To the west of Château thierry, the Marne, which flows straight and straight, begins to meander and meander, and from more than 400 metres in the air, this section of the valley seems to be a streamer on the spear shaft of the lancers. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

The LZ-17 is a 140-meter-long Zeppelin hard-form airship that, like a naval ship, has its own name: "Saxony". When it goes to the battlefield for reconnaissance activities, it usually has a crew of 4-5 and is equipped with a radio, two machine guns, and a small number of aerial bombs that use trigger fuses. If the weather conditions were good, the crew would be happy to let their airship fly more than a kilometer, which would effectively avoid the attacks of the Allied aircraft, and on such a cloudy day, they were like tall men walking into a small house, and had to bow their heads and waists.

Arriving at the predetermined airspace, the German crew turned off the engines of the airship and made it drift slowly in the wind, while some of them held binoculars, some with pencils and maps, and recorded the battlefield situation they observed.

Suddenly, one of the crew members shouted: "There is a situation! ”

Following his gaze to the northwest, the crew spotted two planes. After more than a month of flying over the battlefield, the German airship crews were able to recognize most of the Allied aircraft.

The two planes that looked like big dragonflies were the Breguet RU1 of the French army, the main model with a large number of equipment before the war. They have a connected cockpit large enough for 3-4 pilots, but the position of flying the aircraft is at the rear of the cockpit. Normally, the pilots in front were responsible for battlefield observation, and as Britain and Germany took the lead in the era of air combat, the French also loaded machine guns on their planes.

Without waiting for the two French planes to fly closer, the crew of the German airship vigilantly prepared for battle. Just then, a pigeon plane in gray paint flew in from the east.

Before the outbreak of the war, there were nearly 20 factories in Germany with aircraft production capacity, among which the Albatros series with Daimler engines and the Afiatic and Hubert series with Mercedes engines were all first-class aircraft, but the German Army favored Austrian-made pigeon aircraft.

The single-wing, single-seater aircraft is powered by a 100-horsepower Macside D-1 four-cylinder upright water-cooled engine, with a maximum flight speed of 115 kilometers per hour and a maximum endurance of four hours. From 1910 to 1914, the Noeller plant in Austria and the German factories such as Albatros, Gota and Lupe were licensed to produce more than 200 pigeon aircraft, which was the largest number of single-model aircraft produced at the outbreak of the war.

Before the advent of the synchronous fire coordinator, the Germans, in order to equip pigeon aircraft with machine guns, welded steel frames on the roof of their cockpits, to which the MG-08 light machine guns, which were fed by cartridge belts. This strange and ugly "attachment" directly reduces the plane's power in the air, but at the same time it transforms it from a obedient pigeon into a ferocious sparrowhawk.

The light "German pigeon" quickly stared at a "Breguet", and the French pilot on board turned his gun in a panic and fired backwards, but in the completely open cabin, accurate aiming and steady shooting were simply a luxury, and the Hatch Chase made a rough clicking sound, but few bullets hit the target. The German pigeon was closing in on Breguet from the rear and did not open fire until 100 metres away.

The standard model of the MG-08 has a very fast rate of fire, and in the past month, the Germans have used this weapon to shoot and kill no less than 200,000 Allied soldiers, with the French and Russian troops being the main victims, and the model on board the aircraft has greatly reduced the water-cooled sleeve and simplified the construction of the gun mechanism, and the actual rate of fire has been reduced by a third accordingly.

After several rounds of shooting, neither the German pigeon nor the Breguet hit each other, and in the process, the other Breguet did not go up to help, but flew towards the Zeppelin alone. Before that, the German crew had dropped several heavy sandbags in succession, and the huge aerial beast was climbing at a rapid pace, and it would not take long to hide in the clouds.

To avoid the machine-gun fire of the airship's pod, the "Breguet" had to climb to the level of the clouds, and it was not easy to fly in the clouds and maintain a sense of direction, so the French pilots abandoned this path and flew from the bow of the Zeppelin.

At a distance of seven or eight hundred meters, a machine gun on the German airship began to fire, and a series of bullets whipped back and forth in the air like an extremely thin whip, touching the "bregay" several times, presumably leaving many bullet holes in its wing fuselage. The French pilots also fired from a distance, and some of the bullets hit the airship, which could easily penetrate the outer skin of the Zeppelin and penetrate the airbag and cause hydrogen to leak, but there was no precedent for igniting hydrogen to cause a deflagration.

In order to maintain the ascent speed of the airship, the German crew hurriedly dropped more sandbags, and when the French plane flew by from the side, another MG-08 spewed tongues of fire rapidly, but the barrage of bullets always fell behind the "Breguet".

