February 7, 1916, light rain.

Rain and snow turned large swaths of the south of the Alps into mud overnight, and the temperature dropped several degrees at once.

Early in the morning, Major General Guderian of the German Panzer Corps lamented the terrible weather, and if the sunny weather like yesterday could continue, his armored troops might be able to see the Mediterranean Sea through the Austro-Hungarian kingdom of Croatia and Slavonia a day later.

Now, not only is the heavens unfulfilled, but even the opponents are desperately resisting.

A new order from the Supreme Command from Berlin before dawn had been sent from Guderian to keep up to date with the Austrian Army and Navy, and in fact, his vanguard had been in contact with the troops under the command of Baron Condra the night before, but neither side had any intention of fighting, so they quickly disengaged.

In desperation, Guderian ordered his armored troops to postpone their departure and rest on the spot for the time being.

Two hours later, news came from the 4th and 5th armies that the two armies, which were following Guderian's 1st Panzer Army, had reached the border of the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, and that their infantry was still advancing, but the pace of the march was really disappointing.

Guderian, for his part, had already placed his headquarters near Kamnik, more than 30 kilometers on the border side, and his main forces were encamped on both sides of several major kilometers from the border here.

The reconnaissance detachment had all been dispatched, and the reconnaissance range of the forward troops had been extended to the vicinity of Ljubljana, but no reconnaissance plane had flown overhead all morning.

After lunch, a squadron of airships transferred from the German mainland arrived in the rain, and Guderian hurriedly informed the airship troops of the area he was worried about, and asked them to immediately go to those areas for close reconnaissance.

Immediately after receiving an order from the High Command, the commander-in-chief of the group, General Hausen, ordered his engineering unit and the 1st Division of the 5th Army to build a number of airfields and airship landing fields around Klagenfurt, Austria. In this era, airports were relatively simple, with flat grass or hard ground. Only the bomber will have slightly higher ground requirements; As for the airship landing field, it is even simpler, you only need to find an open area, and then build some mooring towers for the airship to moor, prepare some sandbags, and then transport the ammunition and supplies needed for the airship supply to the landing field.

Although ordinary airports are simple to build, runways that are not very demanding on the ground also mean that they will become soft and muddy when it rains, so a runway made of earth and rock can meet the requirements of all-weather take-off and landing of aircraft. It would take much longer to build such a runway.

Of course, the muddy road didn't just cause problems for the Germans. Two hours later, Guderian received a reconnaissance report from the airship force that a large number of Austrian troops were rushing from the Italian side to the southern Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, in line with the German High Command's assumption that the Austrians were preparing to concentrate their army and navy there for a final battle against the German invasion forces. If it loses, it burns everything, and if it wins, it has a chance to drive the Germans out of the empire.

In Guderian's own mind, it was time to attack with all its might before the Austrian army gained a firm foothold, but the High Command had other plans. The High Command warned the commanders in its orders to the main forces of the lower army group. "Before the High Command lifts this order. Try to march 15-20 nautical miles from the coast and avoid being tempted by the ground forces of the opposing side to approach the coast, otherwise. It will be quite possible to provoke heavy artillery bombardment from the main fleet of the Austro-Hungarian Navy! ”

Guderian's armored forces, although strong, could not compete with the battleships in the water. To deal with these behemoths in the water, one is to bring in a large number of fortress guns, the second is to use ship-to-ship, and the other is to concentrate aviation forces to attack from the air.

At 3 p.m. on 7 February, German Admiral Hipper led a German Mediterranean Fleet into the Adriatic Seas, where he soon joined up with six German submarines on reconnaissance missions in the area. The night before, three of the submarines, U213, U226 and U310, had torpedoed the Austro-Hungarian naval surface warship off the port of Pula and had not sunk a single Austro-Hungarian battleship despite several torpedoes hitting the target. The extent of the damage inflicted on the opposing warship is also unknown.

After receiving an encrypted telegram from the High Command, Hipper asked his fleet to reduce its speed to 10 knots while continuing to gather the German submarines in the vicinity.

At 4:30 p.m., near dusk, the 9th Airship Squadron, which had flown from the German mainland, flew to Venice Bay in the rain, and with the order of the commander, Major Alchete, 18 Zeppelins scattered in formation and began to search the nearby sea.

