Le Sierra is a town located between Grenoble and Darbinny, in the valley of the Isère, between the Belledonnes and the Chartreux mountains.

The town has been planted with flowers and beekeeping, and it is a beautiful place.

Now, however, the town of Le Sierra is no longer in sight, because a battle is raging in the town. The 39th Division of the French Army held on here, blocking the advance of Army Group North towards Grenoble.

"Boom, boom, boom......"

Shells fell on the town of La Sierra, enveloping the entire town in smoke. The French officers and soldiers hiding in the trenches and other fortifications could only pray silently in their hearts to keep the shells from falling on their heads.

The town of Le Sierra was being shelled by the main artillery of the Italian division, 75 mm field guns, 105 mm howitzers, and a small number of 150 mm howitzers, as well as four 210 mm cannons specially brought for suppression.

This 210 mm cannon is a sharp weapon of the Italian Army. Mainly as a suppression of enemy artillery and the destruction of strong fortifications.

The caliber of the gun is 210 mm, the length of the barrel is 5.25 meters (25 times the diameter of the barrel), it uses a stationary and retreating re-entry gun mount, the muzzle velocity of the gun is 523 meters per second, the maximum firing range is 14.2 kilometers, the rate of fire is one round every two minutes, and its total weight is 15.8 tons.

This heavy cannon is very powerful, and it has no chance of surviving the bombardment of the fortifications in and around the town.

Of course, Army Group North originally intended to strengthen the 9th Army with 6 210-mm cannons, but during transportation, due to the changeable climate in the mountains, two airships carrying heavy guns crashed.

That's right, for such a large-tonnage heavy artillery, it is extremely difficult to transport it from land, and it can only be transported by airship. in order to make it in time for the battle against the small town of Lecheira.

If you want to talk about the current use of airships, the Italian military says second, and absolutely no one dares to say first. In the hands of the Italian army, the airship can be used for reconnaissance and ground attack in the air, from bombing to ground shooting and artillery bombardment, the airship has played a flower in the hands of the Italian military.

Of course, for the Italian army, the biggest role of airships at present is to carry out air transportation. Especially in the mountains of the Alps, transportation by manpower and energy is too slow, not to mention the small volume, but the trucks are good, but the road requirements are not low. As far as the current road of the Carragher Pass is concerned, under the emergency repair of Italian sappers, trucks can currently reach Dalbini through here, but only more than 200 trucks can pass through it every day, and it is also considered that the materials transported by the trucks passing through every day are only more than 500 tons.

Although this may seem like a lot, a division needs at least 100 tons of supplies per day in a combat state. The Italian army that invaded the Savoy region had eight divisions of 130,000 men, and needed at least 1,000 tons of supplies per day.

Half of the trucks are solved, and the rest is transported by airships, which are faster and have a larger load capacity than trucks, and can minimize the impact of the terrain.

The airship takes off from Turin early every morning, arrives in Darbini at noon to unload, and then returns to Turin in the evening.

Of course, the mountain environment is very volatile, and the air currents are also very chaotic, and although the airship is much more resistant to the climate than the airplane, it is also dangerous.

In just six days, six round-trip airships were lost. The main reason is that he is not familiar with the environment at the beginning, which leads to more mistakes and causes damage to the airship.

It's much better now, and there has been no damage to the airship in the past two days.

It was also thanks to these air transports that the Italian army could complete its combat equipment as soon as possible, otherwise the battle in the small town of Lesila would have dragged on for two days.

In the face of the artillery bombardment of the Italian army, the defending French army was of course not to be outdone, and its 75-mm rapid-fire guns were also constantly firing counterattacks. However, in terms of artillery caliber, range, and power, the Italian side has an absolute advantage, and it has 75 mm, 105 mm, 150 mm, and 210 mm available, which is far from being comparable to the French 75 mm rapid-fire gun.

Not to mention the fact that the number of artillery on the Italian side was still superior. Therefore, in the artillery battle between the two sides, the Italian side had an absolute advantage, and the 75-mm rapid-fire guns of the French army were defeated in the artillery battle, and many artillery positions were destroyed in the enemy's counterattack, and it did not take long for them to die down.

Speaking of losing in an artillery battle, this is also a consequence of the stubbornness of the French. After the invention of the 75-mm rapid-fire gun, the French army formed the rapid-fire gun omnipotence school. They added steel cannon shields to rapid-fire guns, and in their teachings they asked the artillerymen to advance 75mm rapid-fire guns to within a kilometer of the front line, suppressing the enemy's battle line with a barrage of shrapnel shells, in order to support the French infantry in launching their proud national skill: the bayonet charge.

Under this technical and spiritual factor, the French enthusiastically embraced the 75mm rapid-fire gun, which has been upgraded from a military school to an unquestionable faith.

Howitzers, heavy artillery, mortars and other old firearms and large-caliber guns were thrown into the garbage dump, and the French army believed that they had found the best solution to the future war, and the whole army only needed one artillery, one caliber, one ammunition, 75 mm miss, 75, and howitzer shells, to be able to defeat the enemy in the face of the enemy.

So after the start of the war, the French army had only one type of artillery available, and that was the direct-fire 75 mm rapid-fire gun.

We all know that blind faith is unacceptable, and it is obvious that the French army is a kind of blind faith with the 75mm rapid-fire gun. Even now that Germany and Italy have educated the French with large-caliber artillery and beaten the French artillery units on the front line all over the ground, the senior generals of the military headquarters in the rear still think that it is right.

France did not need to learn from Germany and Italy to adopt or design a larger caliber heavy artillery, but only improved the 75 mm rapid-fire gun to allow it to raise the elevation angle for curved fire.

Of course, if the thoughts of the French military leaders were known to the officers and soldiers at the bottom, they would definitely scold.

But now they have no strength to scold, because the Italian heavy artillery is constantly shelling them, and the shelling of their positions has not stopped. The screams from time to time are a reminder of the brutality of the battlefield. Of course more

For the effect of the shelling, the commander of the 9th Army, Lieutenant General Pascal, was satisfied. Although the 39th Division of the French Army fortified the small town of Le Sierra, delaying their footsteps.

However, it is clear that the fortifications around the town are mainly civil engineering, and there are not many strong permanent fortifications. This also led to an excellent shelling effect for artillery of caliber above 100 mm.

Of course, this is also thanks to the cooperation of the French army, if it were not for the fact that the French army only had a 75mm rapid-fire gun with direct fire ability, then this battle would have been much more difficult.

The shelling was carried out for half a day, starting in the morning and continuing until one o'clock in the afternoon.

Seeing that it was almost the same, Lieutenant General Pascal immediately ordered. "Order the infantry to attack."

With his order, the troops of a regiment came to the launching position, and they had long since recuperated and were waiting to launch an attack on the enemy's position.

And with the order of the lieutenant general, they climbed out of the trenches one after another and charged towards the enemy's positions.