The news of the rocket attack on London soon reached Washington, and Roosevelt was shocked and anxious, in his opinion, Great Britain must be kept at present, otherwise it will lose a strong bargaining chip when negotiating with Germany, so he no longer cares about pursuing Crank, who is wandering near Brazil, and directly ordered Nimitz to take the fleet north to Great Britain. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 info He had wanted Spruance to return as well, but Admiral King and Lehi dissuaded him.

"President, while I think the facts I'm portraying may be a bit pessimistic, we have to be on guard." "The possibility of the British Empire surrendering is becoming more and more likely, we can't put all the chips on it, once it collapses, even the Pacific direction is over, we must leave room for ourselves." ”

After careful consideration, Roosevelt agreed to the request of the two, and the telegram to Spruance was to see if he could deal a blow to the German fleet in the short term, and if not, he would simply go back to South Africa and go to Australia after replenishment.

At this juncture, the British sent another message from Churchill, hoping that the American fleet could escort a fleet of 30 ships, two British home divisions, and four escort aircraft carriers to India. Roosevelt instinctively wanted to refuse, but now his eyebrows are burning, how can the British waste time and troops in India again, but Admiral King thinks that this request can be granted, and his reasons are also focused on the future.

"First, the British Empire can surrender, but only on the mainland, and the four Dominions must be taken over by us, and it is best to have none of the British native divisions left here in South Africa, so that we can firmly control them in the future; Second, although Japan has the upper hand in the Indian war, it does not mean that we have no to fight, the northwest corner of India is still controlled by the British, if reinforcements and materials are transported, it can be completely supported, at least it can contain some more Japanese strength; Third, at present, the main forces of the Axis Navy are concentrated in the Pacific Ocean or the North Atlantic, and there is no strong fleet in the Indian Ocean, so we can seize the opportunity to attack and disrupt the shipping routes between Japan and Germany, cut off their trade exchanges, and even destroy some Japanese and German strongholds. Admiral Kim concluded, "At present, we can no longer fight the enemy, we must find the opponent's weak underbelly, I don't believe it, the world is so big, the Japanese and Germans are all invulnerable monsters, and there are no flaws in the body?" ”

Roosevelt thought about this for a while and thought it was reasonable, so he didn't insist anymore - even the British themselves didn't insist that Spruance come to help, otherwise what would Churchilly do when he sent his native division to India? These two local divisions are very important to the situation in India, the British and Indian troops in the heyday of the Indian Allied Army, together with the US Army and the Chinese Army in India, nearly 400,000 troops, have been fought for more than half a year, either leaving, withdrawing, dying, captive, or fleeing, and the British only have 120,000 men left. However, the strength cannot simply be regarded as the previous 30%, because most of the losses were Indians, who were either scattered on the battlefield or attracted by the Indian government of Bose and turned into a national army, and the losses of the British basic base, the native troops and related officers, were not too great.

The Anglo-Indian troops who stayed behind were quite high in terms of training and loyalty, especially a few Gurkor brigades were still loyally following, which was a process of removing the rough and the fine. Moreover, due to the decrease in numbers and the relative reduction of equipment, the level of mechanized heavy equipment of the British army has even increased instead of falling, and other supplies can better meet the needs, and at the same time, after retreating to New Delhi and the inland area of India, it has also shortened the front of its own side and extended the supply line of the Japanese army, which is conducive to internal operations.

On the other hand, on the Japanese side, after the arrival of a large number of reinforcements, Yamashita found that his demand for materials and munitions was increasing, and the occupied area was becoming more and more extensive and more difficult to manage, although Japan occupied most of India, but in fact India's territory was so large, except for Ceylon Island, which was really in the hands of the navy, the rest of the area could not be taken care of by just 300,000 Japanese troops sprinkled with pepper, and most of the time it still relied on the Bose government to maintain order, and a princely state (equivalent to China's provincial administrative region) could only station a few thousand Japanese troops, In a place as large as a county town, there were only a dozen or dozens of Japanese soldiers, and the people who dealt with the people were basically people from the Bowes government. He sincerely experienced the feeling that the Chinese Dispatch Force was inadequate—the theater he is now responsible for is almost as large as the Chinese Dispatch Force (India + Burma), and the number of troops is even slightly smaller.

Therefore, in mid-March, taking the opportunity of the rest of the troops, Yamashita sent a telegram to Tokyo for the third time, requesting that the number of troops should continue to be increased, and the number should not be less than 5 divisions, and it would be better if 7 could be given. After intense discussions, Ishihara made a decision to continue withdrawing troops from Chinese mainland, reducing the size of China's dispatched troops to about 300,000 and drawing 2 divisions from them to the Indian side, then drawing 1 division from the Kwantung Army, splitting 1 division in the mainland and reorganizing it into 2 security divisions (3-unit system, relatively poor combat effectiveness), and then adding a flying division, barely meeting the minimum requirements of the Indian side.

