Conquer Europe from the West

Chapter 112: Movements of the Farlan Command

Many years later, when the young officers of the empire learned about the history of that period of war.

They often find one thing - Ryan's height is different every time he appears in the book, and he also has a magical teleportation ability. He can be on the battlefield in front and at the headquarters behind.

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The 20-hour continuous air patrol mission did not put the crew of Z331 into a state of distress.

Contrary to what most people imagine, almost all of these young Imperial Air Force officers and sailors were in high spirits and showed no signs of fatigue at all.

Ryan sat in the suspended seat that was originally reserved for Colonel Schmidt, and experienced the feeling that Brad Noah had when he first sat in the captain's seat of the white wooden horse.

From his perspective, the lower ends of the observation glasses installed on both sides of the ship just seemed to be slightly retracted inward, allowing Ryan to see almost the entire scene below clearly.

Directly in front was the Zeppelin-class airship Brandenburg, which served as a command ship and provided comprehensive communications support to the fleet supporting the 502nd Airborne Infantry Regiment's operations.

This huge beast is now bathing in the red light of the setting sun, and from time to time it spews out pure white smoke, like a whale swimming in the sky.

But the cracked armor plates showed outwardly the deterrent power that it should have as the empire's strongest air battleship.

A total of twenty small air liaison boats are loading personnel and 100 kg prefabricated fragmentation air-blast bombs with the assistance of cranes.

Each ship will leave the mother ship with 6 infantry soldiers and two 100 kg pre-fragmented air-blast bombs, and join a fleet of 19 other Zeppelin-class ships in a designated airspace kilometers away, heading to several battlefields east of Verdun.

Earlier, 20 similar air liaison boats left the mother ship in the same way.

They will go to the designated area immediately after the battle begins, drop bombs at an altitude of 3,000 meters, and then reach the surface at almost falling speed, sending batches of soldiers to the safe area behind the various Farlan fortresses.

Ryan was actually not very satisfied with this.

In his imagination, these soldiers should leave the mother ship by parachuting from the air, but the empire has not been able to gather enough parachutes to arm an entire regiment until now, so this matter has to be abandoned in the end.

But the current situation is actually not unacceptable.

After all, for the current Farlans, even if they were lucky enough to discover that there were Imperial air communication boats flying behind them, they were still short of manpower and could not quickly organize a counterattack.

Firstly, their artillery could only fire towards the Empire and could not turn around and hit their own backs.

Secondly, their weapons were not as advanced as those of the Empire. The old 1886 rifles would only become accomplices in the deaths of those Farlan soldiers at night where the combat distance would not exceed 100 meters.

Inside the bridge of Z331.

Ryan simply swallowed the sandwich sent from the kitchen, drank two sips of water to moisten his throat, and turned to look at the radio operator who was holding the headset with one hand and writing information in a notebook with the other.

"What's the situation at the front?" Ryan asked the first mate.

"Yes, Commander."

The first mate immediately turned to Ryan and looked at the log in his hand: "The Fifth and Sixth Armies officially launched the attack on Verdun at 1622: today."

"They are currently blocked outside the Farlan fortress line, just as predicted in the previous combat meeting."

"The Fifth Army Headquarters sent an order to the right wing of the troop 200 minutes ago, requesting them to use high-frequency artillery fire to obscure the Farlans' line of sight in order to provide the necessary cover for our fleet's operations..."

"Wait!"

Ryan was stunned for a moment: "What do you mean by necessary cover?"

He always felt that General Constantine was up to something new.

The first mate then said, "It's about having the artillery units use firepower to attack the infantry outside the Fallanders' fortress first, and then gradually narrowing the bombardment range."

"Oh, Xu Jindanmu, it's okay then."

The United Kingdom's troops used this thing once in the August battle. They bombarded the enemy with great force, but only a third of the shells landed on the Imperial front. The rest hit the rear.

But Constantine is not a fool like those people in the United Kingdom. If the United Kingdom missed the target, it was because they were stupid. Constantine missed the target purely to help Ryan's troops wipe out the remaining enemies in the rear.

Ryan, realizing this, breathed a sigh of relief. "If that's the case, then the Fifth Army's offensive at Fort Douaumont should immediately attract the attention of the Farlanes, right?"

"Is such that."

The first mate nodded. "According to reports from the front, the Farlanes seem to have immediately deployed a reconnaissance aircraft around Fort Douaumont to assist with ground surveillance. The Fifth Army has been trying to shoot down that reconnaissance aircraft for the past hour, but has been unsuccessful."

After saying that, he added, "Do we need to ask the fleet on the front lines to pay more attention?"

"Let the people from the Second Special Service Detachment pay more attention." Ryan held his chin, his eyes wavering slightly.

The Second Special Service Detachment is a disguised term, actually referring to a joint fleet consisting of Z332 as the flagship, four Zeppelins and eight air liaison boats.

