From Fort Thierry to the west, the flowing Marne River began to become winding. Looking from the air of more than 400 meters, this section of the river valley seemed to have become a streamer on the spear pole of the lancer.

The lz-17 is a Zeppelin hard airship with a length of 140 meters. Like a naval ship, it has its own name: the Saxony. When heading to the battlefield for reconnaissance activities, it is usually equipped with 4-5 crew members, a radio station, two machine guns, and a small number of aviation bombs that use trigger fuses. If the weather is in good condition, the crew are happy to let their airships fly more than a thousand meters, which can effectively avoid the attacks of Allied aircraft. On such a cloudy day, they are like tall men walking into a small house and have to bow their heads and bow their waists.

Arriving at the predetermined airspace, the German crew turned off the airship engines to make them slowly flutter in the wind, while some of them held telescopes, some of them held pencils and maps to record the observed battlefield situation.

Suddenly, a crew member shouted: "There is a situation!"

Following his gaze to the northwest, the crew found two planes. After more than a month of shuttle flights over the battlefield, these German airship crews could recognize most of the models of Allied aircraft.

The two aircraft with a large dragonfly shape are the French team's Breguele 1, which is the main model with a large number of equipment before the war. They have a connected cockpit that can accommodate 3-4 pilots, but the plane is located at the end of the cockpit. Usually, the pilots in front are responsible for battlefield observation, and as Britain and Germany first entered the era of air combat, the French also loaded machine guns on the plane.

Before the two French planes could approach, the German airship crew were vigilantly ready for battle. At this moment, a gray-painted pigeon-style plane flew from the east.

Before the outbreak of the war, Germany had nearly 20 factories with aircraft production capacity. Among them, the Albatros series using Daimler engines and the Afiatik and Hubert series using Mercedes engines are both first-class aircraft, but the German Army is particularly fond of pigeon aircraft made in Austria.

This single-wing single-seat aircraft uses a 100-horsepower Messid D-1 four-cylinder upright water-cooled engine with a maximum flight speed of 115 kilometers per hour and a maximum flight time of 4 hours. From 1910 to 1914, the Austrian Norre factory and German factories such as Albatros, Gota, and Lupe, which obtained production licenses, manufactured a total of more than 200 pigeon aircraft, which was the largest single-type aircraft produced at the outbreak of the war.

Before the synchronous shooting coordinator was introduced, the Germans installed machine guns on pigeon aircraft, and their cockpit G-08 light machine guns were fixed to steel frames. This weird and ugly "attachment" directly reduced the air force of the aircraft, but also made it turn from a perceived pigeon to a ferocious sparrow hawk.

The lightweight "German pigeon" quickly stared at a "Breguet". The French pilot on the plane turned his gun in panic and shot backwards. However, in the fully open cabin, it was a luxury to obtain accurate aiming and stable shooting. Hatchcas kept making rough cracks, but few bullets hit the target. The "German pigeon" kept approaching the "Breguet" from behind, and only opened fire when it was a hundred meters away.

The standard model mg-08 fires very fast. In the past month, the German army used this weapon to shoot and kill no less than 200,000 Allied soldiers. The French and Russian troops were the main victims. The model loaded on the plane greatly reduced the water-cooled sleeve and simplified the construction of the gun mechanism, and the actual fire rate decreased by one third accordingly.

After several rounds of shooting, neither the German pigeon nor the Bregei hit the other side. During this process, another Bregei did not go up to help, but flew towards Zeppelin alone. Before this, the German crew had thrown down multiple heavy sandbags in succession, and the huge beast in the air was climbing at a faster speed and would hide in the clouds in a few minutes.

To avoid the machine gun fire in the airship pod, the "Bluegu" must climb to the height of the clouds, and it is not easy to fly in the clouds and maintain a sense of direction. The French pilot gave up this path and flew from the bow of the Zeppelin airship.

There were still seven or eight hundred meters away. A machine gun on a German airship began to fire. A series of bullets whipped back and forth in the air like a very thin whip. It touched the "Breigu" several times, probably leaving many bullet holes in its wing fuselage. French pilots also opened fire from afar, and some bullets hit the airship. They could easily penetrate the outer skin of the Zeppelin airship and penetrate the airbags to cause hydrogen leakage, but there was no precedent for igniting hydrogen to cause it to explode.

