81_81266 There was a knock on the door of Churchill's office, and a blonde female secretary put Wen Jiàn on the desk in front of the Prime Minister and turned to leave. Prime Minister Winston Churchill's mood has been getting worse lately, so no one wants to stay in the Prime Minister's office.

The British prime minister raised his eyelids and looked at the thick stack of reports, and knew that there was nothing good for him today, so he had to pick up the top report and start reading it -- these things had to be dealt with anyway, although they were all mourning papers, but after reading too much, he became insensitive.

Sure enough, it was a loss report from an escort fleet, which stated that a convoy with the number 96 was attacked by the opposing side on the way into Britain and suffered heavy losses. It was a cliché that would surprise Churchill if the British convoy had not lost any hour.

But looking at it, a heavy look appeared on Churchill's already numb face. It was not because the losses of Transport Fleet 96 were too great, after all, it was not for nothing that the transport fleet had been wiped out at the hands of Dönitz's wolves these days - Churchill was surprised that the way the fleet was lost this time, or the means by which the Germans attacked, was somewhat different.

Originally, more than ninety percent of the losses of the British transport fleet were caused by German submarines, and these elusive wolf packs were commanded by a middle-aged man named Dönitz, who used the tactics of swarms to attack the British fleet on a large scale at night, causing irreparable losses to the British.

This tactic, which was a headache for the British, had not yet found a good way to counter it, and this time the Germans played a new trick. At the outskirts of the convoy were the Royal Navy's escort destroyers, which were responsible for driving away German submarines and ensuring that most of the ships in the core of the convoy could reach Britain.

But this time it was the destroyers' turn to be attacked. A "new type of weapon, which flew in the sky like an airplane, crashed directly into the British warships, sinking the destroyers that were on guard at the outermost perimeter." According to the report, the new weapon was able to crash into British warships with precision, and even change the trajectory of its flight halfway.

Moreover, the report said that this strange flying machine that would fly and automatically crash into British destroyers appeared on two major British routes at the same time, sinking five ships, including a light cruiser and three destroyers, and the transport fleet that was breached was undoubtedly attacked by submarines that night and suffered heavy losses.

The reports called this weapon a "flying torpedo", a "suicide plane", and an "Accardo's dart", and most claimed that it was a new type of weapon fired by a German submarine. However, Churchill's staff were not fools, and they ruled out the possibility of a submarine launch from the clues.

After reading the report, an arms expert who was summoned to the Prime Minister's Office came to his conclusion: "Mr. Prime Minister, this weapon should have been fired from a destroyer or a cruiser, not some kind of submarine weapon. ”

He pointed to several photographed black shadows and said: "As you can see from some blurry photos, this weapon takes into account aerodynamics, but does not take into account the need to travel in sea water, and the frequency of use of this weapon is obviously much sparser than the number of German submarines, so I analyze that this is a guided weapon that relies on warship launches." ”

"It doesn't matter what it fired from. Churchill sighed and said, "My concern is whether it will appear on our routes on a large scale! Will it cut off our transport lines completely." ”

Churchill was not in a hurry, as an average of one British merchant ship from New York was sunk, and about one-third of American aid was sunk in the icy Atlantic. The life-saving equipment that Britain exchanged for islands and military port bases lost a small part of it before the battle began.

The three armored corps that Britain expected to set up were only one because of the delay in the arrival of supplies, and the other two, although also called the panzer corps, did not even have half of the equipment of the German armored forces. The remaining 20 infantry divisions, with more than 300,000 troops, were all "World War I infantry" with only light weapons and artillery, and only God knows what kind of results the battle-hardened German troops would achieve.

Poor Montgomery women were so embarrassed that they had even made it to Egypt or Canada to "inspect the work" of the British royal family. Although this construction was rejected, it already shows that the British senior generals were not optimistic about the Strait defense line.

On the beach, 17 of the 75 minefields laid out by the British have been scrapped due to the destruction of the German navy and air force, and only 9 of the 33 mine blockades on the sea are still intact. Relying on those shore defense guns and trench barbed wire, let alone a military general like Montgomery, even Churchill did not believe that he could take the Germans out to sea.

