.    Chapter 615 The situation in North Africa

Standing in the corridor, Lieutenant Chuck waited patiently, and this wait took about an hour, and then Colonel Stuffenberg walked out of the office.

The briefcase he held in his hand, which was originally stuffed, looked deflated, and behind him, followed several senior officers, everyone sent the colonel out of the headquarters and watched the colonel get on the car with a Bulgarian license plate.

Colonel Stuffenberg told Lieutenant Chuck that he had to return to Plovdiv Airport as soon as possible because he had to rush back to Berlin tonight, so Lieutenant Chuck had to prepare for the night, and that night he did not plan to return from Plovdiv immediately, so he stayed in the local hotel for one night and returned to Istanbul the next morning.

However, shortly after the car drove out of the headquarters, the loud sound of large-caliber shells came from the sky.

"Swoosh"

"boom"

"Swoosh"

"boom"

The shells fell into the city and exploded, causing a lot of dust to spread, and smoke filled the streets.

"Do Americans often fire here?" Colonel Stuffenberg asked Ensign Chuck.

Chuck nodded, raised his left hand and pointed to the empty houses near the street.

"Since the Americans occupied Yusqudar City on the other side of the Bosphorus, they often bombarded the city through the strait. At the beginning, they only attacked the suburbs, and later they began to bombard the city. They not only fired real ammunition, but also promoted bombs. They used leaflets to tell the residents of the city that they were about to launch a large-scale shelling on Istanbul and warned the civilians in the city to evacuate as soon as possible. Since then, many Istanbul citizens have begun to escape from the city, and the city has become increasingly empty, and there are not many civilians who dare to live in the city now."

"Is our artillery counterattack effective?" Colonel Stuffenberg asked again.

"It's useless. The Americans used train guns with a long range. In addition, the Chinese Air Force has air supremacy, so we don't know where to launch artillery attacks, so we can only be beaten. The counterattack has no effect unless our Air Force can control air supremacy, but this is obviously impossible in the short term. Although our fighter performance is better than that of the US Air Force, it is at an absolute disadvantage in terms of quantity." Second Lieutenant Chuck explained in detail to Mr. Colonel.

"So, what about v1 and v2 missiles? Can't it bombard Ankara?"

"The error of missiles is too large. Usually, they are all residential houses, which are difficult to hit military targets. Moreover, the US Air Force continues to harass missile positions, and the missile's counterattack has no obvious effect."

At this time, an explosion came from the sky. Colonel Stoffenberg saw several balls of smoke bursting out from the sky not far away, and then many pieces of paper fell from the explosion. It was obviously the propaganda bombs that Second Lieutenant Chuck mentioned that the Chinese artillery fired.

Out of curiosity, Colonel Stuffenberg ordered Lieutenant Chuck to stop the car, picked up some flyers on the side of the road, and looked carefully. The content not only surprised him, but also surprised Lieutenant Chuck.

Because the leaflets sprinkled on the shells today were very eye-catching German, Turkish told everyone in the city that if the German army and Turkish army did not give up Istanbul and the "Manstein Line" as soon as possible, then the Allied forces will carry out a nuclear strike on the German assembly site behind the "Manstein Line".

This situation shocked Stuffenberg very much. It is hard to imagine what kind of dramatic changes would happen if the team really used atomic weapons against the Southern Army. In the face of the atomic bomb, the 1.5 million Axis powers* army was nothing at all, and the "Manstein Line of Defense" would also become a paper line of defense.

Since the summer of 1945, Germany's situation has taken a sharp turn, turning against China, Japan has turned to the Allies, and defeating Germany has no ally in the international arena, even if it still has a huge army.

All the Germans vaguely realized that victory was leaving them, and dissatisfied voices began to appear in the army, and even a middle-level officer assassination against Hitler broke out.

Although it was suppressed in the end, the bad influence had already been caused. Everyone knows that Hitler's situation is over.

As for the Italians, God knows what role they can do besides dragging their backs, and at most they can only expect their surrender to be slower.

In northern Africa, the clear sky is without wind, the visibility is good, the sky is blue and the sea is blue.

This is the city of Suez in Egypt. The famous Suez Canal is also named after this coastal town. It is located in the north of the Gulf of Suez and the south of the Suez Canal. It actually guards the transportation critical moment between the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, and has equal strategic significance as the Port of Said at the northern end of the Suez Canal.

During peacetime, Suez City is a busy port. Vessels preparing to enter the sea are moored at the port outside the city, and form formations through the canal within a specified time.

At this time, Suez City is the starting station of the fleet, and Said Port is responsible for receiving the fleet. If the fleet enters the Red Sea from the Mediterranean, then Said Port is the starting station of the fleet, and Suez City is responsible for receiving the fleet. This is how the Suez Canal is navigated.

