"What do you think of George's suggestion?" Nimitz was a little unhappy when he received a telegram from Patton that he wanted to fight Victoria, but he didn't say anything quickly, but asked his chief of staff, Smith, first. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

"Although his reasoning is simple, I think it makes sense from the Army's point of view." Smith walked to the map and said, "Aerial reconnaissance shows that the enemy did not advance after capturing Lignaris, but sent only a small force - estimated the size of an armored search battalion to reconnoitre, and the main force returned to the division to deploy the defense, indicating that the enemy forces believe that their forces have been used to the limit, and Victoria happens to be in the middle of the German defense line to the north and south." I can understand George's intentions, he hoped to cooperate with the main force of the Fifth Army advancing from the front after the Victoria landing, and eat the German troops in the first line of defense in the north in one bite. ”

"Do you think the Army can do it?"

"Yes!"

"So, you agree with his suggestion?"

"No, I don't agree! As I said earlier, his opinion is reasonable from the perspective of the Army, but it is not reasonable from the perspective of the Navy and the overall situation. ”

Smith explained his point: "Although the South American campaign needs to be fought by ground forces one by one, it is ultimately about sea supremacy. If we fail to control the sea along the coast of Brazil, no matter how far we advance on the ground, we will inevitably be flanked by enemy landings and ultimately undone gains. The key to gaining sea supremacy is to annihilate or crush the current German fleet, and we are very short on time, and I expect that in another 2-3 weeks the German reinforcements will arrive. We don't have much time left, 2-3 weeks is not enough time for George to solve the problem. The main forces of the Fifth Army alone were assembled and advanced, and it was simply impossible to go from El Salvador to Linaris in 7-10 days. In the end, it is likely that he was only halfway through the battle, and enemy reinforcements arrived, and the troops that landed at Victoria would have been wiped out. ”

Nimitz nodded: "I am close to your thoughts, the key to the Brazilian war situation is at sea, as long as we can win the naval battle, the army can win no matter how it fights." On the contrary, no matter how the army fights, it will lose. Please make this clear to George, and I am willing to cooperate with him to achieve victory, provided that the Army first cooperates with the Navy to stabilize the situation. ”

"You can't just say that." Smith shook his head, "You know George's temper, he is more stubborn than a cow, so let's make the situation a little more serious." ”

"How?"

"If the Germans were decisive, they could have given up all their forces in the far north - what if they were all eaten by the Fifth Army? In 3 weeks, if the Navy is unable to destroy or repel the German fleet, which is currently operating in the South Atlantic, we lose! Smith spread his hands, "Now is not a question of destroying this part or that part of the German army, the priority now is to eat the other side's detachment before the German reinforcements arrive!" ”

"Sir, General Nimitz has called us back, and he doesn't agree with us going to Victoria to land." Roosevelt Jr. handed the telegram to Patton, "He still asks to land in Santos, or to Rio!" ”

After reading Nimitz's telegram, Patton's mind was overwhelmed and speechless for a long time.

The telegram revealed a harsh reality: the Army could quite well win a landing campaign but waste a few moments of time.

Patton had planned to launch the Victoria Landing on July 30, cutting off the German rear for 3-4 days, and then leaving the main forces of the Fifth Army to solve the problem. But if the Germans didn't care about this loss, the Americans could eat up to 8,000-9,000 Germans, and then they would have to prepare for the next offensive plan, when they had to go to Santos or Rio. All in all, the Germans set up a long snake formation of 2,000 kilometers winding from Linaris to Porto Alegre on the east coast of Brazil, which seemed to be full of holes, but the real fatal point was in the middle - Santos or Rio, and other places could only be played by the head or the tail, and could not play a role in the whole call. The Germans, fighting for some losses, were able to drag on time.

Seeing that he was still very hesitant, Roosevelt Jr. persuaded again: "If General Nimitz is unwilling to land in Victoria, you can't insist on carrying out the landing mission, don't forget - General Hewitt controls the landing fleet, without Nimitz's consent, how dare he change the target of attack at will, we can't hijack the naval ship again, right?" ”

Patton shook his head with a wry smile: The army had hijacked a naval ship in the last Cape Verde campaign, and as a result, Kennedy testified before Congress and finally crushed Wallace to death - everyone knows that this guy died unjustly, but everyone is dead, what's the point of saying more? Although Patton is sometimes not very good-tempered, it does not mean that he has no IQ, and a fool cannot be a lieutenant general.

He stared at the map and looked at it, and finally sighed helplessly: "Forget it, let's go to Santos to land, I hope we can lure the damn German fleet out." ”

Although Rio and Santos have the same strategic significance, Barton believes that Santos is easier to fight than Rio, which is the capital of Brazil after all, not only has the German army heavily defended, but also has a large number of German aircraft to support nearby, and the landing losses will be large. He only had 20,000 troops in hand for a division, but he didn't dare to toss around.

