Iron Cross

Hearing Admiral King's sarcasm, Hull's face suddenly dropped. However, he never expected that Marshall also had great opinions on him. He thought that letting a secretary of state dictate whether to attack here or not was completely over the line. Is it necessary? Will the military come forward and tell the diplomatic system what to do? Isn’t that the same as Japan?

Roosevelt pretended not to hear the complaints from General Kim, and only asked: "Can time move faster? The situation in Argentina has a serious impact on South American countries. All countries are waiting for us to respond quickly, and the *** has not expressed its position. Yes, that’s just talk, you have to use real guns and live ammunition..."

Hull's face darkened even more when he heard the president use "talking words" to describe his diplomatic efforts, but he didn't dare to refute a word - who told him that Europe was important two days ago, and then said it again after being pressured these two days? South America is important. It's better not to be directly scolded by the president. The navy's rapid withdrawal of warships and its vague statement on when to counterattack has caused panic in South American countries. Everyone is asking: What does the United States mean by this? Do you want to throw South America to the axis and shrink back to the North American continent to live your life?

"It's fast enough. I even doubt that we may be able to launch a counterattack on Christmas Day. The situation is now very clear. The enemy forces on the Falklands are the ones that passed through the Suez Canal in late July. It took at least several months for the enemy to plan and implement them." , Looking back in hindsight, not only have they connected with Peron a long time ago, but they also cooperated perfectly with each other." Admiral Jin did not forget to knock Donovan, "It's a pity that some of us are complacent and always think that everything is under control. ”

Donovan didn't dare to refute and just lowered his head.

Roosevelt knew that Admiral Kim was full of grievances, and he had to let the other party vent them out - Admiral Kim had always been a person who repaid grievances with grievances and repaid kindness with kindness. To expect that Admiral Kim could convince others with virtue and repay grievances with kindness would be worse than expecting Hortiyoshi to do so tomorrow. Lead the combined fleet to defect to the United States.

“What positive things can the Navy do during these months?”

"Our task is very heavy, really." Admiral Jin sighed and poured out the bitter water.

In order to protect the Azores campaign, we frantically built special escort aircraft carriers. Now the number is guaranteed, but qualified manpower is difficult to come by. Not to mention the deployment of more than 1,000 qualified carrier-based aircraft pilots is a fatal problem. The crew alone made the Admiralty scratch their heads. In the past two years, especially in the past year, the Navy has suffered continuous shipwrecks. Although Spruance has used destroyers to carry personnel, the loss of personnel has continued to increase rapidly. Through major battles in the South Pacific, the Indian Ocean, the North Atlantic, the Caribbean, and Tarawa, the Navy's direct personnel losses (killed, wounded, and captured) exceeded 100,000. If we add island seizures, submarine operations, escort warships, etc. in the Pacific, Adding up the losses one after another, the personnel losses have exceeded 150,000. If we count from the Pearl Harbor incident, plus the losses of the Marine Corps, the naval losses have exceeded 250,000.

This is a very frightening number, because before the Battle of Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy (including the Marine Corps) was less than 250,000, which means that the Axis countries completely "washed" the U.S. Navy in two years, and now escorts warships Veteran officers from World War I began to be used as captains. In Turner's plan, many of the escort carriers in Operation Overlord would be supplemented by skilled sailors directly from merchant ships. The problem is that the losses of merchant ships are also not small. The monthly loss of tonnage in the Atlantic submarine war exceeds 1 million tons. At its peak, the Axis dispatched fleets and submarines to jointly blockade, killing 1.65 million tons in one go in a month.

From January to August 1943, the British and American merchant ships lost 9.4 million tons in the Atlantic. The U.S. shipbuilding capacity is currently only a little over 1.5 million tons per month, or about 18 million a year. On the surface, it seems that Germany has not sunk as many ships as the U.S. has built. However, U.S. merchant ships are not only used in the North Atlantic, but also in Brazil in the South Atlantic. and South Africa, India, Australia and New Zealand in the Pacific direction all rely on supplies from the United States, and the combined losses are 200,000 to 300,000 tons. Added together, it just eats up the US’s monthly new tonnage. The only thing that made the Admiralty secretly happy was the month when the German army completely cut off Atlantic shipping. Since there was no need to carry out almost fatal missions, the loss of merchant ships suddenly dropped to less than 400,000 tons. As a result, Great Britain was almost strangled that month.

Of course, as the world's tycoon and industrial hegemon, the United States still has potential to tap. With the arrival of a large number of British shipyard workers, it is expected that the annual construction volume will increase to 2 million tons per month in 1944, and the annual construction volume will exceed 24 million tons - historically The peak of World War II was only 19 million tons/year.

Roosevelt kept promising that Churchill would provide 1 million tons of refined oil products every month. In fact, it almost never happened. Whether it was 1.2 million tons or 1.5 million tons, the British always received a discount, either 30% off or 1.5 million tons. 40% off. President Roosevelt wanted to increase the amount, for example, provide 2 million tons per month, but the Navy told him that this was not possible because the construction speed of T2\\T3 oil tankers for transporting finished products was far slower than that of Liberty Ship (Victory Ship). Even the large-scale escort aircraft carrier converted from a tanker that the Navy had been looking forward to was forced to cancel - the Sangamon class became the swan song.

What Admiral Jin wants to complain about this time is obviously not the tonnage and supplies. This should not be his concern. What he is worried about is the personnel. The average construction period of a Liberty ship is 40 days, and the fastest is 5 days. Now that British shipbuilders have joined, the speed can be accelerated. But whether it is 5 days or 40 days, qualified crew members cannot change it simultaneously. According to American tradition, a qualified ocean-going seafarer needs 2-3 years of training in a junior college, and then a few months of practice on board a ship before he is considered successful. Now, it would be better to hurriedly spend 6 months on land and then cram into the ship to carry out the mission. As long as you can make the round trip alive, you can immediately brag that you are an "old sailor".

"Now the monthly tonnage loss can be almost converted to 100 Liberty ships. No matter how streamlined the personnel is, there are still hundreds of people on a Liberty ship, and the monthly net loss is nearly 10,000. If the seafarers are redeployed in this operation, there may be a huge loss. trouble."

Marshall felt strange and asked hesitantly: "I remember General Turner said that it is completely possible to gather 45 escort aircraft carriers in October."

"The Azores is less than 2,000 nautical miles away from the U.S. port. As long as those rookies don't mess around, it won't be a problem to drive steadily around the Azores and launch carrier-based aircraft." Admiral Jin said helplessly, "Go to the Azores 8,000 nautical miles away. The battle on the island is not that simple. It must be strengthened. In my plan, these three forces are ready to attack together. The Venezuelan road will first settle French Guiana, and the Brazilian road will deter the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan and provide ground aviation support. The navy seizes the island. Only when politicians inside the country counterattack, the army threatens the border, and the island is occupied by the navy will the Peron regime be over."