The Rise of the Third Reich

"It's 0:30 now. The Western, Northern and Southwestern Fronts should have started shelling!"

In the suburbs of Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, Stalin's hometown, the headquarters building of a large-scale division-level military airport was also brightly lit at this time. Major General Alexander Yevgenyevich Golovanov, commander of the 8th Long-Range Bomber Aviation Division of the Soviet Red Air Force, was speaking to a colonel of the US Army Air Force in unfamiliar English.

The colonel had a square Slavic face and a burly figure, and looked like an air force general. He was Curtis Emerson LeMay, commander of the 305th Bomber Wing of the United States.

According to Stalin's request, starting in April 1942, some wings of the 8th Air Force of the United States began to secretly enter the Soviet Union. By the end of May, a total of 6 bomber wings, including the 91st, 92nd, 93rd, 100th, 303rd, and 305th, had entered.

The organization of the US bomber wing is different from that of Germany, Britain, and the Soviet Union. There are not several bomber squadrons under one bomber wing, but functional squadrons under the wing, such as combat squadrons, ground crew squadrons, etc. Under a wing, there is only one combat squadron, and there are usually 3-5 flight squadrons under the combat squadron, and a squadron usually has 22-24 aircraft.

The 305th Wing of Colonel LeMay just completed training in the United States not long ago, and the organization is also very sufficient, with a total of 4 squadrons and 88 B-17 bombers.

The 305th Wing is now stationed at this airport on the outskirts of Tbilisi. The 88 B-17s belong to the 80 Pei-8 heavy bombers of the 8th Long-Range Bomber Aviation Division of the Soviet Air Force, which are neatly arranged on the super-large apron of the airport and are ready to take off!

"We will be dispatched in an hour and a half," Colonel LeMay took a sip of coffee and then took a puff of cigar. "If everything goes well, we should fly to the Kirkuk oil field at 6 o'clock in the morning." Comrade Stalin certainly would not forget to bomb the Kirkuk oil field and the Khuzestan oil field. These two large oil fields can now produce more than 2 million tons of oil per month, all of which will be sold to the German Wehrmacht Reserve Bureau, and then the German High Command will distribute it according to needs. If these two large oil fields are destroyed, the German war machine will be paralyzed, if not paralyzed, and the Soviet Union will be very sure to win the war. So Stalin took out two valuable bomber aviation divisions this time, plus 6 American bomber wings, and prepared to dispatch a total of 240 Pe-8s and 520 B-17s. In addition, there will be 72 P51s of an American fighter wing and 150 Soviet MiG-5 fighters as escorts. The total scale of the attack is as high as 982 aircraft, which is almost a thousand-plane bombing! "Are you sure you can blow it up?" Major General Golovanov asked uncertainly. Although he was confident when he made the plan, he believed that 760 bombers dropping three or four thousand tons of bombs at a time would be enough to destroy two large oil fields. But the German Air Force has also made a great reputation in recent years, and it seems difficult to deal with.

"It's impossible to do it once," LeMay shook his head and said, "The German Air Force is not easy to deal with... Especially at medium and low altitudes, the Fokker Zero and Fw-190 are very powerful, and the P-51 may not have a chance of winning."

The P-51 can deal with the Fokker Zero and Fw-190, but the P-51s deployed by the Americans to the Soviet Union are all high-altitude models equipped with the Merlin 60 engine. The aerodynamics of high-altitude aircraft are different from those of medium and low-altitude models. These P-51s can play at high altitudes, but they are definitely not the opponents of the Fokker Zero when they go down to low altitudes.

After the P-51 went up to high altitudes, it was not at a disadvantage against the high-altitude models of the Fw-190. The B-17 is very sturdy and has strong self-defense firepower. As long as it has the cover of the P-51, it will not suffer too much loss even if it encounters the obstruction of the Fw-190. What really worries LeMay is the recently appeared He-219. This aircraft has too much firepower and is fast at high altitude. Once it bites the B-17, it can be shot down with 30mm and 20mm machine guns.

However, the Americans are still prepared to go recklessly regardless of the losses - even if the loss ratio is more than 20%, Roosevelt can bear it as long as it can destroy the Germans' Middle East oil fields.

But LeMay is still a little worried that the Soviets will not be able to bear it. He said: "Our B-17 and P-51 can fly very high and drop bombs at 11,000 meters. But your Pe-8 can't fly high, and the MiG-5 is a twin-engine aircraft, which is not flexible enough..."

He meant that if you Soviets can't bear it, don't go, just let the American planes bomb. But Major General Golovanov misunderstood him and said that Soviet planes are not good, which is not okay.

"The MiG-5 is a good aircraft!" Major General Golovanov said confidently, "It can fly up to 680 kilometers, has a range of up to 2,800 kilometers, and can carry 800 kilograms of bombs. It can even perform long-range bombing missions alone."

