Iron Cross

In addition to the female secretaries, the armaments manufacturers also complained more about the Führer. Now Hoffman did not interfere much in the specific command of the army, which greatly relieved the two chiefs of staff, Keitel and Zeitzler, and the commanders of the army groups. However, his intervention in the armaments industry, especially in technology, was greatly deepened, which several companies deeply felt.

The first to bear the brunt was Junkers. They got a large number of Ju-88 orders in the aviation armament reorganization case, which was originally a very happy thing. However, half a month later, Hoffman told them through Speer that the performance of the Ju-52 transport aircraft (Junkers Aunt) was outdated and would no longer be arranged for production from next year. The relevant orders would be transferred to the improved Ar-232 of Arado Company because the Ar-232 had a larger load capacity, faster speed, and longer range than the Ju-52. Except that the military experience was not as good as the Ju-52, almost every other aspect was better than the Junkers' products. This made Junkers' top management gasp: Since the transport aircraft market has always been monopolized by Ju-52, Junkers not only earned high profits but also did not spend too much effort on the development of subsequent aircraft models. Therefore, the profit of one transport aircraft is equivalent to that of five bombers. After this order was cut, the profit from the new bomber order could not make up for the potential loss caused by the loss of the transport aircraft order.

The Arado Company, which was stunned by the pie in the sky, was excited all of a sudden. The Ar-232 they had worked hard for for many years finally had a good destination. Not only did it mean that all the previous R\u0026D investment could be recovered, but it also had more motivation to perfect the next generation of new, jet-powered Ar-234 bombers - this was their main goal. Arado Company has spread the word that it will use mature jet bombers to kill the market currently occupied by Junkers' Ju-88 series. Other aircraft manufacturers, like Alado, which are not among the mainstream aircraft manufacturers, were also inspired by this incident and decided to increase their investment. Now that Marshal Milch is no longer in charge of armament production, it can be seen from the Ju-52 order incident that Minister Speer has no so-called sectarianism. There is a lot of room for future armament development. As long as they have a mature product, they can turn things around.

Messerschmitt also cleverly took a share of the transport aircraft market. They launched the Me-323D, which was upgraded from the Me-321 giant aircraft. This aerial giant has a load capacity of up to 16 tons and can carry 130 fully armed soldiers. The capacity is almost 6 times that of the Ju-52, but the crew members are only 5 people. In contrast, the Ju-52 needs 18 people to perform the same mission. The cargo door of the Me-323D is 3.35 meters high, and 2-ton load trucks, ammunition tractors, and Weasel 2 tank destroyers modified from the No. 2 tank can enter and exit at will. More importantly, the core parts of this aircraft are all French-made air-cooled engines (Landshen Rhone 14-N-48 engines) and propellers, which effectively alleviated the problem of insufficient domestic production capacity in Germany. Hoffman was very interested in this large-capacity transport aircraft, believing that it would be very useful in emergency support, especially in North African operations. He specifically issued an order for the first batch of 100 aircraft and asked them to try to use better engines to increase speed. The Ju-322 giant transport aircraft that Junkers was going to launch had not even been finalized at this time.

Just when several companies were vaguely trying to make fun of Junkers, Hoffman's second blow was to Messerschmitt, canceling the order for 2,000 Bf-109s, half of which were clearly transferred to the Me-262 that would be put into production next year, and the other half were added to the Fw-190 - they fought well in North Africa, especially being able to provide escort from Italian ports to Tobruk, which made Garand very satisfied. He has repeatedly written to request an increase in the production of the Fw-190 series. Messerschmitt said it didn't matter, as the Air Force would increase its Me-262 purchases in the future anyway. But Mercedes-Benz soon found itself unable to laugh, because the knife had been cut on Messerschmitt and the pain was on Mercedes-Benz - this was a disaster for the DB601 series engines. 2,000 aircraft meant that at least 3,000 engine orders had been scrapped, because neither the Me-262 nor the Fw-190 used Mercedes-Benz engines.

Originally, the DB601 engine was in short supply in the military system. In order to ensure the production of the Bf-109, other aircraft applications were rejected. The Fw-190 switched to an air-cooled engine for this reason. Unexpectedly, with the passage of time, the status of the DB601, which had always been a popular choice, began to become awkward. What made Mercedes-Benz even more panic was that the Jumo-213 engine produced by Junkers began to enter the mass production stage. This liquid-cooled engine, which had always claimed to compete with the DB601 series, could provide far stronger power output than the DB601 after overcoming technical difficulties. Speer expressed his affirmation. When meeting with Junkers' top brass and accepting their complaints about the Ju-52 incident, he appeased the former and placed an order for 1,000 units. At the same time, he vaguely expressed his dissatisfaction with Mercedes-Benz, which had been using the excuse that the production task of DB601 was too heavy and was reluctant to transition to DB603 (a descendant of DB601 that was better than it), and said that if Mercedes-Benz continued this unprogressive approach, it would further increase the order strength of the Jumo series - anyway, Dr. Tank had installed a liquid-cooled engine on the experimental Fw-190, and once successful, it would inevitably reduce the order for short-legged fighters such as Bf-109 again. Although Junkers suffered a big loss in the transport aircraft market, it won back a game in the engine market and left happily.

