If the cheetah is the fastest animal in the world, then the peregrine falcon is the fastest bird in the world. Before the invention of airplanes, the peregrine falcon was the fastest animal in the world, reaching a dive speed of more than 300 kilometers per hour, and before World War II, few airplanes could fly faster than the peregrine falcon. The last fighter of the Imperial Navy to equip its troops during the Great War was named after this animal, and this fighter was used until more than a decade after the end of the Great War, when the "Peregrine Falcon" was retired after more advanced jet fighters equipped with naval carrier-based aviation. In other countries, this fighter was even used for more than 30 years after the war, and its figure appeared in all corners of the world.

The development of the "Peregrine Falcon" began as early as the beginning of 24 years, and at the beginning, the fighter that was mainly developed by Hafei was actually a substitute for the "Golden Eagle", that is to say, if there was a problem with Shen Fei's "Golden Eagle" in the development, then the design of Hafei would be directly adopted, so as to avoid the use of sufficiently advanced fighters in the Imperial Navy because the "Golden Eagle" could not be put into service on time.

Before the "Peregrine Falcon", Hafei did not have much experience in fighter design, and the design project of the "Peregrine Falcon" was not taken seriously at that time, and Hafei was also focusing on the development of a new bomber to replace the "Wolf Dove". As a result, the chief engineer assigned to the design of the Peregrine Falcon was a young man in his early 40s (at least in the engineering team, 40 is definitely young), and most of the engineers he worked with were fresh graduates from school, and the average age of his design team was only 25 years old.

Because of the lack of urgency in the design requirements, coupled with a young, creative design team, in the initial design stage, the "Peregrine Falcon" adopted a large number of advanced technologies. It can be said that almost all of them were unattainable at that time. Or rather, technology that is unacceptable to the Navy. To give a very simple example, the first thing the designers determined was not the air-cooled engine that the Navy has always used, but the water-cooled engine! If it is changed in peacetime. I'm afraid that just one little is enough to sentence the "Peregrine Falcon" project to death. It was precisely because there were too many "innovations" that the "Peregrine Falcon" project was terminated after the design of the "Golden Eagle" was successfully completed and basically met the technical specifications of the Navy.

In the fourth quarter of 25 years. The Navy did not allocate funds to the Peregrine Falcon project, which nearly killed the Imperial Navy's best fighter during the war. Fortunately, Hafei has just gotten the design funds for the new bomber, and the order for the new bomber was also placed in the third quarter of 25, and even the army aviation began to order this new bomber, Germany, Persia and other countries have also put forward order requirements, and Hafei is the main contractor of the new bomber, making a lot of money. At the request of the young chief engineer, Hafei did not disband the "Peregrine Falcon" team. And in the name of the aircraft factory, the team was provided with half a year's research and development funds. This not only allowed the Imperial Navy to acquire one of the most advanced fighters in the world, but also allowed the Peregrine Falcon to be retained. Later, the team retained the code name "Peregrine Falcon" and became the world's most famous aircraft design team, designing more than a dozen world-class fighters and creating countless miracles after the war. To this day, the Peregrine Falcon factory is still the best fighter manufacturing plant in the world, and it still continues to write about its glory.

After the Peregrine Falcon team was preserved, the young chief engineer gave his men an order to try to meet the design principles of the Navy, reduce advanced designs, avoid expensive parts as much as possible, and make use of off-the-shelf equipment as much as possible. And the ultimate goal is to more than double the overall performance of the "Golden Eagle" and finally win the order of the Navy!

This seemed at the time. It is almost an impossible task, in the case of using mature technology as much as possible, to create a fighter with an overall performance more than twice as much as the "Golden Eagle", which is almost impossible in the eyes of many people, the reason is very simple, the "Golden Eagle" is a fighter that adopts a large number of mature technologies to reduce the design risk, although it is relatively conservative in many aspects, but finally meets the technical requirements of the Navy, and at the same time wins the Navy's orders. In addition, the design team of the "Golden Eagle" is all experienced engineers, Shen Fei has always been a supplier of naval fighter jets, while Ha Fei has never designed a fighter jet, these young people are still fledgling stunned boys, can they create miracles?

