The best way to look at the animation in comparison to the timeline is to view it as a historical perspective. Is what happened in the animation "exactly" what happened in real life? Well, that's up to interpretation. It's like watching a WWII or Vietnam drama film. The events are close but the finer details are questionable.
IIRC, in MD7, someone says to Basara that it was Basara's efforts in Sound Force that defeated the Protodevlin. Basara's reply was he didn't defeat anybody. And that historical note also came up in M7 concerning how Max met Millia in the episode where they are doing a DYRL? remake.