Straddling the Eurasian continent and guarding the strategically important Turkish Straits, Turkey has been a battleground since ancient times. Historically, Turkey has also been arrogant, its territory once covered the entire Middle East, the east extended to the Caspian Sea region, North Africa and the Balkans were also under its control, and the entire Mediterranean Sea was Turkey's swimming pool.

However, no matter how powerful the empire was, it would decline one day, and the Ottoman Turks had barely entered the war in World War I, and after the war, the vast empire finally disintegrated, and its territory was severely reduced, and it had to retreat to the Anatolian plateau.

After the start of World War II, Turkey saw the destruction of France, the crumbling of Britain, and the entry of Nazi troops into the Balkans, and Turkey had to declare neutrality in order to protect itself. However, under the guise of neutrality, Turkey still exported a large number of materials to Germany, the most important of which was chrome ore, which is an indispensable raw material for the production of alloy steel, and Turkey happened to be the only source of chromium imports from Germany.

Germany's Minister of Production Speer pointed out that if chrome ore was cut off, German arms production would cease for 10 months, and Germany would exchange industrial goods for valuable chrome ore to Turkey. Turkey did not put all its treasure on Nazi Germany, and they also exported chrome ore to Britain and the United States in exchange for weapons.

The Turkish army is an outlier with weapons from both factions, and it can be said that the country has always walked on a tightrope, carefully maintaining its balance and avoiding falling to one side and annoying the other.

It can be said that in the early days, Turkey's strategy was very successful, no one from the two camps attacked Turkey, and a large number of arms were sold, so that Turkey's military power increased rapidly, but the good things ended there. After the Chinese government opened up the African route, it mobilized more and more forces to the Middle East, and at the same time pointed the finger directly at Turkey.

The USSR after its victory in the Battle of Stalingrad. Also move the army in the direction of the Caucasus. The Chinese and Soviet armies formed a pincer attack on Turkey. Immediately Stalin and Qiao Yu issued a joint ultimatum, demanding that Turkey immediately abandon trade with Nazi Germany, and at the same time join the side of the Allies, and provide landing grounds for the Allied counterattack in Europe.

This ultimatum weighed heavily on Turkish President Inonu. He was the main assistant to the founding father of the Turkish nation, Kemal, and after his death, he became the president of Turkey, and the tightrope walking strategy was exactly what he strongly advocated.

But now China and the Soviet Union have joined forces to attack. It became difficult for Turkey to continue walking the tightrope, and Inonu convened the cabinet members to urgently discuss the situation in front of them, and the Turkish government was also at this time, they were very dissatisfied with the aggressive attitude of the allies, and these people did not want to bet too early, in their opinion, the war was not yet at the last moment, Germany might still have hope of winning, and they feared that once Turkey joined the allies, they would be attacked by Germany.

On the other hand, the allies are too powerful for Turkey to confront them. The best way is to compromise quickly, otherwise the Chinese and Soviet armies will attack. It is not at all something that Turkey is capable of fighting against.

President Inonu hesitated, and he sent a message to Britain, hoping that Britain would come forward to help Turkey's Sino-Soviet actions, but Lao Qiu was severely hit at the Tehran meeting, and he knew that his weight was not enough to make China and the Soviet Union discourage the idea of attacking Turkey, so he could only advise Inonu to join the allied side as soon as possible.

While Turkey was hesitating, the deadline set by China and the Soviet Union had arrived, and the attack on Turkey had finally begun, with China attacking from the southeast of Turkey, and the Soviet side sending Vasilevsky to command the Transcaucasian Front to attack from the northeast of Turkey.

The equipment of the Turkish army is not bad, it is completely advanced weapons purchased from Britain and Germany, the only problem is that the level of equipment is not able to compete with the Chinese and Soviet armies, which have been fighting for more than two years, at the first moment of the war, the Turkish Air Force was devastated, and in the first three days it lost 350 fighters, and the air force instantly became an air force.

Liu Wenhui, as the commander of this military operation, thought that there would be a strong confrontation, after all, on paper, Turkey has more than 800,000 troops, very well-equipped, and definitely not a fish belly. But as soon as the fight started, it was not like that at all.

The air force is completely incomparable to China, and the Turkish pilots do not seem to understand much about what war is, the Chinese pilots can easily shoot them down, and the weapons that have been exchanged for valuable resources do not give Turkey the combat effectiveness it deserves.

Immediately afterwards, the army was also quickly defeated by the Chinese steel torrent, more than 50,000 Turkish troops were captured, and together with the killed and scattered troops, the Turks lost more than 100,000 troops, and the Chinese army quickly advanced into the Turkish depth.

The Soviet Union was also not slow, Vasilevsky mobilized the Black Sea Fleet and launched an amphibious landing operation from the flank, successfully breaking through the Turkish rear, and then encircling the Turkish troops on the front line, becoming a turtle in an urn.

