Battle of Lemberg (Napoleon's World)

The Battle of Lemberg, also known as the Lemberg Raid, was a major engagement on January 14, 1940 during the French Civil War at the city of Lemberg in the southwestern Eastern Department. While the ground fighting in and around the city was sporadic and featured few casualties, it marked the most substantive victory for the European Alliance's air force over the better armed and more numerous Imperial forces.

The success at Lemberg is directly tied to the daring raid at the crack of dawn by Allied fighters against the airfields northwest of the city, where twenty heavily armed Air Command airships were moored along with eighty fighters. Thanks to the clever use of incindiaries, seventeen of the airships burned at their moors and numerous fighter planes were destroyed on the tarmac and many hangars and two radar stations were destroyed. Having lost the Lemberg Aerodrome, the French Air Command was forced to withdraw from the southern Eastern Department, paving the way for the eventual occupation of Lemberg and later the Crimea by Allied forces that same spring. It also significantly altered the Imperial aerial strategy, gradually moving highly flammable airships away from the front to the point where they almost became useless in battle.