In the early morning of 19 May, the Germans gathered more than 100 airships of various types, carrying more than 5,000 officers and men of two regiments, and carried out airborne landing in the Alvi area, the hinterland of the French Third Army. In order to ensure that such a large-scale troop transport operation could be carried out in an orderly manner, under the order of Qing Ying, the German army not only placed paratroopers in the area in advance to guide the airship landing, but also formulated a list of the order in which the airships landed in turn to ensure the orderly landing. By sunset, all the airships unloaded safely at their destinations and all returned to the rear base. Knowing this, Qingying couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief, and her face, which had been gloomy for several days, finally showed a little relaxed smile.

In all fairness, Qingying's move is undoubtedly an extremely risky act. Alvi was located in the deep heart of the French Third Army, with no German troops around it to meet them, and the airships full of infantry were tigers with teeth plucked, without any ability to defend themselves against each other. Once the French army deployed a certain number of troops in this area, or if the airship was hit by French ground fire during the landing, the German army would be met with a disastrous end of shipwreckage and death. In a sense, the role of the German airship unit has surpassed that of traditional heavy artillery, and has become the core soul of their bombing breakthrough on the Western Front.

However, Qingying put her bet on the breakthrough of information asymmetry between the two sides, and did her best to launch this fatal blow. The French could never have imagined that the Germans would be able to descend into Alvi out of thin air, like the gods. In the end, as Qingying expected, the French army did not deploy any troops here. Listen to the German airships landing one by one in the open field. And then release hordes of deadly army officers and soldiers!

After two regiments of German infantry completed the airborne. Immediately, according to the predetermined plan, they quickly took action. They marched to the gap in the encirclement of the southern flank of the German army, and set up sentry posts, deployed obstacles, dug trenches, and erected machine guns at various communication intersections, forming a tight blockade of the area. On the nearly 10-kilometer-long front, there are figures of German officers and men working hard. Although the German assault force on the southern flank was still some way from this surprise force that had fallen from the sky, and tens of thousands of French troops were putting up hard resistance ahead, it was only a matter of time before the two armies met. According to the expectations of the German command, within a maximum of 36 hours, the main forces of the southern flank of the German army would be able to break through the frontal line of the French army. Complete integration with this airborne force!

According to the report sent back by the reconnaissance airship, more than 100,000 French troops in the encirclement have begun to retreat in a northwesterly direction. Qing Ying was surprised by this quick reaction of the French army, but he would never allow them to escape from his encirclement like this. In order to annihilate the main force of the French army in one fell swoop, Qing Ying gathered a large number of troops in the south, so that his Tionville nest was almost wiped out by the French army; If the French were allowed to run away like this, how would Qingying, who had an empty bamboo basket, mix with the Germans in the future?

In order to delay the retreat of the French army, Qing Ying immediately ordered all the Kirov air boats and Gotha I bombers to be dispatched and began to bomb the retreat route of the main French army in the Visoland encirclement. Roads, bridges, railways, and even country roads were heavily frequented by German air forces. The Fifth Army, reinforced by airship units from the German right flank group. The bombardment power was not the same as that of the previous southern assault. With a terrifying roar of terror, the French retreat road collapsed one after another under the bombardment of the German army. Fragments were everywhere, and the flames were blazing. Although the storage of bombs in the German base was limited, at this critical moment, Qingying had completely spared the consumption of these explosives.

Although the bombing accuracy of airships in this period was far less than that of Stuka, which was accurately dropped after diving, and the bombing accuracy of the original Gotha bombers was also unimpressive, the German bombing was still quite successful. On the one hand, because roads and bridges were fixed targets, and on the other hand, the French army at this time had almost no means of air defense, and the German pilots could completely drive the aircraft to a fairly low altitude and then drop bombs accurately. In addition, the current encirclement is far smaller than that of the entire Western Front, and the amount of bombs that the Germans can drop on each stretch of road is also quite impressive, and the saturation of bombs can be fully guaranteed. The German bombardment of the area produced a blitzkrieg effect comparable to that of World War II.

