhelm Naval Harbor for overhaul, and the German aircraft carrier fleet was reduced to one ship. The British Navy began to move around, and the new home fleet composed of the two aircraft carriers of the Ark Royal and the Fury, the battlecruiser Repulse and the battleship Queen Elizabeth driven back from the South Atlantic began to play the idea of ​​​​a joint German, French and Italian fleet.