At the beginning of April 1943, the entire battlefield was still relatively calm, but it was clear to everyone that large-scale military operations were brewing on both sides of the war.

Lin Youde originally didn't plan to make any big moves in the Mediterranean, but with the deployment of the new VF squadron in place, the air supremacy of the Convexity began to fall to the Allied forces, on the other hand, the cleaning of the Suez River was almost completed, and the day when the remnants of the Ming Empire's fleet sailed into the Mediterranean Sea was gradually approaching, so Lin Youde began to move.

There are two choices in front of Lin Youde, one is to pull out Alexandria, completely pocket the fertile alluvial plain of the entire lower Nile, and completely solve his worries and completely take the sea control of the Eastern Mediterranean.

The other option is to go west from Bulis, anyway, the supply lines of his main force do not need to go to the other side of the Nile, they are all transported from Sicily at night, he can completely leave Alexandria alone, take Algeria, or even enter Morocco, and take back the French North Africa that the French lost. Failure to do so would have essentially condemned Alexandria to death, and the British had no choice but to abandon the fort, which had already changed hands twice, and by the way, the entire Mediterranean Sea to Lin Youde. And the French will also be grateful for helping Lin Youde restore the colony – politicians will not be grateful, but Lin Youde's popularity among the French people will be increased by this.

For Lin Youde, who did not follow the dictator's route, but chose to build a multinational alliance, his personal prestige was very important, and it was essential to ensure that he had enough influence over the allies.

Lin Youde now has a high reputation in Poland, because he helped the Poles block the Russian attack, and Germany probably won't have to worry about Poland stabbing itself for a long time in the future.

And if Lin Youde also established the same prestige in France, it can be said that the geopolitical difficulties faced by Germany would be alleviated by half.

In addition, as a Chinese, Lin Youde's personal popularity will in any case be transformed into part of the European perception of the Chinese, that is, the higher the personal evaluation Lin Youde receives, the better the attitude of the Europeans influenced by him towards the Chinese.

After weighing it a little, Lin Youde decisively chose the plan of attacking Algeria and Morocco westward.

The biggest problem with this plan is the enemy's navy, how unreliable the land supply in North Africa is Lin Youde has already experienced it himself, relying on the land supply, he calculated that he would fight to the death to Algiers, so if he wants to fight Shunlì, he must open up the sea line of communication.

Then the entry of the Ming Empire's fleet into the Mediterranean Sea became the key to the realization of Lin Youde's westward expansion plan.

So Lin Youde temporarily left the front line for about a week and returned to Port Said to supervise the dredging of the Suez Nullah.

During the week of supervision, Lin Youde has been thinking about ways to recapture the game port, and the available intelligence shows that the U.S. army has built a strong fortified area in the game port, and the troops deployed in the game are all veteran U.S. military units that have accumulated considerable combat experience.

However, Lin Youde didn't plan to use his troops to fight Dagang at all - there are napalm that have been improved in actual combat for several years, so why not use it?

Although napalm is far inferior to cloud burst bombs in terms of instantaneous damage effect, but after several years of improvement, this weapon has long become a cheap and large road goods in the hands of the German army, the Luftwaffe has stored a bunch of napalm in the past two years, which was originally intended to attack Russian cities, but Lin Youde adopted a strategy of elastic defense in Russia and did not advance, and then he did not approve the Luftwaffe to use these weapons to burn British cities, so a large number of napalm rotted in the Luftwaffe warehouses.

Now it's time to reduce your inventory.

At the end of April 1943, two Luftwaffe tactical bomber wings arrived in Tonis, shortly after Lin Youde returned to the city, and then the two wings poured out of their nests and attacked the Grand Harbour under the cover of ghosts, turning the beautiful seaside port city into a sea of fire.

After the first day of pure napalm air raids, the tactical bombers of the two wings added several handfuls of firewood to the game with a mixture of high-explosive and napalm, and the whole game continued to burn for three days and three nights, until there was nothing to burn, and the fire was slowly extinguished.

On the first day of the bombing, the German infantry advanced towards the city from two directions, and when they encountered American resistance along the way, they called bombers to wash the ground, and once the Allied air force could not come to wash the ground, the German army stopped advancing.

Although the advance was very slow, because of the existence of ghosts, the Allied forces had more time to control the air, and the air force's ground-washing troops could come in a more timely manner, so the pace of the German army has not stopped.

