The bloody battle over St. Margaret was in full swing, and the RAF went all out for it.

When the London order was conveyed to the RAF Bomber Command, Charles Brown. Lieutenant General Potel thought it was a nasty joke made by some drunken bastard in London.

Because there have been similar things before, some stupid rookie operators have typed out some fabricated messages during training, and occasionally sent them out due to operational errors.

But then he received a series of phone calls from Dowding from the fighter command, Newwall, the chief of the General Staff of the Royal Air Force, and Churchill himself, with very urgent, very earnest, and very harsh words, so that Potter deeply understood that the situation was very bad.

The war has reached this point, and it cannot but be said that the British Royal Air Force has really done its best. It's not that they're not brave enough, it's that the enemy is too ferocious.

The situation in the bomber command was actually worse than the German High Command knew, long beyond the scope of the term "the end of the crossbow".

Potter's troops at hand were very embarrassed, in the early Anglo-German air strangulation battle, a large number of pilots were transferred into the air force fighter unit, many of them were experienced veterans, because Dowding's power was in full swing at that time, Churchill was almost unconditionally supporting all his orders, and the bomber command had no way to refuse Dowding's request.

Potter could not even appeal his opinion to the above, because all the orders were signed by Churchill and the War Cabinet, and anything contrary to them would be a challenge to the authority of these people, which would be self-defeating in the political environment of Britain at the time, even if you were a lieutenant general of high rank.

At this point, Potter could only smash his teeth and swallow it in his stomach, and the situation was urgent, according to Churchill's wishes. At a time when the stakes are at stake, Britain's future depends on tonight's hammer. This obviously put all the pots on the back of the bomber troops, and Portal's psychology at that time was simply inexplicable sadness and indignation, but as a professional soldier, he had to take care of the overall situation. Now the only thing he can do is to do everything possible to complete the task assigned by his superiors, maybe he can appeal to his grievances afterwards, but now he must shut up.

The efficiency of the bomber command is not high, which is a common problem of the entire British bureaucracy, even if it is a matter of burning eyebrows, the British still have to go through all the procedures with seventeen or eighteen official seals. Otherwise, it is a violation of military regulations, and even if you win, you will have to go to court-martial.

Because of Churchill's backing, the fighter command was granted certain privileges, and it became a completely dictatorial little kingdom of Dowding, and its efficiency was significantly improved. But the bombers were only used by Churchill as a political tool, and at that time he had not yet developed the concept of strategic bombing, and the heavy losses on the French front made him lose confidence in the bomber force, and he did not believe that relying on these vulnerable guys could end the war.

After all, the general thinking of the British at that time was still based on the theory of World War I, and the bomber was regarded as a support force for the ground forces. In Churchill's mind, the value of bombers at this time was to make long-range attacks on the German mainland. No matter what hits, just drop the bomb and hear the movement.

Because this means that the British did not simply resist passively, the British still had the ability to fight back and burn the war on the enemy's land. This will not only boost the morale of the masses in the country. And it can also cause international repercussions, eliminate the negative impact of a series of failures in the early stage, and provide some public opinion help for Britain to gain support from the other side of the Atlantic.

After being driven out of the continent, the strategy of the British Air Force was a total contraction. Specializing in the defense of the iron wall, the resources provided to the Royal Air Force, both in man and material, are all prioritized towards fighter units. At this time, the development of British bomber forces not only came to a standstill. And it's starting to shrink gradually.

The training of reserve pilots has come to a standstill, the in-service personnel have been transferred to the coastal defense command and fighter units, and in particular, the loss of logistics personnel has been very serious, and some experienced engine mechanics have been transferred by name, which has led to a sharp decline in the quality of bomber maintenance, and air dangers continue to occur in training and actual combat.

In the end, even the fuel supply was given priority to the fighter units, and many squadron leaders simply stopped flight training, and they did not expect to receive any combat missions anyway, the bomber crew members were bored lying outside the barracks basking in the sun, some people who were not willing to be lonely began to indulge in flirting with the women in the service, and some ambitious ones began to hang out in the pilots' clubs and relied on beer and whiskey to escape reality.

Although many bombers are still sent off the assembly line every month in order to keep the factory running and protect the interests of arms manufacturers, the models are still the same old and sick. What is even more tragic is that because of the shortage of production materials, even those who are old, weak, sick and disabled have appeared in simplified versions.

These simplified versions of the bomber used a lot of laminate and iron sheets, and even hardened pulp board, and the factory replaced the expensive aluminum alloy with these cheap materials, and the parts of the fuselage that had to be curved were directly changed to right-angled planes because of the lack of material ductility. At the request of the wartime cabinet, the factory added a lot of machine gun self-defense firepower to the fuselage, but it was considered that there was no merit at all except for the weight of the fuselage, because there were so many crew members that there was no extra manpower to manipulate those things.

The crude engines were so crudely constructed that they increased the consumption of fuel and lubricants, and the increased weight of the aircraft led to a drastic drop in range and bomb load of these simplified bombers, and in the end, almost no pilot was willing to fly the waste, and could only be thrown on both sides of the runway as an ornament to fool the ignorant civilians.

British bomber forces were once ambitious, and in the early days of the war they were constantly deployed, making long-range raids across the European continent to attack German units and logistics systems on the French front. As a result, the Luftwaffe gave British bomber pilots a nightmare lesson, telling them what they were flying and how vulnerable they were to fighters, and in the end most of the students were left behind by the Germans, many remained on the land forever, and only a few received certificates of completion and returned to England alive.

