"According to the plan, what is the next step of our army?"

"Build an artificial dock, let a large number of trucks and heavy equipment and supplies go ashore, and the sappers will repair two emergency airfields at night to ensure that they can be supported by land-based aviation tomorrow......" After it was decided to launch the SEAL program, Marshal Rommel's old partner Gauss continued to return to him from the Central Asian basin as chief of staff. Gauss www.biquge.info who had experience in landing, was sent to more important places to coordinate operations and draw up plans, and his rank was promoted from lieutenant general to general—a rare arrangement for a chief of staff.

Informed sources said that this was an order from the Führer himself, and that he was very optimistic about the chief of staff. The imaginary enemy's staff under Paulus's command put forward many targeted anti-landing opinions, and even Zeitzler, the chief of the general staff, participated in the war games with great interest, and he commanded the battle of Dieppe to fight the anti-landing very successfully, and all the relevant experience and countermeasures were absorbed, and the progress of the battle also proved that the Icelandic defenders basically did not take any counter-attack measures that exceeded the expectations of the German army, and even far from what was expected in many aspects: for example, Lieutenant General Pei scolded the idiotic behavior of the Americans -- but everyone knows how many mines were planted in the Azores. How many fortifications were built.

The only thing that was unexpected was that the performance of the US Army Aviation was relatively resolute, and it actually dared to carry out long-distance bombing in formation without escort.

"You don't need it, do you?" "We have landed a number of troops, and we have taken initial control of the port of Reykjavík, so we can transport supplies through normal channels......

"I have two considerations: first, the enemy must also know that we will be transported in large quantities through the docks, in case of concentrated bombardment, it is easy to cause irreversible damage, which will seriously hinder the deployment of the landed troops; Second, this is a rare opportunity for actual combat exercises, although we have built an artificial dock in the Mediterranean, but after all, it is only an exercise, and it is still necessary to build one in front of enemy lines in the North Atlantic. I don't think the High Command would mind if we lost a little bit of material or equipment. ”

Lieutenant General was persuaded and immediately reported the news to Machar, who also nodded in agreement and suggested that it be built overnight.

The Japanese delegates, who served as observers on the ships, widened their eyes and observed the display of Germany's latest science and technology, and many people today were full of praise for the Sibel landing craft, believing that although Japan took the lead in developing a "flat-headed, pointed-tail" landing craft -- the square bow protruded upwards and forward, and the sharp stern dragged behind to keep the hull balanced, so that it could directly grab the beach, and its straight bow was a baffle, which could be lowered as a springboard for personnel and equipment to disembark after grabbing the beach, and the Japanese troops would not even get wet when they rushed ashore.

However, the Japanese landing craft were too small and could only deal with the defenders, who were too weak in their defenses, and if the defenders had strong firepower, they were too weak. Moreover, the problem of poor seaworthiness of small landing craft was very obvious, and it could only be towed by large ships and released close to the landing site, and a large landing craft like the German army that could directly move from France to Iceland was extremely ideal.

In addition, the Japanese Marine Corps originally had very few tanks, and they were very light, and developed special internal fire boats, but in the face of the powerful anti-landing firepower and anti-armor capabilities of Britain and the United States, the survival of internal fire boats was worrisome, and now the Japanese Navy has enough tanks, and urgently needs a large enough landing craft, and the landing craft that can carry tanks must be able to carry armored vehicles. Everyone is an expert, and at a glance they understand the advantages of going ashore in an armored vehicle -- not only can they carry heavy equipment and supplies, but they will not waste a lot of physical strength in the beach, and they will also have machine guns or even recoilless guns to provide firepower, which is very beneficial to the suppression of beachhead fire and the pursuit of operations in depth!

The regiment commander, Ito, solemnly recorded the fact that large landing craft should be introduced for the naval landing battle, and more armored vehicles should be prepared for the marines.

The foregoing is understandable, but the construction of an artificial dock is completely beyond their cognitive ability, so they focus on the side of the ship and hold a telescope probe to look at it.

Although the strength of the German Navy is not strong, but the engineering construction capacity is second to none in Europe, after receiving the requirements for the construction of artificial docks, various experts have really used a lot of brains, and Hoffmann also gave full play to the advantages of crossing to mention.

Historically, the artificial wharves built by Britain and the United States in the Normandy landing campaign mainly used concrete caissons, which were magnificent and large-scale, with small ones of more than 100 tons and large ones of more than 6,000 tons, which fell on the seabed at a depth of 5-6 meters on average, and then connected them one by one in a similar way to build blocks, and finally built a complete breakwater and pier embankment. The British and Americans used millions of tons of concrete, steel, sea sand and other materials to build two artificial ports in the Normandy landings, which they first dragged across the English Channel by tugboats, and then built them in turn, stretching for several kilometers, each port can provide up to 6,000 tons of supplies for the army per day.

