Chapter 67: Paratroopers And Sulfonamide
The Grand Duke of Baden was nearly fifty years old, but because he discovered the genius Lelouch, he ended up chatting until two or three in the morning before going back to rest.
Fortunately, in the sleeping car compartment, aside from Lelouch, all the other passengers were the Grand Duke of Baden’s attendants, so it didn’t disturb any innocent passengers’ rest.
Those attendants didn’t dare eavesdrop on the conversation, but everyone was astonished inwardly. They had followed the Grand Duke for many years and had never seen him talk business so late.
“That major must be a once-in-a-millennium genius. Living long enough, you can run into anyone.” Everyone thought this silently in their hearts.
After that, the latter half of the night passed without incident. Because he slept too late, Lelouch was finally woken up by the train attendant after the train arrived at its final destination.
When he rubbed his bleary eyes and got up, the sky was already fully bright.
The train was stopped at Frankfurt Station. A group of workers had even started loading goods onto the train—this train was originally a medicine transport special, unloading goods each time, then pulling wounded soldiers back home, reloading medicine in Frankfurt, and sending it to the front line, repeating the cycle.
Looking at the tens of thousands of medicine boxes on the platform, Lelouch’s impression of the city couldn’t help but change a bit.
This was completely different from the city he saw in his previous life as an electrical engineer when he came on a business trip to attend the Frankfurt industrial exhibition.
In the world a century later, IG Farben had long been dismantled and ceased to exist, and Frankfurt’s urban character had also changed greatly as a result.
But now, it still had the world’s number one chemical industry giant.
However, today, the first thing he had to handle was the parachute matter. Sulfonamide and visiting IG Farben Company could be put off for a few days.
Lelouch tidied up simply, got off the train, and was just preparing to find a place to get a horse, then head to the factory making parachutes—because of wartime controls, Germania’s gasoline rationing was extremely strict, and nowadays there were almost no cars on the roads. City traffic could only revert to horseback riding, carts, or bicycles.
In the later stages of the war, when they were really forced with no other choice, the Empire figured out a way to convert most cars into ones carrying gas bags. Using firewood or coal through a “gas generator” to initially produce carbon monoxide, then injecting it into the internal combustion engine to burn for power. But these things hadn’t appeared yet in early 1915.
However, just as Lelouch wanted to find a cart, an officer came jogging over from the end of the platform to greet him:
“Major Lelouch? His Highness the Grand Duke sent me to receive you. For your stay in Frankfurt, any needs regarding itinerary or accommodations, just tell us.”
Lelouch was slightly stunned, but quickly accepted this arrangement. It seemed that last night’s candid conversation with the Grand Duke of Baden had led the other to treat him as top-tier talent.
He didn’t want to be hypocritical, so he straightforwardly accepted the kindness: “Then take me to Dassler Clothing Factory. I have an order to give them… there is such a factory, right? I don’t remember clearly. If not, we can change it.”
The officer from the Duchy of Baden immediately invited him into a Mercedes car nearby, then drove familiarly to the Dassler Clothing Factory in the suburbs.
Lelouch had originally planned to find it slowly himself. After all, parachute manufacturing wasn’t technically difficult; many textile companies could do it.
But with someone so eagerly providing a car and asking where to go, he couldn’t refuse to give face, so he casually named the only clothing factory whose name he remembered—
Fortunately, from the driver’s reaction, this factory already existed in 1915.
The car soon arrived at the Dassler factory. After getting out, Lelouch just casually glanced around and found that the factory wasn’t very large in scale.
But since he was already there, he didn’t want to waste time, so he casually asked to see if they had the technology and production capacity, and if the quality was reliable.
A Mercedes sedan was parked at the factory gate. In these times, anyone who could still get gasoline rations to drive a luxury car was definitely a big client. So the factory boss hurriedly brought a few people to personally receive them at the gate.
“May I ask who you are…”
Lelouch: “I’m here representing Army Group 6 with a special order. After you look at it, whether you can do it or not, you must keep it confidential. The specific blueprints and details, I’ll reveal only after confirming you can take the order.”
The other party immediately became respectful and led him inside for detailed discussion.
Lelouch didn’t understand supplier inspections, so he just talked casually on site and looked at the clothing factory’s products. After discovering they had really produced parachutes before, Lelouch felt more at ease.