Since the Battle of Dunkirk, British bomber units no longer went to the French front to bomb, because such operations no longer made any sense. They could only rely on a bunch of bombers whose performance was completely unsuitable for modern warfare to sneak up on the German mainland at night, and rely on the front-page headlines of Fleet Street to show that they still existed.

Some of the cutting-edge light bombers were deployed to the Coastal Defense Command to attack German transport ships and small combat ships of the German Navy in the Strait, including most of the Blenheim light bombers, almost half of the Hampton light bombers and all the Fairley combat single-engine bombers, and the last aircraft was simply a tragedy, a representative product that had been outdated since it was built, similar cases abound in British arms production, and they are all products made behind closed doors anyway, A reflection of the decay of the British Empire.

That night, the RAF bomber unit was like an old engine. It took a long time to start running. Everyone knew that the situation was critical, but the damage had already been done, and there was no way back. Rejuvenating it to its former glory is not something that can be done overnight. There are shortages of parts, fuel shortages, personnel shortages, and a large backlog of faulty aircraft in repair shops. Even if the officer pointed a revolver at the head, the ground crew could only spread their hands and say that the plane could not take off immediately, and there was a kind of you who would kill me.

The first to react was the only Sixth Night Bomber Group in Portal's possession. It consisted of four squadrons of Wellington bombers who had been carrying out night attacks on Germany, and in fact all the planes of these four squadrons combined were now not enough to make up a single squadron.

They had been on combat duty for two months without ever being replenished, and the RAF was able to ration enough fuel and spare parts for their mission. But the personnel had to find their own way to replenish it. It's a big joke, they don't run an aviation school, and they want to go over to other bomber units to dig into the wall, but the other side often turns around and runs away when they hear their terrible casualty rate. In the end, because there were too many contacts, the reputation was worn out, and the name of this brigade was heard. Everyone will avoid it like a plague god.

The force finally lived up to Portal's expectations, and roared into the starry sky after nightfall over Britain, an hour after the bomber command received an order from London to be the first British planes to reach St. Margaret's Beach.

The British navigation station that the Germans have been worried about did not play much role, because the directional navigation beam of the British night bombing navigation station was aimed at the night bombing of the German mainland, and the angle and position of the navigation station were carefully calculated, and now the target is the British mainland, the position of these navigation stations has become very embarrassing, the beam angle and width have been limited, and they can only barely bring the plane to the right direction.

As a result, these million-dollar navigation stations were not as useful as a few searchlights in Reichenau, and the subsequent British bombers could see from a distance the snow-white searchlight columns that illuminated half of the sky, as well as the flares and flashing anti-aircraft smoke clouds. The British pilots were like moths on the field that saw a fire, scrambling towards the death trap.

The German ground anti-aircraft fire surprised the first batch of Wellington aircraft to arrive, they had never seen what a radar fire control anti-aircraft artillery system was, because this was still a super advanced secret weapon in Germany, and the Berlin anti-aircraft artillery group had not yet had time to configure, and the first batch of products in trial production were all transferred to the French front. However, if they can get back alive from this trap this time, maybe they will be able to see the system again in the next bombing of Berlin, the Germans have accumulated sufficient experimental data on the front line, and soon these improved models of radar will be mass-produced and attached to all local anti-aircraft artillery units.

The power of the 88-mm anti-aircraft gun in combination with the radar is far more than simply one plus one equals two, but an increase in geometric coefficients. In the past, it might have taken three to five shots to calibrate the height of the group, but this time the first round of bombardment smashed the shells directly into the middle of the British bomber group. Such a result was catastrophic, only for the British bomber crews.

The latest anti-aircraft guns of the German army were equipped with an automatic fuse system, which was a small, electronically controlled mechanical device in the shape of an iron box with a lock hole, on which two pointer dials displayed the set parameters within the machine at this time. When the radar intercepts the target data, it automatically inputs the parameters into the shooting commander, and then the commander calculates and then displays the shooting parameters required by each gun on the shooting dial through the cable, and at the same time inputs the fuse setting parameters into the automatic setting instrument.

Before firing, the gunner only needs to stuff the warhead fuse part of the shell into this configurator, and it will automatically adjust the delayed detonation time of the fuse, so that the shell will explode at the desired time, that is, when it reaches the height of the target.

The power of the 88-mm shell was so terrible that many people forgot that it was an anti-aircraft gun, but in fact the number of pilots who died under the 88 gun far exceeded that of the tankers, and the total value of the planes shot down was much greater than the tanks destroyed by it. Until the end of the war, the proud sons of heaven were still in awe of this terrible anti-aircraft weapon, and the sky was still filled with anti-aircraft clouds that often woke them from their dreams, shouting the number 88 and bursting into tears.

The Wellington fleet has suffered an unusually brutal blow, you can imagine a high-explosive shrapnel exploding in the air about ten meters away from the plane, and there is only a thin canvas skin between you and the killing weapon, and you don't even have time to feel the explosion, thousands of fragments of steel and metal projectiles have penetrated the canvas at seven times the speed of sound, and strafed the machinery, equipment, ammunition and body behind the canvas.

Even Wellington's complex mesh damage-resistant structure was shattered. More than a dozen planes were badly damaged in an instant, and one of the bombers was torn in two from behind the wings and immediately tumbled and fell downward. The other two Wellingtons were hit by shrapnel in the engines, and the broken fuel pipes sprayed fuel onto the hot engine exhaust pipes, and two seconds later the wings were already burning into a ball of fire, and the pilots risked their efforts to steer the planes out of formation and avoid an explosion that would affect the safety of their teammates. (To be continued......)