In this way, the commander of the Chinese dispatch army, Okamura Ninji, quit, thinking that he had too few troops and too much territory, and he couldn't take care of it. Ishihara gritted his teeth and proposed to give up all the western territories on the basis of the Pinghan line, and even the big cities such as Taiyuan, Yichang, Luoyang, and Xiangyang were ready to follow the form of Nanchang and give them up, intending to sell these big cities separately: Taiyuan was sold to Yan Xishan, Yichang and Xiangyang were sold to Chongqing, and Luoyang was sold to the communists. even hinted that Chongqing, if Jiang can pay a lot of money, it is not impossible to talk about Wuhan.

Other small and medium-sized cities and county towns outside the four big cities were sold even more rapidly, and the territory controlled by the Jin system, the central system, and the Communist Party was expanded, especially in the Communist Party, and many base areas were directly connected into pieces, similar to the central base areas -- including half of Shaanxi, almost all of Shanxi (except for the large medium-sized cities and the railway line in Yanxi Shanshou), one-third of Henan (west), one-fifth of Hubei (northwest), such a giant mac covering an area of nearly one million square kilometers and a population of more than 30 million, also began to appear.

Even this kind of blood-selling and kidney-like support is only to increase the Indian army from about 300,000 to 400,000, which is far from the ideal force requirements of Yamashita Fengwen, who believes that if he wants to achieve a tight degree of control, it will be at least more than the number of Kwantung Army + North Korean Army, and the latter two have nearly 800,000 troops. The base camp really couldn't spare troops and materials to him, so he could only continue to mobilize on the one hand, planning to form 15 three-unit security divisions; On the one hand, he asked the navy for help, hoping that the navy could fund some, and it happened that the results of the break between Tsunoda and Nishimura were sent to Truk, so half of them were distributed to the army before they could be heated.

In this situation, it would be whimsical to continue to talk about going north (eating the Far East and Siberia) and going south (eating Australia and New Zealand), and although a group of Showa staff officers with high eyes above the top clamored to demand that the army continue to expand by 1 million, Ishihara and Horikichi thought it was impossible. It is easy to make up the head of the army to expand by 1 million, how to solve the equipment problem? If the army's military spending is too much to crowd out the navy's share, and the navy's strength cannot be improved, Japan will be in an extremely dangerous situation -- once the combined fleet is defeated, all the troops stationed abroad will be dead!

Although the members of the Joint Chiefs Association were not aware of Japan's internal predicament, they could instinctively perceive Japan's weakness from the ever-expanding territory of Japan -- too much territory, too long lines, and too much to defend!

The last topic discussed that night was rockets. Roosevelt was obviously also very interested in this high-speed, long-range weapon, and even geniusly foresaw that this weapon could be used to drop the "big bomb" developed by the Manhattan Project in the United States. In Roosevelt's view, he had never heard a report on the situation of rockets, and it was estimated that the level of American rockets was very bad, and this time there was no British technology to refer to, and the Americans had to study it independently, so he sold 2 billion in one breath - equivalent to the price of 20 Essex classes.

"In fact, we have research, and we were even a little stronger than the Germans at the beginning, but we were delayed by ourselves." Marshall smiled awkwardly, "We've found authority in this area, and he's willing to personally report to us and introduce the rocket." ”

Marshall didn't brag, the man he found was Robert Goddard, he began working on liquid rockets in 1920, on March 16, 1926, he successfully launched the world's first liquid rocket at Ward Farm, Massachusetts, in 1930, he studied rockets that flew at speeds of 800 km/h, and in the rocket launch tests of the following year, he first adopted the program control system that modern rockets still use today. At this time, Germany's first rocket had just been tested, and Braun, who was currently at the top of German rocket technology, had not even finished college at this time.

After introducing his research experience and academic progress, Goddard said: "It is with great regret that the President and the generals, I am sorry to point out that our country was two to three years ahead of the Germans in this field. The Great Depression and the system of our government's lack of attention to defense science and technology and the one-sided focus on the balance of funds undermined this system, and if the performance of the German rockets in London that you described is true, I expect that the gap between us and the Germans is now three to five years, and it will take three years at the earliest. And I'm afraid I won't see that day anymore. ”

"Why?"

"The doctor diagnosed me with throat cancer and probably had about a year to live."

"Oh God, that's unfortunate." Everyone exclaimed.

"I'm going to work hard for the rest of the year......," Goddard smiled, "and I would recommend someone else, I think he's capable of taking over the rest of the work." ”

"Who?"

"Professor von Kármán and his Chinese students."