The Battle of Britain Five Months That Changed History, May—October 1940 by James Holland (z-lib.org).epub

Oberleutnant Siegfried Bethke was one of the German fighter pilots
lying in wait. His squadron had a field day, shooting down five enemy
planes. He himself shot down a French Morane in the morning. ‘A second
was as good as right in front of my nose,’ he noted, ‘but I let it slip away in
my excitement.’
Shortly before midday, Guderian’s Army Group Commander,
Generaloberst von Rundstedt, had arrived at Sedan. Guderian reported to
him on the bridge at Gaulier, by the Draperie Sedannaise, with an air raid in
progress. ‘Is it always like this here?’ von Rundstedt asked. Guderian
replied that it was.
It was a beautiful early summer’s day. Dark green pine forests and lush,
vibrantly green meadows covered the countryside around Sedan. Almost
incessantly, however, the dull explosions of bombs, the chatter of machine
guns and the thudding flak guns boomed out over the valley, while, above,
the roar and scream of aero engines seemed to be ever-present. The ground
shook with the weight of ordnance. Long black plumes of smoke followed
broken aircraft as they plummeted to the ground.
By early evening, the wrecks of Battles and Blenheims lay strewn,
crumpled and charred, all over the wooded slopes around Sedan. Of the
seventy-one aircraft that had set off for Sedan that afternoon, forty never
returned. No RAF operation of similar size has ever suffered a higher rate
of loss.
Meanwhile, Guderian, following his noisy chat with von Rundstedt, crossed
back across the Meuse and hurried to Chémery, a small village near the
bridge across the Ardennes Canal, where the 1st Panzer Division now had
their command post. It was decision time. His orders were explicit: after
establishing a bridgehead, he was to wait and build up strength in case of an
expected counter-attack from the south. To charge on recklessly with the
panzer force was considered by everyone from Halder to von Rundstedt and
von Kleist as far too risky. Even Hitler, the arch-gambler, suggested the
panzers should wait until sufficient forces still crawling through the
Ardennes had caught up.
On the other hand, Guderian and von Manstein, when they had
originally devised their plan of attack, had intended that the panzers go for
broke, disregarding the danger to their flanks. They had always seen victory
or failure in terms of a race against time. And Guderian did not now have