The Baltic War(224)
Mike's wince turned into an outright grimace. As the air force commander, Jesse knew better than almost anyone how tight the petroleum reserves were for the campaign Gustav Adolf was about to launch. They had enough in reserve to cover the needs of the campaign itself, most likely. But the king of Sweden had just had a lid placed on any further ambitions he might have had. At least, if those ambitions required anything that needed petroleum to operate on.
Which meant there had to be something really bad on the way.
Sure enough:
"They've got breechloaders, Mike. Carbines, I'm pretty sure. Probably every damn one of them. I was pretty sure they did, just from what I saw from higher up. That's why I wanted to make that last low run. I saw at least three of those cavalrymen reloading."
Mike drew in a breath. "They might be flintlocks."
"Yeah, maybe. I couldn't see that much detail, of course. But I'm willing to bet you dollars for donuts that they're using percussion caps. Prepared cartridges, for damn sure, since no cavalryman wants to be fumbling with a powder flask. And whether they're flintlocks or percussion locks, Mike, there's no way in God's green earth those guns aren't rifled. I can't say I ever much cared for the French, but nobody ever accused them of being morons. Why bother with a smoothbore breechloader?"
Mike didn't doubt it himself. Which meant that if the French had been able to manufacture enough of those breechloaders to supply their whole army, one of the major technical advantages the USE had been counting on in the coming campaign had just vanished. Instead of being—by far—the best hand weapon on the field, the SRG rifled musket would be second-best. The French would have the same range, with the added advantage that their soldiers didn't need to stand up to reload.
"Thanks, Jesse. I'll get someone in there as fast as I can, to see what we can find out. In the meantime—I've already talked to him—General Torstensson is sending down three cavalry companies and a full regiment."
"You can tell him there's no point in sending the infantry regiment. He may as well keep them, with a battle looming. These guys are pulling out of here, Mike. The lead elements were already on the road by the time I got here. They'll be long gone before the cavalry arrives, much less the foot soldiers."
After Jesse got off the air, Mike took another deep breath before he began a new round of radio calls. Gustav Adolf was not going to be a happy man.
* * *
After the plane finally disappeared, Turenne ordered the march to resume. He spent the rest of the day until they reached the bridge at Minden mulling over the airplane.
He came to two conclusions. The first was that, under the right circumstances, he was fairly certain that a large enough volley could bring down one of the aircraft, if it flew low enough. Muskets might even do it, but Turenne was sure that Thibault could figure out something better. Bombards of some sort, firing canister or perhaps grapeshot, that were specifically designed for the purpose.
The other conclusion was obvious. France had to get its own air force. Give it more than a few years, and no army without aircraft could possibly hope to win a war.
Turenne had never really understood that, until this raid. He'd read the reports compiled by French intelligence agents concerning the USE's use of airplanes in the fighting around Luebeck, of course. But, in truth, he hadn't been that impressed. The flying machines simply couldn't carry that great a load of munitions. Aside from the occasional lucky hit, they were more of a nuisance than anything else. The real damage they did was to the morale of the soldiers, since the pestiferous devices were so very hard to defend against.
After the past few days, Turenne understood how much he'd underestimated the things. True enough, as weapons they didn't amount to much. Not yet, at least. But he'd simply overlooked the monstrous advantage they provided an army in terms of reconnaissance.
Which should have been blindingly obvious from the beginning, especially to a cavalry officer like Turenne. Reconnaissance, after all, was one of the primary missions of cavalry.
By the end of the first day of the raid, Turenne had started peering nervously into the sky every few minutes. Realizing, finally, that all his plans could be wrecked by one airplane that flew overhead and spotted him. It wouldn't take any more than that. The aircraft didn't need to fire a single shot or drop so much as a stone or an empty bottle. All it had to do was pass along the word to the enemy's commanders—who, until the last day or two, could have gotten a large military force into position at the oil fields before Turenne arrived.
In the event, no enemy aircraft had made its appearance until it was too late to stymie the raid. The plane that came then hadn't even bothered to drop any of the small bombs it might have been carrying. Nor would there have been much point if it had, unless the pilot waited until the cavalry column had formed up. At the oil field, the men had been scattered into small groups. At most, a few small bombs couldn't have done more than injure or perhaps kill a few men. And what did that matter, really? There were always casualties in military operations, simply from accidents if nothing else. They'd suffered a few on this raid, even as smoothly as it had gone.