In the middle of the snow, over the South Barents Sea, four piston monoplanes with red stars painted on their fuselages and wings flew in a loose formation toward the northwest. In the cockpit of the www.biquge.info Pen Fun Pavilion, Colonel Alexei Tigrev, commander of the 14th Aviation Regiment of the Russian Navy and winner of the Russian Flying Medal, stared wide-eyed and looked around. The weather was already terrible, and the radio communicator, which had always worked steadily, went on strike, and the depression was so bad that irritability was quietly growing.

Unable to use natural references to guess the direction and the radio equipment was not working properly, Tigrev had to use the most primitive elements of bearing, speed, and time to calculate his position. Under the influence of the wind, the error of this three-element positioning method is often large, and even for an extremely experienced old pilot like him, the deviation may reach thirty or forty kilometers in a range of two or three hundred kilometers. However, the target of this attack is a moving sea surface ship, which is different from a stationary or slow-moving land target, which can reach 20 nautical miles per hour, or more than 38 kilometers, and the deviation of the flight path may make the pilots farther away from their target, or they may find the target by mistake, all by chance!

A strong crosswind blew, and Tigrev had to hold the lever tightly so that the Yak-7 he was piloting kept in the direction of flight. When the limelight passed, he looked back, and Huo Ran found that the three wingmen were farther away from him.

"Sea Eagle No. 1 calls the Eagle, please answer when you hear it!"

Tigrev tried to contact his wingman over the radio, but all that came from the headphones was a monotonous, endless sizzling sound.

With a low "hell", Tigrev looked around again, his eyes tired from the unchanging snow. For many years in the army, I can remember only that cold winter in the Caucasus that I had encountered a similar situation.

"If our planes are also equipped with radars, it shouldn't be too difficult to search for enemy planes and ships in such weather!" Tigrev said to himself in his heart. During the Japanese-Soviet War, the Western Allies led by Germany secretly dispatched aviation units to support Soviet Russia, including special reconnaissance planes and long-range bombers equipped with advanced radar equipment, which not only provided effective early warning for the Soviet and Russian air forces, but even detected the strategic deployment of the Japanese army on the mainland. It can be said that the Soviet Russian army was able to reverse the unfavorable situation several times in the war, and finally forced Japan to abandon the northeast region of China, which was regarded as a treasure trove, and it can be said that it benefited a lot.

After a while, Tigrev suddenly felt restless, and suddenly had a bad premonition. In the blink of an eye, a light gray painted plane suddenly emerged from the snow curtain directly in front of it, and swept over Tigrev with a loud roar, leaving the ace pilot of the Russian Navy sitting there dumbfounded.

Could it be just an accident?

Moments later, when the second light-gray painted fighter flew past in exactly the same way, the only trace of luck in Tigreev's mind was gone.

This is the embodiment of the technology gap!

Tigrev turned his head to look behind him, only to see that the enemy planes in the exercise had once again brutally assaulted his wingman with a shaved head. As a flying ace with hundreds of combat experience and repeated knife licking blood, he knows very well what the performance of both sides means in actual combat - the opponent can easily shoot down all the planes on his side!

Give up? Return? Or do you bite the bullet and continue to search for the enemy's fleet, just to pull a fig leaf for the Soviet and Russian Navy?

Tigrev was conflicted. At this time, I can't contact the base, and I can't contact the wingman, so where to go is all in my own thoughts.

Just as he hesitated, hesitated, a familiar roar came from above. He looked up and saw that the shamrock logo on the light gray wings was so striking and glaring.

A sour smile appeared on the corner of Tigrev's mouth: he was shot down again, and he had no power to break free!

Almost subconsciously, Tigrev pushed the joystick to accelerate the plane into a sea-level dive, which was his most common and effective move when he was rear-ended by an enemy plane on the battlefield. The two-winged I-15 and the single-wing I-16 had no technical advantage over the German-made Fokker XI, Fokker G-51, or the Japanese-made Type 97 and Type Zero fighters, but Tigrev maintained a proud victory rate in his combat career, thanks to the great spiritual strength of the communist faith - as well as his personal excellent flying skills and ability to seize the moment

Normally, after a short- and medium-distance dive, Tigrev would fly the fighter to spiral out or climb rapidly, and what he was best at was the "Inmaiman Flip" maneuver created by the Germans, that is, the vertical maneuver tactic of half-tendon flip, which can be called a towing knife meter in air combat, and is very effective against enemy aircraft chasing in the rear. However, in such bad weather with a bad line of sight, when it is impossible to determine the traces of enemy planes, how can they display their air combat skills?

