The Rise Of Australasia-Chapter 1147 - 863: Air Raid on the Airport

The German Army's offensive was very swift, and within just one week after the war broke out, they captured the northern stronghold of Ústí in the Czech Region, and then advanced toward Prague, the administrative center of the Czech government.

In the traditions of Germania, the Czech Region was known as Bohemia, which has been a very important part of Germania since the Holy Roman Empire era.

For the Austrian Empire, the challenge was that, once Prague fell, the entire Czech Region would lose its will to fight completely.

As an important component of the Austrian Empire, losing Bohemia meant Austria would be left with no room for counteraction in this war.

To save Bohemia, the Imperial Government of Austria urgently dispatched the newly formed Sixth Army Group to head north to the Czech Region.

This Sixth Army Group, composed of a few veterans as junior officers and mostly new recruits, was an integrated mixed-unit Army Group.

Their only mission was to defend Prague and, relying on the northern terrain of Prague, try to hold the Germans outside the defense line as much as possible.

Before the Sixth Army Group could reach the Czech Region, even worse news had already arrived: the Germans were launching a grand advance from Regensburg toward Vienna in the east.

What was more important, Prague or Vienna? The Austrians didn't hesitate long and immediately ordered the Sixth Army Group to head south to reinforce Vienna.

This also resulted in a form of powerlessness when the Czech Region faced the German Army's onslaught.

The Austrian Empire's military barely exceeded one million, most of whom were deployed in the Austrian region. Besides being the central area where the Imperial Government was located, Austria was also facing the pincer attack from Germany and Italy from the north and south.

But this also meant that in Czech and Slovakia, regions farther from Austria, the deployed Austrian forces were far fewer.

Apart from a small portion of Austrian troops, there were only regional armed forces commanded by the respective governments, consisting purely of Czech and Slovak people.

The total military forces in the Czech Region also didn't exceed 400,000, which inevitably led to a disadvantage when facing the numerically superior German Army.

If it weren't for the Germans' desire to quickly take over the Czech industrial facilities, thus refraining from destroying the Czech Industrial Base and transportation hubs, it's doubtful the Czech military could have held out for so long.

Currently in the Czech Region, the Austrian Fifth Army Group and the Czech regional armed forces are fully resisting the attack of the German Third and Fourth Army Groups.

There is a significant discrepancy between the weapons and equipment of both parties. After their combat experience in Poland, the German Army generally equipped a large number of tanks and airplanes.

Although the Austrian Army also possessed tanks and airplanes, the numbers were still significantly fewer.

That's unavoidable, as for the Austrian Empire, the main defense focus was definitely the Austrian region. Even though Bohemia also had armed forces, these regional armed forces certainly would not be equipped on par with the regular Austrian Army.

While Austria was preoccupied with repelling the German and Italian Armies, the supply of weapons and equipment to the Czech Region had already been greatly reduced.

In the battle between the German and Austrian Armies, the most intense struggle was actually for air supremacy.

In terms of the number of airplanes, Germany possessed over 2,500, with almost 1,000 being the latest model of fighter aircraft.

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While on the Austrian side, at the start of the war, they had less than 1,000 planes. Only after receiving support from Britain and France did the number of Austrian planes rise to around 1,500.

But as mentioned before, to prevent aerial raids by the Germans, Austria deployed most of their airplanes near Vienna and in areas of the Austrian battlefield.

The number of planes allocated to Czech and Slovakia didn't exceed 500, which were no match for the thousands of German planes on the opposite side.

After several rounds of intense aerial combat, the German Army gradually gained air superiority and began violently bombing the Austrian ground forces.

The Austrian Army did possess a certain number of anti-aircraft weapons, but they didn't have much of an answer for these new, faster planes.

While they managed to shoot down a few with anti-aircraft weapons, it was when the enemy Bombers descended in altitude to bomb their troops.

This often also meant that the enemy airplanes had already dropped their bombs, inflicting huge casualties on their forces.

On April 27, 1936, at the German Fourth Army Group headquarters.

A German General, serving as the Chief of Staff of the Fourth Army Group, excitedly introduced his plan to the Commander of the Fourth Army Group, "Based on our reconnaissance in the past few days, we have preliminarily identified the distribution of Austrian military airports in the Czech Region.

If we can quickly destroy these military airports, we will no longer have any enemies in the sky. After completely gaining air supremacy, that will be the time for us to launch a total offensive on the Czech Region."

The Commander of the Fourth Army Group nodded, having no major objections to the plan of attacking the enemy's military airports as proposed by the Chief of Staff.

Although Domestic instructions had been to try not to destroy the Czech Industrial Base and railways as much as possible, military airports clearly did not fall within these scopes.