January 27, 1943, Nevada, Nellis Air Force Base.

In the cold wind of the early morning, a Star-Spangled Banner is rising, and along with it there is a flag on a black background with a white reverse cross sign painted on it. This is the team logo of the 414th Training Squadron. The reverse cross is a symbol of hell, but the authentic reverse cross is black. The 414th Training Squadron chose such a white reverse cross to represent the virtual hell, which is indeed very appropriate.

It was a moment that would go down in the history of the U.S. Air Force when the world's first professional simulated enemy unit, the 414th Training Squadron (Reverse Cross Squadron), was established. This squadron gathers some of America's best pilots, and their mission is to get each new pilot to go to hell a few times before going into battle. From this day on, any rookie pilot of the Army Aviation had to come here to undergo a period of ravages before he was qualified to go to the battlefield to fight the Germans and the Japanese. And at the end of '43 and the beginning of '44, pilots from some allied countries will also come here for training.

Now the base is not large, and the number of start-up teams is not large, but in a few years, the base in the middle of a sea of sand will become one of the most important research and training centers of the United States Air Force.

When the sun is fully rising, the flag-raising ceremony ends. The first day of the 414 training squadron began.

The first two days were mainly about the mutual familiarization of the personnel with each other, the division of labor in terms of personnel, and the familiarization with various equipment that was gradually put in place.

In terms of personnel, there are not many people in the team now, but the pilots who can enter the "reverse cross" are basically aces from various battlefields, including Ron from the Pacific, R?? i?? Bunge (the first ace in American history) and McGais and others, (the second ace in the United States in history, originally died in battle, and was selected by Ron to enter the "reverse cross" here, which is equivalent to saving his life. However, this guy didn't appreciate it at all, thinking that he was hindering himself from getting a higher record. By the way, the first and second aces in history are all from the Pacific Ocean, and the level of the devils can be seen) Gobleski (Polish) and others from Europe, as well as g?? Boynton (member of the Flying Tigers) and others. To say that most of these people are not fuel-efficient lamps, originally according to the original standards, it is better to have fewer such people, and one such a squadron is enough. But then, out of some selfishness, to put it more clearly, out of a kind of celebrity collecting craze, Ron brought them all in. In fact, it was almost that Ron even pulled the people of the Royal Air Force. The arrival of these buddies with eyes above the top has also provided a series of good themes for Hollywood later. Fortunately, Ron had prepared a set of pamphlets to deter them - "Energy Air Combat", and after reading the book carefully, he would compare it with his own personal experience. Those bull-coaxed guys finally admitted that although Ron may not have done anything to the sky, his theoretical level is definitely superb. The oldest of these people, and the most flawed, g?? Boynton (nicknamed Daddy) even said, "If I had read this book, I would have been able to get more than double the dollars from Chang Kaishen." (The Flying Tigers are mercenaries, and bonuses are paid based on results.) With that, basically these guys are going to sell him some face.

With the exception of Ron, who oversaw all the projects, the others were assigned to a research group based on their previous service, such as the European group and the Pacific group.

There is also the urgency of familiarizing yourself with your special equipment.

These equipment that need to be familiar include the Japanese Zero, the German FW190, BF109 and other things. These are extremely precious things, and most of them are not easy to come by. For example, the Zero, the Japanese fighter that was originally forced to land in Aleutian because it was lost, had an accident during the forced landing, and the pilot died, but the miraculous, extremely fragile Zero War suffered almost no major damage. The result fell into the hands of the Americans.

As for the BF109 and FW190, most of them were obtained through diplomatic channels, from countries that were engaged with the German army, mainly the Russians. Many of them are not completely genuine, but assembled goods - pieces found from several crashed enemy planes.

Obviously, it is extremely difficult to obtain a large amount of enemy equipment, and it is unrealistic to equip all the Crosses with BF109, FW190, or Zero. Not to mention that the quantity is not enough, what is even worse is that there is nowhere to replace the parts. Therefore, these precious things can only be experienced by pilots, to find a feeling, and a more realistic way is to use the existing capabilities of the US military or the existing Allied forces to improve the aircraft to imitate them while obtaining the enemy's equipment as much as possible.