Germany does not need such a large transportation capacity, Germany only needs to support an army of 2-30,000 people, which can provide about 800 tons of supplies per day. Moreover, Iceland is too far from the European continent to be dragged by a tugboat with such a huge caisson, regardless of the risks at sea, and the battle will be over when it arrives. Therefore, the first requirement for the construction of artificial docks is that they are autonomously mobile, and the speed is not too slow.

Hoffman's original idea of providing a terminal construction modeled after the later offshore oil rigs caught the eyes of engineering experts and thought it was a genius idea, but there was no precedent before and it had to be developed from scratch, as short as 1-2 years, or as long as a few years, and it was not a good equipment for offshore oil development in the future, but now experts are ready to use other methods.

Compared with the hard construction of Britain and the United States, the path chosen by Germany is very interesting, and instead of those troublesome and difficult to control caissons, Germany directly went on board - a camouflage aircraft carrier (or transport carrier) developed on the basis of the Stillman-class tanker.

Stillman is a large oil tanker built by Germany before the war, which can accommodate about 23,000 tons of oil. After the design drawings of the will wheel were approved, Germany designed a 25,000-ton European standard tanker - Bremen class according to Stillman's technical parameters, with an overall length of more than 185 meters.

The United States has used large fast oil tankers to build several large escort aircraft carriers -- the Sangamon-class, but the maximum speed of the Bremen class is only 14 knots, and it takes a lot of effort to change them into escort aircraft carriers. The width and length of the deck exceed the hull (more than 2 meters wide and more than 10 meters long), and the whole tanker seems to be wearing a huge hat, which is also nicknamed a capped tanker.

It's a bit ugly to look at, but there are certain features of the capped tanker that Hoffman was also amazed by.

The deck on the top of the capped tanker is made of steel plates with a thickness of 50mm, which can prevent the horizontal attack of 1,000 pounds of high-explosive bombs (but cannot stop armor-piercing bombs or dive attack aircraft), adding nearly 4,000 tons to the tanker in one go, resulting in a large draft and an increase in the ship's center of gravity. So the engineers reduced the volume of fuel transported in the cargo compartment by 5,000 tons, but the transport space remained in the hull.

Under the attention of everyone, the two capped oil tankers marked B1\B2 slowly headed towards the vertical shore, and the B1 aircraft carrier ran aground first.

"B1 stranded successfully, fill with water!" With the captain's order, the sea valve opened, and a large amount of seawater frantically poured into the various watertight silos, and then the tanker slowly sank at a speed visible to the naked eye, and in the end most of the hull was immersed in sediment and silt, but in this way, the hull also remained stable, and now the whole ship has introduced tens of thousands of tons of seawater in addition to nearly 20,000 tons of fuel, and the ground seems to be very solid.

B2 queued up after B1 and began to move forward in a head-to-tail manner - this is a very crucial step, the docking size of the two tankers is required to be controlled within 2 meters left and right, and within 30 centimeters up and down.

It is more difficult to control the left and right, but the actual long seam deviation is only more than 1 meter, and the upper and lower joints are relatively well controlled, as long as the water is continuously filled, the ship can sink at a uniform speed to achieve the goal, and the height difference of the final seam is only more than 10 centimeters. Because B2 is located in a deeper sea, it is reflected in the fact that the draft of B2 is deeper, B1 is only 70% less than 70% of the hull, and B2 is nearly 75%.

By this time, most of the steps had been completed, and there was still one last step left to equalize. Because the sea is sloping, the shallower it is the more beachhead, so the stern of the two stranded capped tankers is lower than the bow level, and the upper volley deck is inclined to the sea. But this did not bother the German engineers, because the steel plates laid on it were not a single unit, but were laid from more than 1,000 steel plates of the same specification. The engineer immediately calculated the size that needed to be adjusted, taking the sea level height of the last steel plate as the standard height, and the pillars attached to each steel plate began to fall, and the method of shortening the pillars was used to alleviate the effect of the sea slope, and finally formed a roughly balanced platform.

At dawn, a platform connected to the beachhead, nearly 400 meters long and 30 meters wide, appeared out of thin air on the sea, and everyone cheered. The Japanese observer group was dumbfounded, and could they still play like this?

Now, as soon as the freighter comes up and is built on this steel platform with a steel bridge, they can start transporting supplies. The accumulation capacity of the entire platform at the same time is about 5,000 tons.

What's more, this steel platform also has a special role: the 400-meter-long platform can provide a runway for fighter jets that land urgently, and if the platform is extended to 600 or even 800 meters, even attack aircraft can take off and land urgently.