Chapter 970 Air Combat Trap
The village of Düssel is 79 km from Saarbrücken.
This is a small village with less than a hundred households. It has flat terrain and fertile soil, and the villagers live a self-sufficient life.
On this day, the villagers worked on the land as usual.
As long as they are not affected by the war, farmers who can farm the land will have the least to worry about starving to death.
To some extent, they are still beneficiaries because the shortage of supplies has caused food prices to skyrocket, and their agricultural products can be exchanged for more things.
The problem is…
All the men were conscripted into the army, and the heavy physical labor in the fields was done by the elderly, women and children.
Valerie was pulling up a bunch of potatoes and tapping them on the ground to shake off the dirt when she heard something unusual over the sound of the wind.
She stood up curiously and listened for a while, then shouted to her sister who was digging the remaining potatoes in the field with a small hoe a few meters away: "Laura, I heard something."
Then she added, her voice filled with fear: "It may be that the enemy is coming, from the direction of Saarbrücken."
Laura turned around, her face covered in dirt under the sun showing her exhaustion. She looked in the direction Valerie pointed and said comfortingly:
"Don't worry, they said the enemy won't reach here."
"Have you forgotten that our soldiers are winning the battle and are advancing in the direction of the enemy!"
"So, that should be our troops!"
Valerie relaxed a little, Laura was right, she was too nervous.
She focused again on the potatoes at her feet.
Before they had pulled out two plants, the sound of an engine suddenly rang out at the corner of the road, and the sisters turned around in surprise.
Other people working in the fields also stopped what they were doing and looked in the direction of the sound.
Those were tanks, one team after another, with a long and thick gun barrel rising high on the turret, and the black muzzle pointing to the sky, as if it could fire a devastating shell at any time.
There were armored vehicles behind them, but they couldn't tell whether they were friend or foe because the distance was too far.
Getting closer and closer...
An armored vehicle sped up and an officer emerged from the rear compartment. He shouted to the villagers in broken German: "Hey, ladies, is this... Dussel Village?"
A Frenchman, he wears the Adrian helmet, a characteristic of the French army.
The villagers were all pale with fear. They wanted to run but were too frightened to move.
"Yes, yes." Laura mustered up the courage to answer, she was worried that if she didn't answer she would be shot by these people.
The French officer looked at the map in his hand and nodded, "Thank you very much, but I suggest you leave here as soon as possible. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, sir," Laura replied, but she didn't move her feet.
The French officer glared at her. "Don't you understand? This is going to be a battlefield. Leave now, immediately, immediately!"
Finally even yelling so that everyone can hear.
The villagers were frightened and quickly dropped their tools and ran towards the village.
There was some helplessness in the French officer's eyes.
The village is not an ideal hiding place. They should hide in places similar to trenches, such as rivers, ditches, or air-raid shelters and basements.
But people who don’t understand this first reaction is to “go home” and close the door, thinking that this is safe.
Suddenly, the whistling sound of artillery shells rang out in the sky.
But what arrived before the shells was an airplane flying overhead at high speed and at a low altitude.
German aircraft, new fighter aircraft.
They swooped down and fired at the French army formation, causing a bloody storm. The French officers were able to escape by retracting their heads into the armored vehicles in time.
Then, artillery shells exploded all around, and the barrage of bullets lifted the dug potatoes and farm tools into the air, creating a mess when they fell to the ground.
The farmers screamed in fear and stumbled away as fast as they could.
"Prepare for battle!" the French officer shouted.
The soldiers on the armored vehicles immediately jumped off and dispersed, but they still held their guns on both sides of the road and continued to move forward with the tanks.
…
Richtofen was observing this scene from the sky, secretly praising the French Army's most elite 1st Armored Corps, as they remained calm and orderly in the face of danger.
At this time, Richtofen had been promoted to major and commanded the German Army's most advanced "Fokker D.VII" battalion.
His mission was to gain air superiority and protect the "radio bomber".
However, Richtofen had just risked being shot down by flying his Fokker D.VII to carry out low-altitude strafing of the French army.
This seems silly and not in keeping with the mission.
Because there are only 50 "Fokker D.VII" aircraft at present, it is the true king of air supremacy.
But he used this aircraft to dive and attack French ground forces.
This would not kill many people, but would put the precious fighter planes within the range of the French machine guns.
However, only Richthofen himself knew the significance of doing so:
He hoped to create some chaos in front of the French army to prevent them from advancing, while the troops in the rear would continue to squeeze forward, and only after they were crowded into a group could the artillery achieve greater results.
But the result disappointed him.
The French army paid no heed to his attack, without even a perceptible pause or stopping to organize air defense, and their tanks and armored vehicles continued to advance along the road.
This is the determination of an iron army.
Envy and jealousy arose in Richtofen's heart. How great it would be if Germany had such an army!
At this time, the wingman flying nearby gestured to Richtofen and pointed to the southwest.
Looking in the direction indicated by his teammates, more than a dozen red tri-wing aircraft appeared in Richtofen's field of vision.
This was a trap set by Richthofen against the French Air Force.
…
"In terms of performance data, our aircraft are superior to the French aircraft." Richthofen, who had tested the new aircraft, was quite confident in the pre-war meeting:
"Whether it's the French 'Camel' or 'Snipe'."
"The only problem is that we don't have enough fighter jets, only 50."
"And the top speed of 200 kilometers per hour is not much better than the 190 kilometers per hour of the Snipe, and the enemy has many more Snipes than we do."
"How many Snipes do they have?" asked Kaiser Wilhelm II.
"I'm not sure, Your Majesty," Richthofen replied. "At least two hundred."
Then he added: "At the same time, we don't have much advantage over the Camel's 187 kilometers per hour."
The number of "Camels" has increased, and there are now four or five hundred of them.
Therefore, although the German army apparently possessed the most advanced fighter jets, it was still difficult to gain air superiority.
After a short silence, Richthofen said:
"There is only one way."
"We will use our triplanes as bait to lure out enemy aircraft, and then the Fokker D.VII will suddenly join the battle."
"This has the potential to achieve the greatest results in the shortest time, and the enemy is unaware of the cause."
(End of this chapter)
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