Transmigrated as the Crown Prince

Chapter 167: Battle of Poland (30)

On this day, senior officials such as Yannick and Rundstedt came to the front line.

After getting off the plane, Rundstedt looked around and sighed with emotion. "Several of my military school classmates died on this land during the last war."

"Your Majesty General, this time we will definitely fulfill their long-cherished wish." Yannick comforted them.

"It made His Highness laugh." Rundstedt quickly regained his composure. "It's been so many years. It's just a little sad to be here again today." After saying this, he still seemed hesitant to speak.

Seeing this, Yannick took the initiative to speak. "It's okay to tell me what you have to say, General."

Rundstedt hesitated and then spoke cautiously. "Brauchich, he..."

"Walter von Brauchitsch? He wants to return to the army?" Seeing Rundstedt nodding, Yannick showed a hint of a smile. "It seems a bit humiliating to give him the position of battalion commander. How about giving him the position of chief of general staff, General?" Brauchitsch does have some military talent, but there are also many talents in the German army, and he is one more person. No more, no less than him. I gave him a chance before, but he didn't take it, otherwise he would be the current Army Chief of Staff. "Those who cannot keep up with the times will only be eliminated, just like this Poland."

"..." Rundstedt broke out in a cold sweat. He seemed to have mentioned something that he shouldn't have mentioned. The German army has been promoted to marshal for 20 years. After this Polish campaign, a new marshal is likely to be appointed, and the most likely candidate is himself. He didn't want to lose such a soldier's supreme honor, so he hurriedly lowered his head and said respectfully. "I understand, Your Highness."

Seeing that Yannick no longer wanted to delve deeper, Rundstedt also quickly changed the subject. "Your Highness, since we have so many super weapons, why did we only bring the K5 train gun?" This time they not only came for inspection, but also sent five K5 train guns to assist in the attack on Warsaw.

As the top commander of the Army, Rundstedt certainly knew some secrets. Except for the top secret nuclear programs, he knows a thing or two about V1, V2, V3 and so on.

Yannick asked casually. "General, do you know what the benefits of war are?"

Rundstedt thought for a moment. "Territory? Resources? Population?"

Yannick smiled. "Those are just one of them. Although wars are bloody, every war destroys countless families and separates wives and children; it makes countless people displaced and leave their homes. But war also has its benefits. It will rapidly promote the development of human science and technology, almost Every technological revolution is related to war."

For example, during Napoleon's expedition to Egypt, the front was very long and the shelf life of food was very demanding. So an Apel expert invented glass canned food after repeated experiments, which greatly enhanced the shelf life of food.

There is also assembly line production, which originally originated from the Anglo-American War in 1912. The US military was in urgent need of a batch of 5,000 firearms and required a short time to complete them. At that time, American gun factories were all small self-employed workshops, and no one dared to take over. Later, someone came up with a way. Dozens of factories joined forces, each made a part, and finally put the gun together. This kind of production reduces costs and saves time.

Computers, nuclear technology, rocket and aerospace technology, the greatest technologies of later generations of mankind, are all products of World War II.

"Take airplanes, for example. They were not initially considered useless in a war."

In the early 20th century, with the advent of heavier-than-air aircraft, militaries around the world began purchasing aircraft.

During the wars among European countries in the early 20th century, Italy seized a colony in North Africa from the Ottoman Turkish Empire, which later became Libya. In November of that year, Italy established an air force unit, and Giulio Zavodi was one of the pilots.

“Two boxes full of bombs arrived today,” Zavodi wrote to his father in Naples. "We'll drop them from the plane. The weird thing is, no one told us about this beforehand, and we didn't get any instructions from our superiors, so we carefully put the bombs on the plane. Drop these guys in Turkey People should be interesting.”

The rest of the story is history.

Three years later, the armies of all the major European powers had small air ministries, and they were at a painful juncture before the start of World War I.