On the other hand, the result of the battle between the German pigeon and the French Breguet RU1 was revealed - the former won the victory with a clear victory in power and agility, and the French plane fell from more than 400 meters in the air, and the chances of the pilot surviving were slim.

After solving the opponent in front of him, the "German pigeon" hurriedly rushed to support his own zeppelin, and the "Breguet" left the German airship that was difficult to kill three or two times and turned around to meet the battle. The French pilot's piloting skills were not inferior to his opponent's, but his plane carried three crew members, and the top speed of level flight was only 80 kilometers per hour, and the frontal attack was fruitless, and within a few minutes the pigeon plane was bitten by the tail, and the French pilot had to flee in the direction of Paris.

The pigeon chased all the way, constantly firing, and was about to shoot the opponent down, but the machine gun suddenly fell silent. No matter how the German pilot fiddled, the machine gun just didn't make any more sound, and he had to go home in a huff.

The battle in the air did not last long, and the process was very simple, with wonderful scenes and twists and turns

The combat on the ground was completely different, due to the bad weather, the aerial reconnaissance of both sides failed to achieve the desired effect, and the cavalry reconnaissance teams of the German and French armies infiltrated each other's battle lines, and the information provided to the higher command headquarters was mostly one-sided, even contradictory, and the field commanders and rear commanders on both sides ultimately had to rely on their own judgment to make a choice.

At the farthest end of the German front, the Kluk Corps had been supported for nearly 40 hours under the fierce attack of the British and French troops, and the 3rd Corps, which was the first to receive the enemy, lost more than half of its losses and basically lost the ability to continue fighting, while the only reserve of Kluk's division had already been pushed up, and the 3rd Corps joined hands with the 4th Corps to defend the flank positions were attacked by the British troops in a roundabout way, and most of the positions were lost, but fortunately, the 1st and 2nd Corps, which had crossed the Marne River in advance, had withdrawn the main force to the north bank of the Marne River with difficulty. Their arrival kept their artillery positions, while the field artillery struggled to support key sections of the flank line from being breached.

On the right flank, Crook's army was the strongest German army, and when the British and French troops suddenly launched a large-scale counterattack from the direction of Paris, the adjacent Bülow and Hausen regiments were facing the Marne, and it would take time for them to significantly adjust their disposition, and once the Crook's corps was quickly repulsed, Bilow's unsuspecting flank would be exposed to the enemy's guns, which would inevitably set off a chain reaction that would turn a low-hanging victory into a terrible defeat.

Kluk's weary but tenacious soldiers withstood the initial offensive of the Entente forces, and the millions of German troops deployed along the Marne were like a prehistoric beast of astonishing size, a little sluggish, but still able to respond in time to an existential threat - the five legions lined up in turn to Kluk, in the absence of reserves, this was obviously the most direct and effective remedy, and the historical scene could have been avoided, It was precisely because Verdun had already been conquered by the German army: if the fortress of Verdun remained in the hands of the French army, Crown Prince Wilhelm's 5th Army had only one road to pass through covered by French artillery fire, and he had to stop and try to pull out the nail of Verdun, and Ruprecht's 6th Army could only force the French line around Tulle and Epinal, where the French fortresses were heavily armed and defended by field fortifications, and the Bavarian soldiers would lose a lot of strength in front of this line. At the same time, the 3rd and 4th corps in the center, the troops of General Hausen and Duke Albrecht of Württemberg, were also pinned down by the French. Since the horn of the counteroffensive was sounded, the French launched a fierce attack on the German positions in the Saint-Gun marshes, where a number of brutal white-knuckle battles broke out, and in some of the most critical battles, the French field artillery caused mountains of corpses of German fallen soldiers......

Crown Prince Wilhelm's weakened but still main army was able to advance westward from both the north and south banks of the Marne, followed by the Bavarian Prince's army, which surrounded the French defenders around Tür-Nancy with two corps and three cavalry divisions in conjunction with Herringen's 7th Corps. When the main force of Crown Prince William arrived at Saint-Gon, Albrecht sent two corps to the aid of Bülo, and Hausen managed to draw a corps, which was pushed back to the north bank from the Marne-Cen-Nain, and then marched along the unobstructed road. By noon on September 14, reinforcements appeared behind the Kluk Corps in time, the biggest crisis was resolved, and Moltke, who had always lacked confidence, temporarily retained his position as Chief of the General Staff. Of course, for Kaiser Wilhelm II, who had come to the front with a group of dignitaries and officials of his allies, the crisis was a real embarrassment to him, because he had just boasted of the mouth of the sea just before the British and French troops launched a massive counterattack, and within a week the glory of Sedan would be restored in his hands.

(End of chapter)