Of the 18 airships, 12 are medium-sized Zeppelins with a hydrogen capacity of less than 30,000 cubic meters, and the remaining 6 have a gas capacity of more than 30,000 cubic meters and a carrying capacity of more than 2 tons. Two of them are Fortress-class super-large zeppelins.

The German Fortress class airship began to be equipped with the Luftwaffe in August 1915, and in addition to its large size and carrying capacity, the most important feature of this airship is the weapon it carries - a 75 mm short-barreled howitzer. The idea of putting a cannon on board a plane has long been conceived, and the romantic French tried to put a simplified 37mm gun on board during the war, only to find that the plane could not withstand the huge recoil of the gun fire, and this idea had to be abandoned for the time being.

Compared to airplanes, airships had a much larger ground load, but the early airship pods were simple and not sturdy, so they were also unable to withstand the recoil of cannon fire. To solve this problem, German engineers installed a special steel-framed pod on the Fortress-class airship, covered with a layer of wood and canvas, and a simplified version of the gun with the gun wheels, tails, and shields removed, to form a small turret with the muzzle facing down. Despite all the efforts to reduce the weight, the weight of such a pod is almost 1 ton with the shelves and artillery alone, and with the addition of 5 crew members and spare shells, the total weight of the pod at takeoff has reached 2.8 tons.

In the most secret circumstances, the first aerial artillery bombardment test was carried out in northern Germany in June 1915, and the impact point of the shell did not exceed 300 meters from the target when flying at cruising speed at an altitude of 4,000 meters, the impact point at an altitude of 3,000 meters did not exceed 250 meters, and at an altitude of 1,000 meters, the impact point was very close to the target. This effect was very satisfying to the Luftwaffe, who only thought that the 37-mm guns mounted on the test airships were not powerful, so they were tested for the second time. The airship was equipped with the current 75 mm short-barreled gun, and the ammunition reserve was reduced from 40 rounds of 37 mm to 15 rounds.

The final effect met the requirements of the Ministry of the Air Force, and after submitting to the Kaiser for approval, the Ministry of the Air Force ordered 50 of these airships in one go, and the Army also placed an order for 20 ships. By February 1916, Zeppelin had delivered 36 ships to the German team, and the remaining 34 ships were to be completed by the end of the year.

One hour later, at 5:30 p.m. The 9th German airship squadron spotted the Austro-Hungarian fleet, slowly moving north in 6 columns, 30 nautical miles from the coast. The commander, Major Orchet, made a quick decision: to carry out non-precision bombing of the Austro-Hungarian fleet.

In airship tactics, the so-called non-precision bombing is to bomb without adjusting the altitude after discovering the target, and the altitude of this kind of bombing is usually high, and the accuracy is difficult to guarantee, and it is generally used to bomb large targets such as cities and ports.

After the appearance of German airships, the Austro-Hungarian fleet also reacted at the first time. The flagship, "Prince Eugen", was soon hoisted on the signal flag to accelerate its advance, and before the German airship flew over the fleet, the huge Austro-Hungarian fleet had been divided into six single columns, each column adopted different speeds according to the situation of the ships, and the battleship columns composed of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd battleship detachments reached a speed of 16 knots. The slightly slower column of supply ships headed in the opposite direction to the battleship column at a speed of 8 knots.

View from the air. The thickest place of black smoke is the most conspicuous, and that is also the core of the opposing fleet - 9 huge battleships. Due to the non-precision bombing, the 18 airships were neither picked nor picked except for 2 Bastion-class. Drop the bomb directly at the ship closest to you. After a while, a column of water rose on the entire sea surface, and more than 100 ships avoided the ground at high speed, and from a high place, this sea area boiled like water in a hot pot.

Before the German airship group began to drop bombs, the Austro-Hungarian fleet also opened fire into the air without showing weakness, filling the ground secondary guns with shotguns firing desperately, the characteristic sound of the 20mm shipboard machine guns kept ringing, and the machine guns like fried beans.

With a loud bang, the main command tower of an Austro-Hungarian cruiser was shot and exploded! The German airship unit dropped more than 120 aerial bombs. Hitting one or two is not an unusual thing, but before the explosion of this hapless cruiser, no one saw the Germans' bombs flying towards it, and the traces left after the explosion were clearly a grenade and not an aerial bomb!