However, mainstream technology organizations are still slow to understand the strategic importance of this setting. In October 1910, Scientific American magazine criticized the idea of ​​using aircraft as weapons of war, stating: "Except for the purpose of reconnaissance, we consider the usefulness of aircraft to be rather limited, since its carrying capacity is small and if To avoid enemy artillery fire, it can only operate at high altitudes, and the destructive effect of the explosives it drops on cities, fortresses, enemy camps or troops on land, let alone warships at sea, is very limited. In short, aircraft have a very limited impact on war It has no real effect.”

Indeed, in the early days of the war, aircraft were still used only as observation platforms, but air-to-air warfare was a natural step in the evolution of air combat. Both sides of the battle have aircraft and pilots, and they will soon meet on a narrow road above the trenches. The initial confrontation is indeed more gentlemanly, or very chivalrous, because these air warriors still have something in common with each other. Our compatriots on the ground are out of reach.

But it didn't take long for them to realize that the enemies in the trenches with muskets aimed at your head were saluting the same flag as the enemies with silk scarves around their necks and gliding past in spray-painted Albatross. . Someone pulled out a pistol in the air, the first plane was shot down, and the air battle began.

Soon, aerial observers like Giulio Zavodi, flying over enemy lines, realized how easily they could drop explosives. Tactical bombing as a doctrine was born. In the words of Scientific American magazine, air-dropped bombs really began to "have a real effect on the war effort."

"It's easy to imitate, but difficult to create. If the enemy sees our super weapons today, they will try their best to imitate and counterfeit them. Maybe within a few years, those weapons will be used against us. And they will also try their best to find out The method that can defend against this kind of super weapon attack will greatly reduce the effectiveness of the attack."

Just like nuclear eggs, no one knew whether or how to create nuclear eggs before the United States created them. It was not until the United States detonated its first nuclear egg that other countries were convinced that this thing could really be built, and major countries followed suit.

What the Americans did was called innovation. At that time, no one knew whether a nuclear egg could be made. They were just trying to cross the river by feeling for stones. Once everyone knew it could be made, it became an engineering problem, which could be easily solved with the efforts of the whole country. It is true that in future generations, even some small countries that are so poor will be able to create them.

As for the method of resisting these super weapons, even nuclear eggs have the method of "digging holes deep and accumulating food widely". Of course, the current "super weapons" can also defend against them.

For example, a "radio proximity fuze" is considered a "super weapon." According to post-war statistics, the 127mm gun, the main force of US shipborne anti-aircraft artillery, requires an average of 500 shells to shoot down each enemy aircraft when using radio proximity fuses; while using conventional artillery shells, it takes four times more, that is, 2,000 rounds. Most of the artillery used to defend against kamikaze attacks in the later stages of the war relied on radio proximity fuzes.

Unfortunately, the anti-interference ability of early proximity fuzes was not very strong. It is easy to explode early as long as it is below 100 meters above sea level. Or the simplest and crudest high-intensity clutter interference can effectively deal with such proximity fuzes.

The V-1 missile did cause great panic in the British when they first entered the war, but it didn't take long for the British to find a way to deal with the V-1 missile. Because the V-1 missile flies at a leisurely altitude, some of the Royal Air Force's more skilled pilots can dive very close to the missile and suddenly fire to shoot it down.

Later, some bold pilots regarded the V-1 as a big toy and did not even bother to fire it. They drove the fighter plane under the missile and flew side by side at constant speed. The wings were under the belly of the missile. Then they turned the fuselage over. The wings would overturn the V-1 missile and crashed.

Another example is the acoustic homing torpedo. This kind of torpedo is different from the ordinary torpedoes at that time. It can guide itself to the target - the engine of the enemy ship to destroy the enemy ship's power system. This kind of torpedo that can turn on its own to track the target initially caused panic in the British Navy, but they quickly found a solution by dragging a machine behind the ship that could make a lot of noise to make the torpedo deviate from the course. As a result, this large number of guided weapons did not play a big role. Instead, this type of torpedo was criticized among the officers and soldiers of the submarine force because of several incidents of turning back to attack the submarine that launched itself after being launched.

Therefore, Yannick plans to use those shocking super weapons at the most critical moments to deal the greatest blow to the enemy.

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