After communicating some details a bit, Mr. Dassler said he would immediately arrange workers and raw materials that same day for trial production samples, and signed a confidentiality agreement.
Anyway, the production process was mainly fabric sewing, plus some surface treatments, so they could start work right away.
This factory’s raw materials supply was also very comprehensive; they had everything needed. They could even professionally verify Lelouch’s design intent, ensure structural strength, and were very professional and rigorous in their work.
Lelouch watched for a little while and felt reassured.
Time was pressing, and he couldn’t have more refined quality control capabilities anyway, so he could only trust the company.
Fortunately, he knew that Dassler factory’s quality was still guaranteed.
Right now, he saw boss Mr. Dassler’s two sons, 19-year-old Rudolf and 17-year-old Adolf, seriously helping him cut and sew parachutes.
And these two boys later split off to start their own businesses: the older brother opened PUMA, the second brother opened Adidas, and divided up the factory left by their father.
While they were trial-producing samples, Lelouch also took the opportunity to look through their previously produced old-style parachute samples.
During the inspection process, Lelouch discovered another issue: parachutes of this era, even the foldable ones, had round tops without a vent for stable gas exhaust.
This design was actually very problematic. Without a vent, after the parachute filled with air inside, during descent, the air could only escape by randomly picking a relatively weak spot at the canopy edge, forming a “roll,” then air would flow out from that gap.
And because of wind direction, airflow, and other reasons, the position of this temporary gap was uncertain and random. The reaction force from gas exhaust could easily push the parachute tumbling.
In later generations, some people thought “winged parachutes” were less safe than “round parachutes.” An important reason was that winged parachutes, being rectangular, naturally didn’t need vents since air was expelled from the rear side. If a winged parachute descended vertically with no height difference between leading and trailing edges, it could also produce turbulence.
But in this era, even round parachutes lacked a central top vent hole, which would also create turbulence. So no matter what, round parachutes were inevitably worse than winged parachutes—they had all the disadvantages of winged parachutes without their advantages.
（Note: As shown in the above image, after World War I ended, in 1919 Ugly Country’s Leslie invented the round parachute with a vent）
However, after discovering these new issues, Lelouch felt he could place another order for some round parachutes with central top vent holes at the same time, produce both types of samples, take them to the training soldiers on the parachute drop tower for real training, and compare which performed better.
If training time was really too rushed and most soldiers couldn’t master winged parachutes, then for speed, they could only use vented round parachutes. As for dispersion issues, it would have to rely on airships flying a bit lower to solve.
Preparing one more option was always better to be safe.
The parachute business didn’t have much profit; as long as it met military operation needs, that was fine. So Lelouch didn’t plan to get involved in sharing benefits; he would just leave it to the Adidas father and sons brothers to handle slowly.
In the following days, the Adidas father and sons brothers indeed delivered, quickly producing the first batch of samples and sending them to Aachen, relatively close to the front line.
There was already a military pilot parachute training base there, which Duke Rupprecht had greeted in advance to borrow.
Some elite soldiers from several assault battalions had also been transferred there early to participate in assault training.
Lelouch didn’t plan to have all assault battalion soldiers master airborne skills, because it wasn’t necessary—the types of troops that could be air-dropped were fewer than ground assault battalions anyway. The fire support groups configured for assault battalions in ground combat wouldn’t be needed in this airborne mission.
Because Lelouch hoped they would assault the two relatively compact fortress batteries north and south of Dunkirk Port. The combat distance was very short; no light machine guns or grenade launchers were needed—submachine gun range would suffice.
Moreover, in this era, the only weapons that could be air-dropped with soldiers were lightweight ones like pistols or submachine guns. To avoid accidental discharge, during descent, the submachine gun body and magazine had to be carried separately.
While rifles and machine guns like long weapons were, on Earth up to World War II, always air-dropped separately from personnel. Long guns had to be packed in special crates—if not, there wouldn’t have been a need to specially develop the FG-42 paratrooper rifle.
Now, for the first air-drop combat operation in human history, everyone was a newbie. Lelouch naturally followed Occam’s razor principle, striving for extreme minimalism, reducing steps wherever possible. Fewer steps meant fewer accidents.
