After dealing with France, whether to continue to attack Britain or turn to the Middle East and attack India. The choice was a matter of contention between the German General Staff and the Navy, Army and Air Force, as the risks and benefits were equally inseparable. If the defeat of France gave the Allies a great advantage in the war against the Entente, then after the defeat of Britain, it is not an exaggeration to say that the Allies won the war, for the simple reason that the British collapsed, and the United States and China still planned to land in Europe? Germany itself will be safe, and no one will be able to threaten the Allies' homeland! If it continues, it will be a long war of attrition, which is not a good choice for both China and the United States. Even if the Allies were also helpless against China and the United States, then at least the latter would be able to recognize German hegemony in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, and even South Asia! Moreover, Britain can take advantage of the situation to obtain India through negotiations, so why bother to let millions of troops rush from Europe to South Asia?

And if you want to occupy LinkedIn, then the first to bear the brunt is the navy and air force, which has little to do with land-based, according to the German Army, as long as you can send us to the British Isles, then you don't have to worry about the rest. For fifteen days, everyone celebrated the victory in London. But how to send the army over is really not an easy problem to solve. In fact, there are quite a few issues involved. First of all, the air force was faced with many difficult problems, and Richthofen did not think about capturing England, on the contrary, he and other generals repeatedly deduced this problem.

At the beginning of the setting, the Luftwaffe believed that the British Air Force would lose about 3% of the front-line troops in the French Campaign, and this inference was calculated according to the air losses and total air force of the British and German sides in the Iranian Campaign. When the available strength of the British Air Force fell to 60%, the situation between the two sides changed fundamentally, and there was a huge gap in the front-line strength of the British Air Force, which led to a total collapse.

Taking this data as a critical point, if the Allies finally crush the Allies on the battlefield in France in terms of air force. Of course, considering that it is impossible for the British Air Force to send all its aircraft to France, when the situation of the air battle in France is reversed, the loss of the British Air Force should be about 3%. If the British had withdrawn earlier, the loss rate would have been even lower. In other words, the Allied Air Force will face another 70% or so of the British Royal Air Force in the English Channel!

When the battlefield shifted from mainland France to the English Channel and the British Isles, the situation on both sides changed dramatically. According to the Luftwaffe's assumption, it would take about two months after the end of the French campaign for the Luftwaffe to complete its campaign preparations for the British campaign. This is not to say that the Luftwaffe was grinding. Rather, it was because of the thousands of planes that entered France, and the need to repair war-damaged airfields and air defense designs, plus the need to stock up on fuel and spare parts for air campaigns. There are also a large number of technical and maintenance personnel to enter France to arrange their lives. It would be nice if this series of preparations could be solved in 2 months! And these two months were the key to the British recuperating and regaining their strength. The Germans' estimate of the production capacity of British wartime fighters is about 1,000 fighters per month, which is still low in Xu Jie's opinion, after all, the peak production capacity of the British 2 fighters is 26,000 aircraft, including many twin-engine and four-engine bombers, if the British concentrate on producing fighters, then more than 1,500 a month should not be a problem. However, even the speed of replenishing 1,000 fighters per month was enough to put the Luftwaffe under great pressure!

What is the concept of 1000 fighters? In a month, the British will be able to replenish the size of an air army. This time, the Germans, as the attackers, had to cross the English Channel and fight the enemy over the British mainland. After obtaining the forward base in mainland France, the problem of short legs of BF109 and FW190 fighters has been solved to a certain extent, but the attack range is still not rich, after all, you are going with the auxiliary fuel tank, and once you encounter an interception, you have to throw away the auxiliary fuel tank. Then, with the FW190 fuselage only 624L fuel weighing only half a ton and the opponent's grappling PK, the actual range will definitely be greatly reduced, after all, the theoretical range is one aspect, and the fierce battle in the battle is another. So the end result was that it was already good for the Luftwaffe to provide escort for bomber groups in southern Britain.

