Chapter 343

Looking at the information in his hand, Churchill felt that after the arrival of God in 1938, he had no pity on the poor country of the British Empire.

Chamberlain left, leaving Churchill with an unprecedented mess. Although the king of England and other ministers were extremely reluctant to give power to such a former Admiralty who made the Navy lose again and again, but no one else dared to take over the present chaos, so they had to let Churchill take over the post of Prime Minister of the British Empire.

But now Britain is like a giant who has been ill for a long time. The current bad state can not be completely cured by changing a leading group. When Churchill took office, he knew that the problems he had to face were countless times larger than those that the Admiral had to face.

First of all, the most deadly is still the threat of submarines in the Atlantic Ocean. Almost every few hours, he receives news that a transport ship has been sunk by a German submarine. And recently, the news has become increasingly dense and deadly.

German submarines are being deployed on a large scale, and they have adopted a helpless attack method. These submarines are moving in groups in the vast Atlantic Ocean, chasing their prey like wolves. All transport fleets found will be attacked by German submarines at night, even those escorted by destroyers.

In just a few days, Britain has lost three destroyers leased from the United States and more than a dozen transport ships. These days, the sinking record every day is refreshing, almost to the point of collapse. Compared with the German loss, it is negligible. The British loss of hundreds of thousands of tons of transport ships and destroyers in exchange for the poor performance of sinking a German submarine. The most depressing thing for Churchill was that the number of German submarines was at least three times more than the British navy had previously estimated.

Before the war, the British Navy evaluated the German Navy. They thought that the German Navy had no more than 50 submarines, and most of them were small tonnage offshore models. But in fact, the German Navy had 146 submarines at the beginning of the war, and more than 90% of them were large tonnage offshore attack models.

These submarines do not include 10 Dutch Navy submarines, 2 Danish submarines and 3 Polish submarines. These submarines are designed and manufactured by German designers, so the German Navy is familiar with them. So in fact, the total number of submarines that the German army can use now is a staggering 151, far less than the British estimate.

Of course, when Churchill was dealing with the German submarines, he had to deal with the pressure of the British fleet caused by the German high seas fleet moored in the port of William. That's actually four fleet aircraft carriers. The aircraft carriers and battleships that Britain can use now are just barely competing with this German fleet.

There was no way to deal with the threat of the sea, and the rout on land made Churchill miserable. Lord Goth had submitted his resignation several times, but because there was no suitable person, Churchill had not replied to these resignation letters.

The British and French troops have retreated all the way, and now they have lost all of Belgium and are surrounded in the narrow Dunkirk area. Hundreds of thousands of troops have no food, no supplies, no ammunition and fuel, let alone break through the encirclement, it is difficult to even stick to it.

One hundred and fifty thousand British Expeditionary troops were trapped in the defense line, and the telegram urging for supplies every day made Churchill feel suicidal. From food to clothing to shells and weapons, from oil to accessories to replenishment, it seems that the British and French allied forces have become destitute overnight.

What Churchill didn't understand was that in the northern part of France, all the German armored forces were not involved in the campaign of encircling and annihilating Dunkirk, but the German forces were still unstoppable. The French and British forces were rarely able to stop the German attacks in all directions for even a few hours.

So Churchill began to organize the navy to carry out "generator operation" to rush the British Expeditionary Forces back to the British mainland. But the plan was full of troubles at the beginning. First, the Admiralty claimed that he could not guarantee the control of the sea near the English Channel. Then, the British air force declared that it was unable to cover the operation. It seemed that all efforts would be wasted, and the British Empire could only watch its troops become German prisoners.

Of course, if the navy is inferior, but it still has the strength of World War I, and the army is near collapse, but it is far away, then Churchill can't bear the pain of the air force.

The hurricane fighter has just been put into service. The performance gap of the original fighter has been made up by British engineers. Now it is a very good stage. However, it happened at this time that German strategic bombers attacked London.

The hurricane fighter, originally thought to be very advanced in performance, exposed many fatal problems in the process of intercepting new German strategic bombers, which also made this interception a failure. The king was angry and asked Churchill, who had just become prime minister, about the air defense issue near London. He made Churchill, who had been in office for only a few days, lose face.

