"Sir, have a mission?" Lieutenant Colonel Schiller, the leader of the Air Corps deployed on the island of San Miguel, received a call from Warnes. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

What Warnes said on the phone was very simple: "The reinforcement group sent an urgent message 2 minutes ago, a large number of aircraft carriers were found 800 kilometers north-west of Lisbon sailing south, I don't know if it is the British or the Americans, in short, it is not ours, the He-218 has not enough range, so you can only use all your joint attack aircraft." ”

"How many?"

"4 ships."

"It's a bit far, but I'll take this job, hang a torpedo! Special Thunder! Schiller replied crisply.

"Are you sure? The enemy has 4 aircraft carriers, and the defense capability should not be weak, I am afraid it will not be easy to fight. Vaughans asked uncomfortedly.

Schiller pondered for a moment: "Let all the BF-219s cover us, the FW-190 range is not enough...... How many BF-219s do you have left? ”

"There were 36 of them, but 4 were lost, and there are 32 more."

"I have 23 more planes here, and one of them is out of order, so let them all go out and gather together over the airport on Sao Miguel Island, and remember to hang the auxiliary fuel tank."

"Yes, stay safe, and give me back alive."

"Of course, I'm still waiting to add oak leaves to my Knight's Cross."

As soon as he put down the phone, Schiller immediately shouted out of the door: "Boys, the sale has come to the door, all the joint attack aircraft are dispatched, all of them are hung with special mines, remember to hang the wing auxiliary fuel tanks, and the BF-219 is covered." ”

"Sir, special mines are very expensive, and there are not many stocks, why do you have to use special mines?" Lieutenant Bloch asked with a hippie smile.

Schiller scolded with a smile: "Just how much you say, I don't know how expensive? Go fight aircraft carriers, 4 ships! ”

"Yay!" The crowd was stunned for a moment, then cheered and rushed towards the hangar - this was a big deal.

Bloch is right, the G9S aviation oxygen torpedo, which is nicknamed a special mine internally, is really not cheap at all, and even because of the increase in the safety mounting accessories used by exclusive aircraft and the difficulty of manufacturing and assembly, its value is more expensive than the 610mm caliber G9A oxygen torpedo is 30,000 marks, you must know that a complete No. 4 H tank is only 100,000 marks, a BF-109 (excluding engine) is less than 50,000 marks, and 1 special mine is equivalent to two BF-109, It's almost as much as a tank, and of course it's expensive enough.

However, these safety accessories are absolutely needed, without this set of things, the middle and rear of the torpedo is easy to explode if it is strafed by machine gun bullets, and the reason why Japan interrupted the development of oxygen aviation torpedoes after the success of the research of spear torpedoes is because the danger is too high, so high that even Japan itself can not stand it. Germany has additionally strengthened its security after piercing the window paper of oxygen torpedo technology, not only solving the internal protection of oxygen torpedoes with tungsten-nickel alloy armor, but also Germany's exquisite production technology will not make these torpedoes always have oxygen leakage accidents like Japan. In addition, when the belly of the joint attack aircraft is mounted with special mines, special bulletproof flaps are attached to it to resist direct attacks by bullets of less than 13mm caliber, but if it is unfortunate enough to be strafed by a cannon of more than 20mm caliber, it can only ask for more blessings.

Everyone nervously checked the status of their cars, and the veteran officers were studying the flight path and calculating the range and time, and the ground crew was busy one step earlier. Schiller's attack team is not an inexperienced junior brother, on the contrary, this group of pilots and ground crews are all members of the Air Force KG54 bomber wing transferred from the Mediterranean coast, and they have been fighting wits and courage with the Mediterranean Fleet of the British Royal Navy for several years, and after taking Egypt and marching into the Middle East, especially after the victory of the Battle of Malta, the Mediterranean Air Force Wing suddenly lost its usefulness, and thought that it would be transferred to Norway and France, but it did not expect to move to the Azores as a whole, let alone the "open door business" that was transferred It's so big.

After hanging the G9S oxygen aviation torpedo weighing 1.3 tons, the auxiliary fuel tank in the belly of the joint attack aircraft cannot be hung, but two small fuel tanks of more than 100 liters can be hung under the wings, and the engine range can still be extended by 400 kilometers, and with this 400 kilometers as a base, it will be more certain to hit targets more than 700 kilometers away.

At 2:45 p.m., 36 Joint Strike Aircraft and 23 Bf-219s took off and flew east with 32 Bf-219s that had arrived in advance.

