This is a very interesting idea, most of the fighter pilots on the Western Front are veterans who graduated from the "aviation schools" of the Eastern Front and have a number of shootdown records, but there are many inexperienced new cadets in the jet air force. www.biquge.info Because judging from the equipment and test flights in the past few months, pilots with medium experience are the least ideal to control jet aircraft, and some of their maneuvering techniques and habitual movements on propeller aircraft are incompatible with the requirements of jet flight, or even completely wrong, even if technicians and instructors explain and emphasize many times, the operation actions formed imperceptibly still cannot be changed, and the accident rate is surprisingly high, while new students are different: they obey the instructions of instructors and techniciansFirmly in mind, what is said above is what it is, and the degree of mastery is fast - the most beautiful picture can be drawn on the white paper,

As for the ace pilots with more than 50 victories, their vast experience ensures that they can calmly switch to jets and reach their full potential.

So, the first question about admitting a jet pilot is funny: "Is there such a device that a powered aircraft can fly without a propeller, and fly faster than a propeller aircraft?" ”

Many people chose no, and some chose yes - they were preferentially recruited as jet pilots, because they did not form any fixed impression in the field of propellers, and after getting off the biplane trainer, they got on the jet (two-seat trainer version) directly under the leadership of the ace pilot instructor, and quickly mastered the relevant technical essentials, and even thought that the plane should be driven like this. However, this group of trainees can only be used to deal with bombers and engage in head-on confrontation, and there are only a few perverted guys in Germany who are good at using high-altitude deflection angles to attack like Marseilleu, and most of the old birds choose the BZ tactic - the ME-262C is not only much faster than the B-17F, but can also fly higher.

The instructor version is equipped with a 20mm MG213 and uses a precision trajectory to fight the enemy, and the student version uses a 30mm MK108 to serve the bomber with great power - as long as it hits more than 4 rounds, a heavy four-engine bomber like the B-17 is basically finished.

There is a very helpless and cruel training process here, according to the tactical requirements, the novice piloted the ME-262C after taking off under the leadership of the instructor to attack the bomber group head-on, the closer the distance, the better, there is bulletproof glass in front of the cockpit, there is a bulletproof steel plate in the back, the defense against the Americans' 12.7mm machine gun bullets are still very sure, in the shortest possible time to run out of ammunition can be pulled up and return to the base, if you really can't find or are not sure about landing, just find a safe place to parachute as much as possible, don't care about the plane- That's something for the Ministry of Armaments to worry about. Garland believed that a pilot who had completed basic training could become a skilled pilot after 8-10 actual combat battles - and this is how the Americans on the other side trained bomber pilots anyway.

The whole process was a defensive operation, and even if the German pilot was shot down, there was a high chance of survival, while the American crew would either die or be captured as long as they were shot down, and there was no third way out. From the perspective of cost, a 4-engine bomber can build 7-8 fighters, plus the loss in transoceanic transportation, basically shooting down a 4-engine bomber is equivalent to winning 10 fighters, and if it can't be done under the economic cost of 1:10, then the war of the Third Reich will not have to be fought.

This is the economics of war that Hoffman emphasized to Jeshunek after he became commander-in-chief of the Air Force, and it is another brutal and potentially successful high-exchange-ratio tactic, and the cruelty of "natural selection, survival of the fittest" is undoubtedly effective.

At present, most of the novice German pilots are "trained" in the aviation schools of the Eastern Front, and they are all veterans in carrying out air defense tasks on the Western Front, and the exchange ratio is very staggering, and the rapid increase in air defense combat results over the past six months or so has made it difficult for the British and US strategic air forces to move forward, and even to be unsustainable.

In addition to the Storm Bird Air Commando, Yeshunek also reported the preparation of 500 high-altitude fighters, all of the new FW-190A8 series, after the BF-109 was basically withdrawn from the air defense of the Western Front, the A8 series and BF-219 picked the girder, of which the former was the main force again.

Compared with the original model, the A8 series has been completely improved: the BMW801E engine is used, the standard power is 2000 horsepower, the GM-1 injection system is installed, and the engine power can be significantly improved by "taking drugs" at an altitude of more than 7000 meters, and the weapon is replaced with 4 20mm MG213 cannons and strengthens the armor defense of critical parts.

With the R2800 engine for reference, BMW tried to install exhaust gas turbocharging on the BMW801 engine, the laboratory has a product but the effect is still very average, but Mercedes-Benz has been successful in the DB series engine, but the TA-152 fighter with liquid-cooled engine can be finalized in at least 9 months, and it will only enter mass production in the New Year of 1944, so the A8 cannot simply be regarded as a transitional model, but should be the main model before the TA-152 enters service - The combined production volume of Focke-Wolf and the authorized factories is as high as 1,000 aircraft per month, which is the largest production of all types of aircraft in Germany (3,408 aircraft produced in April 1943), completely overpowering the 800 BF-219 and 400 HE-218 aircraft per month, which is more than the combined production of five aircraft types such as the JU-98/JU-188/JU-290/Joint Attack Aircraft/AR-372 combined.