The question before Churchill was not whether to prevent the Germans from landing, but how to kill the Germans on the British Isles. So he issued this "Battle Order that the British must defend their homeland" that vowed to turn Britain into a hell on earth. This order was actually very simple, to distribute all the old stockpiles and weapons that had not had time to be distributed to the front-line combat units to British civilians, so that they could fight to the death with the German regular army at any cost.

The war department expected 1.5 million British civilians to die in the battle against the Germans, and Montgomery was even more pessimistic, believing that if Germany was allowed to retaliate frantically and use the British move as an excuse to tear up some international conventions, then 3 million British people would die in the war.

And Montgomery was not optimistic about these so-called "stall operations", he once told Churchill: "These civilians are not trained and will be slaughtered in front of the German regular army, and these civilians lack the support of heavy weapons, and their role against the German armored forces is very limited." ”

At that time, Churchill's answer made Montgomery almost curse: "The limited effect means that there is still an effect...... These civilians died in the thousands, and even if they could only destroy a German tank, then they bought Britain some time, and what we lacked was precisely time. ”

As a matter of fact, to put it bluntly, what Britain and Germany are fighting now is not the strength of their armies, nor the quality of science and technology, nor is it the contradiction of the people's will -- the fight between the two countries is time! Germany is rushing for time in the hope that it can take Britain in one fell swoop, and Britain is dragging out time in the hope that the United States and the Soviet Union will react and besiege Germany.

Churchill and Montgomery did everything in their power to ensure that Germany was dragged into the quagmire of war. Montgomery secretly deployed the only Panzer Corps in a hidden area in southern Britain, and once the Germans landed, he would command this force and another elite infantry corps to rush to the German beachhead, desperately crippled by the Luftwaffe, and also to take the Germans to sea.

Because he knew that Germany seemed to have a lot of money, just like Napoleon's France, it seemed to be invincible, and it was nothing more than the courage to land once, as long as the German elite was sent to the sea with desperate losses, then Britain would be completely safe. At that time, whether it was a war or a war would be up to the British themselves.

In some sea areas suitable for landing, Britain began to arrange the defense system a century ago, but the forts and defense facilities in some places are too old to meet the needs of modern warfare, but many places can still be used, which saves a lot of time.

The original battery was changed to an "open-top" machine-gun position, the original machine-gun position was reinforced into a trench, the original open space was arranged with barbed wire, plus a few cannons, even a section of the coastal defense position was quite strong.

The British had too few troops, and even fewer trained and combated soldiers, so Montgomery had been reinforcing the southern defensive positions along the coastline by filling holes, and he pressed his elite troops to the second line, hoping to concentrate superior forces to push the Germans back into the sea.

However, his troops have an inescapable disadvantage, that is, the quality of the armored forces, the original British armored forces were all lost in Dunkirk, and now Montgomery's armored troops are all recruits who have only been trained for less than 15 days, and the weapons in their hands are also a big difference with the equipment of German opponents: relying on American equipment like M3lee to challenge German Leopard tanks is a frustrating thing in itself.

The support that the Navy can provide to Britain to resist the landing is very limited, the British King George V and the aircraft carrier Fury are being overhauled in the northern port, and the Counterattack has become the only battleship that can fight on the British mainland, and the British Navy is not as strong as half the German Navy.

Moreover, the landing site will definitely be within the combat radius of the Luftwaffe, and if the Navy interferes with the landing at this time, it will be the same as sending the Luftwaffe for nothing. And the British Royal Navy, which has already been beaten to the point of losing its courage, will have the courage to fight at that time is also a question.

Thinking of these problems, Churchill's head immediately became as big as a fight, and he really wanted to throw the burden back to Chamberlain's side like this, but that old and cunning guy would definitely not stand up and carry the black pot at this stage - people only expected today's ending, so they played a trick to get rid of the golden cicada.

Speaking of golden cicadas shelling...... Churchill seemed to have something in mind, picked up his pen and began to write a report, and he was going to follow Montgomery's example and persuade the British king to take the royal family to Canada to inspect the production line of the new Hurricane fighter jet