In the first week of the war, Turkey lost more than 100,000 troops, the skillful attack methods of the Chinese and Soviet armies, the ability to advance quickly made Turkey feel desperate, the two sides are not at all an order of magnitude, their painful experience once again proved that it is impossible to buy the modernization of the army by buying.

The Turkish army seems to be very well equipped, but the supporting logistics support capacity is limited, the planes and tanks are broken and cannot be repaired at all, and the aviation fuel also has to be imported from foreign countries, the United States and Britain cut off the supply, and the Turkish air force soon became a real air force.

In addition, the ammunition reserves were also seriously insufficient, and after the fighting, they were quickly exhausted, and expensive weapons became decorations, and the war situation fully exposed the weakness of the country.

The fiasco seriously dampened Inonu's morale, and he once thought that the Turkish army was not as good as the first-class powers, but at least it would not be too far behind, but the current situation clearly told him that this was completely delusional that Turkey was too far from a power.

The Soviet Union attacked Turkey, and Western Europe was also deciding its fate at this time, Nazi Germany's newest aircraft carriers Deutschland and Nazi had been tested and officially incorporated into the navy, and the Tirpitz had been repaired early, and Hitler had used mail ships to transfer four escort aircraft carriers.

Three large, four small, seven aircraft carriers formed the core of the Nazi Navy. The construction of German surface ships did not go well, and with the exception of the two aircraft carriers Bismarck and Tirpitz at the beginning of the war, little was achieved. The main reason was the strategic bombing launched by the British.

The docks required for the construction of large ships are relatively large and obvious, and can easily attract attacks. Moreover, Britain also regarded German aircraft carriers as the biggest threat, so it did not hesitate to send a large number of bombers to frequent German shipyards, which seriously delayed Germany's speed.

As the situation became more and more unfavorable and Hitler's situation became more and more difficult, he had to pin his last hope on aircraft carriers, and allocate a part of the already tight supplies to speed up the construction of aircraft carriers.

Finally, the Nazi aircraft carrier was launched, and Britain's situation suddenly became critical, and Churchill mobilized Britain's existing large aircraft carriers. In addition, Shen Honglie led two cutting-edge aircraft carriers, Pingyuan and Anyuan, to the UK a few months ago.

During this time, they have conducted joint training with the British Royal Navy, and they are familiar with each other to ensure that they can cooperate effectively in naval warfare. After a period of tempering, the Chinese Navy has become familiar with the British way of fighting, and the two militaries have carried out fruitful cooperation.

The British intelligence agencies were the busiest, and their mission was to find out the movements of the German aircraft carriers, and the hard work paid off, and the news of the German aircraft carrier sorties was finally discovered, and the British Royal Navy was also ready.

The North Sea is far less vast than the Pacific Ocean, and with a large number of submarines, reconnaissance planes, and camouflaged merchant ships patrolling back and forth on both sides, it is not easy to keep secrets from each other.

Germany no longer had enough troops to land in Britain, so the German battle plan was to have an aircraft carrier formation attack the English Channel, lure the British fleet to sail, and then use the aircraft carriers and shore-based aircraft to cooperate with each other to destroy the British fleet.

The so-called attack must be saved, the English Channel is the British taboo, absolutely untouchable, it is precisely this kind of psychology that the German fleet bypassed Jutland and killed towards the English Channel.

The British, on the other hand, adopted a-for-tat attitude and formed two battle teams in the north and south, with the two Chinese aircraft carriers led by Shen Honglie on the northern front and the main force of the British Royal Navy on the southern front.

The British were unlucky in this sea battle destined to go down in history, and just as the Royal Navy was leaving the Scapa Bay anchorage, they were attacked by a German submarine, and the battleship Prince of Wales, which was escorting the ship, was attacked.

The focus of naval development of various countries is on aircraft carriers, the former overlord battleship is completely an ornament, the Prince of Wales is also the last type of battleship designed and built by the United Kingdom, the main mission is to make up for the shortcomings of aircraft combat, and to provide protection for aircraft carriers, cover the landing of islands and other actions.

The Prince of Wales became the first warship to sink in the most important decisive battle, and although the British sent anti-submarine ships and aircraft to destroy the vicious German submarine, the afterimage of the huge warship sinking rapidly underwater cast a cloud over the hearts of all British navies.

The war continued, and the British could not help but feel sad, they had to quickly find the German aircraft carriers, and sink these guys, the Germans also had this idea, the Nazi scientists in this era did represent the top scientific research force, they developed a new type of carrier-based aircraft, the range reached 2,700 kilometers.

It has surpassed the British carrier-based aircraft, and with the advantage of carrier-based aircraft, the Germans were the first to discover the British, and the aircraft groups of the two sides collided together, and the North Sea instantly boiled, and the carrier-based aircraft roared in the air, and planes were constantly shot down, as if dumplings.

The Germans, having seized the opportunity, were the first to break through the British barrage net and send an escort aircraft carrier to the bottom of the sea. (To be continued.) )