Chapter 207 Strategic Deception Bureau
When the Military Intelligence Bureau and the Stasi were reorganized into the Imperial Central Security Bureau, three departments were separated from them and directly under the General Staff. They are:
1. Miuta Special Forces, which was assigned to the Air Force led by General Kesselring and became the backbone of the planned airborne troops;
2. Intelligence Research Department, which was engaged in foreign military situation analysis and research. After being incorporated into the General Staff, it was reorganized into the Military Intelligence Department;
3. Strategic Deception Department, which was led by Lieutenant Colonel Reinhard Gehlen, an intelligence genius "discovered" by Hersman himself. When the Military Intelligence Bureau and the Stasi were reorganized, this department was also incorporated into the General Staff as a whole, and it was also expanded, upgraded from the Strategic Deception Department to the Strategic Deception Bureau!
And the "bureau chief" of the Strategic Deception Bureau, Lieutenant Colonel Reinhard Gehlen, certainly did not go on the radio to fool people every day. He was in charge of many things, including 7 departments and 1 central command post.
Seven of the departments are responsible for strategic deception work in seven areas, including the navy, army, air force, military industry, strategic material reserves, secret weapons and military communications. The central command post is responsible for the "large-scale comprehensive deception project", which is a big scam that requires the use of various forces to carefully arrange.
And this time, the emperor's coronation parade was organized by this central command post.
Yes, this grand parade is actually a big scam - in fact, most public parades have strategic deception elements, and no country will openly display its true military strength in front of outsiders.
What is shown in the parade is just what the general staff of various countries want others to see.
When Hersman and Schleicher arrived at the airport, Reinhard Gehlen, the deputy commander-in-chief of the parade headquarters, had a very high and broad forehead and looked a bit bookish, as if he was a scholar. At this time, he was explaining the flight route to several air force officers at a military airport outside Berlin.
"Remember, not one circle, but five circles! Fly repeatedly according to the route you rehearsed... That is, don't land after flying back, and fly according to the prescribed route again. You can only land after flying five times. You must not make any mistakes. Do you understand?"
"Report to His Excellency the Marshal and His Excellency the General," Reinhard Gehlen reported to Hersman and Schleicher after confirming that several air force captains understood the flight route, "The flight route is carefully designed to make the "friendly people" watching the parade mistakenly believe that we have sent five times the actual number of aircraft to participate in the parade. In this way, they will be extremely impressed by Germany's powerful heavy bomber force."
Of course, these heavy bombers that are meant to impress Britain, France and Poland are also the product of strategic deception - of course, the aircraft are real. They were developed in the early 1930s at the suggestion of Air Force Chief of Staff Val T. Weaver. They are new four-engine heavy bombers that were developed to replace the famous J.28H four-engine heavy bombers (that is, the "BT Express" BT-1 heavy bomber that the Soviets used to scare the Japanese).
According to the requirements of the Air Force, the new heavy bomber should be able to carry at least 5 tons of bombs and take off from Germany to bomb the British Isles and the entire French territory!
In other words, the effective combat radius of the German Air Force's new heavy bomber must be higher than 1,000 kilometers. In addition, in order to effectively break through the air defense of Britain and France, the new heavy bomber also needs to have night navigation and high-altitude bombing capabilities-and the two performance requirements of "high altitude" and "night flight" are to avoid ground firepower and enemy aircraft interception.
This is related to the "bombing deterrence strategy" that the German Air Force of this time and space adhered to before breaking through the Treaty of Versailles. At that time, the German Army was weak and could only adopt a delaying strategy against the enemy's full invasion. In this case, Germany's only way to defend itself was to use long-range bombers to bombard enemy cities indiscriminately to force them to make peace.
Of course, this is only a theoretical "self-defense method". However, it was very popular in the late 1920s and early 1930s. At that time, Italian General Douhet proposed the "Air Force Victory Theory", believing that in future wars, the army would be trapped in the trench defense line and rely on the air force to bomb enemy cities to win.
The "BT Visit" incident between the Soviet Union and Japan in 1928 made all countries realize the importance of strategic bombing. Therefore, the "bombing deterrence strategy" was continued by the German army until Germany restored its armaments.
In 1932, after Germany restored its armaments, the German Air Force at that time felt that the J.28 was outdated in performance and had limited room for upgrading, and needed to develop a new bomber to ensure the continued implementation of the "bombing deterrence strategy."
