In addition to the female secretaries, there were also arms manufacturers who complained about the increase in the Führer, and now Hoffmann was not very involved in the specific command of the army, which greatly relieved the two chiefs of staff, Keitel and Zeitzler, and the commanders of the army groups, but his intervention in the arms industry, especially in the technical aspects, was greatly deepened, which several companies were well aware of.

The first to bear the brunt is the Junkers, they got a large number of Ju-88 orders on the aviation armament reorganization case, which was originally a very happy thing, but half a month later Hoffman told them through Speer that the performance of the Ju-52 transport aircraft (Junkers) is outdated, and production will no longer be arranged from next year, and the relevant orders will be transferred to the improved Ar-232 of the Aradau company, because the Ar-232 has more carrying capacity, faster speed and longer range than Ju-52, Except for the fact that the experience of military use was inferior to that of the Ju-52, almost everything else was somewhat better than the Junkers product. This made Juncker's senior management gasp: because the transport aircraft market has always been monopolized by the Ju-52, Junkers not only earned high profits but also did not spend much effort on the development of follow-up models, so the profit of one transport aircraft is as high as five bombers, after this order is cut, the profits brought by the new bomber orders cannot make up for the potential losses caused by the loss of transport aircraft orders.

The Ar-232, which they had been working on for many years, finally had a good home, which not only meant that all previous R&D investments could be recovered, but also that they were more motivated to improve the next generation of new, jet Ar-234 bombers - this is their main goal. Aradao has been trumpeted to take out the market that Junkers' Ju-88 series currently occupies with full-fledged jet bombers. And other aircraft manufacturers, like Aradao, which are not part of several mainstream aircraft manufacturers, were also encouraged by this incident and decided to increase investment, and now Marshal Milch is no longer in charge of arms production, and it can be seen from the Ju-52 order that Minister Speer has no so-called gateway view. There is a lot of room for the development of armaments in the future, and they can turn over as long as they have a mature product.

Messerschmitt has also cleverly slipped a slice of the transport aircraft market with the Me-323D, an upgrade from the Me-321 jumbo ******, an aerial jumbo with a payload capacity of up to 16 tons and a capacity of up to 130 heavily armed soldiers, almost six times the capacity of the Ju-52. The crew consisted of only 5 people, compared to the 18 people needed for the Ju-52 to perform the same task. The cargo hatch of the Me-323D is up to 3. At 35 meters, 2-ton trucks, ammunition tractors, and Weasel 2 tank destroyers converted from Tank 2 can come and go at will. What's more, the core parts of this aircraft are all French-made air-cooled engines (Land Shinrona 14-N-48 engines) and propellers, which effectively alleviate the problem of insufficient domestic production capacity in Germany. Hoffman was very interested in this kind of high-capacity transport aircraft, and thought that it would be very useful for emergency support, especially in North Africa, so he deliberately placed an order for the first batch of 100 planes, and asked them to try to use better engines to increase speed, and Juncker's proposed Ju-322 giant transport aircraft was not even finalized at this time.

Just when a few companies vaguely wanted to see the Junker jokes. Hoffman slashed at Messerschmidt for the second time, canceling the order for 2,000 Bf-109s, half of which was explicitly transferred to the Me-262, which will be put into production next year, and the other half to the Fw-190 - they are doing well in North Africa, especially being able to provide escort from Italian ports to Tobruk, which makes Garand very satisfied, and has repeatedly written to increase the production of the Fw-190 series. Messerschmitt said that it didn't matter, anyway, the Air Force would increase the procurement of Me-262 in the future, but Mercedes-Benz soon couldn't laugh. Because the knife was cut at Messerschmidt, and it hurt at Mercedes-Benz - this was a disaster for the DB601 series engine. 2,000 aircraft means that at least 3,000 engines are in vain, because neither the Me-262 nor the Fw-190 use Mercedes-Benz engines.

Originally, the DB601 engine was in short supply in the armament system, and even in order to ensure the production of the Bf-109, the application for the use of other aircraft was rejected, and the Fw-190 switched to air-cooled engines for this reason. Unexpectedly, the time has changed, and the status of DB601, which has always been the emperor's daughter, has not worried about getting married, began to be embarrassing. What made Mercedes-Benz even more panicked was that the Jumo-213 engine produced by Junkers began to enter the stage of mass production. Speer affirms that the liquid-cooled engine, which has always claimed to compete with the DB601 series, can provide far more powerful power output than the DB601 after overcoming technical difficulties. When he met with Juncker's senior management and accepted their complaint about the Ju-52 incident, he comforted the former and placed an order for 1,000 units, while vaguely expressing his gratitude to Mercedes-Benz for the pretext that the DB601 production task was too heavy. Dissatisfied with the delay in the transition to the DB603 (the successor of the DB601, which is better than it), and said that if Mercedes-Benz continued this unenterprising approach, it would further increase the order for the Jumo series - anyway, Dr. Tan Ke has already experimented with the installation of liquid-cooled engines on the Fw-190, and if successful, it will inevitably cut orders for the Bf-109 short-legged fighter again. Although Juncker suffered a big loss in the transport aircraft market, it won a game in the engine market and left happily.

