Early in the morning of December 1, the Joint Chiefs of Staff received two pieces of bad news, one was from Prince Edward Island: German planes attacked the air base late last night, and although the defenders tried their best to resist, the German air raid was very fierce and destroyed the base at the cost of losing more than 30 aircraft; Another message came from the Cape Verde direction: the Germans sent heavy bombers and mysterious weapons that could accurately hit warships at night, and the fleet lost four escort carriers and carrier-based aircraft attached to it, as well as more than 1,000 men. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

These two news made Marshall and Admiral King shocked and angry, and in order to coordinate and command the two battles simultaneously, the two simply took a full set of staff teams to eat and live in the Joint Staff Committee, but they didn't expect to be so uneasy.

"Now I can only attack from Maine, that distance is too far, I can only use horizontal bombers, the effect is extremely poor......" Arnold was very annoyed, but the Germans attacked him at night and had no choice but to turn their eyes to Admiral King for help, "When will General Cunningham's fleet arrive?" ”

"It will be there this evening, the question is, where is the German fleet now? And if the Germans had such sharp assault weapons, I doubt that the fleet would have been sent to the door to be beaten......"

"What kind of weapon is this, so powerful?" Marshall was also deeply troubled by this, the German army's endless stream of new weapons had a major impact on the morale of the troops, and the Tiger tanks alone cast a major shadow on the ground forces - the planes attacking Newfoundland believed that the German Tiger tanks did not exceed 30, but the Canadians insisted on at least 50-60 vehicles, while less than 15 Tiger tanks were actually put into operation.

"If I'm not mistaken, this is supposed to be a German gliding guided bomb, which was seen several times in the Egyptian campaign, when it was attacked during the day, and now it is estimated that it can be attacked at night." Arnold sighed, "Actually, we have it, but the speed can't keep up with the pace of the Germans, and the effect is not good." ”

Arnold is really not bragging, as early as April 1942, the US Army Aviation Equipment Command began to develop the VB (Asson) series of guided bombs. The first model is called VB-1, which is based on a 1000-pound bomb (M-44 was used at the beginning, but later AN-M-65) is equipped with a new tail, gyroscope stabilization system, rudder, tail tracking flash system and other equipment, the principle is basically the same as the early German Hs-293, when the VB-1 is dropped, the carrier can control its trajectory through radio commands, but only for azimuth, so it is named Azi (Azon = "Azimuth-Only”）。 Since it can only control azimuth, it is relatively suitable for narrow targets (such as bridges and railways), but it is not as good as conventional free-fall bombs for ordinary targets. Because the bomb lacked range control capabilities, the accuracy was very low, and only five predetermined radio channels could be used, which limited the application scenarios and range.

It can be seen that Axon was still a little behind the Hs-293 at this time, and it was not until the successful development of the VB-3 model (Razon) in early 1943 that it had the ability to adjust both azimuth and distance, and at this time the number of scheduled radio channels reached 47 - which was equivalent to the level of Germany at the end of 1941. Stimulated by the successful use of Hs-293 by the German army, the US military accelerated the development of a new model, VB-4 is a heavy gliding bomb successfully developed based on a 2000-pound bomb, VB-5 is an active guided bomb that attempts to use radio signals, but the effect is not good, and it is quickly abolished.

The VB-6 is also a 1,000-pound guided bomb, nicknamed the Felix, with an octagonal set of control surfaces and a thermally inductive seeker, ready to deal with targets with strong infrared radiation - but this thing is still lying in the lab, without a single actual test. After calling the relevant experts to ask, the situation is far more wonderful than Arnold's introduction, not only VB-6, but also VB-7\8\9\10 various development models, including television signal guidance, TV \ radio dual-mode guidance, infrared automatic search and other development directions, and even the US Navy has a similar infrared-guided bomb ASM-N-4 pigeon in development, involving units including Douglas Company, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the US Defense Research Council.

Several scientists in charge of the project were also greatly surprised to hear that the German army already had guided bombs that could be used in actual combat, although the telegram sent from the direction of Cape Verde was vague, but in fact, the experts understood all the key words such as night.

"When will a bomb like mine be put into real combat?"