For a time, the uneven and sloping roads were crowded with a large number of French officers and soldiers who urgently needed to retreat. Large items such as mules, horses, baggage, and artillery were crowded together in a disorderly manner, and there was no discipline to speak of. And the people who fled from the city of Visoland were also mixed at this moment, helping the old and the young, dragging their families and families, loading a large number of soft and soft debris with various tools, and competing with their own army for the place to retreat. The French soldiers had no reason to reprimand and hinder these fathers and elders who had fled in a hurry; Due to the ineffectiveness of the French army, they were forced to abandon their ancestral land, where they had lived for generations, which made the French officers and soldiers who were still fighting high half a month ago and were ready to enter the city of Berlin in one fell swoop. The soldiers of the warring sides at the beginning of the war still retained the kindness and integrity of medieval knights, and did not become a tool for complete hysterical killing. For the people fleeing, the French soldiers always tried to help as much as possible, in order to ease the guilt in their hearts.

For the whole of mankind, the good deeds of the French army are undoubtedly a blessing, which proves that the barbaric cruelty of war did not overwhelm conscience and civilization after all; For the French themselves, however, their noble spirit played the exact opposite. The tens of thousands of fugitive refugees who had no rules to speak of were seriously hindered by the fact that the roads were already greatly reduced by the bombing of the German army. The rapid and orderly retreat of the French army, which had been planned, turned into a rapid and almost catastrophic creeping movement.

————————————

May 20, Tionville, command of the German Fifth Army.

In the spacious indoor room, a brand new sand table was quickly made next to the original sand table, and the mountains and rivers were readily available. At the southern end of this sand table, a huge encirclement that spans dozens of kilometers is impressively revealed; A large number of small blue and white flags representing the French army were embedded in it, and it had fallen into the complete encirclement of the German troops.

Qingying smiled at the corner of her mouth, standing confidently in front of this new sand table; As far as the eye could see, the small German flags of the two regiments between them were suddenly drawn from the rear troops of the assault cluster, and then across more than 70 kilometers of forests and mountains, they were directly inserted into the gap in the French retreat under Alvi City. And next to him, Sickert, who had been tense in his face, also stretched out his eyebrows, and a hint of relief quietly crept up his face.

"The news has just been sent from the front that the rearmost line of defense consisting of two French divisions has been broken through by our troops, and the advance hunting battalion of the Sixth Army, which has penetrated deep into the enemy territory, has joined up with the scouts of the 57th Infantry Regiment airborne in Alvery." Sickert spoke softly, his words filled with irrepressible joy and exclamation, "Soaring into the air, divine soldiers descending from the sky, there is nothing more amazing than this." It is truly a privilege for me to be able to witness this historic moment as His Highness's Chief of Staff. ”

Qingying smiled slightly, and did not expand on Sickert's words. According to the plan he formulated before taking office, he used airships to drop a large number of paratroopers to plug the gap in this encirclement; However, when he took over the Fifth Army, he found that there were very few paratroopers in the German army capable of airborne operations. In desperation, Qing Yingcai was forced to change from airborne to airborne, and directly let the airship land on the ground in the wild suburbs of Alvi. Although the German operation was a great success, and the amount of troops carried by airships for landing and direct transportation was even higher than that of paratroopers, this was done on the basis that all countries in the world did not realize that the war could still be fought in this way and that airships could be used for large-scale airlifts. In the future, if you want to replicate this unobstructed miracle of transporting troops, it is impossible to achieve it. The practice of airships directly airlifting a large number of troops to the enemy's hinterland is, after all, an act that deviates from the development of technology and technology of the times, and the establishment of a special paratrooper regiment is the wisest move.

"Hans, how's the battle going on in Theonville?" Qingying paused, and then asked Sickert.

The relaxed look on Sickert's face gradually retracted, and he said: "Since last night, the French have suddenly launched a fierce charge regardless of casualties, and a large number of French cuirassiers armed with sabers and spears have also dismounted and joined the battle for the trenches. At present, our army still has more than 14,000 defenders under the city of Tionville, while the French army on the opposite side should have more than 45,000 troops. However, it will not be easy for them to break through the defense line of our army. A field charge was a death in the face of the barbed wire defense of our machine guns, and it was extremely difficult for the French to find a breakthrough in the jagged trenches. I have mobilized the entire city of Theonville to build a second line of trenches for us, to serve as our strongest stronghold. As things stand, we can hold out in this area for at least a week or more. ”

Qingying nodded hesitantly and said, "Then I will be relieved." If the French were not idiots, it would not have taken them a week at all for them to automatically retreat from Theionville. Now we only need to solve the problem of the southern front and annihilate the main forces of the French army in the encirclement in one fell swoop. ”

Sickert was slightly stunned, and then a hint of joy was revealed. (To be continued......)

PS: Thanks to the book friend Kaede. The renewal ticket of the language and the monthly pass of cllyf support ~~~