"Sir, the surface reconnaissance planes have not been able to find any trace of the enemy......" On the bridge of the Victory, Chris reported to Spruance in frustration, the chief of staff of the X Fleet, "They searched the sector 160 degrees to the south, reaching a maximum distance of 400 nautical miles, and still found nothing." ”

"Let them go back and continue the search tomorrow, the enemy should still be far away." Spruance is confident, "They won't be able to run, even if they chase South Africa or Brazil." ”

"Sir......" A frightened voice suddenly came in through the radio, "the radar has found a large number of enemy planes flying from the west, and the distance is only more than 100 kilometers. ”

"Not good! This must be a group of German attack aircraft from the Azores, how can they fly so far? Chris was terrified.

"The fleet immediately formed a wheeled anti-aircraft formation." Spruance fearlessly and methodically gave the battle order, "all fighters take off to meet the enemy......

The four aircraft carriers immediately increased their horsepower and urgently ejected the fighters, and the deck wind of more than 27 knots made it no longer necessary for the planes to fly into the wind, and a moment later, one after another F4F Wildcat fighters took off one after another, setting up a tight defensive formation over the fleet. The four aircraft carriers carried a total of 65 fighters, accounting for more than 40% of the total 162 aircraft, and 24 fighters had been used as cover missions over the fleet.

He reassured Chris: "It may be the enemy's long-range horizontal bombers, their dive bombers can't fly so far, unless they don't want to go back." ”

Less than three minutes after all the escort fighters were lined up in an anti-aircraft formation, a group of black-pressed German attack planes appeared to the west, and with the help of high-powered telescopes, Chris saw the incoming aircraft model clearly, and quickly blurted out: "It's those damn hunchbacks!"

"Hunchback?" Spruance had been fighting in the Pacific theater and had never fought the Italians, so he was unfamiliar with the nickname and was surprised by the three-engine attack aircraft.

"It's an Italian SM-79 bomber, with a long range and good performance, and I used to fight against them when I was serving in the Mediterranean." Chris explained, "They weren't accurate enough when they bombed horizontally, but they worked well when they were used by torpedo machines." ”

"Torpedo?" Spruance's face instantly became ugly, because he could also see what was hanging under the belly of the enemy plane, and the long guy was obviously a torpedo, "This is really not good news. ”

Two minutes later, the two sides officially engaged, and the wildcats, apparently not wanting to let these attack planes pounce on the fleet at close range, pounced ferociously, and the BF-219s, not to be outdone, rushed together. Soon 55 German fighters and 65 American fighters began to collide face-to-face, and the sky was full of whistling and shooting, and it was difficult for those watching the battle below to discern who was who.

Although he had an understanding of the parameters and performance of the BF-219 in advance, and the identification manual also listed the pictures and judged performance in a regular manner, Spruance, a veteran of the Pacific Theater, stubbornly believed that the BF-219 looked familiar, and he firmly believed that he must have seen this kind of aircraft somewhere. ”

His vision and experience are very good, the BF-219 is developed based on the Zero Combat 32 type, compared with the common Zero Combat 21 type, the wing is not a circular arc and changed to a square wing end and shortened the wingspan, improving the speed, acceleration, roll rate and dive speed limit, more suitable for high-speed assault, good at rolling US fighters (horizontal entanglement belt part BZ), the disadvantage is that the flight range is short and the stall increases, the Allies call the Zero fighter "Zeke", The Type 32 was given the new designation "Hamp" because of the distinctly different features and performance of the wing ends, which Allied pilots mistook for the new model. However, when the Type 32 was used in Japan, it happened to be the air battle of Kuah, and the range could not meet the needs of the attack from Rabaul (1100 kilometers one way), so it only made more than 300 planes and ended hastily, far less than the number of BF-219 in the German army, and Germany optimized and improved the layout of the BF-219.

"Quick, use Thatch's scissors tactics." He roared loudly from below.

This is a tactic developed by John Thatch during the Battle of Midway, which mainly involves a two-plane formation or a four-plane formation in a reverse serpentine maneuver with each other to attract the attention of enemy planes in front of him and create an attack opportunity for his teammates. However, this attack posture often does not enter the rear hemisphere, because the enemy will appear on the side and it will take many training sessions to achieve good coordination, but for the inferior Wildcat, this is one of the few good tactics that can defeat the Zero. Thatch himself returned home after the Battle of Midway as an instructor, teaching and promoting the tactic among new carrier-based pilots.

The key premise of this formation tactic is that it needs to have the function of clear voice communication, and the Japanese Zero War is almost non-existent in terms of voice communication, so the Japanese pilots have a headache when they see this tactic, in addition, at the beginning, they are almost head-on, fighting for protection and fire ballistic performance, and the Zero War is also at a disadvantage, plus there is a problem with the carburetor in the Rong engine used by the Zero War, and the fuel supply is insufficient during the dive, and the speed cannot be fast - of course, it is not good to be fast, and the fragile structural strength of the Zero War is too fast and easy to fall apart.

If it was Zero, Spruance was very correct to propose using Thatch scissors, but he never expected that none of the problems that exist in Zero-Fight do not exist in BF-219. (To be continued.) )