The aircraft simulating the Zero is the Navy's F6F, because of the variables brought by the P-38, this fighter that originally occupied the deck of the aircraft carrier was squeezed out by the original historical defeat of the F4U. However, Grumman found a place for it - after some landing equipment, it was leased to the Russians, and was loved by the Russians for its excellent low-altitude performance, large range, and powerful firepower (four 20mm rifled guns). (Took the P-39's business away.) As a carrier-based aircraft, the F6F is already quite close to Zero in terms of circling, and the speed is faster than that of Zero Strategy, and the dive is even more overwhelming, but the climb is a bit tragic compared to Zero Combat. But at this point, Ron gave the order, and the poor F6F was immediately disemboweled, and a zero-combat operation was performed: all the armor was removed, and even the self-closing fuel tank was replaced with a zero-combat type ordinary fuel tank (anyway, the girl didn't really need to go to the battlefield). The weapons were also cut and replaced with photo guns and film. As a result, the F6F was much lighter all of a sudden, relying on the 2000 horsepower engine, whether it was circling or climbing, it had made great progress, but the speed had also increased a lot, because the body was too light, and the dive performance was much worse. There is even the problem of difficulty in overcoming propeller torque at high speeds (when the propeller rotates clockwise, it gives the aircraft a force to rotate counterclockwise). It's like a Zero War.

The Spitfire from the British was used to imitate the BF109, and the performance of the Spitfire is very strong, almost a panacea to simulate an airplane, but the ability to do negative G maneuvers is far inferior to the BF109.

And used to simulate FW190 is the navy's F4U,The reason why it was chosen,The main reason is to see that its roll is very good,Of course,On rolling,It's still worse than the genuine FW190。

As for the P-38 that Ron relied on to become famous, well, he can only imitate the BF110, which is really overkill.

Once everything is in place, the training is in full swing. These trainings are not about getting pilots to improve their air combat skills, but about flying like enemies and not letting those guys get too idle. It's just that I didn't expect that the first time I trained in the team, there were a lot of problems.

Ron was armed with eight B-17s in a mini-box formation, with a few Spitfires acting as escort planes, and the rest of the guys taking turns imitating the enemy and attacking him.

"Daddy! You're foul, you're flying too fast! The Zero can't fly so fast, and it's not so agile at high speeds. You can't fly like that! ”

"Hey. Poles! How do you play Spiral Climb of Lifting Energy? You imitate the FW190, the FW190 of the Germans does not fly like this! ”

"Hey, Mike! The BF110 can't turn like this, you can't climb like this, forget that you are flying a P-38, remember, you are flying a BF110! ”

"Hey, Bunge, you can't ...... like that"

"Hey, Karn, what the hell, how ...... you"

As a result, after the aces with black lines got off the plane, they kept urging Ron to fly up and show them as well.

"Ron, you're speeding!"

"Ron, climb like this, you should stall."

"Ron, how can you ......?"

"Ron, forget about the P-38. You're driving a BF110! ……”

"Hey, Ron, how could you ......"

When Ron got off the plane, everyone laughed together when they looked at the black lines in his head. After all, habits formed over the years are not something that can be changed all at once.

However, if you can't change it, you have to change it, take your time, don't want to be exactly the same, at least as time goes by, the way they simulate the enemy's flight has gradually become more and more similar. But that's just the simple part.

It was late at night, but the lights were still bright in front of Ron's office window. Together with his staff, he was carefully studying the detailed battle reports that had been sent back from various battlefields.

"Sir, this battle report mentions that a Japanese fighter with a fairly good dive has been found in Rabaul......"

"Sir, this is a detailed report from the 305th Bomber Group on the first bombing of the German homeland, which mentions that the Germans have a new 30mm gun, and some particularly durable fighters......" Major Matthews said to Ron, holding a document.

"Oh, show it to me," Ron hurriedly dropped the other report in his hand and reached out to take it.

"Ah, assault formation tactics. This set has finally appeared. We can also imitate it. Ron turned his head, "Stern, can you still fit this into this week's training plan?" ”

"Sir, it's Thursday."

……

"Sir, next week, the newly formed 385 Bomber Group will come to us for two weeks of training, should our attack plan include this tactic?"

"Next week? Totally usable! ”

This will be the first customer of Ron's "Reverse Cross" hospitality. Ron and the entire team of the "Reverse Cross" decided that they must be impressed. At the very least, let them firmly maintain the formation no matter what the situation in the future.