"Sir, I received a telegram from General Clark, the intelligence shows that the German army has deployed 2 Brazilian puppet divisions in São Paulo and Santos, and its own strength is only a regiment, about 4000-5000 people, while the Brazilian puppet division in Rio has only 1, but the German army has nearly 2 divisions."

"This shows that the center of gravity of the German defense is in Rio, let's go to fight Santos and São Paulo." Patton was full of complaints, "It's just that the army can't beat the Germans, why can't even the navy beat the Germans now?" ”

Roosevelt shrugged, but fortunately Hewitt didn't hear this, but he didn't know that Nimitz had also sent a telegram to Hewitt: If Barton dares to make a mistake, just detain it!

Why keep Barton on the USS New Jersey and Hewitt with him? At best, it's protection, at worst it's strict guarding—who knows what Patton will do when his head is hot. At that time, the conning tower, with armor thickness of up to 445 mm, was Patton's best prison.

Now that Patton is so cooperative, Hewitt of course greeted him with a smile, not only led him to visit all corners of the New Jersey, but also deliberately deviated from the scheduled route halfway, allowing the New Jersey to break into the direction of Victoria Harbor accompanied by other warships, and carried out a fierce shelling on the opposite shore on the spot, misleading the judgment of the German and Brazilian forces, looking at the huge power of the 406mm naval gun when it was fired, Patton sighed to Hewitt: "Why didn't there be such a powerful warship in the Horn of Africa?" Otherwise, it will be gray and slippery, and it will become a soup chicken and climb ashore. For the past year and a half, I've been thinking about revenge all the time! ”

Hueyette nodded in agreement.

With a "boom", the whole warship fired more intensely, Patton was startled, and Hewitt told him that it was a salvo of naval guns after the test firing just now, and the power of the salvo was obviously much greater than the test firing.

He punned: "It seems that all the pipes in the world, whether it is a cannon barrel or something else, have something in common, and they really have to be thicker to be powerful!" ”

Hewitt rolled his eyes, pretended not to understand what was going on, and giggled away.

Seeing that it did not arouse Hewitt's "resonance", Barton turned his head and began to incite the officers and men of the Navy again: "Young men, come on!" This time, I'll give the Germans a little color, and in two years I'll go to Tokyo with you and use these thick pipes to smash the Japanese palace to slag! ”

The soldiers cheered.

Hewitt whispered to Roosevelt Jr., "I think he is very popular with the soldiers, but why does he always feel not serious enough?" ”

"That's his style." Roosevelt Jr. smiled wryly, "There has never been an American general who is so popular with soldiers and hated by other generals as he is, he is a freak, if he was born a hundred years earlier, he must be the best cowboy in the West, but unfortunately, he was born a century late!" ”

At this moment, Krank, who was bent on playing hide and seek with Nimitz, was currently hiding 550 kilometers southeast of São Paulo with his main fleet, which happened to be beyond the coverage of the US Army reconnaissance planes and the field of vision of Nimitz's fleet reconnaissance planes.

"Sir, we have found that the U.S. fleet is heading south...... This is true not only of its main fleet, but also of its transport and landing fleets. In addition, the US military shelled Victoria Harbor this afternoon, and the Brazilian army and port facilities suffered varying degrees of damage. The Air Force tried to attack, but the results were mediocre. Hintz reported to Crank, "I think the enemy is coming at us. ”

"The enemy doesn't seem to care about exposing the target, otherwise it wouldn't have poured fire on Victoria at all - there is no value in shelling without landing." Cranke muttered, "Nimitz must have come for us." ”

"What about the landing force?"

"Maybe it's bait for us to eat...... I'm going to be fooled if I swallow the hook, and the hell knows if there's anyone in there? He stared at the chart for 3 minutes, "Continue to move south, keep a distance from the U.S. military, let the submarine meet the Americans, and give them a little color!" ”

Since the first discovery of the US fleet, German submarines have not shown their faces for many days, which gives the US military an illusion: either they really did not encounter submarines that day, or they only encountered German submarines passing by occasionally. They didn't expect that Cranker had already mobilized a force of more than 30 submarines to deploy off the coast of Brazil during this time, intending to concentrate and give the Americans a hard blow.

"The country has completed the formation of reinforcements, including one panzer division, two panzergrenadier divisions, one infantry division and one heavy armoured battalion, and now awaits the final sea trials of the two British aircraft carriers, and Marshal Martial expects to depart around 15 August - the transport force will join the main fleet through the Strait of Gibraltar a little earlier. In addition, there is also news from the Japanese side that the combined fleet is making final preparations and is expected to depart in mid-August......"

Cranke smiled slightly: "It's going to be hard for Americans in September this year......"