Eisenhower had understood by this time that the 550,000 Anglo-American troops led by Patton had no hope of breaking through the encirclement and could only be sacrificed as outcasts, as long as they could hold out in the encirclement for seven days, Eisenhower was confident that he would break through the Maginot Line and the Siegfried Line arranged by the German army, which was simply a matter of life and death for the entire Anglo-American coalition army. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

Eisenhower gave Patton an order to "hold on to the last soldier." Patton, an ardent warmonger, directly expressed his willingness to accept this order for the sake of the honor of the soldiers.

Eisenhower and Arthur, nicknamed "The Bomber"? Air Admiral Campbell developed a large air attack plan to strike at Germany's war potential, while at the same time dispersing the forces that the Germans had deployed on the Maginot Line.

Campbell was a fanatical "bomber mechanics triumphant" who advocated strategic bombing of German cities to reduce Germany's war potential and demoralize its people in an early end.

Before Campbell, the Anglo-American air force had been bombing Germany at night for more than a year, because night could reduce the chance that bombers would be hit by German anti-aircraft fire.

However, these bombing operations by the British army were not large-scale, often about dozens, and sometimes only 200 planes. In the face of the tight air defense network of the German army, this small-scale bombing was very ineffective, and its own losses were quite serious.

Campbell decided to turn German cities into flames by massive bombing, mostly incendiary bombs.

Campbell was resolute and did what he said in order to test his theory. 191 bombers were sent to attack the old city of Lubek, and although more than 80 bombers were shot down by the Germans, it also caused a 32-hour fire in the old city of Lubek:

The next day, Campbell sent another 468 bombers to attack Rostock, losing more than 160 planes and setting fire to more than 60 percent of the buildings in Rostock's Old Town.

Seeing that the results were good, Campbell decided to go even bigger, and called it the "Thousand Planes Plan", that is, to use 1,000 bombers to bomb a German city at a time.

This tactic is completely a helpless tactic of fighting for attrition and fighting for national strength, when this is exactly what Germany cannot bear, as long as the British and American coalition forces dare to fight with Germany, even if Germany has an incomparably brilliant victory in the early stage, it will eventually shed the last drop of blood. Even if Rommel was a traverser, there was no way.

The only way out for Germany is to annihilate the landed Anglo-American coalition forces as soon as possible, capture their officers and soldiers as much as possible, and then use the captives to force the Anglo-American coalition forces to negotiate peace.

In early October 1941, Eisenhower asked Campbell if he could come up with 1,000 bombers, to which Campbell replied in the affirmative.

At that time, the Anglo-American Air Force Bomber Command had a total of 437 squadrons of medium and heavy bombers, equipped with more than 5,000 bombers, but in Rommel's last full-scale air raid, the losses were very large.

However, there are still more than 2,000 British-American troops left, and with British stocks, the Anglo-American coalition bombers will soon recover to more than 3,000 bombers, and it is not a difficult thing to touch more than 1,000 bombers at one time.

If the air raid operation is 48 hours, there are 1000 reserve bombers that can be used. In addition, the Anglo-American Naval Coastal Defense Command can provide 1,700 Wheatley, Hudson, and Hampton bombers, bringing the total number of bombers to 2,710.

There were about 2,500 escort fighters, and the total number of air raid planes reached more than 4,800, which was almost 70 percent of the remaining planes of the British and American forces.

In order to ensure the implementation of the "Thousand Machines Plan", Campbell lobbied Eisenhower and finally received strong support. Rommel did not want to fight an air force war of attrition with the Anglo-American coalition, but the Anglo-American coalition would not give him such an opportunity.

But the use of so many bombers for air strikes at one time has never been done in history, and it faces many thorny problems. First, the air attack must pass through the German "canopy bed" system, that is, the detection and guidance system composed mainly of the "Würzburg" air defense radar, as well as the "Konhube" defense line composed of BF110G-4A night fighters and a large number of FLAK anti-aircraft guns.

In previous air raids, British bombers suffered in front of this line of defense and suffered heavy losses. And 1,000 bombers were an unusually fat prey for German anti-aircraft fire. How can you reduce your battle damage

Second, the "Lancaster" and other new bombers are equipped with advanced navigation equipment, but many old bombers do not.

Third, the air raid was planned to last one hour, with the aim of increasing the intensity of bombing with a short period of intensive bombing. But in such a short time, will 2700 bombers be able to reach the target area and drop bombs?

Campbell left these issues to the experts to solve. The expert is worthy of being an expert, and he quickly came up with a solution. In response to the first question, experts suggested that it is better for bombers to carry out a long "stream" dense formation at night, so that the probability of bomber groups being detected by the German "canopy bed" system will be greatly reduced.

(At that time, the Germans could only guide one night fighter for interception operations at a time for each "canopy bed", and could only conduct a maximum of six direct interceptions in an hour, which was only suitable for dealing with small-scale bombing.) It is not enough to intercept the strip-like dense formations with long and short lengths).

And the German anti-aircraft artillery could not concentrate on a large number of targets in a very short time, so experts believed that the dense formation of the "stream" type could greatly reduce bomber losses.

The solution to the second problem is for the old and new bombers to attack three different areas of a city in separate formations, and to fly at higher altitudes, so that the chance of collision will drop to only once per hour.

The third problem is better solved, extending the duration of the air attack to 90 minutes, so that the bomber group will fly more calmly and will not have much impact on the intensity of the bomb. Campbell was satisfied with the solution proposed by the experts and immediately assigned the chief of staff, Charles? General Potel drew up a detailed battle plan.

Now the only question left is to determine the target of the air strike. Campbell wanted to bomb Hamburg, Germany's second-largest city, and Eisenhower wanted to bomb the industrial center of Essen. But the experts of the Operations Research Laboratory considered Essen not a good target, since the entire city was shrouded in smoke from numerous factories, and it was difficult for bombers to aim at night at night.

They saw Cologne in the Ruhr industrial region as an ideal target because of its relative proximity to Britain and ease of bomber flights. More importantly, Cologne is a major railway junction in Germany, and if it were destroyed, the ability to transport goods within Germany would be severely damaged.

…… (To be continued.) )