There are no impermeable walls in the world, and Mercedes-Benz soon heard Speer's speech and felt an unprecedented sense of crisis. If in the past, when the armaments production government was out of many ways, it could still find others to dredge up relations, and the Ministry of Armaments could not do it, as long as the Air Force approved it, there was still room for maneuver, but now Speer has the sole power, as long as he says no, no one can change his will unless the head of the state speaks. And the Führer did not dare to go to Mercedes-Benz - Hoffman had clearly expressed his dissatisfaction with the technical performance of Mercedes-Benz's existing aircraft engines, and warned that if the status quo was not changed, he would find a company to copy the British Merrill Lynch engine. Hoffman wasn't trying to scare them, he even picked the imitation company - he went to BMW. BMW is a defeated subordinate of Mercedes-Benz, has been in the aero engine market share is not large, finally rely on the BMW-801 air-cooled series to gain a place, in case they really imitate Merrill Lynch successfully, then liquid-cooled, air-cooled two-pronged, and imitation is more superior is not to take too much technology development road, once they salted fish turned over after Mercedes-Benz company will have no way out. Therefore, Mercedes-Benz had no choice but to swallow its teeth, put away the careful thinking of maintaining the continuous production of the DB601 series to maximize profits, and accelerate the conversion to future generations.

Hoffman's first two knives for the military industry were slashed at the Air Force military-industrial complex, and the third was slashed at the Army's military-industrial complex. In promoting the construction of the army's firepower, if the T-34 tank left the deepest impression on the German frontline officers and men in the war on the Eastern Front, then the second most impressive thing was the Stalin's organ-Katyusha rocket launcher. In fact, the level of rockets in the Third Reich was better than that of the Soviet Union, but unlike the Soviet army's large-scale concentrated use of rocket artillery and relying on a large number of ammunition to cover targets in a short time to achieve operational objectives, due to Germany's superiority in the field of rocket engines, it made a mistake of refinement: it paid more attention to long-distance precision strikes with heavy rockets.

Each German rocket launcher is up to 10 tubes, while Katyusha rocket launchers are generally more than 16 tubes, in terms of rocket artillery caliber, Germany prefers 210mm, 150mm and 201mm calibers are only light rocket artillery, while the Soviet Union has always been 80mm, 132mm mainly. Hoffman knew that facts had proved that the Soviet Union's idea of developing rocket artillery was correct -- rockets were originally weapons with probable launch and area-covering, and it was pure self-deception to insist on carrying out precision strikes. Therefore, he gave a clear directive to develop a German-made weapon similar to the Katyusha rocket artillery, with a reduced caliber and an increased number of tubes, and to be able to be mounted on the SdKfz 251/1 half-track armored vehicle as a regimental fire support unit. Since the Führer was no longer taboo about copying the weapons of the enemy, especially the Soviet army, the designers quickly complied with the order to come up with a similar weapon with a 150mm rocket: a length of 1020 mm and a propellant charge of 6. 14 kg, the warhead weighs nearly 3 kg, the muzzle velocity is 350 m / s, the maximum firing range is more than 6000 meters, and the ammunition is modular, and the 24-tube rocket can be launched in 7 seconds at a time. Hoffmann was pleased with this, because the SS gave priority to the trial of this rocket launcher, so he named it the "Himmler Organ".

Himmler's organ soon got an order for 10,000 pieces, the original 75mm infantry gun usually used by the army was ordered to stop production, and the order for 105mm howitzer was also reduced, at the same time, due to the enhancement of the armor strength of the Allied tanks, the PAK37mm and 50mm anti-tank guns originally developed and manufactured by Rheinmetall became increasingly embarrassing on the battlefield, and they could almost only deal with armored vehicles and old tanks. The troops have repeatedly reported this situation, and Hoffman decisively instructed the Ministry of Armaments to stop the production of anti-tank guns of these two calibers and divert resources to the production of 88 guns and 75mm anti-tank guns. Fortunately, Rheinmetall had a wide product line, and the reduction of some models would not result in a loss of profit, but would facilitate the reduction of its front and the integration of its internal production capacity, so it happily accepted this arrangement.

This afternoon, Hoffman was scheduled to go to the range to see two infantry weapons, and he knew that this would be his fourth cut to the production of armaments. (To be continued.) )