Chapter 233: The End of France (3)

After everyone checked their weapons and equipment, Guderian climbed onto his armored command vehicle and gave orders. "Target, Sedan! Forward!"

After more than an hour of bumping, the surrounding trees gradually became sparse and the road became flatter; Guderian knew that they were about to leave the forest and gave orders again. "All units enter the first level of combat readiness! We are about to contact the French army!"

Suddenly, a familiar burst of dense gunfire came from the front, the sound of MG3 machine guns. Guderian knew that it was the reconnaissance troops and the French border guards fighting. "Black Fox, Black Fox, please reply, what's the situation?!"

Accompanied by the crackling sound of electricity, intermittent voices came. "Report, it's... French army... The remnants... have been captured..."

From the intermittent reports, Guderian learned that the French garrison stationed at the foot of the mountain had been blown up by their own bomber troops, and the remaining remnants had retreated to the Sedan Fortress, and by the way, the bridges on the Meuse River were blown up.

After driving forward for a while, Guderian's armored command vehicle finally drove out of the mountainous area.

"Finally out." Guderian took a long breath and looked back at the armored vehicles coming out one after another. At this speed, let alone the entire 19th Armored Corps, even the 6th Armored Division, which served as the vanguard, would probably have to wait until sunset to drive out.

Looking at the smoke billowing from the bombed Sedan Fortress on the other side of the Meuse River in the distance, Guderian shook his head helplessly. Although he wanted to launch a crossing attack immediately, he had to wait until the 6th Armored Division was assembled before he could act. "Send a telegram to the headquarters, we have crossed the Ardennes Forest and will start the crossing operation tomorrow morning."

Just as the German High Command cheered after receiving the telegram, the French High Command also received the news sent back by Brigadier General Lafontaine of Sedan Fortress.

Although they were amazed at the breakthrough of the German armored forces from the Ardennes Mountains, they did not panic and worry. After all, there is a wide Meuse River between Sedan Fortress and the Ardennes Forest as a natural moat. It was summer, and the deep Meuse River was turbulent, which made it more difficult for the Germans to force their way across the river.

In addition, the firepower points covering the entire river surface of the Sedan Fortress were enough to stop the Germans for a while. Although they also learned from the news sent back by Brigadier General Lafontaine that the German dive bombers were removing those firepower points one by one, no matter how powerful those bombers were, they could not remove all of them.

Even if only half of the firepower points were left, they could well stop the Germans from crossing the river.

Moreover, according to the judgment of the French High Command, it was impossible for a large force to rush over all at once in the rugged terrain of the Ardennes Mountains. The Germans on the other side of the Meuse must be only the vanguard. They must wait for a large number of infantry and heavy artillery units to gather before they can launch a river crossing attack.

In their opinion, this time would take at least a week.

By then, their reinforcements would have already arrived in the Sedan area.

Although the 55th Infantry Division guarding the Sedan Fortress is a second-line unit, it is more than enough to stop the German army without heavy artillery support.

However, the German army's actions once again exceeded the French's cognition. After the 6th Armored Division was fully in place, Guderian ordered to prepare for crossing the river and launch a large-scale attack in the early morning of the next day.

They did not have heavy artillery, but they had long expected this situation, so before setting off, the 6th Armored Division added a lot of 105mm self-propelled artillery and 122mm self-propelled rocket launchers transformed from the chassis of the Jackal tank. The shortest range of this Krupp 105mm howitzer is 9,000 meters; and the range of the 122mm self-propelled rocket launcher can easily exceed 10,000 meters.

The distance between the artillery position of our side and the firepower point of the opposite fortress is no more than 5,000 meters, which means that our artillery can easily strike the fortifications built by the French army on the opposite side of the Meuse River, providing strong support for the crossing operation.

However, the German army could now hit the French fortifications, which naturally also fell within the French range.

As soon as the positions were set up, the French shells came over.

Unfortunately, the French artillerymen forgot the Stukas still circling in the sky. If these cannons were hiding under the camouflage nets, it would be difficult for the Stukas in the sky to find them. But now, as soon as they fired, the large cloud of smoke instantly exposed their positions. One after another, the Stukas seemed to have found food, circling down and destroying all the exposed artillery positions.

Brigadier General Lafontaine was furious and ordered the remaining artillery positions not to fire, and ordered the artillery observers to mark the German positions first, and prepare to bomb them all into the sky after nightfall.

But unexpectedly, until the sun went down and the sky was completely dark, the bombers were still circling over the fortress. They did not continue to dive bomb, but Brigadier General Lafontaine did not dare to take the risk of letting the artillery fire. After all, although smoke is invisible at night, there is flame besides smoke when the artillery fires. Once it fires, it may be destroyed again.

The German army on the other side of the river is not idle either. In addition to self-propelled artillery and rocket launchers, they also have advanced equipment such as helicopters to help transport various artillery.

As early as the Battle of Poland, the German special forces used helicopters to carry out several secret missions.

The real development of helicopters can be traced back to 1904 (as for the helicopter model found in Da Vinci's notebook, it is still very different from modern helicopters. It does not use common rotors, but a huge spiral disk). At that time, Russian scientist Professor Zhukovsky published a paper entitled "The Load Capacity of Rotors", which caused a great response in Russia. Then the development of helicopters began to prevail in Russia, among which Sikorsky and Yuryev were the most famous.

Yannick knew the importance of helicopters in war, and he secretly "invited" these two to Germany a few years ago to cooperate with German scientists Baumgartner and Fleet to develop helicopters. Yannick also pointed out the way for the development of helicopters.

In this way, as early as 1936, Germany had already built a helicopter with an appearance and performance similar to Mi-1. By the time of the Battle of Poland, it had been upgraded to Mi-4.

Although it has not been mass-produced yet, it is still no problem to get twenty of them together. These helicopters carried the IG42 infantry guns weighing less than 600 kilograms and the gunners over the Ardennes Forest and sent them to the front line where Guderian was.

They were busy going back and forth until the next morning, and they transported 50 infantry guns and enough shells for Guderian to squander.