Chapter 238 Army aircraft “confiscated”?
Less than half an hour after Charles left the front line, the front line miraculously returned to its proper combat state, and the same was true for the entire line of defense.
Joffre was still worried, so he ordered the infantry gendarmes to patrol the front line as planned.
However, the report of the gendarmerie captain was: "They are fighting seriously, General, we confirm this, and the battle is very fierce, with gunfire everywhere!"
Xiafei was stunned. This was a little unreasonable.
Then the military police asked again: "General, do we still need to implement the killing order?"
When Joffre received the telegram, he fell silent, as if he could not make up his mind.
Kanais advised from the side: "General, they chose to obey orders. If obeying orders and disobeying orders have the same result, and both have to face the order of beheading, then the order of beheading will lose its deterrent meaning!"
Xiafei thought about it and it made sense. When the troops had chosen to obey orders, implementing the killing order would not only be ineffective but might even have a counterproductive effect.
Thinking of this, Xiafei nodded and said, "Dismiss the leading officer and investigate him. Let him hold a rifle and be a soldier!"
His idea was that the casualty rate on the battlefield was so high that if these officers who tended to "disobey military orders" were demoted to soldiers, they would soon become wounded or appear on the death list, which would be equivalent to "dealing with" them.
"Yes, General!" Kanais breathed a sigh of relief when he responded.
…
It was past ten o'clock when Charles returned to the headquarters.
Gallieni did not ask any more questions. He seemed to have guessed what method Charles was using and did not say anything.
He just asked Charles to eat something and go to the dormitory to rest, and he would send someone to call Charles if anything happened.
This was exactly what Charles wanted. After a whole night of hard work, even though he had a good sleep on the train, he still felt tired.
However, as luck would have it, Charles was stopped by Lieutenant Colonel Fernando just as he returned from the officers' mess.
"Colonel!" Lieutenant Colonel Fernan handed a telegram to Charles: "German machine gun planes appeared and shot down three of our reconnaissance planes."
Charles was surprised and asked, "What model?"
"I'm not sure about the exact model!" Lieutenant Colonel Fernan replied, "But it's obviously a two-seater!"
Charles said "hmm".
During this period, only two-seater aircraft had enough load capacity to carry machine guns into the sky. Otherwise, just two machine guns would overwhelm a single-seat aircraft or change its fuselage balance.
This shows that his estimate was correct and the German army did not have time to produce dedicated fighter jets.
Fernan went on to report: “We estimate that the Germans are trying to restore combat status between the two armies using machine gun planes.”
Charles paused, then understood.
Germany was as anxious as France about a truce on the front line, and they thought of using planes to disrupt the truce agreement: using planes to dive and attack the French defense line would create enough chaos.
The French soldiers who suffered losses thought that the Germans were violating the agreement and would of course fight back.
The German soldiers were speechless. Although it was not them who did it, it was German planes that did it. They had no choice but to fight back.
Soon, the fighting will spread along the entire front and the truce will become meaningless.
What the Germans didn't expect was that the fighting had resumed on the front line before they could play a role.
The German pilots, with nothing to do, could only vent their anger on the French reconnaissance planes, which led to the shooting down of three reconnaissance planes.
Otherwise, the German machine gun planes would probably remain dormant for some time.
As Charles entered the headquarters, Gallieni waved to him.
When Charles approached, Gallieni pointed to the map in the office and said, "We plan to add several airports on the front line and send pilots to the front line. Do you think these locations are suitable?"
Charles glanced at the map and gave a negative answer: "It must be at least 50 kilometers away from the front line."
Gallieni had a puzzled look on his face: "Fifty kilometers means it takes half an hour for the plane to fly to the front line. Colonel, I think the airport should be as close to the front line as possible, so that our planes can be deployed to the battlefield faster and in a timely manner!"
"So, the airport is only ten kilometers away from the front line?" Charles asked back.
"What's the problem?" Gallieni looked at Charles in confusion: "This is already out of the enemy's artillery range."
This is not Gallieni's fault. He didn't know the situation of future air battles, nor did he know how they would develop. He had even become accustomed to the state in which France had absolute air superiority.
"General!" Charles pointed to the direction of the enemy on the map and said, "We should take one thing into consideration: the enemy also has planes, and we cannot always have air superiority. If we set up an airport ten kilometers away from the front line, the Germans will easily find it, and then their planes will attack our airport..."
Gallieni said "Oh" and nodded slightly.
A distance of ten kilometers.
When the front-line soldiers saw the German aircraft formations, they didn't even know whether the planes were targeting artillery, infantry or airports, so they were unable to provide early warning to the airports.
Even with the early warning, the pilots would have only about 10 minutes to take off, which was too short to allow them to prepare.
The "50 kilometers" mentioned by Charles can avoid these problems well.
The airport is separated from the front-line troops, and the enemy aircraft group flies over the front-line targets without taking any action, which means that their target is the airport in the rear.
At the same time, 50 kilometers provides half an hour of preparation time, which is enough time for the airport fighter jets to take off into formation.
Thinking about it, Gallieni nodded and agreed to the plan: "Do as you say, Colonel, move all the airports back!"
"The already built airports must also be moved back." Charles emphasized: "Otherwise we will not be able to provide cover for those airports!"
After a pause, Charles added: "It would be best if all aircraft could be incorporated into the aviation team for unified command."
Charles was referring to the planes in the Army's hands.
At this time, the French army's aircraft organization was very chaotic. Some were under the army organization, some were under the division organization, some had it and some did not. There were many different models and each strategy had its own unique capabilities.
Gallieni was puzzled by this: "If all the army planes are put into the air force, how will the army solve the problem of planes being needed?"
Charles said without hesitation: "Contact the flight brigade and have them send out aircraft to complete the designated mission."
Gallieni pondered over the map for a while and seemed to understand the benefits of doing so: it could ease the pressure on the command of various departments and reduce the possibility of confusion, thereby maximizing the utilization of resources such as aircraft, airports, pilots, and ground crew.
However……
Gallieni laughed: "You may be right to do this, but do you know what Joffre will think?"
Charles nodded, and Joffre would think that Charles was undermining his power.
After all, this means "confiscating" all the planes, airports and pilots in the army's hands and handing them over to Charles!
(End of this chapter)
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