The British were not stupid, they had long considered the possibility of strategic bombing of Britain by the Germans, so they decisively moved important military departments and factories to the north. If the Luftwaffe wanted to bomb, then the strategic bombers had to be prepared to go alone, look at the losses of bombers on the battlefields of Italy and Iran, and think about the strength of British aviation. Richthofen shuddered! It would be a long and brutal process to destroy the industrial base of the British.

Someone may have said that we don't stretch our hands so far and aim directly at the English Channel and the landing site. Isn't it okay to cover the army to go ashore and then hand over the rest of the tasks to the army? Richthofen was right to think about it, but if it didn't strike at the depth of the opponent, then the British Air Force would be able to get a steady stream of supplies. And the Americans can also transport planes and pilots for Britain from the northern ports of the United Kingdom. Then the battle will inevitably be imported into a war of attrition, and the Germans will inevitably not be able to take advantage of the battle on the home turf of the British, who have a well-developed radar network, anti-aircraft artillery positions, anti-aircraft guard posts, and numerous bases. What do the Germans have? Maybe the number of planes is the advantage, but the pilot loses one less and one less, but there is no possibility of running back, and he can't swim across the English Channel!

So in the end, the Luftwaffe was not optimistic about the results of the British air battle. They even planned to forcibly launch a landing operation without completely gaining air supremacy, the Luftwaffe had the courage to make a desperate bet, but the German Army refused to accept it, after all, there is no cover at sea, there are hundreds or thousands of people on a ship, and one bomb can solve it! The Air Force thought it would be good if they could suppress the British Air Force, and if they wanted to completely defeat their opponents, they had to cut off British sea transportation. And that's up to the Navy.

The Luftwaffe's assessment of the situation was still very correct, and if the British had enough raw materials and the Americans to attack, it would be difficult for the air force to achieve an overwhelming victory, so. If you want to solve the problem of an island country like Britain, the most important thing is sea dominance. So the Navy still has a say in this regard. While the Air Force was deducing the rest of the war, the Navy was also considering the possibility of cutting off the North Atlantic route after the end of the French campaign. Conservative in relation to the Air Force. The Navy is still very confident.

The situation was constantly changing, and although at first the German Navy did not think that the pressure on the Navy would be so great until the end of the French Campaign, as the center of gravity of the French Campaign was tilted towards the Mediterranean, the German Navy had to sail out of the Strait of Gibraltar after completing the landing in southern France. Look for opportunities to inflict heavy damage on the American and British fleets in the oceans. This time the German Navy had the advantage in the situation, Germany did not rely on sea transport, and the United States, Britain and France had to devote a considerable part of their forces to maintaining the security of the North Atlantic routes. German submarines, aviation cruisers, and camouflaged assault ships would strike at the vessels on which the Allies depended. And when the Americans had to disperse their forces to drive out and besiege the attack ships at sea, the German Navy would concentrate its forces on ambushing the American and British fleets far from the mainland.

Relying on the superiority of twin-engine aircraft, the weaker the land-based support, the more obvious the perceived advantage and attack advantage that the German aircraft carrier has. Coupled with the fact that the German Navy had access to shore-based aircraft support in the Azores, the German Navy believed that they would gain an advantage in the early stages of the war, especially if the large maritime patrol aircraft of the United States and Britain were not in place. In order to ensure the implementation of the naval plan, the German top management, after coordination, increased the number of naval supplies and financial support, although the new aircraft carrier construction plan was launched. The first batch of aircraft carriers to be built are still two Moltke-class armored aircraft carriers and one Europa-class aircraft carrier, plus three 18,000-ton lightly protected medium fleet aircraft carriers, but with full material and financial support, these six aircraft carriers can be guaranteed to be put into active service within three years and equipped with the required carrier-based aircraft.

