790

The next morning, Lin Youde did feel refreshed, and he had a good night's sleep after last night's Turkish bath, and all his fatigue disappeared because of this.

As soon as he entered the headquarters, Lin Youde asked the staff officers: "How was the situation in the theater last night?" ”

"A small British fleet carried out an attack on our convoy of transports in the Aegean Sea, we lost one transport, and two more ships were damaged."

"Aegean?" Lin Youde couldn't help but raise his eyebrows, "Isn't that already deep into the patrol area of our army's air force?" ”

"That's right, but our night reconnaissance planes can't control the entire sea, and the Air Force reports that every time the radar picks up a signal from a suspected enemy ship, the enemy turns around and leaves quickly."

Lin Youde couldn't help but smack his lips, he had already roughly guessed what was going on, the British army must be equipped with a radar warning device that could receive the radio waves emitted by the radar. The British may not have been able to build such a good radar as the Germans, but it is still possible to come up with such an alarm device with the help of the United States -- after all, it is much simpler than a radar, which is equivalent to a radio receiver that receives radio waves in a specific frequency band.

"So the British fled as soon as they were discovered by our radar, and they carried out a sabotage war without discovering it, the Royal Navy did a good job." Lin Youde couldn't help but admire, the Royal Navy is an old navy after all, and its combat skills and will to fight are commendable, and it seems that they have been freed from the shadow of the sinking of the King George V.

Before Lin Youde came to the chart, now the French Navy in the Western Mediterranean Theater had given up attacking the Grand Fleet of the US-British coalition forces off the coast of Morocco, and they moved to Taranto to stay with the Italian Navy, and the US-British fleet did not dare to leave the protective circle of shore-based aircraft. Although they have several aircraft carriers, it is clear that the Allied Navy still has a considerable fear of the Allied Air Force.

When they were no longer afraid of the Allied air force and a large number of naval units poured into the Mediterranean, it was time for a decisive battle at sea.

At present, the navies of the two sides are still in a state of confrontation, which coincides with the doctrine of "saving the fleet" that has emerged in the last decade or so.

Of course, raids like last night have been happening, and it's normal to sink a few destroyers or something in one night.

"How's it going on land?" Lin Youde continued to ask.

"The battle of Algiers continues, and the French are still resisting coalition attacks near this important port in Algeria, but French resistance is weakening due to continued artillery and air strikes by the coalition navy. At least we think their resistance should be waning. The staff officer pondered for a moment before continuing, "It is not reasonable for resistance not to weaken in such a situation. ”

"The Eye of Odin also thinks that the resistance of the French army is weakening, and you are not wrong." Lin Youde said that the Eye of Odin was directly under his intelligence agency, and it was impossible for ordinary German officers to know what information the Eye of Odin provided, "but the French finally sent their best generals in the civil war to Turnicity/Nice to organize defenses, and they may have used the Battle of Algiers to delay time and give Andrew enough time to consolidate the defense." ”

As he spoke, Lin Youde paced to his desk and opened the texts that had been placed on the table—these were guarded by a confidential officer until Lin Youde personally opened the wax seal on the bag and the confidential officer turned to leave.

Lin Youde looked at the text while comparing the small map on his desktop.

Turnicity is an easy place to defend and difficult to attack, and in addition to landing from the coast, attacking Turnicity from land must cross mountainous terrain. To the west of Turbulence/Nice is the Atlas Mountains, which last for tens of kilometers from the coast, with only a few passes that can be climbed over the mountains, which are too dangerous to carry out too large attacking forces, and the French army has established a large number of static defenses at each pass.

To the south of Tunis, there are two lower mountain ranges, Zài, between Matmata and the coast, blocking the road from Libya to Tunis.

As long as the sea is not lost, the only place conducive to the attack is the flat area between the Atlas Mountains and the coast to the west of Turbulence/Nice, and the width of this area determines that it cannot accommodate too many attacking troops, and the French army has deployed heavy artillery in several cities in this area, which is expected to cause big problems for the coalition forces.

Another major advantage of Tunisia is that it is relatively close to Sicily, and the supply fleet from Sicily to Tunisia can set sail at night and arrive at night, unload cargo at the port for a day and then return at night, which makes it difficult for the coalition forces to interfere with the operation of this supply line, and the narrow sea surface of the strait is also conducive to the use of radar reconnaissance aircraft, and the coalition naval ships are basically unable to quietly approach the transport fleet at night.

The Eye of Odin believed that under Andrew of Tunia/Nice, there were already three French armies modeled after the German army, with a total strength of about 300,000 men. There was also a French army group that had already arrived in Sardinia, but it was not known whether it would be handed over to Andrew or if it would risk being intercepted by the coalition navy to land in Bejaia, Algeria, and rush to Algiers.