Finally, only needing simple weapons like submachine guns, pistols, and grenades for carry-on air-drop.
At most adding a small amount of satchel charges and flamethrowers—these heavy items needed to be packed in shock-absorbing boxes and dropped separately under another parachute.
These were for desperate situations, used for targeted breaching of certain sturdy fortress internal gates or walls.
So in terms of troop types, those participating in this parachute training were submachine gunners, flamethrower soldiers, and demolition engineers from three assault battalions.
Machine gun groups and grenade launcher groups didn’t need training and wouldn’t participate in combat.
This plan also considered soldiers’ weapon proficiency issues—
Lelouch could certainly have more soldiers temporarily switch to submachine guns for combat. But that way, they’d have to practice submachine gun marksmanship anew, and he didn’t have that much time.
Directly selecting submachine gunners and engineers for training ensured they practiced only parachuting day and night; other sub-skills were already ready.
Many people think paratrooper training is slow, taking a year or year and a half, but that’s based on the premise of “needing comprehensive training in all paratrooper skills.”
If all other subjects were cut entirely, training only parachuting without any fancy extras, half a month of intensive training could achieve it.
……
Lelouch didn’t have time to personally oversee the paratrooper parachute training throughout, let alone was he professional at training soldiers.
He could only first get the parachutes made, then draft a training suggestion. The specific training work would be handled by other professionals.
For the talents needed for coordination, Lelouch had Major Immelmann handle it. Immelmann was now a hotshot in the Army Aviation Corps; as the first ace pilot, he had plenty of resources at his disposal, and finding some parachute instructors was no problem.
After arranging the paratrooper training task, for the rest of his days in Frankfurt, Lelouch mainly spent time discussing sulfonamide cooperation with IG Farben.
Lelouch currently couldn’t find the IG Farben engineer who originally invented sulfonamide in 1932 in history—probably because it was nearly 20 years early, and the other was still too young and obscure.
But no matter; Lelouch had the Grand Duke of Baden’s coordination, so he could go straight to the top route and directly meet one of IG Farben’s shareholders and chief scientist, Fritz Haber.
This Fritz Haber was no ordinary person. It was he who invented ammonia synthesis technology in 1909, and rushed to build a bunch of ammonia factories in Germania before World War broke out, enabling Germania to fight a prolonged World War—
Pre-war, all countries thought the war wouldn’t drag on, either Germania quick victory over the Frankish, or after a few months’ delay, Germania, economically blockaded, unable to sea-trade for nitrates, lacking raw materials for explosives, forced to surrender and end the war.
But with Haber and IG Farben’s artificial ammonia synthesis, explosive production no longer depended on natural nitrate minerals. Even cut off from international trade, they could produce unlimited explosives and continue the war.
Of course, Haber’s original intent in inventing ammonia synthesis wasn’t for unlimited explosive production; he just wanted ammonia for fertilizer.
But later, extremists like Ludendorff, disregarding livelihood, diverted almost all ammonia production capacity to explosives. Germania’s fertilizer plants had to largely shut down; farmers had no fertilizer, grain yields dropped, and people were forced to endure hunger.
To be fair, Ludendorff really did unforgivable things in this matter, which was also one of the main reasons people later opposed the Emperor.
But regardless, Haber was a great chemist; in history, he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry the year the war ended.
With Lelouch’s original status and resources, he certainly wasn’t qualified to directly seek an audience with such a Nobel-level respected figure. Moreover, the man was not only a scientist but a top industrial tycoon.
Fortunately, with the Grand Duke of Baden’s connections, all obstacles were cleared.
After meeting Haber at IG Farben headquarters, Lelouch got straight to the point: “I hope your company can dedicate a production line to the azo dye intermediate product sulfonamide, successfully produced 6 years ago, and establish another company specifically to produce sulfonamide drugs that slow drug release speed.
And I can help you secure military sales channels, get your products through wartime expedited clinical trials and all approval processes. So, I hope to discuss specific cooperation modes. I’m not just in it for money; I more hope to ensure the Empire’s sulfonamide supply chain is stable and controllable, so it won’t aid the enemy through sales channels in the future—it’s wartime now, supply chain control is very important. I believe Mr. Haber understands the military’s concerns.”
——
PS: That’s it for today, eight thousand words. Back to action tomorrow.
