Iron Cross

On the afternoon of November 4, two days later than planned, Admiral Ingersoll led the fleet to leave the port of Norfolk and sail toward the deep sea in a torrential rain. At 11 o'clock in the night, Cunningham quietly set off with the aircraft carrier formation. . Although several fleet commanders wanted to stay a few more days to give the HMS Brave aircraft carrier, which had joined the formation in advance, more time to run in, time waited for no one. The lifeline of the British Empire had been completely cut off. Churchill sent telegrams every day to request that the route be resolved as soon as possible. Question - The entire British-Canada route is currently suspended. Newfoundland has a large backlog of fully loaded cargo ships waiting to leave the port. The British Isles have accumulated a lot of empty ships ready to go back. However, the German break-up fleet is circling on the route every day. The Atlantic Superintendent Checks flew one after another, and in the end no one could leave.

Unfortunately, there is currently no large warship in Great Britain. The two closest to completion are the two Resentment-class armored aircraft carriers, but one will not be completed until February next year, the other will not be completed until April next year, and there is also a light aircraft carrier HMS Giant. It will not be completed until August, and the completion date of the only battleship Vanguard is even further away. It is said that it will not be completed until the spring of 1945 at the earliest. This is already the completion date of other warship construction plans (such as the Giant class, the Reckless class, the Centaur class) and other follow-up ships. After cutting it off, we will make every effort to ensure the speed of core warship construction. If we continue to start construction everywhere as before, the speed will only be slower. Therefore, Churchill could only place all his hopes on the British and American combined fleet.

Unfortunately, the situation where the British and American fleets returned as soon as the Axis Fleet was dispatched last time will never happen again. This time the Germans are determined to have another good contest with the Americans in the North Atlantic.

The three-stage battle method proposed by Ozawa was quickly accepted by Berlin. According to the results of the war game, assuming that both sides have normal command and normal luck, the loss of enemy and friendly warships is about 2:1. In summary, the British and American losses are about 4-4 Of the 6 battleships, the Axis will lose 2-3, the enemy will lose 4-5 aircraft carriers, and the Axis will lose about 2-3; Britain and the United States are expected to lose 6-8 escort aircraft carriers, and Germany will lose 5-6. submarine. Aircraft losses would be between 3:1 and 4:1, with pilot losses expected to be 6:1 since Germany was home and had the geographical advantage of the Azores.

The overall result was worse than the results of the United Fleet in the Caribbean, but after careful consideration, Hoffman still agreed to fight this battle. Because he knew that the Axis could not build aircraft carriers as fast as the United Kingdom and the United States. If he did not work hard now, when the Americans had accumulated enough 15-20 aircraft carriers to come out, the German-Italian Axis alone would have almost no chance of winning, and the combined fleet seemed to be heading west again. Encountered big trouble again - Cole sent a secret message, saying that Horikichi was being ostracized in Japan and was surrounded by enemies on all sides, and his life was very difficult. The debate about the next battle plan in Japan was said to be very fierce, and the specific details were not yet known. .

Hoffman had anticipated what would happen to Horikichi. He had expressed some concerns during his stay in Europe, so he even sent an invitation to Germany to serve as the commander-in-chief of the navy. But to be honest, Horikichi came alone. It has completely different meaning to Germany than leading the main force of the combined fleet. He never expected that the situation would turn out like this. After careful consideration, he sent instructions to Cole: to help Horikichi consolidate his political position as much as possible and promote the joint fleet to move westward, and to do his best to maintain Japan-Germany relations. If necessary, Germany can provide economic support. and industrially meet some conditions proposed by Japan, but cannot directly express a position to intervene in its internal conflicts. In the most unfavorable situation, as a diplomatic envoy, protect the core officers of Horikichi's faction and bring them to Germany to serve as advisers.

In this context, it is just the right time to use existing forces to fight a war with Britain and the United States as soon as possible - now is the moment when the gap in naval strength between Germany and Italy and Britain and the United States is smallest. However, no one expected that the Brave was already in service, and the number of British and American aircraft carriers was still estimated at 6.

In fact, Ingersoll deployed more troops than the Germans expected. In addition to the fact that the battleships cannot be replaced in the short term (the Wisconsin and the Missouri will not be commissioned until the turn of next spring and summer), the fleet has one more aircraft carrier and a total of escort aircraft carriers have been dispatched. There were 14 ships - not the 6-8 that the Germans expected. The remaining auxiliary warships, including destroyers and cruisers, were also more than the Germans estimated.

During Operation Joint Elements, the United States mobilized a total of 35 escort aircraft carriers, 25 of which followed the Army to South America, and the remaining 10 ships were newly put into use during this period. In addition to deducting the escort carriers that must be retained on each route, the U.S. Navy also There were 14 ships left, and Turner took them all out in one go. Admiral Jin has no objection to this. Now is the peak period of escort aircraft carrier service. Almost every two weeks, three Casablanca-class escort aircraft carriers are in service. The budget allocated by Congress for fiscal year 1944 (beginning October 1, 1943) is enough to build 150 Casablanca-class ships. Admiral King has issued instructions to build them! Create towards death!