In order to keep the airship rising, the German crew quickly dropped more sandbags. When the French plane flew past the side, another mg-08 spitted out the flames in a hurry, but a series of bullets always fell behind the "Brege".

On the other hand, the competition between the German pigeon aircraft and the French Breguei 1 suddenly revealed the result. The former won the victory with its obvious victory and flexibility. When the French aircraft fell from more than 400 meters of the air, the chance of the pilot's survival was slim.

After dealing with the opponent in front of him, the "German Pigeon" hurried to support his own Zeppelin airship. The "Breguet" left the German airship that was difficult to kill for a few seconds. The French pilot's driving skills were not inferior to his opponent, but his plane carried three crew members, the maximum speed of the level flight was only 80 kilometers per hour, and the frontal attack was fruitless. In a few minutes, the pigeon-type plane bit the tail, and the French pilot had to fly the plane toward Paris.

The pigeon style chased and kept firing. He was about to shoot down his opponent, but the machine gun suddenly fell silent. No matter how the German pilot fiddled with it, the machine gun no longer made any sound, and he had to return in disappointment.

The battle in the air didn't last long, the process was very simple, with exciting scenes and twists and turns

The battles on the ground were completely different. Due to the poor weather, neither side's aerial reconnaissance did not have the ideal effect. The cavalry reconnaissance teams of the German and French armies infiltrated each other's fronts, and the intelligence provided to the superior command center was mostly one-sided, even contradictory. The battlefield commanders of both sides and the commanders in the rear had to make a decision based on their own judgment.

At the farthest end of the German front, the Cluke army had been with the fierce attack of the British and French troops for almost 40 hours. The 3rd Corps, which first took over the enemy, had lost more than half of it and basically lost the ability to continue fighting. The only reserve of the 1st Division of Cluke had long been taken over. The 4th Corps, who joined hands with the 3rd Corps to defend the flank position, was attacked by British troops, and most of the positions were lost again. Fortunately, the 1st and 2nd Corps, who had crossed the Marne River in advance, had difficulty withdrawing the main force to the north bank of the Marne River. Their arrival saved their artillery positions, and the field artillery tried hard to support the key areas of the flank defense line to be broken.

The troops of Cluke on the right wing were the strongest German legion. When the British and French troops suddenly launched a large-scale counterattack from Paris, the adjacent Billot and Hausen Legions faced the Marne River. It took time for them to make a major adjustment of the deployment. Once the Cluke Legion was quickly repelled, Billot's unprepared flanks would be exposed to the enemy's gun, which would inevitably trigger a series of chain reactions, turning the victory at hand into a terrible defeat.

Cluke's tired but tenacious soldiers resisted the initial offensive of the Envoy Team, and the millions of German teams deployed along the Marne River were like an amazingly sluggish prehistoric beast, with a little slow movement, but still responded in a timely manner in the face of the threat of life and death, the five legions lined up to Cluke one after another. In the absence of a reserve, this was obviously the most direct and effective way of remedy. The reason why a scene in history could be avoided was precisely because Verdun had been conquered by the German team: if Verdun Fortress was still controlled by the French team, William's 5th legion had only one road covered by French artillery fire to pass, and he had to stop and work hard to remove Verdun.

Nails, and Ruprecht's 6th Army could only forcibly attack the French defense lines in the areas of Tule and Epinal. The French fortresses there were heavy weapons and protected by field fortifications. Bavarian soldiers would lose a large amount of troops in front of this line. At the same time, the 3rd and 4th Legions in the middle, namely General Hausen and Albresit, Duke of Württemberg, were also firmly held by the French army. Since the horn of the counterattack sounded, the French army launched a brave attack on the German positions in the Shon Gorn swamp. Many cruel hand-to-hand battles broke out in this area. In several most critical battles, the French field artillery made the bodies of the German soldiers pile up like mountains...

Now, the army that William's vitality was damaged but the main force was still alive was able to advance westward from the north and south banks of the Marne River at the same time. The army of the Bavarian crown prince followed closely, and with the forces of two corps and three cavalry divisions, they cooperated with the 7th Legion of Hellingen to surround the French defenders in the Tur-Nansie area. After the main force of William's army arrived in San Gung, Albresit drew two corpses to assist Bilo at night, and Hausen also tried every means to draw a corps. These new forces pushed back to the north bank from Marne River to the south, and then followed the unblocked riot
Chapter completed!