bookpower Chapter 713
Chapter 713
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Attlee worried, the Germans soon launched a formal siege of Liverpool after seeing that the British army was frightened and dared not go north.
The battle was a foregone conclusion. The British army, which had lost its reinforcements, could only defend the isolated city. The Germans launched a fierce attack on Liverpool from the southeast and north. It took only half a day to break through the defense line arranged by the British army outside the city, enter the city of Liverpool, and fight street battles with the defenders.
After the street fighting broke out, the Germans’ automatic weapons such as submachine guns and automatic rifles began to show their power. In the street fighting, the Germans’ firepower density was several times that of the British. They not only had support firepower accompanied by infantry such as mortars, grenade launchers and rifle grenades, but also tanks and armored vehicles to cooperate with them in combat.
The British army was quite careful in defending Liverpool. They set up a lot of sandbags and barricades in the streets and alleys, and then set up a large number of machine gun fire points on the streets to block the German attack route.���If the Germans tried to break through their defenses, they would inevitably be subjected to crazy crossfire, and the casualties of the Germans would be very heavy!
The narrow streets in the city are the most suitable stage for machine guns to perform. One machine gun can suppress the enemies on the whole street and make them unable to raise their heads!
And the British army has at least 300 such positions in the city!
According to their idea, if the Germans want to conquer their positions, they will have to pay at least tens of thousands of casualties!
If the Germans really suffered such heavy casualties, then for the British army, even if they were defeated, it would be a success.
After all, they made the Hans realize what price they would have to pay to continue fighting.
There are still many cities in the south of the sun never sets, and the Fog City is a metropolis larger than Liverpool, even if it was bombed by the Germans and turned into a ruin!
If the Germans want to capture this place, they have to fight a brutal street battle with the British army on the ruins first, and pay a heavy price of hundreds of thousands of casualties!
However, the development of things was completely beyond the British army’s expectations!
The Germans were not the infantry they expected, but a group of Type 4 tanks with reactive armor!
The armor of the Type 4 tanks was very thick, and the 90mm armor was enough to defend against the shooting of anti-tank guns below 60mm.
After the reactive armor was hung, these tanks had stronger anti-strike capabilities. Even anti-tank guns with a caliber of 75mm or more would be helpless at a distance of 500 meters!
The Germans used these Type 4 tanks as pioneers and let them rush in front. As a result, the British army’s disadvantages were immediately exposed!
Their machine guns may be very threatening to ordinary soldiers, but for steel monsters like the Type 4 tanks, machine gun bullets hitting them were like tickling, without any threat!
Therefore, the defense line that the British army had worked so hard to arrange was almost cracked by the Germans in the first confrontation!
“Humph, we have seen this kind of fighting style a few years ago. It is ridiculous that the British Army actually thought that this would work!”
When Model saw that the German soldiers, under the cover of tanks, occupied the streets very well and began to advance steadily, he sneered in his heart!
The British army deployed so many machine guns and hundreds of firepower points in the city, but it was useless.
In terms of weapons and equipment and tactics, the British Army could not find a good way to make up for it!
It can be said that from the beginning of the war to now, Hans’s No. 4 tank has always been a major concern for the British Army and even the entire Allied Forces! They have seen tanks before. After all, the British Army itself is the inventor of the tank!
So they have seen all kinds of tanks, and they don’t think tanks are so great!
However, when Hans’s No. 4 tank appeared on the battlefield, even though the British Army had seen countless tanks, they were still shocked!
Seeing Hans’s No. 4 tank, they knew what a real tank was like. Compared to the Panzer IV, their tanks are nothing but rotten fish and shrimp, not even worthy of carrying shoes of the Panzer IV!
Because the war broke out too suddenly and progressed too quickly, the British side did not have enough time to develop their own tanks. At this moment, their own tanks are still in the research institute and are just a pile of design drawings, but the German tanks are already galloping all over their country, making them restless! It took only two days for the German army to break through the heavily guarded city of Liverpool!
In this battle, the German army paid the price of less than 2,000 deaths and about 10,000 injuries.
The casualties of their opponents, the British army, were very exaggerated. 60,000 of them died in defense. Most of them died in the German air bombing and artillery bombardment, and a small number died in battles with the Germans. The British army was engaged in fierce street fighting!
The number of British soldiers killed was not large, but the number of British soldiers captured was large!
More than 300,000 British soldiers were captured, and a large number of naval soldiers were also captured!
Except for a few who escaped, almost all the British troops stationed in Liverpool were annihilated.
The fall of Liverpool caused the city of Manchester to become a salient on the battlefield. The hundreds of thousands of British troops here faced a dilemma. They couldn’t retreat, and they couldn’t not retreat!
If they retreated, the German army could easily occupy the city of Manchester, further compressing their activities and living space!
If they didn’t retreat, they would most likely be surrounded by the German army!
The main reason for the fall of Liverpool was that it was surrounded, so it became a dead end!
If they were also surrounded, their fate would probably be similar to that of Liverpool. Don’t!
Fog City was quite hesitant, not knowing whether to order a withdrawal.
After suffering heavy blows in succession, the British army’s strength had dropped from five million to about three million. Nearly two million troops had been killed by the German army, and the defenders of Manchester and some other nearby towns added up to nearly 400,000, equivalent to about one-seventh of the remaining British army!
If this army was lost, the advantage of the British Army in terms of strength might be completely gone!
So in terms of preserving strength, they should withdraw!
However, things were not that simple, because they had already run out of food, and the wheat planted in winter was burned by Hans’ bombers using incendiary bombs, resulting in the British Army running out of food at this time. Even if the government carried out wartime economic control and implemented a food rationing system, their food was facing depletion at this time!
If these troops were withdrawn, they would not even have food to supply these troops. At that time, there would be only people but no food, which would cause a mutiny!