After chatting about the gossip of the British royal family, dinner was almost over. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info Adele and Mrs. Knox took the kids upstairs and left the downstairs space for the men to talk about "business".

"Secretary Knox, what do you think of President Roosevelt's speech the day before yesterday? How long will it take for industrial production in the United States to complete the transition from peacetime to wartime? "On behalf of the British officers, Somerville asked Secretary Knox a question of their greatest concern.

The day before yesterday, President Roosevelt made an important speech when he met with reporters with George VI in the town of Hyde Park. In his speech, Roosevelt talked about the adjustment and transformation of industrial production in the United States, which has been discussed in the major media for the past two days.

"It is not a simple task to raise the industrial production of an entire country from the requirements of output in peacetime to those in wartime. The biggest difficulty is in the early stages of the project, we have to build new tools, new factory equipment, new production lines, new shipyards, and then we can have a steady stream of products from them. ”

John laughed to himself, Knox was so cunning, he was almost "reciting" Roosevelt's exact words.

However, Knox is not perfunctory to Somerville, and military production is indeed not something that can be said. According to general experience, it will take at least two years or so to build a large warship, and at least more than 200 days for an ordinary freighter.

"What we lack most now is not large warships, but destroyers and freighters." A Royal Navy major interjected: "The submarines of the Germans are hunting our convoy at sea. We have already lost 880,000 tons last month, and if we continue like this, we will starve to death before the Germans can land. ”

"That's right, what I lack most right now is not weapons but food." Another admiral said: "The island's cultivation only meets 48 per cent of the country's needs, and we have now had to give up some other supplies to prioritise the delivery of food back to Britain." Hitler also understood this, so German submarines attacked the transport fleet more and more often. Mr. Minister, when will those 50 old destroyers be delivered to us? ”

Previously, Somerville had introduced John to the Captain Sidney, the captain of the cruiser USS Southampton, and the commander of the escort formation of George VI's visit to the United States.

"Congress has approved it, and now only the technical issues remain. As you know, these destroyers have been mothballed for some time and need to undergo a thorough inspection before they can be delivered. I've ordered the Bahamas base to speed up, and it would be better if your Royal Navy could help. ”

This time, Knox didn't make another official call. The U.S. Navy also hopes to complete the deal of "destroyers for military bases" sooner. Washington now calls it "the best deal the U.S. government has ever made since buying Louisiana from Napoleon III."

"What is the food on the island now?" John thought that the biggest threat facing Britain was bombing from the sky, but he didn't expect the Royal Navy, which was the pride of the British Empire, to be so embarrassed by a small submarine.

"Now we can control the South Atlantic. Since the sinking of the Admiral Spee, the Germans have rarely visited that area. We can buy some from Brazil and Argentina and some back from India and Australia. But this was not enough, and my mother's and mother's servants had already shoveled the roses from the Tinder estate and planted them with potatoes. ”

Somerville continued: "London's quota is now 10 ounces (300 grams) of bread per person per day, butter, meat, sugar, tea, cloth are all bought with a ticket. The kids haven't had fresh fruit for a long time. Irish citrus can only be purchased from the black market, but that is illegal. ”

"So, the most important thing now is to solve the problem of insufficient escort ships, so that you can bring back supplies from overseas, right?" John suddenly had a new idea. "Somerville, have you heard of Dr. Bowen's ASVMK1 airborne search radar? I remember that the Royal Navy's Blenheim style seems to have this installed, right? ”

"I know." One of the captains replied, "I've seen this on the Ark Royal, and there's a night type." About 20 Blenheim aircraft equipped with such radars can provide 24-hour surveillance within a 200-nautical mile radius. ”

"That's going to be easy. I wonder if we can convert some freighters, remove the superstructure of those ocean-going freighters and ro-ro ships, and put them on decks to use as improvised aircraft carriers. Let's calculate that each ship can carry 10 aircraft, and as long as each shipping formation has two such simple aircraft carriers, it is completely possible to detect U-boats in a semi-submersible state in advance (at present, German U-boats mainly float at night and then attack slow escort fleets). ”

"It's an interesting idea." Colonel Sidney was intrigued: 'But how are the planes stored?' The freighter is not a professional aircraft carrier, and there is no supporting support compartment. Also, how to configure the weapons on the ship? ”

"There is no need for a support chamber at all. They were converted from civilian transport ships, and their speed was originally low, and it was good to stop the planes on the deck in normal times. As for the armament, anyway, German oceanic assault ships are appearing less and less, and the main threat comes from U-boats. These, let's call them escort aircraft carriers, only need to accompany the cargo fleet to travel, and there should be no need for most of them to be armed. You are experts in this area, I just put forward an idea, and you have to study how to do it yourself. ”

"I think it's feasible, so that each merchant fleet only needs one or two escort aircraft carriers, plus two or three destroyers, frigates, and armed merchant ships. If several fleets are close together, they can even join forces to monitor tens of thousands of square kilometers of sea area. I don't believe it, can the U-boat stay underwater all the time and not float up for breath. ”

The more Colonel Sidney talked, the more excited he became, and finally found a new breakthrough in the problem that had plagued the British Royal Navy for almost a year. The other naval officers present also had a sense of pleasure in "keeping the clouds open and seeing the moon," and they gave a lot of opinions on the tactics used to escort the aircraft carriers.

"I'm convinced, John." Somerville smiled and brought John a glass of fruit wine: "Container intermodal transportation, and this escort aircraft carrier, how did you come up with these ideas." There are still geniuses in this world. ”

John waved his hand again and again to show that he didn't dare to be: "I'm just a bystander." How it should be done depends on the naval professionals. ”

In fact, before the outbreak of the war, the United States had studied how to convert cargo ships for convoy escort, and had also experimented with carrying water reconnaissance planes on them, but it did not explicitly put forward the concept of escorting aircraft carriers.

Historically, the first escort aircraft carrier built with the hull of a cargo ship, the USS Nagashima, was launched in June 1941. John thinks he's pushed the process forward by a few months at best, which isn't much of a race.

But in the eyes of others, his "creative thinking" is still very shocking, and even Knox is impressed by John. After all, the British Royal Navy has been known as the number one in the world for so many years, and the problems they have been unable to solve were easily solved by an American. As the U.S. Secretary of the Navy, Knox still feels quite face-saving.

Before leaving, he patted John's shoulder boldly, and repeatedly lamented that he was too late to start, and his own talent was snatched by the army first. He also jokingly asked John if he would like to come to the Navy, which happened to lack a deputy chief of operations.

Of course, John would not take Knox's jokes seriously, he was a part-time worker in the army, and he was not guilty of offending Stimson and Marshall for this. However, he still promised Knox to help the other party form the idea of escorting the aircraft carrier into written materials as soon as possible. Of course, Knox didn't let him work in vain, and gave him a big gift bag.