German artillery and dive bombers on the Meuse, May 1940
Dive bombers plunge onto a hill, mortar and gun crews fire from woods and fields, and flashes of fire glow on the horizon at dusk.
A single-engined aircraft plunges almost vertically and a bomb bursts on a low hill; in a thicket helmeted soldiers stand around a mortar, shells explode at the edge of a meadow, and a soldier crouches at a mortar within sight of a distant church spire. Crews in German helmets load a camouflaged howitzer, a long-barrelled gun stands behind an earth parapet, a howitzer fires from the edge of a wood, and at dusk flashes of fire glow on a dark horizon. German newsreel footage.
On 13 May 1940 the German air force concentrated much of its strength in the West on a few kilometres of the Meuse front at Sedan. The attacks, lasting from morning into the afternoon, did less damage to the French positions than to the morale of the reserve divisions holding the river.
