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Chapter 94: The Axis Attack (4)

“Onboard!”

On the evening of September 6, Lieutenant General Tadao Riri Lin, commander of the Lieutenant General Division, raised his arms and shouted with tens of thousands of officers and soldiers of the Second Guard Division.

After two days and three nights of fierce fighting, under the cover of naval naval guns and planes, Tadao Ririhara finally defeated the 6th Marine Division of the US Marine Corps on Christmas Island and occupied the island intact.

In this desperate battle, the 6th Land War Division fought very tenaciously. Although it lost its air cover and artillery advantages the next day, they fully utilized their sufficient materials and fierce infantry firepower, familiar with the characteristics of the island and reef terrain, and gave their opponents major damage. The Second Guard Division paid a heavy price, with more than 3,000 casualties and more than 80 tanks lost.

This price surprised Tadao Rilina himself, and also made the Second Guard Division lower the mentality of underestimating the US military from top to bottom.

The Second Guards Division is not an ordinary army unit. Before departure, it was strengthened by firepower and armor. Even Tiger tanks that are not available in the ordinary army can find 12 in the Second Division. There are even many other new weapons, such as the introduction of semi-track armored vehicles from Germany, Himmler organ, and the hunter tank killer. The tank wing focused on equipping Japan's newly produced four-type tank - Chito. It is said to be a new tank, but it is actually a t34 Japanese leather version, using 75mml48 tank guns, which is more like a hybrid variety of the T34 chassis equipped with the modified German No. 4 turret, which is exactly half a pound compared to the Shermans.

The weapons in other infantry are not bad. All members are equipped with Type 99 machine guns, and in addition, such as the stg43 assault rifle, the American Browning heavy machine gun is also equipped with a batch, and it also has recoilless cannons that are very rare for the Japanese Army. It can be called well-equipped and completely crushed the ordinary army division in terms of technical equipment.

However, this kind of equipment is still a bit difficult to fight against the American troops, especially in close combat. Although the Type 99 rifle is much stronger than the previous 38 rifle, the Type 99 step and machine gun combination still cannot suppress the Americans using the m1 Garland Bar combination. As for the Browning heavy machine gun, there are also more Americans. If it weren't for some stg43 support and a small number of mg42 removed from the armored vehicles, they would not be able to defeat the Americans when firefighting at night.

Of course, during the day, the Americans could only be passively beaten. The Combined Fleet's naval artillery fire and the attack aircraft hovering overhead provided great firepower suppression for Tador Ririya.

Quickly taking down Christmas Island is Tsukahara's only requirement for the Second Division. Every extra day of drag, the joint fleet faces the threat of Pearl Harbor Land Airlines. Although the US military does not dare to attack the mobile fleet in a big way and cannon the fleet, it does not mean that it does not attack the transport forces, especially the tankers. The motorized fleet of Kakuda Mitsuji's motorized fleet has suffered a lot of losses in recent times. Now it has to cooperate with the ground attack, and the efforts to cover the transport fleet will only be reduced and not increase. The longer the time is, the more unfavorable it is to the fleet - Tsukahara is fighting this landing battle with tanker losses!

The senior management of the United States was also very shocked: in just over 60 hours, a land warrior with a population of more than 14,000 was wiped out. This was the fourth land warrior who had been defeated in Japan.

So far, the Marine Corps has formed a total of 6 active divisions. The 1st Marine Division was defeated by Hori Teiki in Guado with hundreds of guns. It has not recovered so far and is still scared. The other two Marine Divisions suffered heavy damage in the Battle of Tarava. Now the 6th Marine Division is also very bad. Except for one regiment, the entire army was destroyed and nearly 4,000 American troops were captured.

In order to make up for the losses of the Marines after the Battle of Tarava, General Jin also trained two additional Marine reserve divisions in addition to replenishing personnel. Now these two troops have not been built yet, and the front-line team has suffered heavy damage. Now there are only two Marine divisions that can be pulled out to fight.

But Washington didn't have time to sigh at the loss of Christmas Island. It was just as expected by the Joint Conference, and it was just a matter of time.

Although the loss was a little faster, the results achieved were even more optimistic than the initial estimate. In the face of the achievements of sinking the Japanese 400,000 tons of various ships, the land aviation with a floating morale was slightly stable. Everyone admitted a reality: the land aviation sacrificed a lot and the results of the war were quite large. The results of these 400,000 tons of warships exceeded the results of the navy's sinking in the South American battlefield! Of course, the quality is incomparable.

Therefore, the big pie that Truman painted for Land Aviation - the construction of the post-war air force was approved and agreed from all parties.

What worries the Joint Conference now is the increasingly deteriorating situation in South America:

The main force of the South American Allied Army was the Fifth Army of the United States. It originally had 11 division-level units, some divisions with less than 200,000 troops, and later three division-level units were added, with a total number of nearly 270,000. It is the largest army in the U.S. military and its combat effectiveness is second to none.

After the Pearl Harbor Incident, the US Army has been expanding at full speed. So far, it has officially trained nearly 80 divisions, including the National Guard Division, and more than 20 divisions are trained. Among the 80 divisions, 14 armored divisions, and 2 cavalry divisions are actually armored divisions. The Fifth Army alone has 14 division-level units, including the Dahong 1st Division, the 1st Cavalry Division, the 3rd Armored Division and other veteran brigades, as well as the newly formed troops such as the 12th Armored Division.