Lin Youde also concentrated a multinational mixed army group in Sicily, including two German infantry divisions, the 1st Brigade of Tyrolte and other marksmen, the 1st Division of Italian Alpine Mountain Chasseurs, and the Italian San Marco Marine Brigade - these units are very few units that can be fought in the Noodle Country, but the Marine Corps of San Marco is left alone, and it is difficult for the Alpine Mountain Chasseurs to tell whether they are Italians or Austria-Hungary, and many of them have fathers who fought on the side of Austria-Hungary in the last war. It was only after the war that their homeland was incorporated into the Kingdom of Italy.

In addition, Lin Youde was ready to transfer the German Edelweiss Mountain Chasseurs to Sicily to prepare for help, but the German High Command opposed this plan, believing that Sicily had gathered too many traditional elites, and they insisted on transferring the German mountain chasers to the Caucasus Mountains to carry out a sweeping operation against the Russian raiding troops (that is, the guerrillas).

And now the newly formed Italian government is also actively building up troops to prepare for the fighting in North Africa. The Italians are not stupid, and of course they know that it will be their turn if Tunisia is lost - of course Greece may die first, but it is only a matter of priority.

Lin Youde went through all these situations at his desk, and then handed the information sent by the Eye of Odin to the chief of staff and asked him to circulate it to the senior staff officers of the staff.

While the staff officers circulated this highest-level intelligence summary from the Eye of Odin, Lin Youde said to the chief of staff: "We can't just expect the French to create a miracle in Tunia, we must take action in the Eastern Mediterranean to put pressure on the British army, if we can take Egypt and beat the British to the Red Sea, even if Tunisa loses, we still have the ability to fight the coalition forces." ”

"To do this, our naval power will be a constraint, Lin ...... Uh, Your Excellency, Commander. If we can bring the main forces of the Allied Navy in Taranto over, it shouldn't be a big problem. ”

"Don't count on this, the Italian navy can be transferred, the French navy will be in big trouble, in order to avoid the two navies being broken separately, we can only let them stay in Taranto to store the zài fleet."

As for the German Navy, there are only a few ships in the German Navy, several of the Hipper-class ships are equipped with radars to serve as sentry ships in the distant Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea, guiding submarines to besiege the merchant fleet that departs from Iceland to Russia, and sometimes going south to the south of the Faroe Islands to attack the returning unescorted fleet, in short, the entire German Navy is doing what British privateers did to Spain in the past.

As for the Ming fleet that was still in the Persian Gulf, they attacked and harassed the British merchant fleet in the Arabian Sea several times, and once rushed to the Gulf of Aden to block the door, but the Ming Empire's fleet did not have radar, and the ship-borne seaplanes and German-made seaplane parts were not universal, and they could complete the reconnaissance mission at the beginning, but gradually because the maintenance could not keep up with the attendance rate, the result was that the Ming Empire fleet was a little inefficient in intercepting merchant ships except for the time when the door was blocked.

And this kind of blockade operation is not destined to last too long, because there are actually only so many fuel production facilities in the Persian Gulf, and it is difficult to fill up the fleet with fuel, and it will take a long time to save oil after returning from an operation.

What's more, Lin Youde does not have a large enough dock in the Persian Gulf, and the Ming fleet should have entered the dry dock for maintenance after several missions, but it can only be dealt with, it is said that the paint on the bottom of several battleships has long been peeled off, and it is overgrown with all kinds of shellfish, and the operation of the propeller is not good, and the speed of the ship alone has been reduced by one section.

If the Persian Gulf had enough oil and complete dockyard facilities, and the fleet of the Ming Empire was enough for Britain to drink a pot and block it directly in the Gulf of Aden, or even further in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait between the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, then the British would be uncomfortable to death.

It just so happens that the name of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait means "Gate of Tears" in Arabic, because the Seven Brothers Islands at the exit of the strait constitute a large area with complex sea conditions, and many ships have been kneeling here since ancient times, hence the name. When the battleships go to this block, I don't know how many merchant ships will join the ranks of the dead souls at the bottom of the sea.

In that case, the British would probably have to send Shenji to be stationed in British Somalia to deal with this fleet -- as for the British "Cunzài Fleet" A Fleet in the Indian Ocean, with his old R-class battleships, he would never dare to challenge the Ming fleet without Shenji.

In another time and space, the A fleet at least has an aircraft carrier, and the aircraft carrier is also equipped with a large blue and white torpedo machine, this time and space Britain uses the aircraft carrier as an auxiliary ship for reconnaissance, and it only began to pay attention to the aircraft carrier after it was bombed by the Germans, and there are few aircraft carriers in the entire Royal Navy.

(I don't know why I want to block the words Tu/Nice, every update has a slash in the middle of the trouble)