The emotional panic distracted Tigreev, but even so, the long-cultivated habit made him stare at the flight altimeter while staring at the scene under the wing on the right side, and the anomaly on either side would alert him. Realizing that the tumbling waves looked close to the wing, Tigrev hurriedly pulled up the joystick. At this moment, the altimeter reading is still 200 meters, but after the plane is leveled, the visual altitude will never exceed 50 meters, which means that if he hesitates a little longer, he and this Yak-7, which costs much more than the I-16, will be plunged into the sea. Thinking of this terrible consequence, Tigrev suddenly broke out in a cold sweat, and his mood was as nervous as his first flight.

Damn, it must be the cold and humid environment that affects the accuracy of the instruments, and after returning home, the flight instruments of the whole regiment must be completely overhauled! Tigrev muttered to himself, and when he realized that he was distracted again, the deadly roar was clearly heard in his ears!

Was it shot down for the third time?

Tigrev looked in the direction from which the voice came, and this time, the light gray fighter did not whizz past like the previous two times, only to see a single-engine single-seat fighter with a thick and round nose, a narrow tail, and a side profile like a special-shaped spindle flying from the diagonal rear to the position flush with him. In the bubble-shaped cockpit that towered over the back of the plane, the new British Navy pilot wearing an oxygen mask turned his head to look at him for a few seconds, his eyes looking at him with a hint of indifference. Without waiting for Tigrev to make any announcement, he turned his gaze back to the Russian pilot, and to the great surprise of the Russian pilot, the rockets under the wings of the IR-44T actually flew out in smoke and flew out and fell into the sea several kilometers away.

This...... Is it a warning to yourself?

The ace pilot of the Russian Navy was wondering, and the roar in his ears suddenly increased in volume, and the IR-44T, which was known as the "world's top three" in the field of carrier-based fighters, suddenly accelerated forward. After demonstrating excellent horizontal acceleration performance, it suddenly pulled up the nose and came to a "dry land plucking onion", its powerful vertical acceleration ability made Tigrev deeply amazed, and this is not enough, after climbing about 200 meters, the new British naval pilot came to a familiar "Yinmaiman flip" - to be precise, it was derived from the "Yinmaiman flip" air combat maneuver tactics, through continuous horizontal rolls and vertical twists again to the rear of Tigrev, and then continued, A series of tracer bullets burst out from the roots of its left and right wings, stirring up a series of water columns on the surface of the sea below.

The power of the four 20-mm guns was enough to tear the wing or tail of an Yak-7 to shreds in an instant, and the bulletproof armor in the cockpit was not enough to withstand the attack of 20-mm armor-piercing shells......

After completing the entire process of getting rid of the attack-turning into the attack-completing the attack in one go, the IR-44T returned to the position flush with Tigrev's Yak-7, and the new British naval pilot wearing an oxygen mask put his left fingers together, upward, forward, upward, forward, as if to signal "it's your turn".

Tigrev took a deep breath, he was not sure whether the other party had his own technical intelligence and understood his operating habits, but since he had reached this point, he had no choice but to do his best to defend the honor of the Soviet Russian naval aviation. So, he waved his fist at the opponent, turned his head, pushed the throttle, accelerated the level flight, reduced the throttle, pulled the joystick, adjusted the flaps, and showed his best version of the "Yinmaiman flip". With his profound flying skills, he managed to bring the technical performance of the Yak-7 to the extreme level in this terrible environment, but even so, when he completed the whole set of technical actions, there was no enemy aircraft in his sight. Tigrev's heart sank, and he looked through the rearview mirror: the guy was following him closely!

The fourth shot down......

Tigrev suddenly fell into an endless despair. He fought against the best German pilots in the Caucasus, once defeated with one enemy and two defeats, and he shot down fighter jets piloted by European volunteer pilots on the Persian plateau, forcing the Western Allies to make diplomatic concessions, but the glory and pride of the past were shattered to pieces by the harsh reality in this moment. Throughout history, there are indeed many countries that can win wars in the case of backward weapons technology, but the price of victory is often very heavy, and on the other hand, there are more countries that rely on the superiority of weapons technology to win, and they often win very easily. People are certainly the main factor in determining the outcome of a war, but they are by no means the only factor, and when the technical gap between the two belligerents reaches a certain level, just like the embarrassing situation they are encountering at the moment, the leading side may crush the backward side full of faith and fighting spirit without any suspense.

Meow, because I ate a piece of raw radish (a fairly small piece) on an empty stomach, I had stomach pain for two days, and I didn't sleep well at night to get a cold and fever, which is really a tragedy, but fortunately, there is a good clinic that will use Chinese medicine to treat stomach pain and fever, so that I can return from the line of fire. I advise you not to eat raw radish on an empty stomach...... (When I was a child, I secretly dug the radish in the ground and ate it, why didn't I have this problem?) It's really old.)

(End of chapter)