Except for the 20,000 people in the Roosevelt Cluster, the rest were roughly distributed as follows: Ecuador is more than 20,000, Colombia is more than 40,000, Colombia is more than 40,000, French, Dutch, British Guiana is a total of nearly 20,000, and the Three Kingdoms Allied Forces have a total of more than 0. El Salvador is the main force of the US military, with more than 110,000 officers and soldiers, and more than 50,000 people in the Recife area. In addition to the troops of the Allied forces, the total strength of the ground troops in the South American theater has exceeded 300,000.

But this military advantage has not been transformed into a battlefield advantage.

After the German raid on El Salvador, the first collapsed unit was the Brazilian division. The defeated army not only dispersed the US military's position, but also exaggerated the panic atmosphere to the extreme. Then Clark commanded some troops that had dropped heavy equipment to retreat, and asked Roosevelt's group to quickly get closer.

Before Patton arrived in El Salvador, the US military in the area became more than 90,000, and nearly 20,000 troops were retreating from El Salvador to Recife. As soon as Patton accepted the command of the army, he immediately allowed the troops to stabilize his position and even had a fight with Clark - the latter insisted on retreating quickly, believing that it was meaningless to hold on to the ground and counterattack, while Patton held a completely opposite view.

Marshall and most of the members of the Joint Conference agreed with Patton's opinion - the US military in El Salvador was at least 100,000, and the Germans were less than 10,000, so why didn't they attack but chose to retreat? After the order was issued, Clark was unhappy and handed over all the command to Patton, and flew to Recife with a part.

But this fleeting fighter jet soon became a bubble: Rommel, who had a keen sense of smell on the battlefield, then deployed an infantry division, two land brigades, a heavy armored battalion and an air force wing to El Salvador, and ordered Shoken to launch a fierce attack regardless of everything.

The increase in troops prevented El Salvador from being recaptured by the US military, while Shoken's attack intensified the panic of the US military in the South Wing.

Four days later, the situation took a sharp turn for the worse. With the annihilation of the Roosevelt cluster at Jr. and Patton's counterattack against Salvador, the situation of the Fifth Army became very bad.

The total number of the 5th Army that fought fiercely with Rommel's troops in recent days dropped to only over 80,000, including Roosevelt, the three battalions of the Navy that were sent to cover the Navy and more than 4,000 people from the Navy Hewitt. At the joint request of several division commanders, Patton finally issued a retreat order.

In order to prevent the German army from pursuing a large-scale pursuit, Patton divided the retreating troops into three waves and rolled in order to retreat. The navy cluster and the rescued army aviation officers and soldiers who were rescued after parachuting all followed the group army headquarters. The three Roosevelt cluster infantry battalions became the only direct troops of the headquarters.

But Rommel stuck to it and hit the US rear guard with a fierce and short assault, as if a ferocious hyena was unable to kill the entire elephant, but he used his flexibility and ferocity to pounce on the other party and bit off the flesh until the other party was covered in bruises and scars.

Patton surrounded the armored troops in front of Rommel's sudden burst more than once, but it was useless to surround them. The US armored troops could not chew the heavy armored battalion with Tiger 2 as the core. Once the time was delayed, the German follow-up troops and a huge attack aircraft group would immediately rush over to support. The German combat group in the encirclement was very calm and seemed to have great experience in surroundings. The US military could not swallow its teeth even if it collapsed, so it could only give up in disappointment.

Rommel was sure of the Patton army's lack of fighting spirit and used this method to cover up the killing - I just like you who are unhappy but helpless.

Patton now also realized that the reason why the commanders of the Fifth Army asked to retreat together was not to better preserve their strength, but that everyone was afraid of being left alone to cut off the rear! - It means that the entire division was destroyed. If a division commander was exhausted and he survived alone, what kind of face would he have to return to his country?

These division commanders also disagree that Patton led his troops to cut off the rear. The risk of cutting off the rear was too high. What's more, the commander of the army group cut off the rear for the division commanders? Once Patton died in battle, Marshall, who was furious, would definitely attack them. Everyone didn't know that Marshall was seriously ill and hospitalized. Take a step back and say that even Patton cut off the rear, it still needed troops. Although the direct troops of the army now have a reputation, they lost all their heavy equipment. They can't let the three battalions of infantry and naval combat groups go into battle?

Now these senior officers are neither willing to die by themselves nor let Patton die, so the entire army can only choose a suboptimal retreat method in this tacit way of mutual understanding. Although the speed is not fast and the main force is much slower than the one who cuts the rear, it is obviously much more orderly than fighting each other and scattered escape. Morale and supplies can be barely maintained. Washington accused this approach and only hoped that Patton could bring most of the main force back to Recife.

But Rommel would never let the Fifth Army go back so easily. In the early morning of September 7, a landing interception operation code-named "Right Hook" was launched. The German Navy Transportation Force transported the 2nd Armored Grenadier Division to prepare to log in to Alakalu. Their goal was to cut off the US military's retreat... Friends reading books, you can search for "" and find this site as soon as possible.
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