Iron Cross

Admiral Arnold's words sounded quite helpless, but they were highly condensed and summarized. Truman had heard similar words.

Marshall painfully concluded some time ago: "Although Germany has always banned guns, the United States does not ban guns and has hundreds of thousands of members of the Rifle Association, but the level of land warfare is obviously not at the same level; in the same way, although Detroit is the world's largest automobile industry center, the United States ranks first in automobile production and the number of car drivers in the world, it does not mean that the United States' armored force is the best in the world. This is not the same thing. From the perspective of the quality of armored soldiers and tank performance, let alone Germany, even Russia is better than us."

There were hundreds of thousands of people in the United States with pilot licenses before the war, but most of them drove slow pesticide machines and biplanes. Flying was their means of making a living rather than their instinct for fighting. Although it was easier to pass professional flight tests, it did not mean that they were born warriors. The latter needed to withstand pressure and perform well in the test of life and death. Like the unescorted large formation air raid of the US Army Air Force in the Icelandic Campaign, not everyone could withstand the pressure of interception by German fighter planes armed to the teeth. As long as there was a slight deviation, they would collapse.

"What about the Navy?"

Turner didn't say anything, just shook his head slightly.

Truman knew more about the Navy's situation. The Navy's difficulties were greater than those of the Army's! A few days ago, Turner came to him to ask Truman to put pressure on Fatty Qiu to get a few crews for the Essex class that was about to be put into service. It can be seen how embarrassed the Navy was. From Turner's tone, all the seedlings with slightly better quality and potential in the Navy's aviation, even if they were trained as land-based pilots before, have now been hijacked by carrier-based aircraft. Fortunately, the Pacific Fleet, which has been resting, has also trained a group of crews, otherwise even these 120 crews cannot be drawn out!

However, Li Hai still spoke for the sake of the overall situation: "The Navy is preparing to transfer 500 land-based aircraft to Pearl Harbor. This is what we are trying our best to squeeze out."

"The Army will reinforce 1,000 aircraft. There is no more for the time being."

Truman breathed a sigh of relief. This means that there will be at least 3,500 aircraft in the direction of Hawaii. It is estimated that the entire Japanese carrier-based aircraft force will be no more than 700 aircraft. Our side has a 5:1 advantage. Even if the Japanese can fight, this advantage is enough to consume.

"For the next stage of the war, how do you consider properly dealing with the pincer attack from the east and west battlefields?"

"After discussion, the Joint Chiefs of Staff formed two ideas: emergency countermeasures and long-term countermeasures."

There are 3 emergency countermeasures, mainly including:

1. Strengthen the construction of aviation forces and emphasize air control of the sea. Faced with the situation of insufficient naval forces, temporarily respond by improving the level of aviation operations. On the battlefield in South America, the army bases vigorously built new airports and other aviation facilities to increase the density of troops. They will build, expand and station air teams in all ports on the southern coast of the Caribbean Sea, so that transport ships and the army can get multi-level and wide-coverage air cover, and use relatively easy-to-train land-based aviation to fight the enemy's carrier-based pilots; on the Pacific battlefield, with Pearl Harbor as the core, they constantly harassed the Japanese fleet and Midway Island, so that they could not advance without fear.

2. Strengthen the construction of anti-traffic capabilities and promote the effectiveness of submarines. Originally, in order to focus on the construction of surface ships, the US military reduced its investment and construction of submarines. As the axis successively attacked the front line of the deep zone (South America and the Central Pacific), it would be a good idea to cut off the enemy's transportation and supply lines. At present, the main force of US submarines is still the Shark class and the Whitefish class, which have performances higher than the VII-class submarines and are close to the XIV-class, but far inferior to the XXI-class. The US military was deeply stimulated by the XXI-class and has issued an urgent bidding request, hoping to build its own mysterious submarine.

Another progress that cannot be ignored is that the torpedo problem that has plagued the US military for a long time was basically solved in early 1944. The United States finally abandoned the Mk13\\14\\18 series torpedoes that were complained about continuously and had many failures, and took out the Mk24 acoustic homing torpedo and Mk22 aviation torpedo. At the same time, it honestly introduced the MkXV-class traditional torpedo from the British Empire. Although it is not as good as the torpedoes of Japan and Germany, it is at least much better than before. The hit rate and attack power of the Nimitz fleet in this air raid have been greatly improved, thanks to the improvement of new aircraft and new torpedoes. Unfortunately, after the last batch of skilled pilots were consumed, the performance of the new carrier-based aircraft pilots was terrible. Li Hai and Turner could only shake their heads.

3. The army switched to defense, mainly using positional warfare and attrition warfare to delay the enemy's pace. The top leaders of the Army saw clearly that with the current tactical level of the US Army and the pitiful road system in South America, there was no way out of playing armored confrontation. It was better to honestly build permanent and semi-permanent fortifications, lay minefields, and rely on their own high firepower and nearby logistics capabilities to fight a stupid and foolish battle with Germany. Use defense to weaken the enemy - no matter how you maneuver, I will remain unmoved.