Under normal circumstances, it is impossible for you to see a fleet of north-south sailing appear in the canal channel at the same time, because the canal channel is not very wide now. Only by arranging the navigation plans in this way can the ships not collide with each other due to wake interference.

Since the outbreak of the war, the maritime traffic of the Suez Canal has been directly affected. During the Sino-British War, the maritime shipping of the Suez Canal and the Red Sea was threatened by submarines and mines between the warring parties.

When Germany and the Asian League fell into war, the traffic of the Suez Canal was completely cut off. The German army occupied the west bank of the canal, while the Asian League troops controlled the east bank of the canal. The two sides confronted each other through the canal, and artillery and air combat occurred from time to time. Under this situation, the Suez Canal became a dangerous waterway.

No normal-minded merchant ship captain would drive the ship to the canal area and be bombed at this time. The once busy golden waterway became the battlefield for the special forces of the United States and Germany, and infiltration and harassment wars often broke out in the canal area.

Since the war with China, the US military has quickly formed special forces. In fact, this is not difficult. It is just to assemble elite soldiers, allocate the best weapons, and formulate tactics by a dedicated staff team.

Americans are not stupid when learning about war. The only disadvantage is that the special forces were established late. Both tactical literacy and weapons and equipment were far from China and Germany.

Fortunately, Germany did not rule Egypt for too long. After the Asian League's army drove all German troops out of Egypt, the restoration of navigation in the Suez Canal was already placed in the strategic plan of the Allied Command.

After all, this canal has great strategic significance. Whoever controls the canal will control the sea power of the Mediterranean. Now that the canal has been completely controlled by the Allied forces, the Allied warships and transport fleets can come from the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea without any obstacles and enter the sea through the canal.

In fact, from the moment the American tank troops rolled over the sand beside the canal, the American engineering troops and engineers had already begun to carry out preliminary cleaning of the Suez Canal, focusing on the ships sunk on the waterway.

Some of these ships were sunk in the war, while others were deliberately sunk and blocked the waterway after the German army realized that Egypt could no longer defend it. The technicians sent by the US military must find ways to salvage the ships, or simply cut them underwater, dismantle the ships, and then lift them out of the water respectively.

In addition, there are some mines laid by the German army on the waterway, and anchor mines are easier to remove. The key is those magnetic mines that sink to the bottom. In order to eliminate these dangerous lurkers, the US Navy's mine demining forces have been busy on the Suez Canal for a whole month.

These biggest obstacles that affect the safety of the waterway were basically cleared. Although the US Navy participated in the later cleaning work, they were only supporting roles, and the protagonists were the Chinese Navy's domestic mine-deletion ships and mine-deletion equipment.

After a month of hard work, the Suez Canal can finally be restored to navigation. Today is the first day of the canal's navigation. In order to commemorate this historic and strategic day, all heads of state participating in the Cairo Allied Summit will personally attend today's navigation ceremony.

At nine o'clock in the morning, the heads of state had arrived in Suez City, sitting in the sunshade on the high ground on the west bank of the canal, witnessing the arrival of this historical moment.

At 9:10 a.m., the Egyptian president, who presided over the navigation ceremony, finally raised the signal gun and sent out a "allow navigation". Then, all ships that had already formed sounded their whistles and slowly sailed towards the Suez Canal waterway from the northern entrance of the Gulf of Suez toward the Suez Canal.

The leading one was the naval fleet of all countries, and they passed through the viewing platform in alphabetical order of the country's name. The officers and sailors on the warship who did not need to be on duty were all wearing military dresses, standing on the port side of the warship, and saluting the heads of state on the high ground on the west bank of the canal.

This is of course also a ship-reading style by the Allies. In addition to showing people of allies the determination and strength to seize the Mediterranean sea control power, it also shows off its military power to the Axis Group. Therefore, the warships appearing on the canal are basically very combat-capable, and the aircraft carriers of various countries are naturally the most strategic deterrent.

It is actually not very accurate to say that it is an aircraft carrier of "various countries". The aircraft carriers that appeared on the scene are the six aircraft carriers of the United States, Britain and France. Among them, there are only two large aircraft carriers, one from Britain and the United States, and the other four aircraft carriers are small escort aircraft carriers, belonging to the British Navy and the French Navy.

Among the aircraft carriers of various countries, the only one that can take off jet fighters is the US Navy's "New Lexington" aircraft carrier, which will also serve as the main air defense force after the Allied special mixed aircraft carrier fleet enters the Eastern Mediterranean.

The fleet's primary task is to assist the Allies in landing on Cyprus. If possible, Crete may also become a target of the fleet's attack. The fleet's main task is to test the naval strength of the Axis powers deployed in the Eastern Mediterranean waters for subsequent Allied fleets and distract the Axis navy from the Atlantic Ocean.

