Another round of sunset sank on the sea, and the fierce battle for a day gradually cooled down and cooled down. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 InfoAfter the shelling the night before and the bombing of the day, the Luftwaffe base in the east of the island of Texel was already in ruins, and none of the hard runways remained intact, but the flat grass around the airport served as an emergency. There are some fighters on duty loosely parked near the temporary runway, and those that need maintenance and repair are towed back to the underground hangar, so the huge airport looks particularly bleak and desolate as far as the eye can see.

The control tower of the airfield was damaged by enemy planes, but fortunately, the loss of personnel was not large, and the command structure was moved to an anti-aircraft shelter not far away. Although the conditions here are simple, how many people would care about these things in such a special situation?

At the entrance to the bunker, the burly General Ernst Lonnebge greeted his officers with a cup of black coffee in his hand and a tired expression. He was commander of the 30th Air Regiment of the Luftwaffe stationed in the Azores, where he was also the commander-in-chief of air defense, and the fighter force for the defense of Texel now included the entire 12th, 33rd and 37th Fighter Wings, as well as two groups of the 46th Fighter Wing, which had just been transferred from Pico and San Miguel, and a fighter group of the 12th Mixed Wing of the German Navy.

The temporary position of the 33rd Fighter Wing was moved to the other end of the airfield, so Colonel Manfred von Richthofen drove in. After getting out of the car, he walked up to General Lonneburg in three steps and two steps, and the two shook hands neither excitedly nor coldly.

"Your team did well today, and so did you." General Lonnebug said.

Richthofen replied calmly: "But there are fewer and fewer planes, and if tomorrow's battle is still as fierce as today, by this time tomorrow we may not have a few planes left." ”

The general nodded: "The situation is indeed very difficult, and many people are gradually losing confidence, but if we think about it the other way, isn't the enemy also facing the same difficulties?" We lost almost two hundred fighters during the day today, their losses were no less than ours, and one aircraft carrier was sunk, so they should be more pessimistic than we are for tomorrow's battle. ”

"What you're saying is perfectly logical, but I don't know if you've noticed a couple of unusual details. For example, the aircraft carrier capacity of the United States and Britain is relatively fixed, and even if the factor of forcibly increasing the aircraft carrying capacity is considered, the maximum number of carrier-based aircraft they can put into combat is 750, and the aircraft they have lost in the past two days should be about 500, a reduction of two-thirds of the force. However, in the last three rounds of air battles at 17:10, 17:50, and 18:40, the enemy threw nearly 200 planes into the battlefield. Where did so many troops come from? Is there an aircraft carrier that we haven't discovered, or is there some secret method that we don't know about? Richthofen expounded his views in coherent words, and it is clear that he had come up with them after careful observation and careful consideration.

Hearing this, General Lonneburg was silent, but before he could ponder it, he summoned all the officers who had arrived, and he and Richthofen went into the underground bunker one after the other, and took their seats in the compartment next to a pile of radio equipment.

Before the meeting officially began, Lonnenburg read out a telegram sent in the name of Kaiser Wilhelm II, which praised the tenacity of the Azores garrison in the past two days, especially the achievements of the air and naval aviation. It was not easy to survive the initial catastrophic blow under the surprise attack of a strong enemy, and the shelling of the American and British fleets the night before had put the German officers and men on Texel Island to the test of the doomsday.

"I've taken a closer look at the damage you've counted, and the current situation is worse than all our previous calculations, and once this terrible storm begins, it will have to be decided before it ends. Objectively speaking, we are not in a good situation at the moment, and we must rely on our own strength to deal with a strong enemy until the arrival of the High Seas Fleet. As soon as Lonneburg finished speaking, a loud roar was heard in the distance, one after another, as if a thunderstorm had swept in. If it is really a heavy rainstorm in nature, it will obviously put the American and British fleets fighting across the sea in a very disadvantageous situation, and it will also be a fatal disaster for those American and British soldiers who have landed on Texel Island, but the officers who have served in the army for a long time and have experienced various live-fire drills and even battlefield battles know very well that this is not a storm, but another round of fierce artillery bombardment by the American and British fleets on the German defenses on Texel Island.

