On February 7, 1942, Lin Youde received the latest battle report on the plane.

"The two sides sink 3 cruisers on each other......" Lin Youde muttered as he handed the report to Ysera, who was traveling with him, "The British have paid their blood to send the transport ship to Cyprus." ”

"Probably the Americans put a lot of pressure on them."

"No, Churchill should have understood the value of the island of Cyprus now, and those element zeros are not so important, but the strange phenomenon on the island is the key to opening up a whole new field of scientific research."

Lin Youde leaned against the window and looked out, the waves of the Adriatic Sea could already be seen under the wings, and the plane was now flying along the coastline on the Mediterranean side of the Balkan Peninsula.

Lin Youde was overlooking the coastal scenery with a little fresh feelings, and the radioman spoke again: "I received a new message, very short, and the decoding has been completed: the US Grand Fleet is passing through the Guò Panama Canal." ”

"The Americans are going to join the bathtub fight." Lin Youde shook his head and continued to look at the Mediterranean Sea under his wings, "The entire Mediterranean Sea may become the largest ship cemetery in the twentieth century, no, maybe it will become the largest ship graveyard in the history of mankind." ”

"Is there any rumor about the Americans' battle plan, the Eye of Odin?" Ysera asked.

"Not yet," Lin Youde shrugged, "but it can be basically speculated what the Americans will do, their target is definitely Cyprus, for this they need a passage to Egypt to increase troops, it is unrealistic to go through the Indian Ocean, so they must seize the sea control in the Western Mediterranean." And to seize sea supremacy in the Western Mediterranean, they must obtain more air bases in the Western Mediterranean, Gibraltar alone will not work, so their options are very limited. ”

"Is it right to land in Morocco?"

"Yes, so we have sent a note to France reminding them to strengthen the coastal defenses of Morocco and Algeria." Isera was not very concerned in the military field, so this kind of contact between the German military and the French military was not particularly clear.

"But these are not the root causes, and the surest way to ensure the safety of the North African coast is to take Gibraltar. However, Gibraltar was easy to defend and difficult to attack, and it was the British who took a fancy to the big rocky mountain there and forced Spain to cede Gibraltar to them. ”

On the British-occupied peninsula of Gibraltar is a huge rock known as the Gibraltar Rock, which is said to be the symbol of the world border in Phoenician mythology and the real-life prototype of the Pillar of Hercules. The boulder occupies almost the middle of the peninsula, and there are many natural caves inside the rock, which the British converted into underground passages, ammunition depots, and barracks, and a large number of forts and cannons are set up throughout the rock.

The entire British-controlled peninsula of Gibraltar was a fortress.

It was almost impossible to land on the east coast of the Gibraltar peninsula, because the east coast was full of cliffs, and the west coast of Gibraltar faced a bay, less than 10 kilometers away from the Spanish mainland on the other side of the bay.

It was also very difficult to attack Gibraltar by land, as the Gibraltar Peninsula was connected to the Spanish mainland by only a narrow isthmus of Guò, on which a large number of reinforced concrete fortresses were built.

More crucially, Lin Youde was not sure to persuade Spain to allow the German army to attack Gibraltar through Spanish territory.

After Lin Youde told Isera about this, Isera sighed: "So, it will be very difficult to take Gibraltar itself?" ”

"Yes, unless you use a similar tactic to capture it from within, the price of capturing it is too great."

"Then Dad, you just said that you want to cure the root cause?"

"Didn't I say that with a strategy similar to the Trojan Horse scheme, you can capture Gibraltar? The question now is whether we can prepare for action fast enough. If we can't take this fortress before the Anglo-American forces gather in Gibraltar, we will have to engage in ground warfare with the regular forces of the American-British forces in Morocco and Algeria. Fortunately, our troop carriers are safer than those of Britain and the United States, and they still have some advantages. ”

"The Americans already have a group army headquarters in Britain, as well as three full-strength ground troops, plus the British and Canadian troops assembled in Britain, and they can immediately get their hands on two or three hundred thousand troops." Ysera was able to tell the exact information about the American forces in Britain from memory alone, "if they were going to attack Morocco and Algeria......

"I think they'll be doing it this summer at the latest. If it is early, it may be in March or April. ”

Organizing a landing operation required a lot of preparation, but since the United States entered the war, the British army had been seeking to return to the European continent, so it had been preparing under very difficult conditions. In the second half of the 41st year, after the British supply situation began to improve, the British continued to accelerate their preparations for the landing operation.

In other words, it is entirely possible that the Anglo-American coalition will launch a powerful amphibious assault in Morocco and Algeria in March and April.

Especially given that the main French forces were now concentrated in Libya and were busy attacking Egypt, the Anglo-American commanders might risk launching an operation before all preparations were fully completed, in order to land before the French could consolidate the defenses of North Africa.

Although Lin Youde's infiltration of Gibraltar has been carried out since the start of the war with the British, the current degree of completion is still a little far from the "capture of the fortress from the inside".

In other words, ground warfare with the Anglo-American coalition in the barren and backward lands of Morocco and Algeria was probably unavoidable.

Lin Youde was well aware of this, and had ordered the transfer of troops to Sicily, not directly to Morocco, Algeria, or Tunisia, because there were people in the French government and parliament who insisted that the French could defend their colonies and protested against the presence of German troops.

Lin Youde had just called Xia Li to tell her about this before getting on the plane, hoping that she would do her best to deal with the opposition within the French government, so that the German army could directly enter Morocco and other French North African colonies to strengthen local defenses.

"The French really like to mess with us." Ysera said dissatisfied, "Why didn't you annex it in the first place?" ”

"In the event of the annexation of France, can you still count on the French to give you their lives at the front? Now the French army is at least on our side, and regardless of their combat effectiveness, their very existence has to make Churchill and Charlotte have a lot of concerns. ”

As soon as Lin Youde finished speaking, the driver's voice came from the loudspeaker: "We can already see the island of Cyprus, Your Excellency." ”

Lin Youde and Isera hurriedly rushed to the window together and looked at the sea.

"Looks ...... There's nothing out of the ordinary. Ysera commented.

"yes, it's just an ordinary island." Lin Youde echoed, "But it is indeed the fuse of the future fierce battle in the Mediterranean." ”