After the six aircraft carriers led a large number of escort fleets through the viewing platform, it was the auxiliary ships' turn to take action. Among these auxiliary ships, two strange warships aroused the great interest of the heads of state and military experts present. The two warships were two new cruisers of the US Navy, one named "Astoria" and the other named "Minneapolis".

According to the visual observations of military experts from various countries on site, the "Astoria" and "Minneapolis" should be cruisers of the same class. Judging from the hull length and freeboard height and other dimensions, the full load displacement of this class of cruisers should be between 7,000 tons and 9,000 tons.

Judging from the tonnage, they are not very large warships, but what is surprising is that the firepower equipment and layout of these two new cruisers are fundamentally different from those of the usual cruisers.

You can understand by looking at the number of naval guns on their decks. Whether it is "Astoria" or "Minneapolis", there are only a few naval guns that can be seen on their decks. One of the main guns is located on the middle line of the bow deck and the caliber will not exceed 150 mm.

The other several naval guns had obvious caliber anti-aircraft guns, and were all arranged on both sides of the fore deck of the warship. The gun positions extended at most under the bridge of the warship's entire rear deck, but there was no gun visible on the entire warship's rear deck.

However, the empty warship rear deck was not empty either. There were four huge strange box-like objects arranged there, fixed on the rear deck by solid support poles at a forty-five degrees, and divided into two groups, one front and one back, and both formed a cross-layout of one high and one low.

If you can look over from the side and back of the sky, you can see that there are two huge objects similar to "x" shapes arranged on the rear deck of the warship.

As soon as these two strange-shaped warships appeared, they immediately caused whispers from the audience. They began to guess the use of these two strange-shaped warships, and intuition told military experts that the "Astoria" and "Minneapolis" should be combat ships.

Moreover, the four huge box-shaped objects must be their main weapons for combat, but it is not easy to guess what is contained in the box.

However, considering China's recent leading position in missile technology and the United States has just fought with China, many diplomats speculated that the four huge box-shaped objects were probably also guided rockets. As for whether they were used to fight warships or land targets, everyone was out of reach.

In fact, these people are right. Since the United States suffered a great loss from missiles in the war with China, it has gradually begun to pay attention to the role of this long-range strike weapon.

A huge scientific research institution was even specially established, spending almost the same amount of funds as atomic bomb research, in order to take this weapon into your hands as soon as possible.

Finally, a private company provided weapon guidance technology to the US side, although it had a range of less than 80 kilometers and was much smaller than that of Chinese missiles.

But in this way, this incident still made the US military happy, and even urged Congress to increase research funds and invest vigorously to develop such a future weapon with unlimited prospects.

As for the weapons manufacturing company, its name is Donald Industrial, no one will notice that the accounting manager in this company is Chinese.

Let us look back to North Africa, on both sides of the Suez Canal in Egypt.

Politicians and military strategists from all over the world were sitting on the viewing platform guessing what kind of combat ships "Astoria" and "Minneapolis" were, but Yao Liang, the initiator of all this, was sitting on the viewing platform and secretly feeling proud.

He came with his boss Reggie Donald. On the other hand, several accompanying officials held their heads and chests, and they were proud and proud.

You should know that the United States is the third country in the world to master missile technology, and some technology levels have even reached or exceeded Germany's level. Of course, it is still far from enough compared to China, but this has already satisfied the US military.

In fact, the "Astoria" and "Minneapolis" are indeed the latest cruisers of the US Navy. "Astoria" is the first ship, so this class of ship is the "Astoria" class cruiser.

The "Astoria" class is not the artillery cruiser of the past, but the concept "missile cruiser" of the concept, the four objects that look like large iron boxes are the missile storage launch tubes. Each launch tube is equipped with a "Swordfish" anti-ship missile, which means that each "Astoria" class missile cruiser can carry four powerful anti-ship missiles for combat.

The "Swordfish" anti-ship missile is a flight missile that guides attacks by radar and uses a semi-armor-piercing warhead. Each missile weighs as much as half a ton of warheads, which is very powerful.

Even if a battleship is hit by a "swordfish" at a key position, it will immediately lose its combat effectiveness. The missile is driven by a turbojet engine, but during the takeoff stage, it depends on a rocket engine to push the missile out of the launch cylinder.

After that, the rocket booster automatically fell off, and then the main engine that had been started immediately increased its power. At this time, the missile officially entered the cruise state and flew to the target under the guidance of the radar.

At present, there are two models of the "Swordfish" anti-ship missile, namely the sea-based and land-based. The land-based equipment is equipped with the naval coastal defense forces. Relying on heavy multi-wheel trailers, it can be deployed on the coastline to strike near-shore targets, or used to block narrow waterways. The sea-based missile is equipped on the "Typhoon" class cruiser.

The "Astoria" class cruiser is also the first main battleship in US history to use missiles as the main combat weapon. It can provide aircraft carrier combat groups with medium and long-range anti-ship combat support tasks.

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