Overall, the three emergency countermeasures have one purpose: to buy time. Use space to exchange time, and fight consumption with consumption.

Long-term countermeasures are more complicated. Li Hai pondered for a while and said slowly:

1. It is necessary to get rid of the unfavorable situation of being attacked from both the east and the west, that is, consider making conditional peace with one of them and concentrate on dealing with the other - the Joint Chiefs of Staff suggested negotiating with Germany, even if it is a temporary ceasefire.

2. Further optimize domestic armament production, reduce models, and simplify logistics. The current chaos in the models of equipment of the army and navy is so great that even the wealthy United States can no longer bear it. The unfavorable political and military situation has left them no time to care about the feelings of the capitalists. Some invalid orders are preparing to be cut sharply, which is most obvious in the aviation field.

After discussion by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, it was decided to stop the production of six fighter models including the P-38\\39\\40\\43\\61\\63 from September 1, and expand the production of the P-51, but only the P-51C (P-51C) will be produced. 51D is still being improved), the P-47 series only produces P-47D, and the production of P-80A (the official U.S. military code name of the Meteor jet) is increased. The order volume soared from 500 to 3,500 (unit price is 93,000 US dollars, which is US$20,000 cheaper than the P-61, and only equivalent to one-seventh of the B-29)

They are also merciless in attacking bombers. Only the B-29 will be retained for the four-engine bombers, the B-17\\B-24 will be cut off, and the B-36 development project will remain unchanged. Only the B-25 and B-26 will be retained for the two-engine bombers ( Widow Maker) was axed. In fact, the B-26 could obtain better performance after improvement, but the top management of the Army Aviation had no intention of waiting any longer. As for the light attack aircraft, only the A-26 was retained and the A-20 was axed\\ A-24, and emphasized the use of P-51 to carry bombs to undertake some ground attack tasks. The most urgent need of the Army Aviation now is to develop its own Lightning bomber based on the German Ar-234 jet bomber.

After the success of HNA attack aircraft in BTD, the order volume soared to 4,000, and then all SBD\\TBF\\SB2C were laid off. Others shared the B-29, A-26 and B-25 with the Army Aviation, expanded the production of F4U, and slightly reduced the F6F production, while urging Grumman to complete the development of the F8F fighter as soon as possible.

After the models are integrated, the Joint Chiefs of Staff requires each manufacturer to authorize each other's technology to achieve large-scale unified production. The Joint Chiefs of Staff hopes that aircraft production will reach 90,000 in 1945, including 20,000 4-engine heavy bombers, transport aircraft, and reconnaissance aircraft, and more than 8,000 jets. It's not that they don't want to build more, but that they can fly jets. There are more than 1,000 people, and one-third of them are British, and jets are improving very quickly. It is a complete waste to build too many.

There is a similar process for improving armored vehicles, but it has not yet been sorted out and is not expected to be reported to Truman until September.

3. Investment in the Manhattan Project must be increased. As Germany quickly took control of Africa, the source of uranium ore in the Belgian Congo was cut off. Later, it obtained uranium ore from Canada and accelerated mining and refining. Although the intelligence system in charge of Donovan was unable to know the progress of Germany's atomic bomb development, judging from various signs, it was believed that Germany is also accelerating the construction of nuclear weapons. However, many attempts to sabotage the Norwegian heavy water plant in the early stage failed. Now that the entire European continent is controlled by Germany, the United States is unable to disrupt Germany's progress and can only hope to gain time. The Joint Chiefs of Staff received assurances from scientists that if all effective measures were taken to protect them, U.S. atomic weapons were expected to undergo field tests in June 1945.

4. Before the spring of 1945, focus on strategic defense and team training, and not launch any offense. In particular, the Navy will no longer take the initiative until it obtains enough warships and trains enough carrier-based aircraft pilots.

"It is expected that the counterattack will be gradually launched in July 1945. By then, the navy's fleet will be formed, atomic weapons will be available, the aviation force will be extraordinary, and the army will have actual combat experience... the strategic situation will be ideal." Li Hai paused, "At that time You can lead us in a counterattack..."

Truman nodded first: "I have approved these two levels of countermeasures, and you can go ahead with them."

Before everyone could recover, he waved his hand again: "Don't make the plan so big, just make it to the end of this year. You will welcome Dewey in January next year. He may have different ideas."

"Your Excellency, although you are currently at a disadvantage in the election, as long as we survive this period..."

"No chance. Dewey has threatened to put all the financial losses, personnel losses and military losses in the past three years at the next debate. This is all true. I don't want to deny it. I don't want to shift the responsibility to Roosevelt either. Gentlemen or generals - I am the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States. I will frankly admit my fault and take all responsibility. I will...withdraw from the election..." Truman took off his glasses and wiped the lenses carefully, trying not to let it go. Tears flowed, "The Democratic Party has agreed to my request and decided not to field new candidates."

There was a "clang", and Turner, who was drinking water, couldn't hold the cup, and it fell to the ground and broke...