At the instigation of Chen Dao behind the scenes, under the vigorous impetus of Goering, and with the active participation of Field Marshal Milch, Deputy Minister of Aeronautics, Yeshunek, Chief of the General Staff of the Luftwaffe, Udet, Director of Weapons Production of the Luftwaffe, and commanders of various air units, the Luftwaffe began to seek transformation not to be left behind. [ads:This site has a new URL,Shorthand method:,.]

The purpose of the transformation was simple and straightforward, that is, to get the Luftwaffe out of its tactical air force status attached to the army and truly become an independent strategic air force.

After a thorough investigation, Chen Dao was surprised to find that the embarrassing identity of the "air artillery corps" of the Luftwaffe, which was nominally independent but was actually assigned to the German Army, was unclear for the reason, and it was quite like an unsolvable problem of chicken or egg.

The German Army has always been strong, and European countries have made a vivid analogy that Germany is a country where "one army has one country", and this army refers to the German Army, which shows the strong power of the German Army in Germany.

In 1934, despite Hitler's obstruction, the leader of the SA, Röhm repeatedly threatened to replace the German Army with SA, and finally under the strong backlash of the German Army, under the fall of Goering, Himmler and others, Hitler tearfully launched a purge of the SA.

In June 1934, Hitler, with the assistance of Goering and Himmler, expelled Rohm from the German Yankuai Coalition. On the night of 30 June, Goering's secret police and Himmler's SS cracked down on the SA, executing Röhm and more than 150 SA leaders, and the SA, which numbered more than 2.5 million men, was wiped out overnight.

This bloody night is known in German history as the Night of the Long Knife.

The German Army was so strong that the Luftwaffe in its nascent stage was inevitably influenced by the German Army.

In 1933, the Luftwaffe began to secretly form an army, until 1935, when it officially became an independent army, which was the initial stage of the construction of the armored forces led by Guderian in the German Army.

In the practice of the theory of blitzkrieg, Guderian found that even truck-towed large-caliber howitzers could not keep up with the speed of armored forces, as a result of which tanks often did not receive timely artillery support.

Guderian immediately proposed to the Army Ordnance Bureau to develop a self-propelled gun for use with tanks to solve this problem, but was strongly prevented by Goering, who was killed halfway.

The reason given by Goering was that the Stuka dive bomber could play the right and left of the SPGs, and there was no need to waste valuable resources on SPGs.

Guderian naturally could not fight Goering, who was the head of German industrial development, and the development of self-propelled guns was temporarily shelved.

And what's even stranger. The high-ranking members of the Luftwaffe, such as Goering and Udet, were obviously fighter aces, but they were all keen on the construction of high-speed bombers, and Udet himself was the inducer of the famous Stuka dive bomber.

Was it the German Army that was too strong to lead the Luftwaffe? Or did the Luftwaffe itself take the wrong path, and it has become a headless case of injustice on the road of army appendages, and it is impossible to tell whose responsibility lies. But it turned out that both the Luftwaffe and the German Army were victimized.

Under the status of being a vassal in the name of independence, the Luftwaffe had to scratch the eyebrows and mustaches.

The hard-working Luftwaffe had to undertake strategic tasks such as seizing air supremacy, bombing airfields, bombing transportation hubs, bombing industrial areas, and carrying out strategic transportation, and at the same time it also had to undertake the call of the German Army to serve as the "air artillery" of the German Army, especially the armored forces.

High-intensity combat missions inevitably bring chaos, and mistakes inevitably arise under chaos.

The result of the mistake was that the Air Force was scolded. The army was out of luck.

The Army's unfortunate performance is manifested in the slow response speed of the Air Force, which is unable to provide air support to the front line in a timely manner, resulting in delays in fighter aircraft.

After the more serious army solved the crisis on its own, the bombers who heeded the call belatedly arrived, and then mistook their own people for the enemy and mercilessly dropped bombs on the army.

During the French campaign, the Großdeutsche Motorized Rifle Regiment was wounded by Stuka of the Third Air Force shortly after crossing the Maas River, and it is conceivable that this accidental injury must have caused a lot of scolding among the soldiers of the Großdeutsche Regiment.

After investigation, the Luftwaffe suffered as many as 27 accidental injuries to the German Army during the French campaign.

