In the northern part of the French border, in an ordinary house in the city of Dunkirk, a telegraph in the basement suddenly began to work.

"Didda ...... Didda

The signal transmitted according to a certain pattern is recorded on a blank piece of paper, and then converted into a special string of messages according to a special code.

The space in the basement was not small, and there were three people busy here, and the person in charge of receiving the telegraph was a white woman, who handed the translated signal to a white man behind her.

The identity of the man is the Allied army lurking in the German-occupied area, and the other two are also Allied forces, and their main task here is to serve as a transit station.

Due to the importance of the transit station, in addition to this one, there is also a transit station near the city of Dunkirk. Dunkirk was relatively close to the British position, and the high-power radio could be used to transmit signals to the British mainland, thus connecting the Allied information channels in France.

It was not only Dunkirk, Calais, and Wissan that had transit points, but also Allied telegraph operators in cities closer to Britain, including Paris, France, and Vichy, the seat of the Vichy puppet government.

Their mission was not only to transmit telegrams, but also to represent the trust of their comrades in enemy-occupied areas, and the precious news was sent to them and then to Britain.

"It's Pelican Bird 16. Finding their target, they immediately forwarded the telegram to London. ”

"Understood, I'll send the report right away."

The man looked at the message in his hand with some surprise. Above is a message from a squad responsible for reconnoitring the new German aircraft, reporting that the Mossok airfield near the city of Dunkirk contains important information about the new German jets.

As a transit station, it is not necessarily that every piece of information has to be interpreted, some are sent directly according to the original telegram, and some special ones need to be interpreted on the spot, and they are distinguished according to the different telegram heads. The wireless telegraph in John's possession was numbered Pelican 16, because it had not long been sent down. The London side deliberately conveyed the order, and the news of the Pelican Bird Squad was very important, and it was reported as soon as there was news.

It is also this, the white man after reading the message on the note. Immediately the telegraph operator sent the news back to London. The colleague took out a lighter and burned the note to ashes, and washed it away with water to completely reassure.

When this information was transmitted to London, it was immediately taken seriously by the command, you must know that the Allied high-level has always been a little afraid of the German army's new mysterious jet aircraft, and now that it is known that the aircraft is in the Mossok base, a strategic meeting was immediately launched.

Although Britain and the United States are both allies, Britain is geographically destined to have an advantage over the United States. So the first to get the news were not the Americans, but the British.

Spacious offices with exquisite decorations. It had already been used as a conference room, and the person who got the news was an ordinary telegraph operator, who reported it to his immediate boss after seeing the news, and the other party was a major general of the army garrison in London, and after confirming the source of the news, the major general informed the others.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I have just received a telegram about the new jet aircraft of the German army."

The British major general coughed a few times, and several people present were both senior British generals and American generals.

Although Britain very much hopes to obtain the technology of the Germans, but at the moment Britain and the United States are fighting together, not to mention that the Americans are still one of the main combat forces, and the British major general obviously sees it very clearly, and will not fall out with the Americans for such a thing. After repeating the message on the telegram, the major general sat back in his place and waited for an answer from the crowd.

The first to speak was a British general, also with the rank of major general, but under the Air Force.

"Since we know that there are such planes hidden in the Mossok base, then I will immediately send bombers to bomb this place according to the plan I made before, and since we can't get it, then we can't leave it to the Germans."

I was afraid of being cold when I had a meeting, but someone started it, and then someone else immediately objected.

"One bombing won't solve the problem, we can blow up one, can we blow up all of them? It was impossible for the Germans to put all the planes there, and even if they blew them up, the planes that the Germans had placed elsewhere would continue to take off. ”

"So what do you say? You can't just watch the Germans finish it. ”

The Air Force Major General frowned: "The commando team of General de Gaulle was broken up by the Germans before, and we suffered losses in that battle, and it was not all because of this new aircraft?" ”

Those who are qualified to sit here are all high-ranking and powerful people, even the lowest rank is a colonel, and the door to the conference room is closed, and there is no way for irrelevant people to enter, let alone get in touch with the secret topics that are being discussed inside.

