Shaofeng rushed back on the morning of the 19th, he didn't come back before, but Han Shaofeng also knew that the contradiction between him and Gu Xunlei must be resolved, and he couldn't just keep it deadlocked, so he didn't stay in Panama City on the 17th to participate in the combat meeting, but returned to Jamaica under the pretext of preparing to attack Cuba, which was different from Gu Xunlei to command the troops to attack Puebla on the front line.

Determining the direction of the campaign is not the same as determining the campaign action. At that time, there were still many things that Luo Yun needed to solve with them, such as the landing time, the landing location, the number of troops that needed to be invested, the number of support troops, and the combat materials that needed to arrive at the front line before that, etc. These must be determined as soon as possible before we can deploy troops, stock up on supplies, and get the fleet into action as quickly as possible.

It is best to determine the landing time, because Han Shaofeng must strive to fight to Cuba before 1 September, and even if it is impossible to occupy the whole of Cuba before then, he must also seize a piece of territory, otherwise he, the commander of the front-line Marine Corps, will have to go home and farm. Similarly, Luo Yunchong did not want to delay time, the sooner the Marine Corps captured Cuba, the faster his bombers could fly over American cities to drop bombs. Therefore, both decided to attack Cuba as soon as the time came.

The choice of landing site is directly related to the number of troops to be invested and the difficulty of the landing operation. At that time, the ideal landing place was in the south-east of Cuba, near the port of Santiago, and after the landing, the port of Santiago would definitely be attacked first. As long as the port of Santiago is taken, the Marines will have a firm foothold in Cuba, and they will be able to easily obtain war materials through the port, and at the same time, they will be able to smoothly send engineering equipment to Cuba. In addition, there are several US military airfields near San Diego, and these airports are all needed by Luo Yunchong. But the problem is. The U.S. military will certainly also strengthen defenses in the vicinity of San Diego. This has been confirmed by the intelligence services and photographs taken by reconnaissance planes, and the US military is already strengthening the defenses of southeastern Cuba before the fighting in Jamaica is over.

Outside of the southeast, the only suitable landing site is central Cuba, with Cienfuegos as the center. It is the only area from Cuba to the south that does not have too many shoals, while the Queen's Garden Islands to the southeast and the Cannareos Islands to the northwest are both shallow waters and have too many reefs. Not suitable for fleet assembly, not for marines to storm the beach, not a suitable place for landing. Only the Gulf of Cochinos near Cienfuegos is more suitable for landing operations. And this bay later had an even more resounding name - Bay of Pigs. Perhaps many people know "Bay of Pigs" but not "Cochinos Bay".

These are the two options, but the conditions in the Cienfuegos area are obviously not as good as those in San Diego, mainly because there is no regular airport for the US military nearby, and if the airport needs to be rebuilt, a lot of manpower and material resources need to be invested. If you depart from Cienfuegos, go and capture the airfields of the US army in other areas. It also requires a lot of troops. In addition, Cienfuegos is located in the central region of Cuba, which is vulnerable to counterattacks by the surrounding American forces, and the Marines need to build a longer defense line when they go ashore, so they naturally have more troops to invest. The infrastructure of the Port of Cienfuegos is not as complete as that of the Port of Santiago, and it needs to be expanded, which is another significant project.

But the problem is that it must be very difficult to hit the port of San Diego, and how to solve this problem has become the focus of everyone's consideration at that time.

The number of troops that need to be invested is determined by the size of the campaign. and the enemy's defensive forces. At that time, Han Shaofeng had already agreed with Luo Yunchong's intention, that is, to minimize the scale of the previous battle, take the airport as the main purpose, and wait until the maritime force is strengthened, and then invest heavy troops to destroy the US troops on the island. This made it possible to minimize the number of ground forces invested. Allow more maritime capacity to transport engineering troops, as well as combat materiel for strategic bomber units. However, there is a limit to this reduction, after all, the most basic thing is to ensure the landing area of the US troops.