The original job of this fleet was to attack the Farland artillery positions in the middle of the front line, but now that the entire front line has been moved to the present, its job has become to monitor all Farland fortress positions except the city of Verdun.

Ryan actually didn't want them to be responsible for such work.

After all, the Zeppelin class has twenty machine guns and two 40mm rotary howitzers of the same type as the Wave class.

In terms of equipment, this was enough to make Farlan lose all his armor and run away faster than a rabbit.

But the problem is that all of these weapons on the Zeppelin are mounted on the top of the airship, not on the bottom like the Tide-class.

This makes things very delicate.

That is - even if you have so many weapons, you can't use them in ground attack missions.

At first, Ryan didn't understand why anyone would design it this way.

Then he learned from Brinkmann that the Zeppelin class was finalized sixty years ago, and at that time, the artillery was not able to fire stably with the muzzle pointing downwards...

Ryan didn't understand at first, but after a quick calculation of the era, he discovered that all the weapons at that time were muzzle-loading cannons.

He was immediately relieved and understood why there were so many Zeppelins in the Empire but they were not allowed to be manufactured anymore.

There is no other way. The only result of installing a cannon overhead is that when encountering the enemy, you can only keep descending. By the time you descend to the ground, it won’t be long before the airship is beaten into a fool by the cannon.

But the situation is urgent now. There are less than forty minutes left before the battle officially begins. Ryan will naturally not let the airship leave the front line for the safety of Zeppelin.

On the side, the first mate took over Ryan's order and was about to let the telegraph operator send the message.

But before the telegraph operator could confirm, Ryan called out to the first mate, Clementon, and said, "Wait, give them another sentence."

"Just tell the Second Special Service Fleet not to attack the fighter jets."

"Even if you spot it, don't use downward-firing weapons to attack that reconnaissance plane. You can't alert them. It would be bad if they sent an airship."

Ryan still couldn't forget the first day when he was chased by four airships. The Farlans obviously didn't have many airships, but for some reason they liked to attack one fleet at a time, making it seem like fighter training.

"Yes!"

Clementon immediately repeated the order and had the telegraph operator send it to Z332.

It was at this moment that the hatch next to the bridge was pushed open.

"Lieutenant Colonel, we just received a visible light signal from the front! The reorganization of the troops has been completed." Brinkman almost tripped over the aluminum alloy threshold as soon as she came in, but she immediately grabbed the handrail on the side and looked at Ryan.

"very good!"

Ryan nodded immediately. Currently, only four Wave-class ships in the fleet were equipped with visible light signaling equipment (the blinding thing before). Being able to confirm the visible light signal meant that all three fleets, plus the Zeppelin-class ships that needed to search the warehouses in the city of Verdun, had completed all the aerial photography of the Verdun front and began to change the fleet into battle formation.

He immediately asked, "When can the photos be developed as soon as possible?"

"We estimate half an hour, but the Fifth Army Headquarters will get the photos faster than we can."

Ryan: "Then don't send them to the command ship. Send a telegram to Montmedy and have the Fifth Army staff confirm the Farlan munitions depot in Verdun and immediately send the coordinates to the Third Squadron. The rest of the troops remain as planned."

The 3rd Squadron was the fleet that observed the city of Verdun and was equipped with a Zeppelin-class warship and two air liaison boats.

However, they had no soldiers with them, and their primary offensive method was to use airborne communication boats to drop bombs on ground targets. "Yes!" Brinkman saluted immediately, then dived into the cabin behind the bridge and directed the radio operator inside to send a message to headquarters.

At this time, the telegram from the bridge had just been sent.

First Mate Clementon turned to look at Ryan and continued his report: "The Sixth Army has just completed the encirclement of Saint-Mihiel. A brigade of the Fifth Army is preparing to launch an attack on Saint-Mihiel from the direction of the forest in two hours, aiming to merge with the Sixth Army."

“They won’t succeed.”

Ryan immediately shook his head. He had just opened the system map and could see that Mielle had two full regiments of Farlans hiding in six fortresses on the front line, and there were also too many cannons.

This largely confirms the fact that Joffre was indeed dismantling Falden's guns for his own troops.

But this is obviously good news for Ryan.

Because this meant that Fort Douaumont and Fort Vau, as well as some surrounding forts, had indeed lost some of their artillery.

This will provide many good opportunities for the Fifth and Sixth Armies to attack.

But this also means that there will be more Farlanes than usual in Fort Douaumont, Fort Vaux, and the surrounding forts.

Because the vacant gun positions are definitely filled with machine guns.

But this also brings up another problem.

That is, there will never be anyone on the top of Fort Douaumont.

The same thing happened at Fort Warburg and other forts.

This was great news for Ryan and his 502nd Infantry Regiment.

