Chapter 607 Battle of Savoy (middle)

Le Cheira is a town between Grenoble and Darbiny, a town in the valley of the Isère, between the Belledonne and Chartreuse mountains.

The town has previously been planted with flowers and beekeeping, and is a beautiful place.

But now, there is no beauty in the town of Le Sierra, because a battle is breaking out in the town. The French 39th Division stood firm here, blocking the advance of Army Group North towards Grenoble.

“Boom boom boom…”

Cannonballs fell on the small town of Le Sierra, shrouding the entire town in smoke. The French officers and soldiers hiding in trenches and other fortifications could only pray silently in their hearts to keep the cannonballs from falling on their heads.

The town of Le Cheira is being shelled by the Italian army division-level main artillery, 75mm field guns, 105mm howitzers, and a small number of 150mm howitzers, as well as 4 210mm cannons specially transported for suppression.

This 210mm cannon is a weapon of the Italian Army. Mainly as a suppression of enemy artillery and the destruction of fortified fortifications.

The gun has a caliber of 210 mm and a barrel length of 5.25 meters (25 times the barrel diameter). The speed is one shot in two minutes, and its total weight is 15.8 tons.

The power of this heavy artillery is good. It can bombard the town and surrounding fortifications. As long as it is hit by it, there is no possibility of survival.

Of course, the North Army originally planned to strengthen the six 210mm cannons to the 9th Army, but during the transportation process, due to the changeable climate in the mountains, two airships carrying heavy artillery crashed.

That’s right, for such a large tonnage of heavy artillery, it is extremely difficult to transport from land, and it can only be transported by airship. In order to make it catch up with the battle against the town of Le Sierra.

When it comes to the current use of airships, the Italian military is the second, and absolutely no one dares to say the first. In the hands of the Italian army, the airship can be used for both reconnaissance and air-to-ground attacks. From bombing to ground shooting and artillery shelling, the airship has played a role in the Italian military’s hands.

Of course, for the Italian army, the biggest role of airships is to carry out air transportation. Especially in the mountains and mountains of the Alps, it is too slow to carry out transportation by manpower and energy storage, not to mention the small amount of transportation. Trucks are good, but the requirements for roads are not low. As far as the current road of Carragher Pass is concerned, under the urgent repair of Italian engineers, trucks can currently reach Dalbini through here, but there are only more than 200 trucks that can pass through each day. The material is only more than 500 tons.

Although this may seem a lot, a division needs at least hundreds of tons of supplies every day when it is in combat. The Italian army that invaded the Savoy area had eight divisions of 130,000 people and needed at least thousands of tons of supplies every day.

Trucks solve half of the problem, and the rest are transported by airships. Compared with trucks, airships have fast transportation speed and large carrying capacity, and can also minimize the impact of terrain.

The airship takes off from Turin every morning, arrives at Dalbini to unload the cargo at noon, and returns to Turin in the evening.

Of course, the mountain environment changes a lot, and the airflow is also very chaotic. Although airships are much more resistant to climate than planes, they are also dangerous.

In just six days, six round-trip airships were lost. Mainly because of the unfamiliar environment at the beginning, resulting in many mistakes and damage to the airship.

Much better now, no airships have been damaged in the past two days.

It is precisely by relying on these air transport vehicles that the Italian army can complete the combat equipment as soon as possible, otherwise the battle in the small town of Le Sierra will be delayed for two days.

In the face of the artillery bombardment of the Italian army, the defending French army was of course not to be outdone, and its 75mm rapid-fire guns also kept firing back. However, in terms of artillery caliber, range and power, the Italian side has an absolute advantage. It has a variety of 75mm, 105mm, 150mm and 210mm available, which is far from what the French 75mm rapid-fire gun can match.

Not to mention that the number of artillery pieces on the Italian side still has an advantage. Therefore, in the artillery battle between the two sides, the Italian side has an absolute advantage. The French 75mm rapid-firing guns are losing ground in the artillery battle. Many artillery positions were destroyed in the enemy’s counterattack, and it didn’t take long for them to die. .

Speaking of losing in the artillery battle, this is also the consequence of the stubbornness of the French. After the invention of the 75mm rapid-fire gun, the French army formed a school of rapid-fire gun omnipotence. They added steel mantlets to the rapid-firing guns. In the teaching, they asked the artillerymen to advance the 75mm rapid-firing guns to within one kilometer of the front line, and suppress the enemy’s front line with a barrage of shrapnel to support the French infantry to launch their proud National Skill: Bayonet Charge.

Under this technical and spiritual factor, the French’s enthusiastic support for the 75mm rapid-fire gun has been upgraded from a military school to an unquestionable belief.

All kinds of old firearms and large-caliber artillery, such as howitzers, heavy artillery, mortars, etc., were thrown into the garbage dump. The French army believed that they had found the best solution for future wars. The whole army only needed one type of artillery, one A variety of calibers, one kind of ammunition, 75mm Miss, 75, shrapnel, can defeat the enemy when facing the enemy.

So after the war, the French had only one type of artillery available, the direct-fire 75mm rapid-fire gun.

We all know that blind faith is a must. Obviously, the French army is a blind faith in the 75mm rapid-fire gun. Even now that Germany and Italy have educated the French with large-caliber artillery and beaten the French artillery units on the front line to the ground, the senior military officers in the rear still think it is right.

France does not need to learn from Germany and Italy to adopt or design larger-caliber heavy artillery, as long as it improves the 75mm rapid-fire gun so that it can raise the elevation angle for curved fire attacks, the problem can be solved.

Of course, if the high-level French army’s thoughts are made known to the lower-level officers and soldiers, they will definitely yell at them.

But now they don’t have the strength to scold, because the Italian heavy artillery is constantly shelling it~www.readmtl.com~ The shelling on its positions has not stopped. The screams from time to time reminded the cruelty of the battlefield. Of course more

Lieutenant General Pascal, commander of the 9th Army, was very satisfied with the effect of the shelling. Although the French 39th Division fortified the small town of Le Sierra, delaying their footsteps.

However, it is obvious that the fortifications around the town are mainly civil engineering, and there are not many solid permanent fortifications. This also led to the excellent shelling effect of artillery with a caliber of 100 mm or more.

Of course, this is also thanks to the cooperation of the French army. If it hadn’t been known that the French army only had a 75mm rapid-fire gun with direct-fire capability, this battle would have been much more difficult.

The shelling went on for half a day, starting in the morning until one o’clock in the afternoon.

Seeing that it was almost the same at this time, Lieutenant General Pascal immediately ordered. “Order the infantry to attack.”

Following his order, a regiment of troops came to the launching position. They had already recharged their energy and were waiting to launch an attack on the enemy’s position.

Following the lieutenant general’s order, they climbed out of the trenches and charged towards the enemy’s position.