By the time Han Shaofeng attacked Jamaica, Cuba's U.S. military had increased to 350,000, including about 28 combat troops. The days are increasing. Almost every day, reconnaissance planes monitoring the Florida Strait spot US military transport ships, or convoys, heading from Miami to Cuban ports. In addition, the spy personnel sent back several important pieces of information 10 days ago, all of which were about the US military's defensive mobilization. One of the priorities is to strengthen Cuba's defences. If the sea goes well, by the end of July, the number of US troops deployed in Cuba will exceed 450,000, of which more than 36 are combat troops. After all, Cuba is a place as big as a palm, and no matter how many troops there are, it may not be able to make much of a difference. The large number of artillery deliveries to Cuba by the U.S. military, as well as the deployment of combat aircraft to southern Florida, is also rapidly increasing. These combat aircraft can cover the entire airspace over Cuba and can be diverted to Cuban airfields at any time.

Synthesis of various types of information. As well as the basic campaign requirements put forward by Luo Yunchong, Han Shaofeng finally determined that at least 12 marine divisions needed to be invested, and 6 marine divisions had to be prepared in reserve to deal with unexpected situations. In addition, Han Shaofeng also made a forecast for the combat operation to capture the whole of Cuba, and determined that at least 25 marine divisions plus 2,500 combat planes would need to be invested, and these combat planes would have to be deployed to Cuba as much as possible in order to be able to defeat the whole of Cuba by the end of the year.

After the input of troops was determined, Han Shaofeng was fully responsible for organizing and mobilizing the relevant combat units. The affairs of the support force are jointly responsible for Luo Yunchong and Lei Shaoqing, and this is mainly divided into two parts: shore-based aviation and the fleet, the support fleet that was originally subordinate to Han Shaofeng has been indirectly commanded by Huang Xiaotian at this time, and Lei Shaoqing, as the chief of the general staff of the theater, can command this fleet through Huang Xiaotian, or directly issue combat missions to the fleet.

In order to support Han Shaofeng to the greatest extent, Luo Yunchong did not immediately deploy strategic bombers to Jamaica, but first deployed tactical aviation. In addition, a part of the tactical aviation is deployed in the Cayman Islands. At that time, there were a total of twelve front-line airfields, or field airfields, that could support tactical aviation, and on these airfields up to 2200 combat aircraft could be deployed. Also

The field airfield is under construction, and according to Luo Yunchong's estimate, a total of about 3,000 combat planes can be put into Han Shaofeng's combat operations in Cuba, and if necessary, a batch of transport planes can be transferred from the rear to urgently provide combat materials for the Marine Corps by air before the Marine Corps seizes the port.

Arrangements for the fleet were quickly deployed, with the support fleet remaining primarily responsible for providing anti-aircraft cover and aviation support to the Marines, as well as providing artillery support to the Marines when they came ashore. The two support fleets are strong enough and take turns to provide uninterrupted fire support to the Marines, so there is no need to deploy the main fleet to provide direct fire support to the Marines. Of course, this does not mean that Tan Renhao's combined fleet does not have to participate in combat operations.

Cuba is not Jamaica, it is more than ten times larger than Jamaica, and it is closer to the US mainland, and the US military's tactical combat aircraft can fly over to fight. Therefore, the preparation of firepower before the landing, especially the suppression of air defense in advance, is quite important, and this task can only be entrusted to the main fleet. The escort aircraft carriers in the support fleet can only carry fighters (although it has been confirmed that they can carry the "Falcon", but because their carrier capacity is quite limited, they generally do not carry bombers, but all carry fighters), and the ground bombing capability of fighters is obviously inferior to that of carrier-based bombers, and the survivability of the support fleet itself is quite limited, so it is difficult to afford this kind of high-intensity, high-risk combat operations.

In the fleet combat operations formulated by Lei Shaoqing, the main force fleet must destroy the US military's air combat capability as much as possible, seize sea and air supremacy before the arrival of the Marine Corps, and at the same time be responsible for suppressing the airfields of the US mainland, establishing an air defense interception line on the periphery of the battlefield, and striving to keep the US bombers out of the landing ground. Other words. The Combined Fleet had to be fully dispatched to be able to accomplish so many missions.

