In the airspace south of Ireland, British Air Force Sergeant Chris Varner looked around and saw the planes all Hhandley Petti HP-38s, and he silently counted the more than eighty HP-38s dispatched by the 36th and 37th Bomber Wings. www.biquge.info After the most tragic air battle, the faster Boeing P-9 and Blenheim III had already retreated under the cover of fighter jets, leaving the slower biplane heavy bombers behind.

Varna was a machine gun shooter who had been assigned to the HP-38 since he was in service, and his dream was to become a fighter pilot, so he spent a lot of his spare time learning about flying, but now it seemed that his dream had become extremely distant, especially when several four-plane formations flew in from the north, and his mood fell to a low point.

The Fokker G-51, the main fighter of the new generation of the Luftwaffe, has not been equipped for a long time, and the number of fighters in service is said to have reached 6,000, and the British Air Force has only more than 7,000 fighters of various types, and the newly equipped "Mountain Eagle" is only equipped with more than 20 flight squadrons. In previous battles, the few Fokker G-51s showed a terrifying momentum like a wolf, they were equipped with 20mm cannons that were simply invincible aerial hammers, and their fuselages and fuselages were far stronger than expected, which can be called cuirassiers on the battlefield of air combat!

"Warriors of Britain, prepare for battle!"

Hearing the pilot's encouragement, Varner's heart swelled up not with a fighting spirit, but with a deep despair - without the protection of his own fighters, the chances of these HP-38s escaping were probably infinitely close to zero.

With a blank face, he opened the safety of the machine gun and loaded it. The 7-point 7 mm Lewis machine gun should be okay against infantry, but it pales in comparison with fighters. In the previous air battle, Varna had lost four bullet discs, and it seemed that twenty or thirty bullets had hit the enemy plane, but not even a single hair could be knocked down.

Seeing the ferocious Fokker G-51s approaching step by step, the 21 surviving British bombers consciously shrank in formation in order to concentrate their scattered self-defense firepower -- in recent years, the British heavy bomber unit has been diligently cultivating the so-called dense air defense phalanx, but judging from the heavy blows encountered over Ireland, this tactic created by British Air Force General Joel Jensen is far from achieving the desired effect.

The German fighters were still several hundred meters away, and the roar of Lewis's machine guns rang out from inside the bomber group. Not surprisingly, the Fokker G-51s swung lightly, effortlessly avoiding the flaming whips formed by the barrage of bullets

With the loud roar of Daimler engines, the Luftwaffe cuirassiers began to charge, and the effective range and air combat power of the 20mm cannon far exceeded that of ordinary machine gun bullets, and they ruthlessly penetrated the mixed metal and fabric skin of the Handley-Pédge P38, shattering anything they encountered inside the aircraft, including the metal skeleton, and then piercing through the other side of the aircraft, three or two rounds were enough to leave a fatal wound on a British bomber weighing seven tons!

"Ah......h

Watching a friendly plane fall from close proximity in a broken state, the shooter at the nose finally screamed out of control, and he swept the bullet towards a German fighter plane whizzing by, and the bullet disc quickly ran out, but the trajectory of the bullet failed to catch up with the target.

"Reload, Pooh, hurry up and reload!"

Varna heard the pilot alerting the nose shooter, and he didn't look at his companion, but his heart ached as if he had been stabbed with a knife. Such a hopeless battle is too cruel for a young man who is only 20 years old - many people grow up in failure, but they are not qualified to be losers, because even one defeat can be the end of life's journey.

In the first round of the German fighter charge, only 12 bombers remained in this flying formation, and the rate of loss was indeed much faster than before. If this trend continues, in a matter of minutes, the main forces of the 36th and 37th Bomber Wings will be completely wiped out in the skies over Ireland.

Following the flight trajectory of the German fighters, Varna turned his gun to the other side, and Huo Ran found a group of biplanes flying in the distance, their formation was a little messy, and the air combat performance was certainly not as good as the German Fokker G-51, but if they were British fighters, they would still bring a ray of life to the remaining 12 bombers.

The flame of hope was just kindled, and it was quickly extinguished by the relentless reality: the biplanes met the Fokker G-51s in a friendly manner and flew straight in this direction, while all the Fokker G-51s regrouped into a four-plane formation and turned around and flew east.

The only officer on board, the pilot, Second Lieutenant Hughes, lamented: "It's the 'griffon' of Ireland!" These guys aren't as fierce as the German fighters, but we've just bombed their capital, and they're not going to let us go easily. ”

The raging Irish Warhawk quickly echoed Ensign Hughes's inference with the sound of gunfire. Seeing that Handley Pej around him was getting less and less, Varna was furious but had nowhere to vent: which bastard made the decision to strike Limerick? Why didn't he sit on a bomber and see for himself what he had done?

The Irish did not give these desperate British pilots a chance to raise the white flag, and after two rounds, only two lone British bombers were left in the sky, and they were more or less left with bullet holes in their fuselages and wings.

At this time, Second Lieutenant Hughes finally said a heartwarming word: "Get ready to skydive!" Guys! You have done your part. ”

With the parachute on his back, Varna was able to escape the nightmare by unfastening the harness and climbing out of the open cockpit, as it may not be nice to be a prisoner of war for the Irish, at least not again and again in the face of endless mental torture in the face of whizzing enemy planes.

