Iron Cross

Before dawn on December 1, the Joint Chiefs of Staff received two bad news. One came from Prince Edward Island: late last night, German aircraft attacked the aviation base. Although the defenders tried their best to resist, the German air attack was very fierce and the air base was attacked. The airport runway and aircraft were destroyed at the cost of losing more than 30 aircraft, and efforts are currently being made to repair them; another news came from the direction of Cape Verde: the German army dispatched heavy bombers and mysterious weapons that can accurately hit warships at night, and the fleet Four escort aircraft carriers and the carrier-based aircraft attached to them were lost, as well as more than 1,000 personnel.

These two pieces of news shocked and angered General Marshall and General King. In order to synchronize and coordinate the command of the two wars, the two simply took the entire staff team to board and live in the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They did not expect to receive such disturbing news. .

"Now we can only attack from Maine. The distance is too far. We can only use horizontal bombers, which are extremely ineffective..." Arnold was very annoyed, but he had no choice but to turn his attention to General Jin for help when the Germans attacked him at night. , "When will General Cunningham's fleet arrive?"

"We can arrive this evening. The question is, where is the German fleet now? Moreover, if the Germans have such sharp attack weapons, I doubt that the fleet will come and be beaten..."

"What kind of weapon is this? Is it so powerful?" Marshall was also deeply troubled by this. The endless new weapons of the German army had a major impact on the morale of the troops. The Tiger tanks alone cast a major shadow on the ground troops - Attack New The Finnish aircraft believed that there were no more than 30 German Tiger tanks, but the Canadians insisted that there were at least 50-60 tanks, and in fact fewer than 15 Tigers were put into combat.

"If I guess correctly, this should be a German glide-guided bomb. It appeared several times in the Egyptian campaign. It was a daytime attack at that time. Now it is estimated that it can be used for night attacks." Arnold sighed, "Actually, we also have it, but The research speed cannot keep up with the pace of the Germans, and the results are not good.”

Arnold was really not bragging. As early as April 1942, the U.S. Army Aviation Equipment Command began to develop the VB (Asson) series of guided bombs. The first model, called the VB-1, was based on a 1,000-pound bomb (initially the M-44, later the AN-M-65) with a new tail fin, gyro stabilization system, rudder, tail tracking flash system, etc. , the principle is basically the same as that of the German Hs-293. When the VB-1 is thrown, the carrier aircraft can control its trajectory through radio commands, but only for the azimuth angle, so it is named Azon = "Azimuth-Only". .

Since it can only control the azimuth angle, Asun is relatively suitable for long and narrow targets (such as bridges and railways), but it is not as good as conventional free-fall bombs for ordinary targets. The bomb lacks range control capabilities and has very low accuracy. In addition, it can only use 5 Predetermined radio channels limit application scenarios and scope.

It can be seen that Azong was lagging behind Hs-293 ​​at this time. It was not until the VB-3 model (Razon) was successfully developed in early 1943 that it had the ability to adjust both azimuth and distance. At this time, the number of radio channels reached 47 - —Equivalent to Germany's level in late 1941. Stimulated by the German army's successful use of Hs-293, the U.S. military accelerated the development of new models. The VB-4 was a successfully developed heavy-duty glide bomb based on a 2,000-pound bomb. The VB-5 was an actively guided bomb that attempted to be controlled using radio signals, but the effect was ineffective. OK, it will be abolished soon.

VB-6 is also a 1,000-pound guided bomb, nicknamed Felix. It uses an octagonal control surface and a thermal seeker to prepare for dealing with targets with strong infrared radiation - but this thing is still lying in the laboratory. There are no field trials. After calling relevant experts for questioning, the situation was even more exciting than what Arnold introduced. There were not only VB-6, but also various developed models such as VB-7\\8\\9\\10, including TV signal guidance, TV\\radio dual mode There are a series of development directions such as guidance and infrared automatic search. Even the U.S. Navy is developing a similar infrared guided bomb ASM-N-4 (Dove). The units involved also include Douglas Company, MIT and the U.S. Defense Research Institute. committee.

The ideas are all good, but there is no finished product. The scientists in charge of the project were also greatly surprised to hear that the German army had guided bombs that could be used in actual combat. Although the telegram sent from the direction of Cape Verde was unclear, the experts understood everything about the keywords such as dark night and automatic tracking. .

"When will similar bombs be put into actual combat?"

"It may take another year or more..."

