There are many naval aircraft, the army is also not to be outdone, after getting the relevant technology of British Gloucester and de Havilland, the XP-80 project of the Lockheed Skunk Factory has been quickly accelerated, and the prototype manufacturing and 9 test flights have been completed, Arnold requires mass production to begin at the end of this year, and the model is officially codenamed F-80 (note: it is also known as a meteor in history, but the British meteor is a twin jet, and the American meteor is a single jet). In addition, after the German bombing with a jet group, the U.S. Army Air Command put forward a formal request for jet bombers more than half a year earlier than in history.www.biquge.info

The requirements issued for the tender were a range of more than 5,500 kilometers, a practical ceiling of more than 13,000 meters, a maximum speed of more than 875 kilometers per hour, and a bomb load of not less than 5 tons - this is also vaguely a Manhattan engineering vehicle requirements.

In the past, the U.S. positioned the vehicle as a B-29, but now German jets can easily intercept the B-29, so they must penetrate at a higher altitude and speed. Originally, there was a British base, 5500 kilometers could cover the entire European continent, and now there is no bridgehead, and the Americans think that the problem is not big, it is a big deal to recruit death squads for a one-way attack, and taking off from Newfoundland can cover the whole of Western Europe! There are always warriors under heavy rewards, and it is a big deal to recruit a group of Jews.

North America, Convair, Boeing and Martin have each produced plans and been awarded separate contracts for the first phase of the study, with the XB-45, XB-46, XB-47 and XB-48 being the fastest, with the Boeing being the fastest and testing on the B-29.

At this point, Hoffman obviously did not expect the Americans' persistent pursuit of strategic long-range bombing, and with the jet type, he still immediately thought of such a big thing as a four-engine long-range bomber, and did not study the road of lightning bombing by twin-engine medium bombers.

In fact, in addition to the idea of demonstrating, the air raids on the British Isles and the display of advanced weapons also have the idea of depleting the national strength of the United States and neutralizing the advantages of the United States. In the field of conventional aviation armaments, although Germany has a unique advantage, its overall strength (both in terms of quantity and quality of aircraft) is weaker than that of the United States, and the reason why Germany can temporarily take advantage of it is that, on the one hand, Germany is concentrating on developing a limited number of aircraft models, especially the four bombers, which are almost not equipped with huge costs, thus saving huge expenditures; On the other hand, the German pilots had accumulated tremendous superiority over many years of war, and the US military was no match at all in terms of performance level and quantity.

But sooner or later, this advantage will be wiped out, so new equipment must be developed to force upgrades to achieve corner overtaking. At the end of Hoffmann's year, the reason why China was very obsessed with electric vehicles was that it believed that it could no longer catch up in the field of internal combustion vehicles, and that it was necessary to engage in electric vehicles in order to achieve corner overtaking.

The routine of displaying the compulsory upgrade of new equipment was summed up by Hoffman on the basis of the experience of the Cold War, and the arms upgrade in the Cold War was such repeated stimulation layer by layer, but the limitation of the Cold War was that many advanced weapons could not be used, or people did not feel the pain intuitively or on the skin. The immaturity of the proxy side in the US-Soviet proxy war greatly reduced the effect, taking the simplest Middle East war as an example, were the Soviet tanks really as weak as they were shown in the war? Of course it can't be, the reason for the poor performance is because the Soviet Union exports parallel imports or monkey versions, plus a group of rough brothers in the Middle East to use good performance to have ghosts, and sophisticated weapons can only play 100% or even 120% in the hands of qualified people. Not to mention anything else, if the Turkish army defending Transcaucasia this time was replaced by 200,000 German troops with the same equipment for defense, how could it collapse so quickly?

Although there is pressure in the Cold War arms escalation, the sense of urgency is not so strong, and it is completely possible to wait, but now that we are fighting a world war, any weapon will directly affect the battlefield performance, thus pressuring the opponent to keep up. This pressure will force the opponent into its own rhythm and track, and directly disrupt the opponent's development process.

If the United States can maintain its usual rhythm in aviation equipment, then it can be seen from the development process of heavy tanks that the United States has a chaotic rhythm.

The two SS American divisions explained very clearly that in order to fight the Tiger tank, the US military could not wait to use the immature and defective M6 heavy tank, and I heard that thousands of units were produced. It turned out to be a fiasco in Cape Verde, and the German designers who had seen the real thing did not give a damn about it at all - except for the 90mm tank gun, everything else was rubbish!

However, Sherman has always been considered by designers to be very good, at least more potential than his own No. 4 tank, and the Americans are completely putting the cart before the horse. If you follow the German routine, you must follow the upgrade method of the No. 4G to patch the Sherman, such as upgrading its front armor from 51mm to 80-90mm, and replacing it with a new tank gun -- so that the new Sherman after the transformation can reach the level of the No. 4G and reach the level of 90-95% of the Leopard.