Because they may have the opportunity to land directly on the heads of the Farlans.

This will greatly shorten the time required for troops to capture a series of fortresses such as Fort Douaumont.

But it also indirectly shortened the time left for the troops to capture the Farlan headquarters.

The reason is very simple.

Verdun was able to hold out purely because of these fortresses on the front line.

Once one of the fortresses was captured, it would mean a gap in the Verdun front.

The Imperial Army could just rush in through this opening and rush directly to the rear of each fortress, suppress those fortresses with very few troops, and send a large force into Verdun.

Considering that the staff and headquarters of Farlan's Third Army were all qualified officers who could quickly discover the Empire's true intentions and immediately mobilize troops to support Verdun, they would definitely make the decision to evacuate the current area immediately after receiving the news that Fort Douaumont had been captured.

If they really left, even if Ryan occupied the headquarters, it would be considered a failure.

Because as long as these people can survive and see the combat records written by the front-line troops, they will quickly guess that the Empire used the airship fleet in the personnel deployment operation.

Then the Empire will inevitably find itself facing the Farlan airborne infantry regiment.

Ryan didn't want to face the days of having to be on guard against the Farlan paratroopers every day.

To this end, he had to confirm the location of the Farland headquarters and immediately lead his troops to occupy the Farland Third Army headquarters, and ensure that no Farlander could escape Verdun alive.

Ok?
Suddenly, Ryan felt as if he had discovered something.

He immediately gestured to Clementon to pause, then let his chair fall back onto the deck and walked to the map beside him.

Verdun is a city surrounded by dense forest areas on the east and west sides, with the Meuse River flowing through it from north to south.

Considering that the current front line is from northeast to southwest of Verdun, the enemy's headquarters must not be in Verdun, because no one can guarantee that Verdun will not be captured.

But on Earth, the French Third Army's headquarters in Bar-le-Duc is now in the Empire's occupied zone, so its headquarters should be further south or further back...

On the south side of Verdun, at Saint-Mihiel, there is only one train station.

however.

Rennes saw fewer than seven train stations within a hundred kilometers south of Verdun.

There are only four related to the banks of the Meuse River.

One was in Audenville, one in Saint-Mihiel, and the remaining two were in a village called Lerouville and the large city of Toul...

Considering that the Farlans must ensure the mobility and communication convenience of the headquarters, they will inevitably set up headquarters in these four areas - unless they are crazy enough to choose to build the headquarters in a place where there is no railway at all (railways at this time are very important communication routes).

Rennes didn't even need a scale to rule out Odenville, which was sandwiched between Saint-Mihiel and Verdun.

Tulle was also ruled out as being too far away.

The only remaining station is Lerouville, about ten kilometers south of Saint-Mihiel.

Pull up the map immediately.

Hundreds of thousands of densely packed red dots appeared in Ryan's sight again.

Because the Empire has now advanced to the front line, Ryan can clearly see all the units along the 100-kilometer-long Meuse River, which extends north and south with Verdun as the center.

He immediately confirmed the location of Saint-Mihiel and found that almost all the Farlanes there were gathered around the railway.

Another part of the soldiers were sent one after another to a fortress located on the front line. Including the people inside the fortress, there were about 12,000 people in total.

On average, there are less than two thousand people in each fortress.

and.

Just south of Saint-Mihiel, about ten kilometers south of Lerouville, the situation becomes a little different.

About a thousand soldiers gathered in this village with less than a hundred houses, but they were not sent to the nearest fortress. Instead, they were stationed around the train station, gathering like a dense swarm of ants.

On the north side of Leruville, there is a very wide plain. Judging from the markings on the map, it is an equestrian school.

But on Ryan's map, he could see several neatly arranged reconnaissance planes and a very large factory building.

He looked at the map in the bridge and found that the factory was not marked on it.

This shows that it must have been built recently.

Ryan didn't dare to neglect it. He immediately called the first mate: "Clementon, do you have the recent reconnaissance report on all the train stations along the Meuse River?"

Clementon shook his head. "I'm very sorry, but the Fifth Army has no confirmed intelligence on this matter, Commander."

"fine."

Ryan raised his hand slightly, signaling the other party not to worry, and then said, "Send an air liaison boat to conduct a reconnaissance mission to Lerouville, south of Saint-Mihiel."

"Leruvier?"

Clementon immediately stepped forward and confirmed the location Ryan mentioned: "I understand. I will contact the Second Special Service Detachment immediately."

He wrote down the location and prepared to hand the note with Lerouville written on it to the telegraph operator beside him.

But before he could hand over the note, Ryan called him again.

"No, never mind."

He said, "I don't feel comfortable letting those rookies from the airship fleet come."

"Besides, it's too early to go now. We have to wait another hour until the sun sets. Then I will lead the assault company to conduct reconnaissance."

(End of this chapter)