The sun was shining brightly, the red sun was rising, and hundreds of German planes were lined up in a four-plane formation, flying in groups from the east towards Sedan. They had only a handful of Messerschmitt-109s as escorts, more than half of them Junkers-87 dive bombers with fat landing gear, and a group of twin-engine Henkel-111 medium bombers, which stood out against a small single-engine background. The aircraft engine roared loudly, sending out more than a dozen kilometers in all directions, and the German soldiers on the ground along the way all erupted in enthusiastic cheers.

"The guys from the Air Force are finally here." Guderian looked up at the group of planes flying towards the Maas River and spoke. It was 10 o'clock in the morning, about two and a half hours after his telegram for help was sent, and although the speed was a little slow, Guderian's heart turned to understanding and relief when he saw the dense flight echelon in the air. This time, in order to help the 19th Panzer Corps cross the Maas River, the two air fleets dispatched several times the ground support forces during the Polish campaign, and it was normal for them to move a little slowly. Thinking of this, Guderian couldn't help but look forward to it, it was the first time that his side had concentrated bombers on such a large scale, how much power could it generate?

The German pilots did not make Guderian wait long. After confirming that there were no enemy fighters in the air, two teams of eight Junkers-87s (Stuka) took the lead in lowering altitude, and by comparing them with previous aerial photographs, the pilots quickly identified the target at the location they were about to attack. Immediately after, Stuka began to swoop down at an almost vertical angle, and the piercing screech of the buzzer suddenly resounded through the sky!

"Boom!" When the air exploded with an earth-shattering loud bang, a fierce and blazing fire cloud burst out from the west bank of the Maas River, and instantly rose into the air hundreds of meters high. As far as the surging air and waves reach, the surrounding sand, gravel and gravel rush in all directions like a storm, and the billowing gunpowder smoke envelops the huge area within a radius of 100 meters, which is spectacular and hideous.

Since aerial bombs do not need to withstand huge bore pressure like artillery shells, and their internal charge ratio can easily be stacked by 50%, the destructive power of a 250kg bomb is even stronger than that of 450mm high-explosive shells several grades, which is definitely a dragon-slaying knife level existence in land warfare. When the smoke cleared, a huge crater with a diameter of more than 40 meters appeared on the ground, and its depth was enough to accommodate the lower three floors of houses!

The explosion of this aerial bomb opened the prelude to German air raids. Suddenly, there was a scream over the Maas River, and German Stuka fell from the sky like meteors. When approaching about 300 meters above the ground, the German pilots dropped bombs on the target with precision through their sights, and then pulled up the fuselage to return to the air. In less than 10 seconds, the sound of a landslide and tsunami-like explosion thundered on the ground, and the hot waves swept across the sky; From a distance, the west bank of the Maas River is like clouds rushing, volcanoes erupt, the earth rumbles and shakes, and even the river ripples.

At the same time as the Stuka group carried out dive bombing, nearly 30 other Heinkel-111s also went on the offensive. Unlike the Stukka, which uses high-powered aerial bombs for targeted killing, these twin-engine bombers are tasked with fire coverage, and at the moment they have up to 40 50kg bombs in their magazines. When they opened the bomb magazine and flew over the French position, a row of towering walls of fire tens of meters high exploded on the ground: each bomb was equivalent to the thunderous blow of a 380-millimeter cannon, and dozens of bombs fell at the same time with a sound almost like a comet, and the meteorite broke through the sky, raging on the west bank of the Maas River, and the smoke of the sandstorm was billowing vertically and horizontally.

In just 25 minutes, more than a hundred German fighters poured their ammunition on the west bank of the Maas River. Before the frightened French soldiers could recover their senses, they saw another large group of German bombers flying from the eastern sky. There were also about 100 of them, the vast majority of which were Stuka and twin-engine bombers, who quickly picked up the unfinished work of the previous batch and dropped tons of ammunition on the heads of the French. Thousands of mountains trembled, the field exploded into the sky like a boil, and even if the German officers and soldiers on the other side of the river took refuge behind their bunkers, they could still clearly feel the strong shock wave coming from a thousand meters away.

"The power of the air force can reach such a level......" Hearing the deafening explosions that continued to sound in the distance, Goodry was relieved and could not calm down for a long time. According to the plan, the German Air Force will dispatch 1,100 sorties today to launch a high-intensity and intensive bombardment of the west bank of the Maas River for five hours. If the 19th Panzer Corps were to be subjected to such an air attack, Guderian would not have the slightest confidence that his troops would be able to hold on, even if it was a group of Waffen-SS soldiers who were so brave that they were crazy, they would have gone insane under this thunder, right?