It was not very difficult to determine the required combat materials, and at that time there were already relatively systematic and perfect calculation methods, which could calculate the combat materials that would be consumed during the campaign according to the number of combat units put into operation, the predicted combat time, and the approximate combat intensity, and then determine the surplus of combat materials according to possible unexpected circumstances. Finalize the total amount of combat materiel that needs to be put into the ground. At that time, a batch of war materials had been hoarded at the port of Kingston, and the related material delivery work was also intensively carried out. In order to allow Han Shaofeng to launch an offensive as soon as possible, the construction work of the last few field airfields was slowed down a lot, and more transport ships carried war materials instead of engineering materials.

At that time, there was another problem that was more difficult, and that was the transport fleet. When Luo Yunchong arrived in the war zone, there were only five transport fleets operating in the war zone, and two of them were responsible for transporting war materials to Gu Xunlei. The other three transport fleets provided supplies to Han Shaofeng, and this could only guarantee the supply of war supplies every three days on the route from Cologne to Kingston, and if the route was extended to San Diego, the interval would be four days.

Luo Yunchong was personally dealing with the matter, and he first contacted Gan Yongxing and asked for more transport fleets for him, and by late July. Two transoceanic flotillas will arrive in Panama City, and both flotillas will be temporarily left in the war zone. In addition, Luo Yunchong left behind the two fleets in the theater that were originally provided to Gu Xunlei, so that he could concentrate seven transport fleets, about 3 million tons of transport power. Even during landing operations. There are 100,000 10,000-ton ships in front to transport the first batch of emergency combat materials and equipment needed by the Marine Corps after they go ashore, and there are also transport ships that can form at least four transport fleets, counting the time spent loading and unloading in the port, and a transportation cycle of 12 days can transport at least 170 tons of combat materials at a time. Such a huge transportation capacity is enough to ensure that the Marine Corps can be supplied with war materials that far exceed the consumption.

In addition to these big problems, many small problems must also be solved as soon as possible, or solutions must be determined. At that time, the theater command had not yet been fully established, and many staff officers were not in place. In addition, most of the newly transferred staff officers are also familiarizing themselves with their new positions. Luo Yunchong asked each deputy chief of general staff to be responsible for handling a major problem, and many detailed affairs were handed over to the staff officers to be responsible for handling, which not only could temper the ability of the staff officers and speed up the preparation for the campaign, but also through such an arrangement, the staff officers also quickly adapted to the new position, and the theater command gradually grew stronger in handling these thorny affairs.

Similarly, Tan Renhao was not idle. After determining the approximate combat missions of the combined fleet. While arranging staff officers for the Combined Fleet Command, Tan Renhao also arranged relevant tasks. It's different from Luo Yunchong. Tan Renhao's staff officers at the Combined Fleet Command are all naval officers, and there is no problem of multi-arms operations. The most important thing is that most of the staff officers promoted by Tan Renhao at that time were familiar to him. For example, more than 30 staff officers were transferred directly from the headquarters of the First Task Force or from the battle groups of the First Task Force, and several other task forces also sent staff officers to augment the Combined Fleet Command.

By about 24 July, the arrangements were in place, and many issues had been substantively resolved or were in the process of being resolved, but there was still an extremely important issue that had not yet been resolved, that is, where to choose the place to land, and it could be said that this became the most important issue.

Han Shaofeng thought it would be more appropriate to choose the landing site in Cienfuegos, while Luo Yunchong insisted that Santiago would be more suitable. Han Shaofeng probably wanted to avoid the Marines from falling into a bitter battle, so he avoided the important and light, on the contrary, Luo Yunchong wanted to seize the airport faster and start bombing the United States, so he asked the Marines to storm Santiago. The two talked about this issue several times, but did not reach an agreement, and in the end, a high-level meeting had to be held specifically about the landing site!