In order to cooperate with the actions of the German Navy, the Austro-Hungarian Navy also appropriately increased naval expenditures. In the next three years, Austria-Hungary will complete two armored aircraft carriers of more than 25,000 tons, and another will be put into active service within six months after the start of the war. As a result, the size of the Allied aircraft carrier fleet will reach more than 18 ships! In the face of such a powerful force, Count Spee felt a little fluttering! He believed that even if he collided head-on with the US and British fleets from the beginning, he would definitely not suffer.

And is that actually the case? The Germans obviously underestimated the shipbuilding capabilities of the United States and Britain, and when the Germans launched a large number of new warships, the United States and Britain were not idle. Especially the United States! As the current leader of the Entente. At the critical moment, the Americans are absolutely able to stand up! Long before the start of the Italian War, the Americans had 2 large Yorktown aircraft carriers (converted from two Lexington-class battlecruisers) and 2 Wasp-class aircraft carriers (the Wasp-class aircraft carrier in this plane has a displacement of 25,000 tons, and other data is similar to the historical Yorktown-class aircraft carriers, but the level of protection is close to the historical Japanese aircraft carrier Shozuru. Subsequently, three medium-fleet aircraft carriers with a claimed displacement of 15,000 tons were built using the remaining tonnage of the treaty. USS Raider, USS Langley, USS Saratoga, so that the Americans had 7 fleet carriers during the treaty period.

After completing seven aircraft carriers, the Essex-class aircraft carriers that the Americans started construction can be described as dumplings, in fact, when the Germans flaunted their military strength and entered the Atlantic, the Americans had more aircraft carriers than the Germans. At that time, the No. 2 ship of the Essex had just been commissioned, and during the Iran War, the United States had another 1 Essex completed and put into service, and now the Americans have 10 fleet aircraft carriers, and there are as many as 6 Essex-class aircraft carriers working on the slipway!

According to the speed of American shipbuilding, even if new fleet aircraft carriers are not started in the next two years, the total number of aircraft carriers that the United States can put into war time will be as many as 16! With this amount alone, the Americans can already fight with Germany and Austria on paper! Of course, in fact, Germany can also save some aircraft carriers from Turkey and Spain. But even so, once the war began, the Allied fleet still had some disadvantages in terms of the number of aircraft carriers in the face of the fleets of Britain, the United States and France. And when the Germans gained insight into the Americans' shipbuilding capabilities and speed, they added new supercarriers in an attempt to make up for the lack of quantity through quality. Of course, this level is not Caesar's. However, after realizing that the United States and Britain and other countries were fully exerting their strength, the Allied Congress was thrown further and further away, and Germany hastily launched World War II without even waiting for the arrival of three years of preparations. The horror of the production capacity of the Americans can also be seen from this aspect!

What is even more surprising to the Germans is that although the Americans mass-produced the Essex-class aircraft carriers, they are also very interested in larger aircraft carriers. In the eyes of the Americans, Essex, although classic, still cannot be compared with the Europa-class aircraft carriers of the Germans. The US Navy has also done internal research on the Germans' design and construction of such a huge aircraft carrier, and they are also considering why the Germans had to build such a huge aircraft carrier. First of all, the Moltke-class aircraft carriers of the Germans are the same as the American aircraft carriers, and if the aircraft volume and take-off performance of the aircraft on both sides are similar, then the Moltke-class aircraft carriers and the American aircraft carriers should have the same aircraft capacity. In other words, the number of aircraft that can operate on an aircraft carrier of nearly 30,000 tons is about 100. (including standby unit)

Eggs will not be put in one basket, and the Americans are confident that the Germans will understand the problem. Therefore, the construction of new large aircraft carriers will definitely not be a simple increase in the number of carrier-based aircraft. So what is their purpose? At this moment, the Americans thought about the possible use of twin-engine aircraft by the Germans, but at the last moment, at the moment of approaching the truth, the Americans' train of thought suddenly diverged. That is, do they think that the Germans are planning to make a three-in-one aircraft of air combat, bombing and lightning strikes? Americans think it's quite possible!

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