Just finished this one on Hard. At some point the Germans take out your airfield, which is why you couldn't use air attacks. Here's some things that helped me:
-At the beginning, place your AT guns back in the trees a little bit behind the sand bag semicircles. These positions were set up by the level designers and have a pretty good firing field.
-Try to always have someone on the fixed machine guns in the trenches.
-Bring in reinforcements ASAP, don't let points build up. Either heavy squad or more AT guns. If you bring in heavy squad, make sure to use their AT soldiers (2 per reinforcement), they have a pretty powerful AT weapon.
-Watch for planes. There's not much you can do about the bombing runs. Even if you try to move the targeted AT gun, the plane just adjusts it's route and kills it. However, you CAN see where the machine gun strafing runs will probably occur and move your guys out before the plane can get there. This is very impt as one strafing run can decimate an entire line of trenches.
-When a tank is getting near range, save it. Then go through each AT gun and make sure it's ammo type is AP (armor piercing) instead of HE (heavy explosive). That way they're not trying to switch ammo type and reload when the tanks are in range. When the tanks gets in range click on each AT gun in range to attack the tank. If you lose an AT gun, reload. If you kill the tank, save.
-SAVE/LOAD IS CRITICAL! You need some patience, but due to the randomness of this game, saving and reloading until it goes right is key.
-Try to make it to 5 ships passed before retreating or being overrun from your first line of defense.
-Once you fall back, get a flak gun ASAP and place it slightly left of center behind your trenches. Keep a constant eye for a fast moving enemy on your minimap (an enemy plane) and attack the plane with your flak as soon as possible. The goal is to shoot it down before it reaches your lines so the falling parts don't take out any of your men. If a plane attacks an area of your line where the flak can't reach it, reload. It'll probably choose a different spot on the next load.
-Try to fill all the sandbagged semicircles with AT guns, just like before. It really helps to pull back the 76mm AT gun from the first line of defense before everything crumbles.
-Once you have your flak and AT guns in place, get ready for a long, tough battle. Constantly keep an eye out for planes so you can force target them with your flak gun before they reach your lines. Do the AT force-fire trick as before, saving and reloading if things do not go well. Try to save up 50 reinforcement points so you can get the KV1 Heavy Tank. This will give you a solid mobile defense since you can move the tank as needed.
-Most impt: SAVE EVERY TIME SOMETHING GOOD HAPPENS! I ended up having about 25 save slots. Every time I destroyed a tank and none of my AT guns or Flak was destroyed... save. Every time I shot down a plane w/o the falling parts killing something impt... save. Before you shoot the coastal gun... save. 20 seconds before the next wave of tanks hits your line... save. Then if everything goes to hell (which happened ALL THE TIME for me), you can reload and still be OK.
-Final note: I had to play the entire mission at the slowest speed in order to have a chance at keeping up with the action. Even then I struggled. I don't see how anyone can play this game at full speed.
Post back if you have more questions, good luck!
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