There is no impenetrable wall in the world. Mercedes-Benz soon heard Speer's speech and felt an unprecedented sense of crisis. In the past, when the armament production was handled by multiple departments, they could still find someone to smooth things over. If the armament department was not good, there was still room for maneuver as long as the Air Force agreed. But now Speer was in power. As long as he said no, no one could change his will unless the Fuehrer spoke. Mercedes-Benz did not dare to go to the Fuehrer. Hoffman had clearly expressed his dissatisfaction with the technical performance of Mercedes-Benz's existing aircraft engines, and warned that if they did not change the status quo, he would find a company to copy the British Merrill engine. Hoffman was not trying to scare them. He even chose the company to copy - BMW. BMW was a defeated opponent of Mercedes-Benz. It had always had a small share of the aviation engine market. It had finally gained a place by relying on the BMW-801 air-cooled series. If they really succeeded in copying Merrill, they would have to use both liquid cooling and air cooling. Moreover, the advantage of copying was that they did not have to go through too much technical development. Once they turned over, Mercedes-Benz would have no way out. Therefore, Mercedes-Benz had to swallow its pride and put away the idea of ​​maintaining the continuous production of the DB601 series to maximize profits, and accelerated the transition to future products.

Hoffman's first two cuts in the military industry were made on the Air Force military enterprises, and the third cut was made on the Army military enterprises. In promoting the construction of the Army's firepower, if the T-34 tank left the deepest impression on the German frontline soldiers in the Eastern Front, then the second deepest impression was Stalin's organ - Katyusha rocket launcher. In fact, the rocket level of the Third Reich was better than that of the Soviet Union, but unlike the Soviet army's large-scale centralized use of rocket launchers and relying on a large amount of ammunition to cover the target in a short time to achieve combat objectives, due to Germany's advantage in the field of rocket engines, it made a mistake of refinement: it paid more attention to the long-range precision strike of heavy rockets.

Each German rocket launcher has a maximum of 10 tubes, while the Katyusha rocket launcher generally has more than 16 tubes. In terms of rocket launcher caliber, Germany prefers 210mm. 150mm and 201mm calibers are only considered light rocket launchers, while the Soviet Union has always been mainly 80mm and 132mm. Hoffman knew that the facts proved that the Soviet rocket launcher's development idea was correct - rockets are probabilistic launchers and area coverage weapons. It is purely self-deception to insist on precision strikes. Therefore, he issued a clear order to develop German weapons similar to the Katyusha rocket launcher, with a smaller caliber and more tubes, and it must be able to be installed on the SdKfz251/1 half-track armored vehicle as a regimental fire support unit. Since the Führer was no longer afraid to imitate the enemy's weapons, especially the Soviet weapons, the designers quickly followed the order and came up with similar weapons using 150mm rockets: the length of the rocket was 1020mm, the propellant charge was 6.14 kg, the warhead weighed nearly 3 kg, the muzzle velocity was 350 m/s, the maximum range was more than 6,000 meters, and the ammunition was modular. 24 rockets could be fired at one time within 7 seconds. Hoffman was very satisfied with this, because this rocket launcher was given priority by the SS, so he named it "Himmler Organ".

The Himmler Organ soon received an order for 10,000 pieces. The 75mm infantry guns that were usually used by the troops were ordered to stop production, and the orders for 105mm howitzers were also reduced. At the same time, due to the strengthening of the Allied tank armor, the PAK37mm and 50mm anti-tank guns originally developed and manufactured by Rheinmetall were increasingly embarrassed on the battlefield. They could only deal with armored vehicles and old-model tanks. When facing new tanks, they became "stepping stones" and only heard a sound. The actual penetration was terrible. The troops had reflected this situation many times, and Hoffman decisively ordered the Armament Department to stop the production of these two caliber anti-tank guns and transfer resources to the production of 88 guns and 75mm anti-tank guns. Fortunately, Rheinmetall's product line is rich enough, and cutting some models will not bring profit losses. Instead, it provides convenience for it to compress the front line and integrate internal production capabilities, so it happily accepted this arrangement.

This afternoon Hoffman was scheduled to go to the range to view two infantry weapons, knowing full well that this would be his fourth blow to arms production.