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

"It takes so much time......" Marshall was rather annoyed. Eisenhower's encounter in Africa and the encounter of the 5th Army Division on Saar Island fully illustrate that the German army has equipped tanks with practical night vision equipment, and after urgently asking domestic experts, it was found that they are also researching, but the development direction is for infantry portable night vision devices, the detection distance is only more than 100 meters, and it cannot be used for tanks at all, so the experts can only use all their resources to study the new model, and the road is exactly the same as that of the Germans, but it will not be able to take it out for a while. The Germans have already tried to develop infrared headlights and low-light night vision devices that can be installed directly on the tank, which means that there is no longer a need for an additional infrared illumination vehicle.

Scientists were also very emotional when asked why these key military technologies were one beat behind the enemy, such as jets, night vision devices, and smart bombs: "Before the war, you cut defense and military spending every year, thinking that it was not a top priority, and budget balance was the top priority, and now that we are blaming us for our slow speed, why don't you ask the Germans how long they have been preparing for the war?" "No one can say anything about the system and the system......

Admiral Kim asked, "Then what is there to deal with this weapon?" ”

"The first is to spread out as much as possible, and the second is to create another target with obvious thermal radiation once the enemy is aware of the attack - such as picking a lifeboat with fuel and igniting it if the enemy plane is coming; Or launch an incendiary bomb on the surface of the sea, as long as its radiation intensity exceeds that of the ship, the bomb will be attracted away by the stronger radiation. ”

After getting this method, everyone's faces looked a lot better, but what to do in the next battle became a big problem, and the reconnaissance planes departing from the Canadian mainland found that the freighters that had been captured and stranded on the periphery of the port were all heading southeast, and in the early morning they had exceeded the port by 250 kilometers, and they were still moving at a speed of more than 15 knots.

"Do you need to blow them up? There are millions of tons of material ...... on it."

"There are not many planes that can be put into attack now, and it will take at least 500 bombers to sink such a large fleet, which means that it is impossible to attack the German fleet in these two days......"

"Or let Admiral Cunningham's fleet attack this fleet?"

"It's too risky, what if the Germans use it as bait? Moreover, the German artillery fleet also needed to attack - the Germans would not be able to get a second fleet without these warships, and we could quickly produce more quantities with the loss of 1 million tons of supplies. ”

The final order of contention was that the first target of the attack today was the German aircraft carrier group, followed by the artillery unit, then the German landing force, and finally the captured freighter group.

"What about the Cape Verdean front?"

Admiral Jin gritted his teeth and said: "Originally, there were a total of 17 escort aircraft carriers, and the loss of 4 and 13 ships, I think the aviation force is sufficient, and the top priority is that the 3rd Division of the Army is not afraid of sacrifice to attack bravely and strive to take Saar Island as soon as possible. ”

Marshall also sent a ruthless blow, patted the table and said: "Send a telegram to MacDonald, ask him to form a complete regiment with the remaining strength of the 5th Division to continue the attack, I will give them another 48 hours, if they still can't take Sal Island, all officers above the regiment will be dismissed on the spot!" ”

Ingram reminded: "The situation on Newfoundland is also deteriorating rapidly, whether to ask the army to immediately send reinforcements, I don't think it will be possible to rely on the Canadians......"

Marshall turned his head and asked Eisenhower, "Are Matthew's men all here?" ”

"Arrived at 2 regiments! If there are enough planes, they can depart this afternoon. ”

"Very good, let them prepare for the airdrop at 3 o'clock, go to 2 regiments first, and the other troops will quickly follow, we can't afford to lose the two battles of Newfoundland and Cape Verde."

In the early morning, one after another joint attack aircraft and Ju-188s took off from the Azores and headed for Newfoundland under the escort of Bf-219s, and after sending 100 carrier-based aircraft to the aircraft carrier group through cross-platform operations for two consecutive days, the land-based aircraft finally found a place to use and quickly reinforced Newfoundland, so as to help the aircraft carrier group be freed from the heavy cover task and devote itself to the fleet engagement - although there is no evidence, However, Ozawa believes that the Americans should have sent an aircraft carrier group to attack, and the most typical situation is that last night's raid did not find any fleet carriers.

In the afternoon, the aircraft carrier formation in the southern part of Newfoundland Island was discovered by US reconnaissance planes, and Arnold did not hesitate to give the order to attack, while the Ar-352, which was also carrying out reconnaissance missions, only sent back the news that the main force of the US aircraft carrier formation had not been discovered......

"There are many air defense circles to Newfoundland, relying on land-based aircraft to cooperate in the operation, and at the same time sending telegrams to Berlin."

What everyone didn't know was that Hoffmann, who was far away in Berlin, also received tricky news, and two bad news came together. (To be continued.) )