The atmosphere became a little intense at this time, you say a word to me, but most of them are British, and the Americans rarely remain silent, and everyone senses that something is wrong, and their eyes fall on a lieutenant general of the United States Air Force.

The lieutenant general looked about forty or fifty years old, with short hair and gray temples, and was thinking about something with a cigarette in his mouth, noticing that everyone was looking at him, the lieutenant general spat out a puff of cigarette and shrugged his shoulders.

"What do you all see me doing? My Eighth Air Force has no spare bombing capacity and is still recuperating. ”

"Lieutenant General Spatz, let's not discuss the issue of the Eighth Air Force for now, we would like to hear your opinion on this matter."

Spatz glanced at everyone, saw that the other party really did not mean to move himself, and pondered for a moment before speaking: "Actually, I still have an offensive opinion on this matter, it is true that we cannot blow up all the planes of the Germans, but if we blow up one, we will have one less." ”

"It's just that the problem is that we don't know how many planes there are in this base, and if the planes lost in a bombing operation are far from enough to make up for the results achieved, then I would better not attack."

He was largely agreed, and one of the points they had argued before was that no one knew exactly how many new planes there were, and if there was only one, it wouldn't be worth bombing.

The reason why the opinion of Lieutenant General Spatz should be taken into account is that he was the commander of the Eighth Air Force of the United States Army, an air force unit that fought against Germany on British soil, and for a long time was one of the main air forces of the British bombing of the German army. The Eighth Air Force is now resting, and the root cause of this lies in Lieutenant General Spatz's mistakes, or outdated ideas.

In 1943, Britain and the United States launched a number of bombing campaigns against Germany, mainly at night. Traverse. Lieutenant General Harris was disgusted by the theory of "night saturation bombing," and Spatz believed that with the pride of the United States, the B17 "Flying Fortress" bomber, and the Norden sight for seven cents, his Eighth Air Force could accomplish accurate daytime bombing missions.

Because Spatz had previously served as commander of Eisenhower's Allied Air Force during Operation Torch, which landed in North Africa in 1942, Spatz had time to implement his plan in 1943.

Like most air generals of the time, Spatz believed that strategic bombing was the main task of the aviation forces, and believed that the role of bombers should be superior to that of fighters, and Spatz himself was an active supporter of this strategic theory.

To demonstrate the feasibility of precision bombing. On April 17, 1943, Spatz sent 117 "Flying Fortresses" to break into the skies over Bremen without combat escort, and the German fighter group made the Americans' blind trust B17 suffer a big loss, 20 MC-109 rampaged in the American bomber group, and after the air battle, 62 Flying Fortresses were shot down and damaged, accounting for more than half of the total number of aircraft participating in the war, and the Americans were stunned by this result.

However, Spas did not learn his lesson, and on August 13, he again sent 363 B17s to bomb the Schweinfurt ball bearing factory, this operation did not go smoothly from the beginning, some American pilots lost their way, and the bombers flying over the target were also intercepted by the Luftwaffe, and the Americans bombed the plant in spite of it, causing the plant's production to drop by 17%, but 60 bombers themselves were shot down, with a loss of up to 19%.

On October 14, 290 B17s attacked Schweinfurt again, this time the Americans learned their lesson and sent a large number of fighters to escort the ship, but the Germans resisted stronger, they sent 800 M-109 and 725 M-110 fighters to the battle, such a huge attack caused the US Air Force to suffer huge losses, 60 Aerial Fortresses were shot down on the spot, 138 were scrapped after barely returning home, and the rest were all with bullet holes, The massacre prevented the Eighth Air Force from launching new air strikes for a month.

Combat practice has shown that without the escort of fighters, bombers always suffer heavy losses. From December 1943 to January 1944, American bombers simply did not dare to venture close to the German border, let alone penetrate deep into the heartland. This is also the reason why Lieutenant General Spaatz did not take the initiative to speak at the meeting.

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The third update, there will be an update in the evening. (To be continued......)