Therefore, the task of developing a new heavy bomber was given to Fokker, Junkers and Dornier, which were in the limelight in the civil aviation field at that time.
Between 1935 and 1936, Fokker, Junkers and Dornier successively presented their own designs, including Fokker F.36 of Fokker and Ju.819 of Junkers.
However, the Fokker F.36, which had the best performance, did not appear in this parade. This heavy bomber with a high-wing, double vertical tail, and front three-point landing gear layout, a solid fuselage and powerful self-defense firepower, equipped with four BMW 700 series engines with turbocharging technology, and fully capable of high-altitude bombing missions, was actually the real winner of the "New Heavy Bomber Tender" and received the most orders.
In order to achieve the "high-altitude performance" required by the Air Force, Junkers and Dornier chose the liquid-cooled engine of Jumo, which was not very outstanding. As a result, the empty weight and take-off weight of Ju.89 and Do.19 were far less than that of Fokker F.36 equipped with turbocharged air-cooled engine.
However, Ju.89 and Do.19 still received 30 orders respectively, and all 60 Ju.89 and Do.19 have now been delivered to the German Air Force, and they will all participate in today's military parade.
In addition to these 60 new heavy bombers, another 100 J.28H will also appear over Berlin. 160 aircraft will make five turns in the air over Berlin, flying out the momentum of 800 aircraft.
The reason for exaggerating the size of the Ju.89 and Do.19 fleets is to implement a "strategic deception plan" against Britain, France and Poland - "Black Plan".
The plan was to convince Germany's enemies that Germany would win the final victory of the war through a year-long strategic bombing campaign with thousands of four-engine heavy bombers such as Ju.89, Do.19 and J.28H.
This seemed very conceivable, because the Keynes Plan and the expanded Soviet-German cooperation made Germany's aviation industry, especially the production capacity of civil airliners and transport aircraft, far stronger than in history. Until 1935, the five major German aviation manufacturing giants, including Fokker, Junkers, Heinkel, Focke-Wulf and Dornier, maintained their lead in the 1920s and still controlled 70% to 80% of the world's civil aviation market, except for the United States and the Soviet Union.
In the field of medium and heavy bombers based on civil airliners/transport aircraft, Germany also has a greater advantage than Britain, France and other countries!
"Very good!" Hessman looked at the endless planes on the tarmac outside the window and nodded with satisfaction, "This is exactly what I want. We want to let them know that we have many large planes that can be used to bomb London, Paris and Warsaw. This will scare them. And to enhance the intimidation effect, we can also use Ju.89 and Do.19 on the Spanish battlefield."
"But will our actions speed up the enemy's development of advanced fighters?" Schleicher was still a little worried.
"They have already accelerated!" Hessman laughed, "Britain and France have begun to accelerate their research. However, the air superiority fighters they have developed cannot deal with our heavy bombers. Because according to the concept we instilled in them, these heavy bombers target their big cities. Therefore, these large aircraft do not have to attack during the day. They can use the cover of night to bomb Paris, London, Warsaw... In this way, the British, French and Poles need to develop night fighters. And these night fighters will eventually become a huge waste!"
Night air combat in this era is very difficult, because there is no lightweight radar available, and even if an airborne radar is developed, it is not something that aircraft such as Bf-109 or Spitfire can install. Generally, twin-engine heavy fighters are equipped with searchlights and radars. And this kind of bulky twin-engine fighter has poor combat capabilities during the day, and is not a match for flexible and light single-engine aircraft. Moreover, even if Ju.89 and Do.19 may attack during the day, they will adopt the method of high-altitude penetration. For this reason, Britain and France had to focus on the research and development and production of fighter jets on the liquid-cooled route with better high-altitude performance, so as to further expand Germany's advantage in the air-cooled route.
Of course, Britain and France could also form a large group of heavy bombers like Germany, and also take the form of night air strikes to counterattack - but Hessmann did not believe Britain and France, mainly because the British really dared to easily provoke a night bombing battle in the absence of German bombers.
Because the Strategic Deception Bureau would make them believe that Germany had a larger and more advanced heavy bomber force. Unlike Goering, Hessmann did not pin his hopes of conquering Britain on bombing. He did not have so many precious pilots to compete with the British.
And in his opinion, blockade was the most effective means to seriously damage Britain's war potential, and it was better to land at the right time to conquer Britain.