Chapter 1109: Confusing Intelligence

At any time, changing a cipher is a massive undertaking for an entire army, let alone an entire Allied system. It’s not something that can be changed on a whim; it requires a long and drawn-out process. Moreover, the ciphers of this era were not cheap, dime-a-dozen items that could be designed at a moment’s notice.

There are more than enough strange things in war! To immediately change a cipher just because you encounter a single suspicious problem? What a joke! After dismissing the adjutant, this British intelligence officer felt that he had been getting more and more exhausted recently.

Those all-pervasive German spies were already enough to give him, as the man in charge, a headache… And recently, a number of secretive German research projects had been added that he needed to confirm. It was as if his one head had swollen to the size of two, making him feel terrible.

He casually picked up a blurry photograph of a German heavy water plant in Norway. He really wanted to find the person who had taken this photo and give them a good beating. If it weren’t for the fact that something called “PS” (Photoshop) didn’t exist in this era, he would have definitely guessed that this photo was just randomly ‘shopped to fool him.

The photo only showed a section of a seemingly ordinary concrete wall. A decent German concentration camp, a prison, or any of those military facilities—you could probably take this picture at any of them. You say this is a heavy water plant? I could just as well say it’s an atomic bomb silo! The key is: who would believe it?

This annoyance made him think of his adjutant again, and his suggestion to change the ciphers. He hatefully threw the photo down, picked up the glass of water beside him, and took large gulps of the cold water.

Tossing aside the infuriating photo, the next one, a long-distance shot, made him want to cry even more. The photo was of a German aircraft, taken from far away. But based on the clarity of the photo, it was still possible to distinguish that this aircraft was of a considerable size.

Clearly, this aircraft was not one of the German planes that had already appeared on the battlefield, but a new model that had never been seen before. Apart from its size, the most notable feature of the German plane in the photo was that it had three engines on each wing. This design had not been seen on any other German aircraft. One thing was certain—its range and bomb load would exceed all current aircraft in service.

A month ago, an American spy near a German airfield had photographed this new, behemoth-like bomber. Based on its size, it could only be a bomber! And according to the calculations of American engineers and military personnel, this aircraft could take off from Britain and reach the East Coast of the United States.

And so, the American high command, upon receiving this news, had been incomparably shocked. They were terrified that their safe and secure East Coast would be dragged into this war from Europe. A very obvious thought was: watching other people fight and paying people to fight for you is, in essence, completely different from taking a beating yourself.

If German bombers were to appear on the East Coast, then adding in the German U-boat crisis that had appeared on the East Coast before… America would very likely have to face a two-front war, and one of those fronts would be a passive, defensive one. God bless, if that situation really did arise, the Americans would rather continue to pursue their policy of isolationism, to withdraw from the war and to close their doors and play house.

“We cannot let a single German bomber fly to the American homeland to conduct a strategic bombing!” This was what President Roosevelt had said immediately after seeing the photo of this plane. Once the American homeland was under German attack, then a large part of their massive industrial strength would have to be diverted to producing all kinds of anti-aircraft guns.

It was also because of this photo that the U.S. Congress had finally passed the plan to continue to send reinforcements to Iceland. At the same time, a plan to increase the production of Essex-class aircraft carriers was also passed, in order to equip the Atlantic Fleet with more carriers to offset the growing threat of the German sea and air forces.

This British officer put down this second photo and picked up the third. The expression on his face became even more grave. The thing in this photo was even more strange. It looked like a massive shell from a German Friedrich rocket launcher. But the latter was clearly fatter, and this thing was obviously much more complex than a Friedrich rocket shell.

As for the origin of this photo, it had cost this British intelligence officer dearly. One of their most valuable spy networks, which had been lurking in Germany, had been uprooted by the SS just for this piece of intelligence. And the British military, who had obtained this intelligence, had indeed been startled by this terrifying German plan.

Germany intended to use this kind of super-long-range rocket as a carrier for a superweapon to attack the United States. However, from the contents of this intelligence, it seemed that the German scientists had not yet mastered an effective means of long-range guidance, and were unable to make this super-rocket carry out a precision strike.

But the intelligence showed that the relevant German departments were actively experimenting with and deploying this super-rocket, and had even named this thing the V2 guided-rocket, or V2 missile for short.

