In an office, Ron is taking on his new assignment. An adjutant of General Arnold took him to a small office, handed him a dossier, and told him: "You look at this material first, and then General Arnold has a new task for you." ”

Ron nodded, took the papers, sat down at his desk, opened the file bag, and checked the materials inside.

All of this information is related to a new fighter jet that became famous in later generations. This fighter was the P-51, which was later hailed as the king of fighters. Perhaps there is something different from the original time and space in parallel space, but the P-51, which was supposed to enter the army at the end of 43, was here several months ahead of schedule and was first commissioned in the first half of 43.

But this great plane, like the original plane, did not perform well when it first came on, and even far from being excellent. It was first offered to the British as a foreign-aid model, and according to the British who first used it, it was a pit of daddy. Although its range is by no means comparable to that of the Spitfire, which can only barely fly through the English Channel, and its low-altitude performance is also good, the use of laminar flow wings and a good streamlined stature make its low-altitude speed a notch faster than the P-40, and the maneuverability at high speed is also surprisingly good, and the 4 rifled guns with a rate of fire of thousands also make the British like it very much. But it's still a, because it can't be used to escort bomber fleets.

*one* this * reads *small* what is the fundamental task of the YBDU fighter? The fundamental task of a fighter is only two, that is, to take out the enemy's bombers, or to prevent the enemy from taking out his own bombers. As for fighting enemy fighters, this is only a means of completing interception or escort missions. If a fighter cannot complete such the most fundamental tasks for some reason, no matter how powerful it is one-on-one, it can only be eliminated. For example, the Japanese Zero Battle, if you talk about the challenge, in the hands of a veteran, the old version of the Zero War 21 is definitely more powerful than the later improved version of the Zero War 52. However, the Japanese quickly replaced the more powerful Zero 52 with the Zero 21. The reason for this is that the Japanese found that the Zero 21 could not accomplish these two most fundamental tasks.

Because the Zero-21's top speed is so slow, it is difficult for the enemy to intercept the enemy when it launches a surprise attack on the bomber group it is protecting. And when it goes to intercept enemy bombers, it is difficult to get rid of the entanglement of enemy fighters. (A P-38 pounced on the bomber without any need to worry about one or more Zero-21s in its direction at six o'clock, because they were too slow to catch up anyway.) But when a Zero 21 pounces on an American bomber, if there is a P-38 behind it, it is really stressful - people will catch up in the blink of an eye, and then before it can fire at the bomber, they will take a shower with a dense rain of bullets) So, the Japanese replaced the lighter and more agile Zero 21 with the Zero 52, which was less capable of heads-up, but was a little faster, but unfortunately the Zero 52 was limited in speed, and the problem faced by the 21, well, basically for the 52, It's the same insolvability.

A similar situation arose with the P-51, which was first supplied to the British. The original P-51 had a very poor engine (basically the same as the old P-40) and did not have an exhaust gas turbo. This led to the very poor high-altitude performance of this aircraft, and when it reached more than 5,000 meters, it encountered the German BF109, and it was impossible to cry. But the Western Front is not the same as the Eastern Front, here, whether the British or the Americans, when will the bombers fly below 7000 meters? As a result, the tragic P-51 either struggled to climb above 5,000 meters, and then became crippled first because of the rapid drop in engine horsepower, and then became the Iron Cross for German pilots; Or stay at low altitude and watch your bombers being slaughtered and get in a hurry. What the? German bombers? By 43, Germany was on the Western Front, where else did this species exist?

As a result, although the tragic P-51 was replaced with four 20mm rifled guns that were much more powerful than the six .50 machine guns in the original time and space, the fate of being left out did not change in any way. They were either sent by the British to second-tier teams to train pilots, or they were used as long-range tactical ground-to-ground attack aircraft. If the British hadn't replaced it with a Spitfire-used Merlin engine, it might have ended up working with the Russians, just like the P-39 of its predecessor.