Listening to the roar outside, the officers in the bunker invariably showed a different color, they were not worried about their own safety, but they were wary of the enemy's offensive moves, but when they saw that General Lonnebug was sitting safely, they calmed down and continued to stay. A short time later, a junior officer hurried from the adjacent radio room and reported to Lonneburg: "We have received a call from the command that the enemy fleet is shelling our fortress of Lübeck, and the command orders us to immediately send bombers to attack the enemy fleet. ”

Lonnebug frowned: "Got it! ”

With that, the general's gaze turned to the officers present, first Colonel Lothar Goren, commander of the 15th Bomber Wing, and then Colonel Bender Peters of the 46th Fighter Wing, and then ordered: "Lothar, your wing is to dispatch two squadrons of torpedo bombers and one squadron of light bombers; Bender, send two squadrons of fighters from your wing to cover. Let the pilots set off as soon as possible, attack close when they have the opportunity, and attack from afar if they don't have the opportunity. ”

The two wing commanders immediately responded, and then had their lieutenants relay the order immediately.

The meeting continued amid the rumbling of artillery.

"This morning, I was hoping for a war of attrition to bring down our adversary, because our enemy has only eight aircraft carriers, and at 70 to 90 aircraft each, we should have about 700 aircraft ready for operation, and even with very heavy losses on the first day of fighting, we still have more air and naval aircraft in the Azores. Judging by the battle during the day today, we have a slight upper hand, so I have always thought that my reasoning and judgment are correct, but Colonel von Richthofen has just given me a very important reminder that the enemy has put in about 200 fighters in succession two hours before nightfall, and the intensity of the continuous attack is very strong. It shows that after losing about 500 carrier-based aircraft in the early stage, the number of existing carrier-based aircraft is far more than we estimated, and the reason for this deviation is exactly what we need to be vigilant about. Although I am not a naval expert, when I participated in joint exercises before, I learned a lot about the technical situation related to aircraft carrier operations from my colleagues in the Navy, and they told me with certainty that it is unlikely that an aircraft carrier can obtain carrier-based aircraft from a supply ship like refueling when fighting at sea, and that there are only two ways for an aircraft carrier to replenish its carrier-based aircraft, which is to ship at the port or fly in to replenish supplies, and these two methods cannot be met under the current battlefield conditions, so what is the problem? Lonneburg hurriedly glanced at the crowd worriedly, "I can't figure it out, what is the problem?" Could it be that our pilots have mistakenly exaggerated our gains? ”

With the exception of Colonel von Richthofen, almost all the officers were trying to figure out the numerical logic of this series of statements, and it took several minutes for them to calm down from their agitation, but no one could give an answer, and there was no more constructive speculation than Richthofen.

At this time, on the sea more than 200 kilometers northeast of Texel Island, the aircraft carrier formation of the US and British fleets is sailing downwind under the strict escort of many light ships, and many yellow lanterns are lit on the flight deck of each aircraft carrier, although they are not as colorful as the festival lanterns, looking down from a high place, this is still a very special picture: the lanterns form a pair of parallel lines, each pair of parallel lines has a simple Arabic numeral in the middle, five aircraft carriers in good condition and the "Wasp" that has completed emergency repairs In fact, by the early 30s, the night take-off and landing of aircraft carrier-based aircraft was not a new topic, and basically every country equipped with aircraft carriers had mastered the know-how, but taking off and landing at night was more testing of flight skills than daytime, and accidents were more likely to occur.

As time passed, one after another, the white-painted carrier-based aircraft landed on the designated aircraft carrier, and with each successful landing, there was always a cheer mixed with whistles on the deck and anti-aircraft gun emplacements of the aircraft carrier, because they were not fighters returning from their missions, but reinforcements to supplement the aircraft carrier's combat strength.

In addition to the Azores, the nearest land is the Canadian island of Newfoundland, with a flight range of 2,000 kilometers, which is a long distance that no current carrier-based aircraft can cross, and the aircraft landing on the US and British aircraft carriers is not beyond the existence of existing technology. In fact, they flew in from very close proximity -- among the auxiliary ships that arrived in the Azores with the main American and British fleets were not only troop carriers, supply ships, hospital ships, but also many large cargo ships. Because they did not want to arouse the vigilance of their opponents in advance, the United States and Britain did not take great pains to lay flight decks for them and transform them into auxiliary aircraft carriers, but installed aircraft catapults with short slides on their decks before departure, and the crews only needed to use simple cranes or even pulleys to put the carrier-based aircraft that were basically in an empty state on the catapults, and they could be ejected very easily. Of course, only the most professional carrier-based pilots were sure to land these catapult-off carrier-based aircraft on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier, so while the Germans were distressed by the fact that there were fewer planes than pilots, the American and British fleet commanders were worried about the opposite-all the reserve pilots had been dispatched, but in the away field, once they were shot down by the enemy, the probability of parachuting back to their own aircraft carrier was only about 20 percent. Seven or eight out of 10 German pilots who successfully parachuted were able to quickly return to their bases.

(End of chapter)