All of this intelligence, from all different sources, pointed to one problem: Germany was developing a weapon that was small in size but immense in power, a small number of which could strategically destroy the U.S. East Coast. Another problem that was highlighted was that Germany was developing all kinds of weapons that could change the pattern of the war. And in this respect, although the Allies also had some accumulation, they had not at all reached the level that Germany had.

For example, in the field of rockets, the Allies clearly also had scientists who had proposed the concept of this long-range strike weapon. But the funding they had received was not sufficient, and they had not even built a single prototype. And this photo from the German side was an actual photo of several scientists studying a real, physical rocket.

Unfortunately, if Akado had been sitting here, he would probably have laughed out loud at these photos. Because these spy photos, from all sorts of channels, were in fact mostly “false intelligence” that had been wildly guessed at. Because of Germany’s counter-espionage and secrecy work, these Allied spies had in fact only obtained a partial understanding of the intelligence. And when this intelligence was strung together, the result was even further from the actual situation.

For example, that giant, 6-engine “bomber” was actually a new long-range transport project for the German Imperial Aviation company. Although the German military was also involved and had mentioned that some military considerations should be taken into account in the design, in fact, that experimental aircraft was a bona fide civilian plane, with 70 seats inside for people to ride comfortably.

And that so-called “super-rocket” project was a case of two completely different departments being infiltrated by spies, and the intelligence obtained being pieced together, compounding the error. That photo was actually of the final stages of the German Navy’s anti-ship ballistic missile project. Because of the tossing of the sea, its limited guidance capability, and the risk of refueling at sea, Germany had ultimately abandoned the anti-ship missile plan. The photo was of several engineers dissecting the remaining missile body, summarizing their experience.

The accompanying document had been found in another place and was clearly not a match for the photo. The large rocket that Germany was researching was twice as long as the anti-ship missile in the photo, and its volume was even greater… Of course, this was a core secret. No one was allowed to take pictures of it.

The same thing, a similar joke, had also happened on the German side. For example, a German spy had once found an analysis report from the U.S. Navy, which was analyzing the Japanese “Long Lance” oxygen torpedo, but it had been mistaken by the German Navy as an American black technology. If it weren’t for Akado hearing about the “Long Lance” in a routine meeting and arranging for a second investigation, to this day, Dönitz and Raeder would still be believing the absurd notion that American torpedoes could reach a speed of 40 knots.

On the other hand, the Germans’ own pure-oxygen torpedo project was progressing very slowly. This thing had indeed performed well in the laboratory, but the problem of oxygen explosions caused by vibration had never been completely eliminated. According to Akado’s rule that “unreliable weapons will not be deployed,” this thing was still in the laboratory stage.

The facts proved that Germany could not maintain a world-leading level in all aspects. At least in the field of oxygen torpedoes, the Japanese were indeed at the forefront of the world. Unfortunately, this advantage had not led the Japanese Navy to victory.

Comparing the combat records, it was not hard to see that the number of Allied ships sunk by German torpedoes was far greater than the number of Allied ships sunk by Japanese torpedoes—the Japanese battleship Yamashiro had also been sunk by a German torpedo. This, from another perspective, showed that to rely on a single high-tech weapon was not enough to change the situation of a war.

Akado did not believe in the “weapon-only” theory. He firmly believed that a war could not be changed by a single weapon. But on the other hand, he was also not a supporter of the “soldier-only” theory, because he believed that while one weapon could not change a war, a hundred weapons could cause a revolution on the battlefield!

In any war, man and weapon are two important, indivisible components. The room for improvement in man is too small, so the only thing worth investing in and improving is the weapon. And Akado, who had returned to the present from the future, naturally knew that a so-called “weapon” was not just a weapon, but a system!

Excluding the human element, any weapon, when taken alone, is not invincible. A weapon that shoots far cannot have a high rate of fire. A weapon with a high rate of fire cannot be accurate. A weapon that is accurate will be slightly lacking in reliability. So no weapon can be taken out alone to be compared and evaluated. They are a complex system, a series of complementary existences, born under a combat guiding ideology!

Therefore, to just take out one weapon and to compare it with an opponent’s weapon is, for the weapon itself, a kind of blasphemy, a kind of insult! And to analyze a weapon, detached from its system, what one gets is just an objective evaluation!

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