In order to make the navy "change its mind" and design a fighter with low price and advanced performance, the "Peregrine Falcon" team almost made all the previous designs and came up with more than a dozen different design schemes in two months. Most of these designs are still very advanced, such as one with elliptical wings, another with a tailless layout, and even a rear-mounted propulsion engine. As a result, these forward-looking, or whimsical, designs were abandoned, and the chief engineer ended up using the conventional design method, which was the safest and most able to meet the requirements of the Navy.

In April 25, a large number of new designs of the "Peregrine Falcon" were sent to the Technical Office of Naval Armament. At that time, the P-51 had already appeared on the battlefield, and the performance of the "Falcon" was comparable to that of the P-51, and the "Golden Eagle" was not much better than the P-51, and the intelligence department also confirmed that the US military was developing more advanced fighters, not only the US Army Aviation, but also the US Naval Aviation had the possibility of obtaining a fighter with better performance, completely surpassing the "Falcon", and not much worse than the "Golden Eagle" in 26. Therefore, the Naval Equipment Technology Office did not refuse the "Peregrine Falcon" team again, and on the one hand, asked Shen Fei to improve the design of the "Golden Eagle" and improve its performance, and also gave the "Peregrine Falcon" team a small amount of money, asking the "Peregrine Falcon" team to come up with a more perfect design as soon as possible.

Although the Navy's appropriation is not much, even less than the support provided by the factory, the Navy finally gave support, and as long as it wins the support of the Navy, it is possible to win the Navy's order, and as long as the Navy's order is obtained, it means that thousands of such fighters can be produced. Hafei's president will not let go of this opportunity, and if Hafei can enter the field of fighter design, it will be able to catch up with Shen Fei and become the number one supplier of the Imperial Navy. Therefore. After the Navy officially allocated funds to the Peregrine Falcon team, Hafei also tripled the amount of money provided to the Peregrine Falcon team. In addition, a lot of infrastructure was provided, and the team was increased to get the team up and running at full speed

The biggest problem with the SHKP design remains the engine. The basis of the design of any kind of fighter is the engine. What kind of engine there is, what kind of fighter there is. It is impossible to change this design idea, and any engineer understands that the new engine must be determined first, only after the new engine has been determined. to be able to determine the overall design scheme of the fighter. However, the problem is that neither the "Feng-16" provided to the "Falcon" nor the "Feng-18" of the "Golden Eagle" can meet the requirements in terms of output power. At that time, it was proposed to use the "Feng-17" used on heavy bombers, but the engine used by the bomber was different from that of the fighter in many ways, and the improvement of the engine alone was enough to give Hafei a headache.

The turning point came in July 25, when the "Feng 20" engine developed by Shen Fei for its next-generation fighter was basically completed, and Ha Fei also got two prototypes at that time, and then the "Peregrine Falcon" team decided to use the "Feng 20" as the power system of the new fighter. And on this basis, full-scale design work began.

The output of the "Wind 20" is not much greater than that of the "Wind 18" used in the "Golden Eagle", and it is still a 22-cylinder engine with a maximum output of 2400 horsepower. The engine's most distinctive feature is that its total weight is more than two percent lighter than that of the Wind 18, and its mechanical supercharging system is redesigned, with only 150 horsepower at an altitude of 5,000 meters less than at sea level. Even at an altitude of 9,500 meters, it is capable of producing 1,800 horsepower. This is a remarkable achievement, and the "Feng-21" engine, which is based on the core of the "Feng-20", is the basic power of the next generation of bombers.

In fact, the navy does not attach great importance to the high-altitude performance of the engine, in actual combat, most of the navy's fighters are fighting at altitudes below 5,000 meters, and few fighters will fly to an altitude of more than 5,000 meters to fight enemy aircraft, especially carrier-based fighters, which are mainly concentrated in medium and low-altitude activities. Therefore, the low-altitude and medium-altitude performance of the engine is the most important. And Shen Fei's "Wind 20" is indeed a bit off-track, but its biggest feature is its light weight. Moreover, the layout of the cylinders has been modified to reduce the wind area, which can be regarded as a huge improvement. For aircraft designers, a smaller wind area allows designers to take into account the aerodynamic layout of the fighter more thoughtfully, rather than just making a fuss about the power, and cannot make up for the lack of performance with a better aerodynamic layout like the Army Airlines. From this point of view, it was the birth of the "Wind 20" that finally gave birth to the most advanced piston fighter of the Imperial Navy.

