Chapter 343: A Mess

Churchill looked at the intelligence in his hand and felt that since the arrival of 1938, God had not shown any mercy to the pitiful country of Great Britain.

Chamberlain was gone, leaving Churchill with an unprecedented mess. Although the King of England and the other ministers were extremely reluctant to hand over power to a former First Lord of the Admiralty under whose command the navy had suffered one defeat after another, they had no choice but to appoint Churchill as the Prime Minister of the British Empire, as there were no other candidates who dared to take on the current chaotic situation.

But the current Britain was like a giant who had been ill for a long time. Its current dire state could not be completely cured just by changing the leadership. It was only after taking office that Churchill realized that the problems he had to face were countless times greater than the problems a First Lord of the Admiralty needed to face.

First and foremost, the most fatal problem was still the submarine threat in the Atlantic. He received news of a transport ship being sunk by a German submarine almost every few hours. And recently, this news had become more and more frequent and more and more deadly.

The German submarines were being deployed on a large scale and were using an attack method that left him helpless. These submarines operated in groups on the vast Atlantic Ocean, like wolfpacks chasing their prey. Any transport fleet that was discovered would be attacked on a large scale by the German submarines at night. Even those with destroyer escorts were no exception.

In just a few short days, Britain had already lost three of the destroyers leased from the United States, as well as a dozen transport ships. The daily sinking records had been refreshed these past few days, almost to the point of collapse. And in comparison, the losses of the German army were really negligible. Britain had exchanged the loss of hundreds of thousands of tons of transport ships and destroyers for the pitiful combat record of sinking only one German submarine. What frustrated Churchill the most was that the number of the elusive German submarines was at least three times more than the British Navy had previously estimated.

Before the war, the British Navy had assessed the German Navy. They had believed that the German Navy had at most 50 submarines, and most were small-tonnage, coastal models. But in fact, the German Navy had 146 submarines at the beginning of the war, and more than ninety percent were large-tonnage, ocean-going attack models.

These submarines did not even include the ten captured Dutch navy submarines, two Danish submarines, and three Polish submarines. And these submarines were all designed and manufactured by German designers, so the German Navy was very familiar with their use. Therefore, in fact, the total number of submarines that the German army could now use was an astonishing 161, far from being as few as the British had estimated.

Of course, just as Churchill was grappling with the German submarines, he also had to contend with the pressure that the German High Seas Fleet, which was moored in the naval port of Wilhelmshaven, was putting on the British Home Fleet. That was a solid four fleet aircraft carriers. The number of carriers and battleships that Britain could now mobilize was only barely enough to contend with this German fleet.

The threat at sea could not yet be dealt with, and the rout on land was also causing Churchill extreme pain. Lord Gort had already submitted his resignation several times, but because there was no suitable candidate, Churchill had not yet approved these letters of resignation.

The British and French forces had been in a complete rout. They had now lost the entire territory of Belgium and were surrounded in the narrow Dunkirk region. Several hundred thousand troops had no food, no supplies, and were short of ammunition and fuel. Let alone breaking out, even holding their ground was difficult to do.

One hundred and fifty thousand soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force were trapped on the defensive line. The daily telegrams urging for supplies made Churchill feel like committing suicide. From food to clothing, to shells and weapons, from fuel to spare parts, to replacement troops—it seemed that the Anglo-French coalition forces had become paupers overnight, lacking everything.

What Churchill could not understand was that in the northern region of France, the German armored forces that were sweeping everything before them had not been committed to the battle to annihilate the forces at Dunkirk at all. Yet the German army was still unstoppable, and the French and British armies were rarely able to stop the German offensive in any direction for even a few hours.

So Churchill began to organize the navy to carry out “Operation Dynamo,” to rush the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force back to the British mainland. But this plan was fraught with difficulties from the very beginning. First, the First Lord of the Admiralty claimed that he could not guarantee command of the sea near the English Channel. Then the British Air Force announced that it was unable to cover this operation. It seemed that all efforts would be in vain, and the British Empire could only watch helplessly as its own army became prisoners of the German army.

Of course, if one were to say that the navy, although at a disadvantage, still had the strength to fight, and the army, although on the verge of collapse, was far away, then the sharp pain of the air force was something that Churchill could not tolerate.

The Hurricane fighter had just entered service. The original fighter performance gap had been made up for by the British engineers. The current situation could be said to be an excellent one. But at this very moment, the incident of the German strategic bombers attacking London had occurred.