By this time, most of the Irish fighters had turned around and headed east, leaving only four IR-29s to settle the feud.

Varna silently loaded a new cartridge plate, pulled the bolt, and loaded the fire, incorporating the silhouette of the Irish fighter into the sight. There was no suspense about defeat, and after that, he no longer had to look into the distance in fear, because there would be no more enemy fighter groups surrounding him like sharks smelling blood, and it would be the end of life or death......

At airports in the southwest of England, many officers, soldiers and ground crews are gazing at the western sky. After two sorties of planes, the airport became empty. The pride of watching the hordes of bombers and fighter jets soar towards Ireland had sprung up in their hearts, but as time went on, some bad speculation and every word from the command raised people's worries: Will Britain be an epic victory or a tragic Waterloo?

Before the answer was revealed, the relentless air raid sirens were heard. The fighters who remained to carry out the alert defense hurriedly rose into the air, and the soldiers of the air defense forces rushed to their respective positions. People looked serious, but they rarely saw panic, because this was not the first time that enemy fighters had attacked - less than half an hour after Germany officially declared war on Britain, thousands of German bombers began to flood the English Channel in a repetitive and heavy bombardment of military installations and transportation hubs in southern Britain.

"Be hidden! German planes are coming a lot this time! Someone shouted.

"They couldn't have come at the right time!" Someone ran and said, "In twenty minutes our first bombers will be back." ”

The bystander answered: "The bombing will not take more than twenty minutes, and I am afraid that the Germans will blow up our airstrip to the point that there are pitfalls, and even plow the nearby grass with them, so that we will go to the reserve airfield to meet the heroes and land." ”

Someone indignantly replied: "Hmph, the Germans must have calculated the time." ”

In a short time, the well-trained British officers and soldiers were ready to deal with enemy air raids. Dozens of British fighters divided into several formations to meet the German aircraft group, before they approached the German bomber formation, a large group of war eagles swooped down from the sky, the two fighters quickly fought into a group, from the ground it is difficult to distinguish between friend and foe, but the British fighters in the sky and the air defense forces on the ground obviously agreed on their respective defense ranges, just waiting for the black pressure aircraft group to cross the coast, the rumbling of artillery is like thunder, and the clear sky is suddenly filled with gunsmoke.

In the bunker near the runway, someone lit a cigarette and only half smoked it, and twenty or thirty fighters on both sides had fallen, and seven or eight German bombers hit by anti-aircraft fire dragged black smoke down.

"That's just the case with the Luftwaffe." As soon as someone let out such an emotion, there was a particularly loud roar in his ears, and it felt like a truck was rushing towards him. When the people in the bunker looked in, they were shocked: a large group of low-flying biplanes, clearly the size of fighter jets, but with large and small aerial bombs mounted on the belly and under the wings. The anti-aircraft artillery positions that were firing at the air bore the brunt of their attacks, followed by flickering fires and billowing black smoke from hangars, fuel depots, and airfield runways.

"It's despicable that the Germans actually converted their Focker-XI into a fast bomber!" Someone in the bunker shouted indignantly, "It's not fair! ”

There was no fairness on the battlefield in the first place, and the German biplane fighters, having dropped their bombs, quickly climbed. Without the drag of additional loads, they have the ability to compete with the British Air Force's "Long Glove", "Gladiator" and many other American-made biplanes.

The explosions at the airport were easily silenced, and the screech of bombs falling from the sky sounded overhead, and the dense explosions converged so that no second sound could be heard.

At the operational command center in London, young staff officers were constantly adjusting the markings on the operational diagram according to the battle reports coming from everywhere, German fighters taking off from northern France were divided into four arrows and invaded southwestern England, and more than 20 military airfields from the Cornish peninsula to Devon and Wales were attacked one after another. Since most of the planes stationed here had already been sent to bomb Limerick, the British Air Force did not suffer as much damage in this massive air raid as the first two attacks in the morning, but the damage to the airport facilities was very great, and many airports even lost the ability to take off and land aircraft normally.

The two main pillars of the RAF, General Hugh Trenchard and General John Salmond, stood side by side, and the former instructed the adjutant: "The bombers should have enough fuel to fly to the military airfields of Schiprowshire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire...... Let me prepare the areas I have just mentioned, look at the losses of the air wings, and arrange for them to land at the new airfields. ”

A few minutes after the adjutant received the order, an old-looking Air Force colonel walked out of the communications room in a panic, almost mixing garlic under his feet as he ascended the steps, and his unusual behavior attracted the attention of Trenchard and Salmond.

"Dermot, what's wrong with you?" Salmond asked.

"Generals, we have just made contact with the first few wings to bomb Ireland, and judging from their reports, the losses of the first echelon in the skies over Ireland are likely to reach eighty percent!"

The two air generals were speechless in astonishment, 80 percent meant that less than 100 of the 400 planes in the first wave had returned, and their worst plan had been to lose half of them.

The colonel argued: "The situation has not yet been fully confirmed, perhaps our pilots were too nervous and lacked experience in the Great War to make overly pessimistic estimates." ”

After a long silence, Salmond asked Trenchard, who single-handedly created the British Royal Air Force, for instructions: "Is it necessary to urgently recall the second echelon?" ”

"Are you sure that won't make it worse?" Trenhard's face was horribly gloomy.

Salmond was speechless.

(End of chapter)