**

"I call this an air-ground battle." Lin Youde introduced to his staff officers with some pride, "I only have a general idea of this tactic, and the general framework is to maximize the use of air power to influence the battle situation on the ground under the condition of having air superiority." In my opinion, there are several indispensable conditions for the implementation of this tactic: first, needless to say, air superiority. Without air superiority, this tactic becomes difficult to execute. Second...... Well, what do you think of the second point? ”

Lin Youde's mistake of pretending to be forced has been committed again, so he threw a question out - a discerning person can understand at a glance that this is actually a good way to pretend to be forced, so as long as he casually pulls out a few answers, and gives Lin Youde a chance to say "You have a point, but you are still wrong".

But there are clearly people among the staff who are not so smart.

Sharon, who stayed in Lin Youde's staff as a midshipman, said: "Communications, sir. ”

"That's right!" Lin Youde looked genuinely happy, "It's communication!" In fact, from the beginning of the war, our army has emphasized air-ground coordination, but to be honest, the strength of coordination is not satisfactory. More often than not, our Lightning dive bombers and BF109s with rockets are on their own target hunt when they are on a mission of near-air support, while in the Battle of Heavy Dà, they are given target parameters provided by the Air Force reconnaissance aircraft and our military's military intelligence. However, the ideal air-ground coordination is not like this, it should be that after encountering the enemy, the ground forces of our army immediately call for air support, and then the aircraft that are in the air at that time carry out near-air support will launch an attack.

"The situation has improved after we have specially equipped the air dispatch aircraft that has been in the air for a long time, but this is still far from the true integration of air and ground."

Lin Youde paused, looked around at the General Staff, and then continued: "The crux of the problem is still in communication and command control. Our piston-powered aircraft have limited take-off weight and cannot carry communication equipment with good enough performance, which has become the biggest obstacle to our air-ground integration. We've been working hard to overcome this problem by developing more powerful and smaller communication devices, and we're retrofitting aircraft with more powerful engines.

"We're also working to improve the connectivity of our ground forces by equipping them with radios with better endurance and more power – all of which are aimed at making our aircraft more connected. After so many years of hard work and actual combat testing, we can now finally play this kind of air-ground synergy. ”

Lin Youde's words made some staff officers show quite complicated expressions, in fact, this is understandable, after all, in the eyes of people in this era, the air-ground coordination ability shown by the German army in the past few days has been very amazing. But Lin Youde is not a person of this era, he knows what a real air-ground integrated battle looks like.

On the one hand, the current command and communication systems are too primitive to carry out such complex integrated operations, and on the other hand, it is also related to the performance of the current aircraft. In the era when air-ground integrated warfare played a leading role, a two-plane formation could wash a large piece of ground from beginning to end with ammunition carried by a two-plane formation, and at that time, the fighters had relatively good electronic equipment, at least there would be no such thing as the ground troops shouting their throats and no one in the sky heard them - and this kind of thing was still very common in this era, and even the German army, which was known for its good performance and quantity of telecommunications equipment, often failed to shout people.

However, it seems that the German army's air-ground coordination of this level can already make the US military drink a pot.

This made Lin Youde a little emotional, in the past, when it came to the US military, the first thing that came to mind was all kinds of air superiority washing, he Lin Youde jumped for so many years, and finally let this feature get to the head of the German army.

To be honest, it's quite rewarding.

By the way, the founder of the air-ground integrated warfare theory in this time and space must be his Lin Youde, no matter what the final result of World War II is, his Lin Youde's deeds in military history textbooks must have added a lot of color.

And now, the expressions of the staff officers in the staff department have already made Lin Youde experience the thrill of becoming another pioneer of military theory in advance.

Especially Sharon, the Middle Eastern lion of another time and space is now looking at Lin Youde with adoring eyes.

"The future is the era of air power," Lin Youde patted Sharon's shoulder gently, "If the Jews want to gain a foothold in Jerusalem, surrounded by Arabs, they have to use air power." Only in this way can we make a thousand pounds. ”

"What?"

"Four or two thousand pounds, a Chinese proverb, translated words - that is, the Air Force is the fulcrum that pries the earth, understand?"

"Got it."

**

On the last day of April 1943, the Germans marched into the ruins.

The first living creature they found was the lion in the circle of small animals in the wide open race of the French.

(I went, I thought I could have two hours to leisurely travel to a full 3,000 words of the third watch, now it seems that the third watch can only shrink a little, at least the first two more are a full amount of 3,000...... ）