The Hurricane fighter, which was originally thought to be very advanced, had exposed many fatal problems in the process of intercepting the new German strategic bombers, which had also made this interception very unsuccessful. The King was furious and had questioned Churchill, who had just become Prime Minister, about the air defense problems near London, which had made Churchill, who had only been in office for a few days, lose a great deal of face.

But this was not just a problem of losing face. Britain’s actual air defense preparations were indeed very backward. The situation of the home air defense being short of troops and generals had given Churchill, who had received the report, a huge headache.

First was the reality of the outdated equipment of the British home air defense forces. The entire force seemed to be mostly using the tactics and equipment of the First World War, relying on acoustic locators and naked-eye observation to guard the sky.

Second was the outdatedness of the anti-aircraft guns. The large anti-aircraft gun units were equipped with obsolete weapons, with a slow rate of fire and limited altitude, completely unable to deal with the new German strategic bombers. Of course, a small number of units were equipped with Bofors anti-aircraft guns, which could be considered to have made up for the lack of low-altitude defense. But in terms of the high-altitude defense system, Britain was like a woman with no clothes on.

It was clear that replacing a large number of anti-aircraft guns in a short period of time to strengthen their own air defense level was an unrealistic matter. Churchill had no choice but to focus his attention on the development of fighter planes, which could both attack and defend.

After all, the improvement of the fighter planes had already been completed due to the needs of the war. It was just that this new Hurricane fighter still needed a major improvement in its firepower. So Churchill had almost immediately ordered the relevant enterprises and design departments to upgrade the firepower of the Hurricane fighter from eight 7.7mm machine guns to four 20mm cannons.

He ordered 10,000 anti-aircraft guns to strengthen the air defense of the southern region of Britain, purchased 2,000 Hurricane fighters to make up for the technological gap with the German Air Force, and immediately began the development of a next-generation fighter, requiring its performance to completely surpass Germany’s existing Fw-190D. Churchill had given a series of orders that even he himself felt were impossible to complete in one go.

But there were still two problems that he needed to solve most urgently, and these two problems could not be solved by procrastination. The first was how to quickly improve the air defense capability over the British capital. The second was how to stabilize the raw material transport lines and increase the production of fighter planes.

He was worried that once the German bombers appeared on a large scale and began to threaten Britain’s industrial production areas, he would not have a sufficient number of fighters in his hands to engage these terrifying “aerial bomb-dropping machines.”

What was even more terrifying was that if Britain’s industrial production areas and the large city of London were to become targets at the same time, he would have to disperse his already weak fighter force to deal with the overwhelming German bomber units at the same time. This would put Britain in a completely unfavorable situation, and even the replenishment of the navy would be affected.

Once they entered this vicious cycle, then Britain would be completely finished. Transport would not be able to meet the increase in industrial production, industry would not be able to meet the losses of the war, and the losses of the war would make it even more impossible for the army to guarantee the unimpeded transport lines. If they really entered this cycle, let alone surrendering, it would be hard to say whether Britain could even be saved as a country.

So today, at this very moment, Churchill had no choice but to once again send a telegram to the US President, Roosevelt, requesting that the United States continue to aid Britain with war materials, including 1,000 P-36 fighters. In addition, he also requested that the United States provide 50 destroyers and 20 cruisers.

And at the end of the telegram, he specified that at least 400 P-36 fighters and 20 destroyers should be rushed to Britain first—so that Britain could carry out “Operation Dynamo,” to allow Britain to withdraw 150,000 troops to resist a possible German cross-channel invasion.

But the reply from the United States was very disappointing. Roosevelt claimed that he could only provide Britain with 200 P-36 fighters and 12 destroyers. And the other weapons and equipment would have to wait until the United States had expanded its production capacity before they could be provided. These promises were too little, too late. Britain had no choice but to face the current situation alone.

Now he had to fulfill his own promise, because in his speech in response to the German bombing of London, he had declared that Britain would certainly respond to Germany’s bombing. In his speech, he had claimed that for every bomb Germany dropped on Britain, Britain would return hundreds of thousands of bombs to Germany. But when it came to the actual operation, he had found that the bombers that Britain could fly to Berlin were still on the drawing board.

But the situation no longer allowed him to consider it any further. He decided to listen to the suggestions of several members of Parliament and ministers and ordered the Air Force to launch its bombers and, without a suitable fighter escort, to attack the German strategic port of Wilhelmshaven, to make a proper response to the incident of the German bombing of Berlin.

Churchill sat behind his desk, picked up the telephone on the corner, and gave the order for the plan that he had long been preparing. “Hello? Is this Air Command? This is Prime Minister Winston Churchill! Launch the bombers. The air raid on the German port, the retaliatory action, begins at once!”