Li Mei nodded noncommittally. He knew about the MiG-5 aircraft. The development process of this aircraft received technical assistance from the United States. The engines used were imported from the United States, so it was more successful than the MiG-5 in history. meet all design requirements. It was successfully put into production in early 1942 and is now a trump card in the hands of the Soviet long-range bombing aviation. It is indeed a good aircraft. But the Germans obviously have a trump card to restrain it - the mosquito killer (He-219) must also be a MiG killer...

…

"Commander, commander, the Soviets have started shelling! The war between us and the Soviet Union has broken out!"

The headquarters of Rommel, the commander of the German Middle East Front, is in Kirkuk. This place and Abadan in Khuzestan are the most heavily fortified places in the Middle East. There are more anti-aircraft guns than Berlin, and there are also the most advanced air search radars. Several large airports have been built nearby.

In addition, General Rommel's own headquarters and the commander of the 4th Air Force, General Alexander Lehr, were also stationed in Kirkuk and Abadan - keeping a close eye on the oil fields!

When the Soviets launched the war, Rommel was sleeping. He was woken up by his adjutant. Then he put on his military uniform and walked into the war room sleepily. He found that Lieutenant General Bismarck, the chief of staff of the Middle East Front, was already there, talking with something. People talk on the phone.

When Lieutenant General Bismarck saw Rommel, the phone call had already been completed. He hung up the phone receiver and said to Rommel: "It was General Leer calling from Abadan. He requested that planes be sent to bomb the Baku, Batumi and Grozny oil fields in the Soviet Union."

The Soviets want to bomb the Middle East, and the Germans will naturally want to bomb the Soviet Caucasus oil producing areas! Although the Second Baku in the Urals has been developed, the oil-producing areas in the Caucasus still contribute more than half of the Soviet Union's oil. If the Caucasus oil-producing areas are destroyed or occupied by Germany, the Soviet war machine will be severely weakened.

But it will not be easy to destroy the oil-producing areas of Baku, Batumi and Grozny. Since the French did it once in 1940, the Soviet Union has now strengthened its air defense in that area and deployed high-performance fighter jets such as MiG-3 and La-3.

In addition, after the bombing of Batumi in 1940, Stalin, who realized the vulnerability of the Batumi oil city, began to transfer oil refining operations to the Ural Industrial Zone. With the support of a large amount of refining equipment provided by the United States, the construction of the Second Baku Petroleum Industrial Zone is progressing rapidly. According to estimates by the German intelligence agency, the Soviet Union will be able to get rid of its dependence on the oil city of Batumi by the end of 1943 at the latest.

"How many aircraft does the 4th Air Force plan to dispatch?" Rommel walked to the map table with his hands behind his back and looked down at the situation map of the Middle East battlefield.

The situation is still good. Muscat, the last British stronghold in the Middle East, was recently captured by the 26th Army commanded by General Alfred von Goltz. Now that the route from Abadan to the Suez Canal has been opened, the largest oil fields and refineries in the Middle East (the Abadan refinery has also been repaired) can finally continue to deliver fuel to the German Empire's war machine.

Moreover, before the opening of the Persian Gulf waterway, Abadan's large oil fields and refineries have resumed production one after another. There are currently three to four million tons of crude oil and refined oil stored in Abadan - these are unplanned fuel by the headquarters and are just used to meet the needs of the Eastern Front.

"The 4th Air Force is preparing to dispatch 96 Do-217s and 64 Fokker Zeros to bomb the Baku oil fields; dispatch 72 Ju288s and 32 He219s to bomb the Batumi Oil Refinery."

The oil wells in the Baku Oilfield are scattered, so there is no intensive anti-aircraft fire cover, so the Do-217 and Fokker Zero, which have better low-altitude performance, were sent for bombing.

The facilities of the Batumi Refinery are quite concentrated and surrounded by a large number of anti-aircraft artillery cover, so the Ju288 and He219 high-altitude ships were used to destroy them with wire-controlled glide bombs.

"Where is the Navy?" Rommel asked again, "When can the Mediterranean Fleet be dispatched?"

Now the navies of various European countries participating in the war on the side of Germany have formed a combined fleet, called the European Combined Fleet. Several theater fleet commands have also been established under the European Combined Fleet, namely Atlantic Fleet Command, Baltic-North Sea Fleet Command, Mediterranean Fleet Command and Indian Ocean Fleet Command. Below these fleet commands, and below them are Squadron.

Among the commanders of these four fleets, the commander of the Atlantic Fleet is concurrently held by Marshal Gunther Lütjens, the commander of the European Combined Fleet. The commander of the Baltic-North Sea Fleet is also German and is now Admiral Rolf Karls. Admiral LaPold of France, Commander of the Indian Ocean Fleet. The commander of the Mediterranean Fleet is of course Italian Admiral Inigo Compioni.

According to the provisions of the "Blue Plan", the Mediterranean Fleet, dominated by Italian naval ships, will enter the Black Sea through the Sea of ​​Marmara and the Dardanelles Strait after the Soviet-German War breaks out, and then use naval guns to attack the Black Sea coast. Batumi, the Soviet oil center.