The morning breeze blows, the white clouds fly, and the July sun shines brightly in every part of the city. Located next to the runway of the suburban airport of the Hamburg Port Command, dozens of representatives from various parties have gathered at this time; Among them were naval officers in formal suits and engineering representatives with loose hair, and their eyes were all on the brand-new military plane in the middle of the runway.

At the beginning of 1935, the Navy issued instructions to various domestic aircraft manufacturers for the research and development of new carrier-based fighters: the new aircraft should be designed with a metal fuselage, a fully enclosed cockpit, and a single pair of wings, and should be able to meet the requirements of taking off and landing on aircraft carriers. Fang Yan, who paid no more attention to naval aviation, immediately contacted his cheap daddy Rudolph and expressed his willingness to fully participate in the bidding. Today, Rudolf has extended his business to the aviation sector: the Gotha company, which he controls, is a well-known aircraft manufacturing base in North Germany. In addition, far away in Leningrad, at the Union shipyards, there were also aircraft research teams belonging to this group; They were all elites in the industry who had evaded the development of the Treaty of Versailles in the early years and went to the Soviet Union to continue their research, and many of them were well-known aeronautical mechanical engineers from the United States. During the Great Depression, these Americans lost their jobs, and Fang Yan took the opportunity to add them to his own business and became the technical backbone of the German aviation industry.

With the joining of these people, the R&D progress of Rudolph's Gotha company is obviously much ahead of other domestic counterparts. In May of the same year, the first prototype, designated the GO-152, was built, and the Gotha company immediately conducted several flight tests, constantly remedying and refining the technical deficiencies reflected during the flight. So far, this fighter has carried out 11 test flights, and judging from the good situation reflected so far, this fighter will most likely be selected by the Navy and become the main backbone of aircraft carriers!

After careful inspection by mechanics. All the work before the take-off of the test aircraft was quickly completed. A young pilot climbed up the escalator into the cockpit and closed the bulletproof glass completely. The engine roared with a dull roar, and the three-wing propeller in front of the fuselage began to spin rapidly; A few seconds later, the fighter began to gallop forward on the runway, and after taxiing for more than 100 meters, it broke away from the ground and flew into the sky.

"Dear General Barak, this aircraft reflects the highest level of technology of our Gotha company, and I can say with complete confidence that it is also the highest industrial achievement in the whole world!" Ral, the chief engineer of the project, stared at the white warhawk soaring into the sky, and said to Barak, the director of the Naval Armaments Bureau, with pride in his words. "This type of aircraft is more than half a ton heavier than the BF-109 developed by the army at the same time, and the empty weight reaches 2.8 tons. However, with the propulsion of an 850-horsepower air-cooled engine, it is no slower than the Army's light fighter that has just been test-flown for a short time. In the next step, we plan to increase its engine to 1,000 horsepower, so that its maximum level flight speed is expected to exceed 540km/h, and the fighter's climb ability will be greatly improved. Ral briefed the general in front of him who was in charge of evaluating the weapons.

"Thanks to its high inherent weight, the GO-152 is able to meet all the needs of the Navy in other terms of performance. It has a range of up to 1,300 km, and more than 1,900 km when loading drop tanks; This makes its radius of sea activities significantly larger than that of the BF-109, which has a range of only 800 kilometers, and can play an ideal role in both attack and reconnaissance. Ral spoke again. In fact, this is one of the fundamental reasons why the Navy did not directly use the army's light fighters on board, but decided to start anew: because it did not know where and at what point in the vast sea the target would appear. The fighter plane, which is usually responsible for reconnaissance and vigilance, undoubtedly needs more internal oil to make its activity radius and air time more superior!

In addition to this, the landing gear of the BF-109 is quite thin and light. Carrier-based fighters, on the other hand, often need to operate forcibly on bumpy and shaky aircraft carriers; In particular, when the carrier-based aircraft landed, it had to rely on the landing gear to hook the arresting cable on the flight deck, which made the BF-109 unsuitable for being a carrier-based aircraft. If the aircraft carrier really accepted these members, then even Fang Yan came up with an angled deck that could be returned after a failed landing. Flight accidents caused by insufficient strength of the landing gear are bound to be recurring. The GO-152 was designed with a solid landing gear, which will undoubtedly make it easy to take off and land on the ship.