But it's not just a matter of losing face. Britain's actual air defense preparations are really backward. Churchill, who got the report, had a headache because of the lack of local air defense major general.

The first is the fact that the British air defense forces are backward in equipment. It seems that most of the troops are using the tactics and equipment of World War I, relying on hearing devices and visual observation to guard the sky.

Secondly, the anti-aircraft guns are old and backward. Most of the anti-aircraft gun troops are equipped with backward weapons, with slow firing speed and limited firing height. There is no way to deal with the new German strategic bombers. Of course, a small number of troops equipped with bofos anti-aircraft guns can make up for the deficiency of low altitude defense, but in the high altitude defense system, Britain is like a woman without clothes. Obviously, it is not very realistic to replace a large number of anti-aircraft guns in a short time to strengthen its own anti-aircraft level. Churchill also had to pay attention to the development of fighters that can advance, attack and retreat. After all, the improvement of the fighter has been completed because of the needs of the war, but the firepower of this new hurricane fighter still needs to be further improved. So Churchill almost immediately ordered the relevant enterprises and design departments to reduce the firepower of Hurricane fighters from eight to seven. 7 mm machine guns, reinforced to 4 20 mm machine guns. 10000 anti-aircraft guns were ordered to strengthen the air defense force in the southern part of Britain, and 2000 hurricane fighters were purchased to fill the technical gap with the German air force. Immediately research and develop the next generation fighter, and require the performance to surpass the existing fw-190d fighter in Germany... Churchill issued a series of orders that he thought impossible to complete. But there are still two problems that he needs to solve urgently. These two problems can not be solved by delay. The first problem is how to rapidly improve the air defense capability over the British capital; The second problem is how to stabilize the raw material transportation route and increase the output of fighter. He worried that once German bombers appeared on a large scale and began to threaten Britain's industrial production areas, he would not have enough fighters in his hands to meet these terrible "aerial bomb dropping machines". What's more, if Britain's industrial areas and the big city London become targets at the same time, he will have to disperse his already weak fighter forces to deal with the overwhelming German bomber forces at the same time. In this way, Britain will be in a completely disadvantageous situation, even the replenishment of the Navy will be affected. Entering this vicious circle, Britain will be completely finished: transportation can not meet the needs of industrial production, industry can not meet the needs of war losses, and war losses make the army even more unable to guarantee the smooth transportation routes. If Britain really enters this circle, it is hard to say whether it can keep the country, let alone surrender justice. So today, at this very moment, Churchill had to send a telegram to US President Roosevelt again, asking the United States to continue to provide British war supplies, including 1000 P-36 fighters, as well as 50 destroyers and 20 cruisers. And at the end of the telegram, he indicated that at least 400 P-36 fighters and 20 destroyers should be transported to Britain first - so that Britain could carry out "operation generator" and withdraw 150000 troops to resist the possible cross sea invasion of Germany. However, Churchill was disappointed by the US response. Roosevelt claimed that he could only provide 200 P-36 fighters and 12 destroyers for Britain. Other weapons and equipment will have to wait for the United States to expand production capacity. These promises are far from enough, and Britain has to face the situation on its own. Now he has to fulfill his promise, because in his speech to deal with the German bombing of London, he declared that Britain would certainly respond to the German bombing. In his speech, he declared that every bomb that Britain suffered from Germany would return hundreds of bombs to Germany! However, it was not until the actual operation that it was discovered that the British bomber that could fly to Berlin was still on the drawing. However, the situation no longer allowed him to think more about it. He decided to listen to the suggestions of several members of Congress and ministers, and ordered the air force to take off bombers. Without the escort of suitable fighter planes, he bombed the strategic target of Germany, Port William, and made due response to the German bombing of Berlin. Churchill sat behind his desk, grabbed the telephone in the corner of the desk, and gave the plan he had ordered: "hello? Air force command? I'm Prime Minister Winston? Churchill! Take off the bombers, attack the German ports, retaliation begins immediately