As for the Americans, since the P-51 was marked by the British as a cheating father, even his own father looked down on it. Fortunately, there is another place that suits it well, and this place is Myanmar!

After the Japanese army occupied Burma, the Yunnan-Burma Highway, the last channel for foreign goods to enter China, was completely cut off. Without the assistance of the Allies, the Chinese Nationalist Government was in an increasingly difficult position. In order for China to continue to support, it became necessary to open up a new material route, and a legendary route was born. This is the Hump Route.

The Hump route is perhaps the most important air route in the world, and for a long time it was the only way for China to connect with the world, without which China might have bled and collapsed before victory was achieved, like Tsarist Russia in the last war. This route is the last umbilical cord that maintains China, an ancient country with a serious lack of its own hematopoietic capacity.

But the Hump route is also the world's most dangerous airlift route, with military transport planes laden with supplies taking off from India and passing through the snow-capped Himalayas to Yunnan, China. There are mountains as high as six or seven thousand meters on the route, and although the C47 transport plane can fly over from a higher altitude when it is empty, when it is loaded with supplies for China, its maximum flight altitude will not exceed 5,000 meters. (Failure to carry the load is not enough, because they have to carry their own fuel for the return journey when supplies are delivered) This makes these bulky transport planes have to go from the valley to the snow-capped peaks.

The air currents between the valleys are extremely unstable, sometimes violent wind shear can cause a fully loaded transport plane to take a large top in the air, and sometimes the strong winds in the mountain pass can even cause an aircraft flying at an airspeed of more than 300 kilometers to retreat relative to the ground. But that's not the worst of all, the most terrible thing is - sometimes the valley, which was sunny for the first half minute, is suddenly covered in fog, visibility quickly drops to zero, and pilots can only fly blindly with instruments and maps. When the weather was fine and the planes passed through the valleys along the route, the pilots could clearly see that the bottom of the valley was shining with silver light everywhere. These lights are signposts - they are the wreckage of a plane that crashed on this route during a previous mission. Throughout the war, thousands of transport planes and many more pilots died in these inaccessible valleys. The bones of the vast majority of the martyrs are still buried there.

The danger of the hump route comes not only from nature, but also from the enemy. In order to get around some of the mountains that are too much to fly, the transporters have to make a big bend. This curved route is drawn on the map in the shape of a camel's hump, hence the name of the hump route. The top of the hump juts out into Burma, where two air groups of the Japanese Army are stationed.

Due to insufficient range, the P-40 fighters of the US Tenth Air Force and the Fourteenth Air Force (Flying Tigers) were unable to escort the transport aircraft throughout the journey. As a result, the transport aircraft unit suffered heavy casualties under the interception of Japanese fighters. It is also becoming increasingly difficult to maintain the hump route.

At this critical moment, the P-51 of the Great Voyage came into the air, and her arrival was like a crimson dawn, about to drive away the terrible long night.

That's what everybody is looking forward to. Shouldn't that be? The P-51 is a much more advanced fighter than the P-40, she has sufficient range, higher speed, and perfect stability and handling at high speeds. On the Japanese side, there are only some outdated Ki43 fighters. The maximum speed of these enemy aircraft is not even 500 km, which is more than a hundred km worse than the maximum speed of the P-51 and not even much faster than the cruising speed of the P-51. Shouldn't killing such an opponent be like chopping melons and vegetables?

However, a month after the convoy began, everyone's glasses were shattered to the ground - the much more advanced P-51, beaten to the ground by the outdated, old-fashioned Ki43. Their performance in battle was even far inferior to that of the aging P-40 fighters.

Yes, the pilots who participated in the war described her in the materials: at low speeds, she was as stupid as a duck, turned much slower than the P-40, and did not climb very well. What's worse is that when turning, she is prone to a unilateral wing stall, and there is no warning before the stall.

Ron gently put down the information, he already had his own judgment in his heart.

At this time, the young adjutant walked in again, he glanced at Ron and said, "If you are done, come with me, and the general will talk to you." ”