81_81266 "Left full rudder!Sail due south!" A first officer stood on the bridge and loudly confirmed the password. For the first time, the German ocean-going fleet entered the waters of the South Atlantic on a large scale, escorting a huge transport fleet of 40 Hercules transport ships.

It was a large-scale naval operation, in which Germany imported large quantities of rubber from South American countries in one go, and then formed a fleet to return to European ports under the escort of the German High Seas Fleet. Those chemical companies and manufacturers who need rubber have long been looking forward to the arrival of natural rubber materials and looking forward to the quality of rubber products that can improve the quality of their products.

Natural rubber is still an irreplaceable industrial raw material in this period, although the company has developed a substitute for artificial rubber, but in terms of quality and characteristics, artificial rubber is inferior to natural rubber.

Has anyone ever wondered why the German tank used the complex design of the cross load wheel in the previous life? Because the edge of the tank load wheel had to be wrapped with rubber, but the quality of the German artificial rubber could not meet the requirements, so the small diameter load wheel or cross load wheel had to be used to increase the contact area per unit length to alleviate the negative impact of insufficient rubber quality.

The much-criticized German-style tank running mechanism is actually the main purpose of making a compromise for the lack of rubber performance, which shows from another side that any technical shortcomings will bring earth-shaking changes to the design in application. This is the power of industry, which is why it is impossible for a traverser to make the Tang Dynasty army use a reloader howitzer.

Now because of the technological innovation of Farben, Germany hoarded rubber before the war is about to run out - the original rubber can not be hoarded on a large scale, will deteriorate because of time, but Farben has developed a new technology, which can be processed through guò to extract new rubber from the deteriorated rubber, although this technology has about 15% waste, but it can allow the German side to unknowingly hoard rubber materials before the war.

This is also an important reason why Accardo dared to equip German tanks with a single-row load-bearing wheel running mechanism in this time and space, and why the reliability of German tanks has been greatly improved.

Defeating the British Navy and not turning the other cheek with the United States allowed Germany to purchase a huge amount of rubber raw materials in South America. In order to prevent Germany from completely turning its other cheeks against Germany, the content of economic sanctions against Germany did not include rubber, an important industrial raw material, and the corresponding German navy did not go south to attack the shipping route from South America to North America -- the two sides obviously played each other's tacit cards when they were hostile.

Moreover, the United States is now really unable to prevent Germany from purchasing rubber from South America, which has a clear relationship with the maritime strength of both sides. For example, the United States can clamore for an arms embargo to Iraq, which everyone thinks is not inappropriate, but one day Iraq is clamoring for sanctions against the United States to impose an arms embargo on the United States, which is completely funny.

The sinking of the US aircraft carriers USS Enterprise and USS Lexington at Pearl Harbor has had a fatal impact on the actual combat capability of the US Navy. The U.S. Navy in the Pacific Ocean, which the United States regards as its own bathtub, is still being chased by the Japanese Navy, let alone in the waters of the South Atlantic, where there is not much power.

In fact, it is not that the US Navy does not want to develop its Atlantic Fleet, but that the Atlantic waters have always been forbidden by the powerful British Navy. Whoever wants to develop his own navy in the Atlantic must first pass the British navy.

However, this unreasonable but once invincible British Navy was defeated by the newly rising German Navy in a short period of time, which suddenly created a power vacuum in the North Atlantic waters, and the German Navy is trying to make up for this vacuum area, so the backward US government has fallen behind the German Navy in the North Atlantic.

The aircraft carriers under construction in the United States, in response to the Atlantic crisis manufactured by the German Navy, have not yet been launched, as have the aircraft carriers built by the British at Canadian shipyards and in the United States. Now the United States is completely unprepared for a two-front operation, so they are carrying out the order of operations first in the Pacific and then in the Atlantic.

However, at the same time, the British Navy did not think the same as the American Navy, and they prepared a large number of attack fleets in the South Atlantic Sea, with cruisers as the core, to intercept German merchant ships, causing a lot of trouble for the German Navy.

Last month, they sank four ships between Germany and Brazil, belonging to Vichy France, Italy and Germany. The German navy, of course, could not tolerate the interference of the British navy on a transport line that it had managed to build, so it immediately moved south to seek a decisive battle for the British naval fleet near the South Atlantic.

