“……”

"How does it sound so unreliable to expect the Army Air Corps to break the deadlock?" Major General Han Haiping asked in surprise.

Lieutenant General Wu Shixun's eyes widened, and at this time, Major General Han Haiping knew that he had said the wrong thing in a hurry, and slapped his head with his right hand with a wry smile, blaming himself; "Commander, look at me saying the wrong thing again. I am concerned about it, and if I lend me two more dares, I dare not question the decision of the marshal. It's just that this army air force has never performed much, and it suddenly shoulders a heavy responsibility, no matter how you look at it, it's a bit mysterious! ”

"The Expeditionary Force Command has decided, and the current Army Air Force has begun to fight for air supremacy over the Somme, and I don't know how effective it will be?" Lieutenant General Wu Shixun raised his head and looked to the east.

His gaze seemed to have crossed the channel and reached the sky above the Somme......

Somme battlefield

In the clear blue sky, Lieutenant Colonel Hou Shude led the fighter group of his brigade roaring over the positions of the two sides of the confrontation.

Looking down from an aerial perspective

Twenty or thirty kilometers in a radius were long ravines, like ugly scars, spread out between the vast land, one after another, most of which were trenches dug by the Germans.

Whenever a trench was breached by the British and French forces, another one was dug in the rear, and the trench was cut along the valley and the river cut the earth, and everywhere there were dense and countless blackened bomb craters, barbed wire, cantonment holes, and artillery positions and heavy machine gun positions mixed in between, revealing a bloody hellish smell.

It was on this land of more than 200 square kilometers that Britain, France, Germany, and other countries paid a heavy price of nearly 2 million casualties among officers and soldiers, almost 10,000 officers and soldiers per square kilometer, and the blood had soaked this land.

Lieutenant Colonel Hou Shude looked down from time to time to see that behind the trench positions of the Anglo-French forces, there were landmarks from the bannermen of the Royal Army Air Corps of the Ocean Empire, almost every 2 kilometers.

These bannermen were divided into squads throughout the entire Rêma front, with a total of 26 banners and seven men in each squad in a 50-kilometre-wide offensive area.

Their task was to immediately unfurl two banners the size of a sheet when the Imperial planes flew into the sky, and marked "Yiqi" in large red letters with arrow symbols.

With these flags, pilots were able to quickly know which airspace they were in and which direction the Germans were in. Important information such as the specific location of the artillery positions of the Germans.

As soon as their planes passed, the flag bearers gathered their flags to avoid being discovered by the Germans.

Hou Shude flew the fighter over the battlefield, and he pulled the control stick to raise the fighter plane, and according to the news from the front, there were German aircraft in the airspace.

The 23 fighters that followed closely followed also climbed higher to get a better view.

The search didn't last long

Lieutenant Colonel Hou Shude saw dozens of black dots in the distance, and his spirits lifted, and he manipulated the plane to shake its wings a few times, which was the signal of "follow me to fight", and then swooped towards the German plane.

Dozens of silver fighters roared past in the air, chasing and fighting in the air, and the roar of the engines resounded through the heavens and the earth, constantly shooting down German planes one after another.

This caused the British and French officers and soldiers on the position to shout loudly and excitedly to cheer for the warriors in the air.

These pesky German planes were like flies, and they would always drop dozens of grenades in the airfield, dropping them one by one as they skimmed over the trenches.

Although it did not hurt many people, it always caused great fear among the soldiers.

As soon as the fighters of the Ocean Empire appeared, they crushed the German army with their skillful combat skills and advanced fighter performance, and beat the opponent from the sky like a turkey, which made people feel happy.

for a week

477 German planes were destroyed on the Somme front, and silver planes depicting the tricolor of the Oceanic Empire dominated the skies, which made the German side feel a great crisis.

Perona

This is the headquarters of the German 2nd Army on the Somme front, and the whole town is full of strong defenses and German soldiers, and the artillery positions on the outskirts of the town are as dense as a forest.

Inside the German command

The commander of the 1st Army, General Fritz von Billow, stood solemnly in front of the map, and the commander of the 2nd Army, General Galwitz, stood beside him, and the two were listening to the chief of staff, Edgar von Manstein, give a briefing on the situation at the front.

"Your Excellency Commander;

The situation we are facing now is extremely serious, the aircraft sent by the Ocean Empire this time is codenamed "Lightning", just like its name, this is a very advanced aircraft that we have never seen before, fast, powerful, and far superior to our equipment.

As a technologically advanced industrial nation, it is not surprising that the Ocean Empire has hidden some new weapons, but the planes that appeared over the Somme were more than a generation ahead, which put us in a great dilemma.

Of our 672 fighters, 477 have been shot down in just one week, and hundreds of heroic German pilots have died, and the ascension has almost become a mortal mission, which has also led to the refusal of the remaining pilots to fight.

Without aircraft, we would have no way of knowing the enemy's troop movements and preparations for attack, nor would we be able to understand the orientation of the enemy's artillery positions, and we would not be able to take targeted measures for defense.

This will certainly greatly reduce the combat effectiveness of our army and cast a shadow over the overall campaign.

At present, emergency measures are being taken by the technical department, but according to the information transmitted by the rear aircraft manufacturers, the advantage of the Ocean Empire lies in the advanced high-horsepower aircraft engine, and this is a defect that we do not have and cannot be overcome in a short time. ”