Besides. In addition, due to various reasons such as bad weather that prevented the air force from being able to dispatch, or because the front line was too far from the rear airfield, the armored troops rushing to the front line could not receive heavy fire support, and had to pay greater sacrifices to win.

After learning from the painful experience, taking advantage of the opportunity of the large-scale reorganization of various arms of the German army after the French campaign, the Luftwaffe under the command of Goering decided to change its mind, re-become a "man", and carry out a reform from head to toe, from the inside to the outside, in order to completely get rid of the status of an army vassal.

With the mass production of Wasp and Wildbee self-propelled howitzers, the problem of the disconnection between the tanks of the German armored forces and the artillery of the divisions was solved, which inevitably led to a reduction in the volume of ground support missions of the Luftwaffe.

At the same time, it is also to take the route of professional specialization. Under Chen Dao's positive suggestion, Göring decided to implement the second season of the Cuckoo Project without hesitation, using Chen Dao, an "undercover agent" who broke into the Waffen-SS, to play "Infernal Affairs" with Himmler fiercely. In one fell swoop, the Army Aviation Corps was formed, and the task of ground support was transferred to the Waffen-SS.

After getting rid of the heavy burden of ground support, the Luftwaffe carried out a radical reinvention of its thinking, from Goering downwards.

Under the pressure of Goering's slogan of "change people without changing ideas," the Luftwaffe reversed the idea of building an army with bombers as the core, and instead embarked on the road of construction with fighters as the mainstay and other types of aircraft as supplements.

The Luftwaffe also defined the five major tasks of the Luftwaffe as the seizure of air supremacy, territorial air defense, strategic bombing, strategic transport, and airborne strikes.

In terms of seizing air supremacy and territorial air defense, the Luftwaffe actively improved the existing main combat model, the ME-109 fighter model. to deal with the Spitfire, a fierce enemy that appeared in the skies over the United Kingdom.

During the airdrop leaflet operation to London, the ME-109 exposed its shortcomings of insufficient range and inability to provide full cover for the bombing, and the Messerschmitt Company researched and equipped the ME-109 with auxiliary fuel tanks, which extended the stay time of the ME-109 fighter by 40-60 minutes.

At the same time, the Luftwaffe has increased its investment in a new type of FW-190 fighter jet, which was put into production in October, giving German fighter pilots a new choice.

In order to keep up with the times and meet the needs of homeland air defense, the Luftwaffe continued to increase its research on radar and jet fighters.

In terms of strategic bombing, the Luftwaffe discontinued the production of the aging Do-17 bomber, leaving only the production line of the Ju-88 and He-111 bombers, and decided to produce a small number of He-177 strategic bombers.

Every time he thought of the He-177 strategic bomber, Chen Dao couldn't help but hate it.

Germany must have a powerful strategic bomber, if for nothing else, but in the future, after the development of the atomic bomb, a weapon of mass destruction, to be able to have a suitable carrier to smash it on the enemy's head.

At the current level of science and technology, only strategic bombers can undertake this heavy task.

The overall structural layout of the He-177 is not bad, but the problem is that the Luftwaffe would want such a big guy to have the ability to dive and bomb, which is really unreasonable.

"Do you admit that calling four bombers to dive and bomb is pure nonsense?"

In Goering's splendid office, Chen Dao looked at the manual of the HE-177 strategic bomber in his hand and said.

"I'll admit it's all Udet's dive-bombing frenzy, it's none of my business." Without hesitation, Goering pushed the blame.

"There is no need to engage in dive bombing, nor do you need to engage in any complex dual-linkage coupling engines, just build a four-engine strategic bomber that can be quickly put into production. Thirty or fifty of them were produced for the bomber unit to try. Chen Dao said.

"Got it. Next summer, we will have 7,000 front-line combat aircraft, including 2,000 fighters.

Now that all the armies of Germany are being reorganized, and the resources we have in stock are no longer sufficient, we must get a good grasp of foreign trade, especially our scrap steel business, and exchange more resources for Germany. Goering said with a frown.

"The main thing is to end the war against Britain as soon as possible, the Italians can't hold on, the time is almost up, and our "Santa" plan is also going to be accelerated, trying to take Iraq at Christmas, and then hit Churchill on the head."

Goering sneered a few times and then gloated with a look of schadenfreude on his face.

"You know what? The Greeks not only withstood the Italian attack, but now they have counterattacked into Albanian territory, and everything is as you would expect. (To be continued.) )xh118