A few days ago, when attacking the Baltic Fleet, the Goethe-class aircraft carriers were already on combat cruises in the central waters of the Baltic Sea, but in the course of the battle, a big problem was discovered, when the steam catapult catapult carrier-based aircraft, it will cause the problem of deck icing.

This question bothered the researchers, and these days, there are already catapult researchers on this aircraft carrier to examine the problem of how to improve it.

And now, the deck is brightly lit, and several personnel are working on it.

"We use hand-held equipment to heat the deck and we can make the ice melt quickly." An operator said: "But this is not the best way, the catapults of our follow-up aircraft carriers should be equipped with electric heating devices on both sides, once it freezes, it will melt quickly." ”

If you want to de-ice, of course, you need to heat it. It's just that this de-icing will lead to an increase in the demand for electricity on the aircraft carrier, and the aircraft carrier built in the later stage must take this power problem into account.

Squadron Leader Franz Stiegler was also on his side, and he suggested to the men: "If you add salt to the steam, can you slow down the freezing?" ”

Seawater is difficult to freeze because the salt content lowers the freezing point, and when the researchers heard Franz's words, they immediately shook their heads: "No, that will increase the failure rate of our catapults a lot." ”

It will indeed reduce the freezing point, but the salt will corrode, and the internal structure of the catapult of the aircraft carrier is precise, and once it is corroded by the salt, it will not take long to be scrapped.

On the bridge not far away, the radar search antenna was still rotating normally, and since they came to this sea area, they have not stopped observing the sky above them, ready to meet the possible attack at any time.

What if an uninteresting Soviet plane came over?

Now, on the radar console on the bridge, the radarman suddenly saw a large echo, and immediately he exclaimed: "A large number of planes have been found, at least a dozen!" ”

After getting this siren, Franz strode towards his plane, quickly jumped into the engine room, turned on the radio, and shouted to the tower: "764 is already in position, request to take off and intercept." ”

Originally, it was supposed to be the F190 that was responsible for the air defense of the fleet, and the Stuka bombers were on bombing missions. Unfortunately, the Goethe-class aircraft carriers have a small displacement and carry a small variety of carrier-based aircraft, and due to the limited production of the F190, it has led to some Goethe-class aircraft carriers, all equipped with Stuka bombers, such as now.

In general, the Stuka bombers do not perform combat missions, but now it is different, it is night, night fighters, they are all big guys, there is no need to worry about maneuverability, as long as they can keep up with the bombers.

At night, it is impossible to break out air battles between fighters, all fighters are intercepting bombers, and even some night fighters are improved by bombers, such as the Junkers-88 in history, which was first improved into a night fighter.

Now, Franz was quickly preparing for departure, and the machine gunner in his rear compartment was quickly in position, carrying several incendiary bombs.

"It is possible to take off, in the direction of twelve o'clock, at a distance of eighty kilometers." The sound of the tower was already heard in the headphones.

The deck crew had already towed the Stuka bomber to the take-off line, and since the Stuka was not carrying the heavy one-ton bomb now, the carrier did not need to turn to the headwind, as long as the Catapult was used, the Stuka could easily fly.

In a powerful overload, Stuka has already taken off with a catapult.

On the entire Goethe-class aircraft carrier, only one plane, Franz, took off alone.

If you want to talk about the ability to catapult and take off at night, half of the carrier-based aircraft pilots on the aircraft carrier can master it, but the ability to land at night is different, and until now, only Franz has it.

As for the others, they are still in training, and once they have this ability, almost all of them have been transferred away by the Earl Zeppelin-class aircraft carriers, and these escort aircraft carriers even play the role of training aircraft carriers.

After takeoff, Franz pushed the lever and pushed the rudder to steer, heading towards twelve o'clock, due east.

In this dark night, over the Baltic Sea, the planes flying from the east are definitely not German, and even if Germany bombs at night, it is enough to go over the land, and the bombers on the front line take off more than a hundred kilometers and are the target, and there is no need to go far to the sea at all.

So, it must be the bombers of the Soviets, they are flying over the Baltic Sea in this dark night, then their mission is not simple, it is not good, they are going to bomb Berlin!

Thinking of this, Franz was excited, and he must not let them succeed!

The night sky was not particularly dark, and overhead, a crescent moon shone on the sea, and the stars showed a bleak glow.

In Franz's headphones, the voice of the guide on the aircraft carrier was constantly heard: "The height is four thousand, and the other party is 15 kilometers in front of you." ”

Franz adjusts his altitude to be at the same height as the other person, so that the results can be easily observed.

"Keep going, it's only five kilometers away, pay attention."

In the air, distances change rapidly, and Franz carefully observes himself directly ahead.

The radar guided behind is improved, with a ranging accuracy of 100M and an angle measurement accuracy of 0.2 degrees, so he only needs to look for it within the error of the guidance radar.

However, he did not see anything.

"It's already flown over."

The sound from the earphones made Franz very depressed, he passed by the other party, but he just didn't see the other party, he firmly believed that there was no problem with the aircraft carrier's radar, then it must have been a problem with his search just now, and the target could not be observed.

Just as he pushed the lever to continue reversing course in pursuit, the Heavy behind him suddenly shouted, "I see a blurry mass down there." ”

Below? Franz suddenly realized that he had just made a mistake, and that the altimeter was wrong.

In this era, the most common is the barometric altimeter, and in different latitudes, the change of barometric pressure with altitude is different. There will be an error of tens of meters.

In a normal attack operation, the error of tens of meters is nothing, but in this night interception, the error of several tens of meters is enough for him to ignore those airspace.

In fact, with the development of technology, Germany has begun to develop high-precision radio altimeters and even radio speed measurement devices, but they are not installed on planes like Stuka that need dive bombing, and those high-altitude bombers are the most needed.

Just now he mainly searched the airspace in front and above, and forgot to search the airspace below, but fortunately he had a machine gunner to help him search, and since he found it, he started to attack.

"Attention, prepare to throw flares, and two seconds after the flares fall, let's attack." Franz shouted to his own machine gunner.

If there were several planes coming up together, then they could work together, one would drop flares at a high altitude, and the rest would catch up and attack, but now, there was only Franz, and he had to rely on everything.

Throw a flare first to see how many are coming, the specific direction, and then chase and attack.

Just as he was about to show off his skills, he heard a voice on the bridge from inside the headphones: "There is another group of aircraft behind, the Soviets are crazy!" ”