500 FW-190A8s are not worth much, but the pilots who fly these planes are worth it - the least of them has 7 successes, the most is more than 100 (the higher ones are taken out of the storm birds), the cumulative number of shootdowns of all pilots adds up to tens of thousands, and the British and American pilots can be trump cards if they have 5 shot down records, and here, the standard for aces is 50 - a full 10 times.

At 15:14, the American aircraft group had flown over Hanover, and was constantly attacked by air defense fighters along the road, but the huge aircraft group was unmoved and continued to advance, but there was also some other news, Camhuber, who was in charge of the overall command, received a report: The US military dispatched new escort fighters, the number of which was about 100.

He sneered: "It seems that the Americans have also come up with new gadgets, I don't know who is more powerful." ”

"I bet the Americans will be so surprised to see our storm birds that their eyes will drop." Garland said with a smile, "This new batch of aircraft is estimated to be the P-51 mentioned in the intelligence bulletin, so I don't know if the bomber has been replaced with a B-29." ”

He guessed correctly, this batch of aircraft is the newly put into use P-51B fighters, after the replacement of the British Merlin engine, the performance has been greatly increased, can provide a full escort for the bomber group, but unfortunately because it has just been put into mass production, and the route between Britain and the United States is blocked, the number is far from enough, otherwise this time the Eighth Air Force will completely replace the escort aircraft - the P-47 will be changed to P-51.

As for the B-29 that Garland wanted to see, there was not a single one this time, most of them were B-17s, and some of them were Lancasters - this is the strength of the British who gritted their teeth and pulled out, this kind of heavy bombers suffered heavy losses in the bombing of the Azores, and the number was sharply reduced, but Portugal picked up the ready-made cheap and began to equip a large group of Lancasters.

On the command plane at the head of the large formation of the US army, Brigadier General Curtis Lemay, who was the commander of the Fourth Bomber Wing of the Eighth Air Force, was flipping through the navigation map, and then carefully checked the terrain below, Berlin has surpassed the British Air Force's common hyperbolic positioning system method, and the farther away it is, the more useless it is, but fortunately, the experienced navigation officer has made up for this shortcoming, and there are very few clouds today, so it is very convenient to observe, he sighed: "It's really a good weather for bombing." ”

The sergeant major in charge of navigation turned his head and asked him: "Sir, if you fly in a straight line, you will still be in Berlin in 20-25 minutes, do you need to turn and take evasive actions?" ”

Li Mei shook her head: "Don't waste time, fly in a straight line, and try to leave a little more time for the P-47s to stay in the air." ”

This time, the mission of the Eighth Air Force was clear, to bomb Berlin and destroy Berlin's landmarks, including the Chancellery, the Reichstag, the Brandenburg Gate, the Victory Column, the Berlin Cathedral, etc., in retaliation for the air raids on New York. Considering that Berlin was the area with the highest concentration of German anti-aircraft fire (second only to the Azores), Li May not only personally led the team to command, but also mobilized the largest number of bombers and escort fighters.

In the past, the Eighth Air Force usually carried out daytime bombing on the line to flexibly dispatch the line to attract German air defense fighters to misjudge in order to avoid real and false attacks, but Germany soon adopted an independent defense zone system, air defense fighters are only responsible for dealing with an area, and there is no need to blindly carry out cross-regional reinforcements, with the rapid increase in the number of German fighters, each air defense zone can maintain more than 400 fighters, and the total number of air defense fighters on the entire Western Front exceeds 4300 and is still growing rapidly, No matter how much we avoid the real and attack the false, we will be able to attract dozens of mobile planes to be transferred around. The Berlin key air defense zone is usually capable of gathering more than 600 aircraft. This density greatly exceeded that of the same period in history, and it also contributed to the fact that the British and American strategic air strikes have not been effective.

Considering the large number of air defense fighters in Berlin, Li Mei hopes to use the method of flying in a straight line to give the P-47s an extra 10 minutes of time in the air, and the maximum range after they add the auxiliary fuel tank is only 2200 kilometers.

At 15:15, the air raid sirens sounded in Berlin, and the streets and alleys sounded sharp and piercing sirens, and Hoffmann took refuge in the bunker under the escort of the guard flag team.

"Führer, the number of US aircraft in the US military fleet has been reduced to more than 1,200 aircraft, of which more than 100 bombers have returned and been shot down."

"Let it go, I believe in you." Hoffman thought for a moment and added on the phone, "I'm in the bomb shelter, it's safe." ”

"Then we are relieved." (To be continued.) )