"In order to make this fighter better adapt to the aircraft carrier platform, we also spent a lot of effort on its aerodynamic layout and wing construction. In the case of a full load of fuel bombs. The GO-152 only needs to run 170 meters to take off, a figure that is expected to be reduced to less than 130 meters if you take into account the deck wind and relative displacement generated by the aircraft carrier at high speeds. When it gets a 1,000 hp engine, this number will be cut even further. With a confident smile on his face, Ral continued, "And in order to cram more aircraft into the aircraft carrier with limited hangar area, we have also given the aircraft the ability to fold the wings. With a folded wingspan of only 5.5 meters, it would theoretically require only 55 square meters to fit into a hangar. ”

Listening to Delal's introduction, Barak finally couldn't help but be moved. Although he was not adept at the nascent naval aviation, the German Navy had already received three light aircraft carriers one after another; After two years of use, the navy has gradually figured out some ways to determine the strength of the combat strength of this new warship. At present, these two improvements made by Gotha in technology are both good strategies that can greatly increase the number of fighters that can be dispatched by the aircraft carrier!

"In terms of combat effectiveness, we have also done our best to ensure it. The GO-152 is equipped with two 13mm heavy machine guns in the lower front of the fuselage and two 20mm cannons in the wings. The self-sealing fuel tank, steel plates around the cockpit and engine, and bulletproof glass give the fighter a certain degree of defense, ensuring that critical parts are not damaged in the face of small-caliber bullets. In addition, it can carry a 250kg aerial bomb under the belly of the aircraft, and if necessary, it can replace the bomber to carry out a dive attack on targets at a certain angle at sea. Lal further explained.

Barak nodded slowly, his eyes shining brightly for the first time. The manager of the Gotha company had already quoted him a price of 100,000 marks including the engine, and if it could achieve the same superior performance as Lahr had introduced, then it would be an ideal weapon with a good price. Looking at the fighter planes that were conducting various maneuver tests in the air, Barak had already made his own decision in his heart.

After a thorough technical trade-off, in August 1935, the German Navy officially announced that the Gotha GO-152 had won the tender for the carrier-based fighter project. When Fang Yan learned the news, his heart couldn't help but be filled with joy: his early investment in digging corners in the United States had finally borne fruit, and the performance indicators of German carrier-based fighters had reached the top level that could be reached under the technology of the times. In naval and air combat, a good fighter is even more important than bombers and torpedo planes: whether it is leading a team to break through the enemy's aircraft to block and launch an attack on a ship, or taking to the air to destroy the enemy's incoming aircraft group, the side with superior fighter performance can occupy a significant battlefield initiative.

In terms of carrier-based attack aircraft, the Gotha company also made a phased technological breakthrough after October. A prototype named GO-388 was assembled, and the first test flight took place, leaving all technicians looking forward to the future. The aircraft has an empty weight of 3.0 tons, is operated by two members, and the dangerous explosives mounted under its belly can be 500kg bombs, 800kg bombs, or 1000kg torpedoes, of which 500kg bombs can be loaded with 70 degrees of dive angle, launching precision strikes on the battleship. Because it can hold more internal oil, the range of the GO-388 is not lower than that of the GO-152, and even if it is loaded with torpedoes, it can also reach a huge distance of 1,000 kilometers. In terms of self-defense capabilities, the aircraft is equipped with a 13mm heavy machine gun, and the armored defense in the core position is also strong and reliable, and it has a certain counterattack power in the face of incoming enemy fighters.

In contrast, the Junkers-87 dive bomber of the Army Aviation has a significant gap with the GO-388 in terms of range and self-defense capabilities. While it is capable of delivering superior precision bombing, its combat radius is as limited as that of the BF-109; More importantly, the Junkers-87 has extremely poor survivability in the face of enemy fighters, so it must rely on its own complete air supremacy to give full play to its advantage in ship attack. In actual naval and air combat, such a one-sided situation is almost impossible; Especially in the face of the excellent performance of the American carrier-based aviation, it is good that the German fighter force can guarantee that it will not be suppressed, and if you want to create a blue sky with only the Iron Cross logo, it simply only exists in a dream! (To be continued.) )

PS: From tomorrow the author will go on a business trip to the imperial capital again.,The update may not be guaranteed.,I hope you'll forgive me.