The designers even modified a few Shermans with their own hands, first using 35mm homogeneous armor to give Sherman a defensive patch, and then grafting the Leopard-style turret directly onto Sherman, and then properly optimizing the suspension, the total weight of the German version of Sherman after transformation is only more than 33 tons, the effect is very good, firepower, mobility, and defense have reached a relatively balanced state.

The German version of Sherman is known as the nine-fold Leopard, and this technical level combined with the production capacity of American tanks is very terrible, because the Leopard Germany itself produces less than 700 vehicles / month, and if the Sherman is at full power of the US military, the monthly output can reach at least 3 times that of the Leopard.

In the United States, a similar Sherman Magic change also has it, with the standard code name M4A3E2 and the nickname Dumbo. That is, the protection is greatly enhanced on the basis of ordinary Sherman tanks: the frontal armor of the lower half of the hull is thickened to 114-140mm, the inclination angle is 34-90 degrees, and the side is 38mm; The thickness of the frontal armor in the upper part of the hull is 102mm, the inclination angle is 43 degrees, and the side thickening is 76mm; The armor thickness of the outer parts of the turret frontal gun shield and the side and rear armor is 152mm, and the thickness of the turret frontal gun shield is 178mm, thanks to the 500 hp Ford V8 liquid-cooled engine, although the Dumbo reaches 38 tons, the mobility is not satisfactory.

The problem is that the 38-ton Dumbo is obviously too heavily transformed, compared with the same 38-ton Leopard, the firepower is weak (Dumbo is still a short-barreled 75mm gun), mobile meat, and the defense is slightly stronger, but the 88/L56 tank gun is still worn, even if this magic change can't stop the Tiger, so the original good idea was distorted by the Germans, and the United States did not focus on the development of Dumbo but accelerated the 42-ton M26 (Pershing), and even hit the IS-1 with the idea.

Although the performance of the M6 received little feedback from the Cape Verdean front, it was not well reacted by all sides, and the US military directly announced that it would abandon the switch to the M-26, and Marshall gave a death order that 1,000 vehicles must be built by September, and then there were all kinds of pits, and engineers, troops and factories all complained about it.

At this time, Stalin's father was in a hurry to send 2 IS-1 and a full set of drawings, after the engineer equipped it with the American sight and related internal equipment, a test compared to find that the IS-1 performance is more stable, and later even replaced the Pershing turret and artillery, which is messy, the same is a tank in the early 40s, the Pershing turret version of the IS-1 performance in all aspects is stable and overwhelming the M-26, and the engineer said that if the United States to produce, many details will not be as rough as the Russians, He even patted his chest and said that the diesel engine on the IS-1 could be replaced with a gasoline engine with the same 500 horsepower.

So on April 18, the War Department issued an unprecedented order for GM to copy and produce 10 American versions of the IS-1 (equipped with Pershing turrets) according to the technical requirements of the production drawings for comprehensive testing, and the internal accessories can be used in the United States to use existing American products, for a time limit of 3 months, while the M-26 continues to be manufactured, implementing the two-legged policy.

German designers did not like the M6, but the IS-1 tank they also thought was quite remarkable, at least stronger than the Leopard. Except for Hoffman, everyone thought that the IS-1 was the latest heavy tank of the Soviet Union, and Hoffman knew that Stalin's father must still have the IS-2 hidden, so he didn't know when he would be able to take it out (Zhukov roared: You wait, I'll show you right away!). So on the one hand, the manufacturing of the Tiger 2 is accelerated, and on the other hand, the Tiger 3 (Tiger King) is urged to improve ultimately.

After the designers came up with the design of the Tiger 2, the Ministry of Armaments also began to ponder the improvement of the Leopard - the 4th could be improved from A to H that year, and the Leopard could naturally do the same. Under the stimulation of the IS-1, a Leopard E improvement plan for the installation of HL230P30 engine (700 horsepower), the frontal main armor thickened to 100mm, and the installation of infrared headlight night vision equipment was quickly approved, at the cost of the Leopard increased from 38 tons to 40.5 tons, fortunately, the horsepower increased synchronously, and the maneuverability did not decrease but increased.

At the same time, the new Tiger 2 is all equipped with 700 horsepower engines, and even the Tiger King under development has temporarily used this engine for prototype testing. In the course of the test, it was found that the performance of the 105/L68 originally planned to be equipped was not as good as expected (the naval gun, the army is not familiar), and the designer tentatively proposed whether to replace the 128mm caliber gun, and the caliber and electric twin 128mm anti-aircraft guns were the same door, which was regarded as inheriting the tradition of the Third Reich to change the anti-aircraft gun to a tank gun.

At that time, there were two options: 128mm/L61 and 128mm/L55, and after testing, it was believed that the L55 tank could withstand it completely, and if there was an HL234+ engine, perhaps the L61 could also withstand it. Concerned about the threat of the IS-2 and IS-3, Hoffman agreed to the adjustment, and by the way, the gun on the Rage (Tiger Tanji) was also replaced with a 128mm caliber calibre.

As a result, by mid-1944, various weapons that did not exist or did not appear in history began to appear unexpectedly due to various changes.