"It actually takes so long?" Marshall was quite annoyed by this. Eisenhower's encounter in Africa and the encounter of the Army's 5th Division on Sal Island fully demonstrated that the German army had equipped tanks with practical night vision equipment. After urgently asking domestic experts, it was found that they were also studying it, but the development direction was for infantry. Portable night vision devices have a detection range of only more than 100 meters and cannot be used on tanks. At the request of the military, experts can only give up their original ideas and use all their strength to research new models. They follow the same path as the Germans. But I couldn’t take it out for a while. At this time, the German army has tried to develop infrared headlights and low-light night vision devices that can be directly installed on tanks. This not only means that an additional infrared irradiation vehicle is no longer needed, but also means that the technical gap between the two sides has further widened.

Some people asked why these key military technologies were lagging behind the enemy, such as jets, night vision devices, and smart bombs. The scientists were very excited: "Before the war, you cut defense spending every year and thought it was not a top priority. Balance the budget." That's the top priority. If there's a war, blame us for being slow. Why don't you ask how long the Germans have been preparing for the war? "The ramble extends to institutional issues, and no one can say anything.

Admiral Kim asked: "Is there any way to deal with this weapon?"

"The first is to disperse the fleet as much as possible, and the second is to create a false target with obvious heat radiation when the enemy attacks - such as picking a lifeboat to put fuel on it, and setting it on fire once an enemy plane attacks; or If an incendiary bomb is launched on the sea, as long as its radiation intensity exceeds that of the ship, the bomb will be attracted by the stronger radiation."

After getting this method, everyone looked much better, but the next step of the battle became a big problem. The reconnaissance planes departing from the Canadian mainland discovered that the freighters that had been captured and stranded outside the port were all heading southeast. In the early morning, they It is 250 kilometers away from the port and is still moving at a speed of more than 15 knots.

"Do we need to blow them up? There are millions of tons of materials on them..."

"There are not many aircraft that can be used for attack now. It would take at least 500 bomber sorties to sink such a large fleet. This means that we cannot attack the German fleet in these two days."

"Let Admiral Cunningham's fleet attack this fleet?"

"It's too risky. What if the Germans use this as bait? The German artillery fleet also needs to be attacked - if the Germans lose these warships, they will no longer be able to come up with a second fleet. If we lose 1 million tons of supplies, we can quickly Produce more quantities.”

After everyone debated, they came up with the order of priority: the first attack target was still the German aircraft carrier formation, followed by the artillery force, then the German landing force, and finally the captured freighter team.

“What about the Cape Verde front?”

Admiral Jin gritted his teeth and said: "Originally there were a total of 17 escort aircraft carriers, 4 were lost and 13 were left. I think the aviation force is sufficient. The top priority is for the 3rd Army Division to attack bravely without fear of sacrifice and strive to capture Sal Island as soon as possible. If two divisions combined with overwhelming naval and air power cannot defeat a mere 5,000 or 6,000 German troops, people will laugh out loud.”

Marshall also got angry, patted the table and said: "Send a telegram to Macdonald and ask him to form a complete regiment with the remaining troops of the 5th Division to continue the attack. I will give them another 48 hours. If they still cannot take Sal Island, All officers above the regiment level will be dismissed on the spot!”

Ingram reminded: "The situation in Newfoundland is also deteriorating rapidly. Should we ask the Army to immediately invest in reinforcements? I think it is impossible to rely on Canadians..."

Marshall turned to Eisenhower and asked: "Are Matthew's men here?"

"Two regiments arrived! They can complete preparations this afternoon."

"Very good, let them prepare for the airdrop as soon as possible. Go with 3 regiments first, and other troops will follow quickly. We cannot afford to lose the two battles of Newfoundland and Cape Verde."

Just as the Joint Chiefs of Staff was busy mobilizing troops, in the early morning, joint attack aircraft and Ju-188s took off from the Azores one after another, and headed for Newfoundland under the escort of Bf-219s. After delivering more than 100 carrier-based aircraft to the aircraft carrier formation through cross-platform operations for two consecutive days, the land-based aircraft finally found their place and quickly reinforced Newfoundland Island, helping the aircraft carrier formation to free itself from the heavy cover task and devote itself wholeheartedly to the fleet. Fighting - Although there is no evidence, Ozawa believes that the Americans have sent an aircraft carrier formation to attack. The most typical situation is that yesterday's night raid in Cape Verde failed to find any fleet aircraft carrier.

In the afternoon, the aircraft carrier formation in the southern part of Newfoundland was discovered by a US military reconnaissance aircraft. Arnold issued the attack order without hesitation. At the same time, the Ar-352, which was performing a reconnaissance mission, only returned the news that the main force of the US aircraft carrier formation was not found. This made The senior leaders of the fleet found it very difficult: soon a group of US military attack aircraft came to the door, but they could not find the enemy aircraft carrier fleet.

"Hide to the Newfoundland air defense perimeter, rely on land-based aircraft to cooperate in operations, and report the situation to Berlin at the same time."

What everyone didn't know was that Hoffmann, who was far away in Berlin, also received difficult news, and it was two bad news at the same time.