The French officers and soldiers were confronted with the most terrible nightmare of their lives. The earth-shattering roar swept through the sky like a tsunami, and they were like they were in the fabled battlefield of hell, trembling in the very center of the showdown between the gods. Even if they covered their ears, the sound of anger coming from between their fingers still seemed to shatter their brains and tear their organs apart. The hurricane-like waves set off an unprecedented storm of sand and soil on the surface, and the people nearby were either beaten to a blur of flesh by shrapnel or blown into the sky like a cloud of mist, and then smashed into a ball of bloody flesh.

Seeing the waves of German planes sown and the seemingly never-ending thunder of heavenly fire, the newly drafted French recruits soon became mentally broken, shouting hysterically in the trenches and firing indiscriminately. The veterans who have been in the army for a long time are also on the verge of losing control, although they are more tenacious and can resist tenaciously under the large-scale shelling, but in the face of this purgatory scene like the collapse of the sky, they are still overwhelmed.

After a few hours, even the backbone non-commissioned officers could not hold on. Driven by their survival instincts, they abandoned their duty to defend their territory, forgot their military status, and fled to the rear like crazy. Their will to fight had completely collapsed, and the only thought left was to run away, as far away from the Germans as possible.

"The bomber attack is almost over. The 1st Panzer Division was ordered to assemble its forces and relaunch the river crossing. Guderian looked down at the watch on his wrist and ordered. It was 3 p.m., and the last German fighters had just begun dropping bombs five minutes earlier, and it was expected that in about 20 minutes, the thunderous sonata, which lasted more than five hours, would come to an end. Although Guderian was 80% sure that the French army had lost its resistance, he still had to use the most rigorous attitude to prevent contingencies. He needed to match the rhythm of the air raids of the air forces, so that the infantry crossed the river and went ashore immediately after the bombardment, so that the French did not have any respite.

On Guderian's orders, the German soldiers again rowed to the opposite bank on inflatable rafts. This time, there was no more fire from the other side, only the sound of explosions echoing in their ears with louder and louder sounds.

Perhaps as luck would have it, the Germans' air-ground coordination was unusually perfect this time. While the smoke and dust from the last bomb had not completely cleared, the first inflatable raft had just sailed onto the west bank of the river. The kilometer-long stretch of the river is covered with huge craters, scorched black marks from the heat, and the surroundings are quiet, as if no one has ever defended here. When the Germans arrived at the French artillery positions behind the hillside, they found that there were only artillery and no one here.

Receiving reports from the front, Guderian was overjoyed, and he immediately ordered the sappers to begin building pontoon bridges for the passage of large forces. Soon, the German sappers assembled the boats into load-carrying boats and connected them with iron cables across the Maas, which were then laid with specially made sturdy planks and fastened with latches. By 8 p.m., three wide pontoon bridges large enough to pass tanks had been erected over the river, and the Germans immediately began to cross the river in a race against time, forming three magnificent golden dragons in the night.

According to Guderian's order, the German tank units were suspended after only one regiment, and the anti-aircraft battalions armed with 88-mm and 20-mm anti-aircraft guns were given priority to pass through the pontoons, and immediately deployed a guard around the bridgehead. Guderian knew that the movement of the German army crossing the river today was too big, and the commander of the army was a fool, and he should also understand that the German attack in the direction of Sedang was definitely not a petty fight, but a real killing move that would kill France.

Therefore, if the coalition forces want to prevent the German army from continuing to break through, the most effective way in addition to transferring troops to block it is to send planes to blow up the pontoon bridge over the Maas River. Although the Germans had assembled an unusually large number of aviation units in the direction of Army Group A, they could not provide air protection for the Maas River throughout the day - the French daylight in early summer was as long as 16 hours, and the German airfields were still in Germany at this time, and the distance from Sedan was generally more than 160 kilometers. With a range of less than 800 km, the BF-109 could only fight over the Maas River for about half an hour at most, and it was obvious that it was impossible to fully support the air protection of the pontoon bridges on their own.

The strength of the aviation was unreliable, and Guderian could only rely on his own air defense forces to carry out the defense. To this end, he made preparations before the war: the 19th Panzer Army has one independent anti-aircraft artillery regiment and two anti-aircraft battalions, with a total of more than 170 anti-aircraft guns of various types, and its officers and men are also trained for a long time and have been tested in actual combat on the Polish battlefield. Guderian was convinced that with this force, a net of death could be woven on both sides of the Maas. Even if the Allied planes could blow up the pontoon bridge once, they would have suffered heavy losses themselves, so that they could no longer attack the pontoon bridge that the Germans had rebuilt later.