Immediately after that, the same scene was the same when another battleship exploded on the side of the battleship - the officers and men standing on the side of the ship clearly heard the shells whizzing and falling into the water and exploding, but there were no German battleships within a radius of dozens of nautical miles, not to mention that the German ** team had not yet occupied the coastal area, even if it did. Their cannons can't hit so far!

One after another, howitzers continued to fall in the area where the Austro-Hungarian fleet was located, and from the point of impact, they were basically targeted, which even Admiral Anton House, who was extremely experienced in naval warfare, was confused!

A quarter of an hour later, the German airship formation had dropped its bombs and turned back, and the strange shelling stopped. During this period, only one destroyer and one supply ship were injured by German aerial bombs, but the number of ships hit by grenades reached seven, but fortunately only minor injuries were inflicted on these ships. The Austro-Hungarian fleet did not shoot down the German airships, but the gunfire of shotguns seemed to hit several of them, and the Austro-Hungarian sailors could see them slowly descending from the sky, but after dropping something from above, they eventually maintained their altitude one by one and turned away.

In addition to regretting, the middle and lower officers and men of the Austro-Hungarian fleet began to feel afraid, because they had just attacked them with less than 20 airships, which had already exhausted them, although they did not know how many airships Germany had, but it should not be a problem to send one or two hundred.

What is even more terrible is that some officers in the fleet had already learned of the news of the huge German airship formation flying to Vienna before they left port, although Admiral Anton House issued a gag order to these people, but after such a toss, the news that Germany has countless airships and may appear at any time is still shameless, and it spreads like an electric wave that is constantly strengthened by energy, and the content is becoming more and more exaggerated, and everyone who hears it is terrified.

Sensing an unusual atmosphere in the middle and lower echelons of the fleet, several squadron commanders of the Austro-Hungarian fleet came to the flagship of the fleet, the "Prince Eugen", in a small boat after dark. They asked Admiral Anton to sail out of Venice Bay, and they felt that it would be better to retreat to the military port of Pla, and if they felt that it was not safe, then to the military port of Taranto in Italy.

"It's not like I haven't thought about it!" Anton House told the generals earnestly: "If you want to live, there is only one way out, and that is to give in to the Germans!" ”

The generals looked at each other, but soon, the commander of the cruiser detachment, Rear Admiral Christop, said in his characteristic loud voice: "Surrender? Are we worthy of His Majesty the recently deceased? Is it worthy of the Austrian people? Is it worthy of your soul? ”

The phone call embarrassed the generals who had planned to propose negotiations with the Germans.

"Well said!" Admiral Anton praised him from the bottom of his heart, but in fact, he didn't think about compromise at all, just wanted to test the reaction of some people.

"Thinking that our chivalrous country was attacked by such a scoundrel by the Germans, as the essence of the country, our navy has the most responsibility to defend the dignity of the empire! In this way, His Majesty the deceased Emperor Austria will also feel relieved in the Kingdom of Heaven! ”

"Fight for His Majesty the Emperor!" The generals said in a low voice, although their tone was weak, but at least they no longer only worried about their own lives as before.

"Very good, since you have to fight, you have to fight with dignity! Retreating to the military port of Pula, we can only be beaten passively, and once we are attacked by the Germans, it will be difficult for our warships to evade in the limited harbor area; Retreating into the military port of Taranto should be able to hide from German land-based aircraft, but the German airships and naval planes will still be tracking, and I am more worried about the Italians, who may well have made a deal with the Germans, so it will be very unsafe for us to stay in Taranto! Admiral Anton first analyzed his thoughts for the generals, and everyone agreed that it was indeed safer to be in the vast sea than to stay in the harbor.

"Strategically, retreating into any harbor is a passive defense or even a dodging defense, which basically does not help to reverse the current situation! Now, Baron Condra is leading the main force of the Austrian Army from Italy into the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, where they will defend the central and southeastern parts of the kingdom from the German invasion along the Branica River and the Veridi Mountains, and wait for Hungarian reinforcements on the spot! Look! Anton House brought the group to the map, where the plan was marked with a series of symbols and arrows, "We're going to give them fire support behind the army lines, the German invasion is strong, and the heavy artillery is definitely still behind, so we have every chance of repelling their armored forces with heavy artillery!" ”

Knowing the admiral's intentions, the generals expressed their support, and they quickly returned to their ships and did their best to appease the restless sailors.