Work on the full-fledged design of the "Peregrine Falcon" was completed at the beginning of 26. By this time, work on the design of the modification of the "Golden Eagle" was also completed, and the Navy had already placed an order. Obviously, the Peregrine Falcon was still a step too slow, did not be able to complete all the design work when the Navy arranged the 26-year order, and missed the opportunity to put it into production in 26. The "Golden Eagle" received a lot of praise after equipping the troops, and it was not until the middle of 26 years, that is, when Yan Guozhong was preparing to attack Australia, that the P-51D appeared for the first time in the Pacific theater, and at this time, the Imperial Navy found that the Americans had made a better performance fighter, and it was difficult for the "Golden Eagle" to overwhelm the P-51D in performance. As a result, at the beginning of June 26, the Naval Equipment Technical Office contacted Hafei directly, demanding that Hafei must complete the design of the "Peregrine Falcon" by the end of June 26.

This is actually the Navy has begun to consider ordering the "Peregrine Falcon", Ha Fei, who received this news, and the "Peregrine Falcon" team were naturally overjoyed, they almost gave up the "Peregrine Falcon" because they missed the opportunity at the beginning of 26. At the last moment, the enemy's advanced fighters pulled the "Peregrine Falcon", so that this fighter with a bumpy fate finally embarked on the road to final maturity.

Ha Fei handed over the specific design indicators to the Naval Equipment Technology Office at the end of July, and Yan Guozhong gave Tan Renhao a copy of the document at that time. The Naval Equipment Technology Office sent the design indicators to the Theater Command, mainly to ask the person in charge of the Theater Command to make changes to its design performance according to the actual situation on the battlefield, so that Hafei could take care of the requirements on the battlefield as much as possible when improving the design. Of course, the design indicators of the new fighter must be top secret, at least until the "Peregrine Falcon" is officially put into production and installed, the Navy will not announce its design details, so as to avoid the enemy's targeted design of a better fighter.

Among the design indicators, the most striking is its maximum speed, the "Peregrine Falcon" will be designed to reach a maximum speed of 420 knots! As far as Tan Renhao knows, the speed of the latest modification of the P-51 series is around Ruknot, while the speed of the F4U, which is newly equipped with US naval aviation, is less than Ruknot. Initially, the Naval Equipment Technology Office only required the "Peregrine Falcon" to reach 400 knots, becoming the first "400" fighter of the Imperial Navy, and if necessary, it can continue to improve in the future, but from the very beginning, Hafei set the goal at 420 knots to ensure that it is fully ahead of all enemy fighters when it is in service.

It can be said that this is an ambitious design plan, and even Tan Renhao can't believe that the "Peregrine Falcon" can reach this speed. As far as Tan Renhao knows, the speed of a mysterious fighter with a new power system that the Germans are working on is only about 450 knots. If the Peregrine Falcon can reach speeds of 420 knots when it takes to the skies, it may be able to reach even higher speeds with the advent of the improved Wind 20. Well, the "Peregrine Falcon", flying at a speed of 420 knots, will definitely dominate the skies of the Pacific Ocean.

Hafei's ambitions are great, and in the middle of 26 years he also started the design of two new bombers with "Feng 20" as engines. At that time, the Navy did not put forward the design requirements of the new bomber, obviously, this is the design of Hafei's own investment, if it can finally win the Navy's order, then all Hafei's production lines will run 24 hours a day.

After reading this document, Tan Renhao also had to admire those engineers of the empire, and at the same time, he also had to believe that in many cases, the empire really did not bring out its true potential, and when all the strength of the empire exploded, no country would be the opponent of the empire!