Transmigrated as the Crown Prince

After everyone checked the weapons and equipment, Guderian climbed into his armored command vehicle and issued the order. "Target, Sedan! Move forward!"

After bumping for more than an hour, the surrounding trees gradually began to become sparse and the road became smoother; Guderian knew that they were about to walk out of the forest and ordered again. "All ministries have entered the first level of battle preparation! We are about to contact the French army!"

Suddenly, a familiar burst of gunfire came from the front, which was the sound of an MG3 machine gun. Guderian knew that the reconnaissance force was at war with the French border guards. "Black Fox, Black Fox, please reply, what's going on?!"

Along with the tingling sound of electricity, there were intermittent sounds. "The report is that...the French army...the remaining soldiers...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 its own bomber forces, and the remaining soldiers had retreated to the Sedan Fortress, blowing up all the bridges on the Meuse River.

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

"It's finally out." With a long sigh of relief, Guderian looked back at the armored vehicles driving out one after another. At this speed, not to mention the entire 19th Armored Corps, even the 6th Armored Division serving as the vanguard would have to wait until sunset before they could all move out.

Looking at the heavily bombed Sedan Fortress on the other side of the Maas River in the distance, Guderian shook his head helplessly. Although he wanted to launch a cross-river attack immediately, he had to wait at least until the 6th Armored Division was assembled before he could take action. "Send power to the headquarters. We have passed through the Ardennes Forest and will launch a river crossing operation tomorrow morning."

Just as the German high command was cheering for joy after receiving the telegram, the French high command also received news from Brigadier General Lafontaine of Sedan Fortress.

Although they felt incredible that the German armored forces had broken through the Ardennes area, they did not panic or panic. After all, there is a wide Maas River between Sedan Fortress and the Ardennes Forest. It was summer, and the deep Maas River was turbulent, which made it more difficult for the Germans to forcibly cross the river.

Coupled with the firepower of Sedan Fortress covering the entire river, it was enough to hold off the German army for a period of time. Although they also learned from the message sent back by Brigadier General LaFontaine that the German dive bombers were removing those fire points one by one, no matter how powerful those bombers were, they could not all remove so many fire points.

Even if half of the firepower is left, it can still prevent the German army from crossing the river.

Moreover, according to the judgment of the French high command, given the extremely rugged terrain of the Ardennes region, it is impossible for all large troops to rush over at once, and the German troops appearing on the other side of the Meuse must be just the forwards. They would certainly have to wait for a large number of infantry and heavy artillery units to assemble before they could launch a cross-river attack.

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

By that time, our own reinforcements had already arrived in the Sedan area.

Although the 55th Infantry Division currently 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 actions of the German army once again exceeded the French's understanding. After all the 6th Armored Division was in place, Guderian ordered preparations to cross the river and prepare to launch a large-scale attack early the next morning.

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

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

But now that the German army can hit the French fortifications, they are naturally within the French range.

As soon as the position was set up, French artillery shells came over.

It's a pity that the French artillerymen forgot about the Stukas that were still hovering in the sky. If these cannons had been obediently hiding under the camouflage net, it would have been really difficult for the Stukas to spot them that day. But now that the cannons are fired, the huge cannons erupted. A cloud of smoke instantly revealed their location. One after another, like vultures that had found food, the Stukas circled down and destroyed all exposed artillery positions.

Brigadier General Lafontaine angrily 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.

Unexpectedly, the bombers were still hovering over the fortress until the sun went down and the sky became completely dark. They did not continue dive bombing, but Brigadier General Lafontaine did not dare to take the risk and let the artillery fire. After all, although you can't see the smoke at night, when the cannon fires there is not only smoke but also flames. Once fired, it might be destroyed again.

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

As early as the Polish campaign, German special forces used helicopters to conduct several secret missions.

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

Yannick was well aware of the importance of helicopters in war, and had "invited" these two secrets to Germany a few years ago, asking them to cooperate with local German scientists Baumgartot, Flett and others to develop helicopters. Yannick also showed them the way forward for helicopter development.

In this way, as early as 1936, Germany had built a helicopter similar in appearance and performance to the Mi-1. By the time of the Polish campaign, it had been upgraded to Mi-4.

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

Busy back and forth until early the next morning, they transported 50 infantry guns and enough artillery shells for Guderian's squandering.