The German High Seas Fleet consisting of 5 aircraft carriers, 17 armored ships and cruisers of various types, 25 destroyers against the British South Atlantic Detachment consisting of 1 battleship, 7 cruisers and 20 destroyers. The Anglo-German Battle of the South Atlantic broke out on May 22, 1938.

Two days later, one Italian battleship arrived in the vicinity with three cruisers and five destroyers, and the Axis maritime forces were even stronger, while the British Navy had two destroyers leaving the war zone and heading to the Pacific to assist the defeated U.S. Navy in defending Australia.

Vichy France's fleet also entered the theater of operations, and a French battleship and a cruiser came to South American waters to investigate the sinking of their transport ship, and although they did not receive an order to engage the British Navy, the British Navy had already listed them as enemy sea forces that could be sunk.

On the morning of 23 May, German naval carrier-based aircraft spotted a British destroyer fleet, and then the first carrier-based aircraft attacked, and the two sides continued to open fire, and by the afternoon, all three destroyers of the British destroyer fleet had been sunk. However, the bad news came that the main force of the British naval fleet had gone north and inflicted heavy damage on the Italian naval fleet.

The Italian battleship was seriously damaged, one cruiser was sunk, and 2 destroyers were also hit and sunk. The Italian Navy suffered its heaviest losses since the beginning of the war. However, their losses were exchanged for important information, and the German naval fleet fixed the approximate location of the British Navy's South Atlantic Squadron.

The ensuing pursuit was even more difficult than anyone had imagined, and the British naval fleet quickly approached the German navy that night, forcing back the German navy's high seas fleet for a full 30 nautical miles, and then pulling away to continue northward, with an iron determination to return north to Canada.

According to the intelligence service, Britain's only usable aircraft carrier, the Ark Royal, came out with the remnants of the home fleet, and it seemed that it was going to ensure the absolute safety of its own fleet. However, the German Navy, which had absolute air supremacy at sea, did not give the opponent a chance, and the two sides came into contact again the next morning, and the German carrier-based aircraft sank 4 cruisers and severely damaged the battleship Queen Elizabeth, the flagship of the British South Atlantic Fleet.

The British South Atlantic Fleet was thus far left with only 2 cruisers (the other cruiser was damaged by the Italians, fled in the other direction due to the drop in speed, and eventually returned to Canada for repairs). Combat effectiveness had dropped to a negligible level, and Germany's course in the South Atlantic had been restored.

It's just that British submarines are really not easy to strangle, after all, anti-submarine escort is a long-term job, unlike sea operations, which can be accomplished in one battle. So Lütjans was ordered to return home, and then the German South Atlantic Fleet was formed, consisting of two ironclad ships, two missile destroyers and two air defense destroyers, and began to cruise in the South Atlantic seas for a long time to provide escort for the German fleet.

At a time when Germany and Britain were fighting for sea supremacy in the South Atlantic, the Japanese navy was in full swing, and like the German navy, they were carrying out their own plan to move south. They crushed the U.S. fleet in one fell swoop, fully occupied Malaysia and the Philippines, and drove the U.S. Army to Australia.

The Greater East Asia "Alliance" looks like it is invincible in the world, and it has gone so far as to rely on the navy of one country in Japan to exert the momentum of dominating the Asia-Pacific region. Coupled with the decisive victory of the German Navy in the South Atlantic, for a time three important blocs were re-ranked: the Axis powers were already the first in the world, the so-called "alliance" of Greater East Asia was second, and the Allies were at the bottom.

The situation was not complicated: the once-invincible British Navy was defeated by the German Navy, the US Navy unexpectedly suffered heavy losses at Pearl Harbor, and the industries of the two countries were just beginning to exert their strength, and the lost ships had not yet been remedied. That's why they lost at sea.

However, this does not mean that the United States and Britain will still be so wolf after a year, and Accardo knows that as long as they survive this difficult first year, even if the Axis powers have taken control of Europe, they may not be able to hold down the Allies, let alone Japan.

He felt a little powerless now, and many things were no longer out of his control. Relying on aid or covert intervention can no longer have a sufficiently large impact on the situation and cannot change the outcome of some events. How to reach out to East Asia in the future, exert a powerful influence on China, and change the post-war world pattern -- this is a question that needs to be prepared now.

"Provoking a world war is such a technical job, which is really not something that ordinary people can afford. Accardo put aside the operational report of the naval battle in the South Atlantic and sighed with a wry smile