At present, the United States is building Casablanca-class submarines almost as fast as Germany is building Type XXI submarines. The problem is that the former has a displacement of up to 8,200 tons, while the latter is less than 2,000 tons.

After three days and four nights of covert sailing, on the evening of November 7, the German submarine U-607, which was more than 300 kilometers south of the Bermuda Islands, suddenly discovered to its surprise that a large number of enemy ships suddenly appeared within the observation range of the periscope.

"Two Iowa-class ships, two George V-class ships, two Queen Elizabeth-class ships..." Captain Ackerman asked in confusion, "Hell, this is obviously the main fleet of the Americans, but they ran away What does it mean to go south of Bermuda? And where is the enemy aircraft carrier?”

"Captain, don't worry about so much, just send the information out quickly."

"I'll have to look again."

Two hours later, Machar and others received a telegram from the submarine headquarters. To everyone's surprise, the main force of the enemy fleet did not come in the direction of the breaking fleet, but went southeast.

"Let the submarine find a way to follow the enemy." Machar warned, "Let's see what the enemy wants to do."

This hope soon came to nothing - U-607, which ventured to follow the US fleet's movements by floating at night, was sunk by the opponent, and the German army suddenly became deaf and blind. .

"It seems the enemy has discovered us."

"This is just right, otherwise I would still worry about how to let the Germans know." Turner suggested with a confident smile, "Now the fleet will turn due south, and after 6 hours of sailing, it will turn due east, and at the same time notify Captain Cunningham of our position. Will."

Ingersoll nodded, immediately agreed with the opinion and issued the battle order.

The codename of this Anglo-American operation is "Mousetrap", which means to catch the rat of the break-up fleet, but it obviously took a lot of thought in strategic preparation. According to Turner's suggestion, the fleet will act according to the following plan:

1. After leaving the port, the fleet turned to the southeast, assuming a posture of heading south to reinforce and attack the Falklands. It ignored the British-Canadian route and lured the main axis fleet, including the break-up fleet, to pursue it. In this way, the British-Canadian route would naturally be restored, and the fleet could move in a relatively favorable position. position to fight the Germans;

2. If the German army does not take the bait or is unaware of its own movements, prepare to attack and occupy Cape Verde, lure and mobilize the German army;

3. If the German army continues to ignore it, it will launch further attacks and prepare to capture Dakar in the name of Free France and gain a foothold in West Africa.

The entire plan boils down to one sentence: instead of directly opening up the British-Canada route, it emphasizes mobilizing German forces by diluting the attack, and creating opportunities for the fleet to annihilate the enemy during the mobilization process.

Turner made it very clear in his report to the Joint Chiefs of Staff: "The enemy broke the British-Canadian route and forced our troops to fight. This is obviously a conspiracy. We cannot fall into the trap. We must fully mobilize the German troops, Cape Verde and Dakar. Erdu is an important strategic point in West Africa, and the German troops deployed there are not very strong. If we can successfully capture it, it will open a gap for the United States on the African continent, which is more powerful than attacking the Azores or the Falkland Islands. It’s so sudden that I don’t believe the Germans can ignore it.”

As for the army troops to attack Cape Verde and Dakar, Turner also thought about it and directly called the second batch of army troops currently on their way to Brazil.

After the plan was submitted, it caused an uproar in the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The objections were based on two reasons: first, if this strategy is followed, it will take a long time to resolve the crisis on the British-Canadian route, and the United Kingdom may not be able to sustain it; second, An attack on Cape Verde or Dakar would seriously affect U.S. relations with Portugal and France.

Turner scoffed at the second opinion, believing that Germany was using the Azores to interfere with and attack us, while the United States was instead worried about its relationship with Portugal, completely putting the cart before the horse. As for Dakar, the British had already attacked it once, and it would be nothing to attack it again. , in short, he has the bachelor spirit of "A monk can touch me, but I can't?", which is very suitable for Admiral Jin. He has long disliked the Portuguese and French.

As for the first point, Admiral Jin agrees more. For the navy, dealing with the German fleet is the top priority, and opening up the British-Canada route is just a "incidental". The news reached the British and American Joint Chiefs of Staff, which of course aroused strong dissatisfaction among the British representatives. They even threatened to withdraw from the Atlantic Combined Fleet to open up the shipping route alone. However, Admiral Kim stopped them with a curse: "You can withdraw. After withdrawing, Don’t expect the United States to send you supplies or warships anymore. Even if the president orders it, I won’t carry it out. You can do whatever you want, or you can replace me!”

These words made Marshal John Greer Dill (the leader of the British delegation) livid with anger. Just as Li Hai was about to come out to smooth things over, Arnold suddenly stood up and helped: "Since you can go it alone, don't ask for the U.S. Land Forces anymore." The airline will deliver this to you, transport this and that, I would rather put the transport capacity in the direction of South America.”

Even Marshall couldn't suppress these words, and Roosevelt looked helpless. The meeting was noisy around this plan, and Admiral Jin was not in a hurry. He was determined not to go to sea until the British agreed to the fleet. He could afford to delay the problem, but the British could not afford it - the British-Canada route was still blocked. !

In the end, the British had no choice but to compromise and agree to the battle plan with their noses pinched.