บท 329: Chapter 406 Planning (1)
Although the original "Operation Sea Lion" was not successfully implemented, Wilhelm would not be foolish enough to launch a landing operation in such cold winter conditions.
According to the plan, the new version of "Operation Sea Lion" would start with paratroopers air-dropping onto British soil; if a landing operation were to be launched now, a portion of the transport capacity would have to be allocated to deliver various cold-weather materials to these paratroopers to prevent them from being frozen to death in a foreign land. This would necessitate a reduction in the delivery volume of weapons and ammunition, as well as a corresponding reduction in the number of paratroopers.
Moreover, infantrymen jumping from landing crafts into the icy, bone-chilling seawater would find their cold-weather clothing absorbing water and becoming unbearably heavy, greatly diminishing their combat capabilities. And the enemy would not give them the opportunity to find a place to change out of their soaked clothes.
Therefore, Wilhelm and the military high command believe that they must wait until at least the end of February next year to conduct the landing operation.
In the meantime, on one hand, they aim to starve Britain into submission and strike at the morale of the British military and civilians; on the other hand, they are actively preparing for the landing operation.
On this day, Wilhelm, accompanied by Kurt Student, visited a paratrooper training base.
As the convoy entered the base, accompanied by the roar of planes in the sky, a dense mass of parachutes nearly obscured the entire sky.
Watching the paratroopers slowly drifting down from mid-air, Wilhelm casually asked, "Is the pass rate for these parachutes 100%?"
"Uh, no, Your Highness," Kurt Student shook his head. "The pass rate is 99.9%, but this is already the highest level in the world."
"99.9%?" Wilhelm frowned in dissatisfaction. "Each parachute is linked to a soldier's life; they should achieve a hundred percent pass rate. Pass my order, from now on, randomly select a few parachutes from each new batch, and have the factory managers test them by parachuting with them."
This method was learned from the United States. During World War II in the original timeline, the pass rate for U.S. Air Force parachutes was also 99.9%, which meant that statistically, one in every thousand paratroopers would die due to a parachute malfunction. The military demanded that manufacturers achieve a 100% pass rate. The factory managers said they had done their utmost, and 99.9% was the limit unless a miracle occurred. The military (some say it was General Patton) then changed the inspection system, randomly selecting a few parachutes before each delivery, and having the factory managers personally test them by parachuting. Since then, a miracle occurred, and the pass rate for parachutes reached one hundred percent.
Kurt Student, with an admiring look, respectfully said, "Your Highness is wise."
As they spoke, everyone arrived at a room nearby, where a large table in the center was laid out with various weapons and equipment.
The first was the "leg bag."
In the original timeline, during the German airborne operation in Crete in 1941, it was not possible for paratroopers to air-drop with their rifles; they could only carry pistols, with weapons placed in boxes that had to be searched for upon landing. But a box is not a person; it cannot deliberately control its direction of fall and can only drift with the wind. Then there was the scene of a group of freshly landed German paratroopers, armed with pistols, charging at the ready British positions. The reason why the paratroopers were so desperate was that their supply boxes had landed in the British positions!
It's hard to imagine how frustrated those German soldiers who couldn't find their weapon boxes must have been.
Just three years later, during Normandy, the Allied forces were already able to air-drop with basic individual equipment. This was because a famous British military technician in the Allied forces invented a device called a "leg bag" to solve this problem. It's essentially a rope over a meter long attached to a bag. After you jump, the bag is tied to you, and the strap, due to gravity, hangs below your feet. When you're about a dozen meters from the ground, you can either release it or let it fall to the ground with you, then take out the weapons inside and fight.
One important reason why German paratroopers couldn't use "leg bags" like American paratroopers was "poverty."
As the country with the most war potential during World War II, the United States mobilized the nation's industrial power to produce military facilities, and the paratroopers who could spread their wings in the sky were given the green light, with equipment being supplied as a priority. In contrast, the meager resources of the Germans were not only divided cleanly among the land, sea, and air forces, but even transport planes could not be mass-produced, only equipping a certain scale of transport troops to transport essential materials. By the mid to late 1943, all available resources were focused on the army and armored forces technology; where would they find the time to manufacture more individual airborne equipment for the paratroopers?
And the once-dominant "Green Devils" of Europe, in the end, either because there were not enough transport planes or because the transport planes had no fuel, had to "parachute" from trucks to reinforce the battle zones, being used as ordinary infantry, which was undoubtedly a tragedy.
Next to the leg bag was a "large pistol."
This "large pistol" is a bit larger than the current pistols but much smaller than a submachine gun; this is the "Skorpion" submachine gun produced by Czechoslovakia in later years.
Because the size of this submachine gun is not much larger than a combat pistol, some people consider it to be a submachine pistol. Its original design intention was indeed as a dual-purpose weapon, which could be fired continuously with both hands against the shoulder like a submachine gun, or fired single shots with one hand without shouldering like a pistol. It can serve as an assault weapon in close combat, or replace a pistol as a personal defense weapon. Its size is very suitable for vehicle drivers or aircraft pilots to carry or use.
It uses the traditional free bolt operation principle, with three firing modes: semi-automatic, three-round burst, and fully automatic. It employs a hammer rotation firing method and a locked bolt to ensure shooting accuracy. The theoretical rate of fire is 1150 rounds/minute, with an effective range of 250 meters (although beyond 100 meters, the bullet has almost no penetration effect).
Equipped with this "large pistol," paratroopers can still fight with this gun and 100 rounds of ammunition even if they lose their leg bags during the parachute jump, which is much stronger than the small pistols of the original timeline.
Next to it was an FAL rifle. A later automatic rifle designed by Belgium using the 7.62×51mm NATO standard rifle cartridge.
The FAL is probably the best-performing 7.62mm NATO automatic rifle of the Cold War era (generally considered the most outstanding of the NATO trio: M14, FAL, G3 rifles). Without relying on the hegemony of the country of origin or the public relations of the manufacturer, the FAL, launched in 1953, was used by over 90 countries, produced by more than 10 countries, with a production exceeding 4 million units. For a long time, it has been endowed with resounding titles such as "one of the greatest mercenary weapons of the twentieth century," "the right hand of the free world," and has a good reputation among domestic and international firearms enthusiasts due to its nearly 50-year service history with few scandals.
However, it also has a very obvious drawback, which is its poor accuracy in continuous fire. It is difficult to control the point of impact in full-auto or three-round burst mode. But this is a common problem with automatic rifles firing full-power rifle cartridges.
Therefore, when Britain introduced the FAL, they eliminated the continuous fire and changed it to the semi-automatic rifle L1A1.
However, changing to semi-automatic does not mean that the rate of fire is low; rapid firing with a bipod can be very fierce. Moreover, at medium and short distances, instead of considering the rate of fire, it is better to make use of accuracy and bring out the advantage of the powerful 7.62 caliber.
Therefore, the German version of the FAL also eliminated the continuous fire mode and changed it to semi-automatic; since it is issued to paratroopers, the stock is also changed to a folding type; when the stock is opened, the gun length is 1020mm, and when the stock is folded, it is 770mm long.
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