Since the Me264 bomber was much lighter in empty weight than the B-29, and the engines used in both were of the same class, both were 18-cylinder air-cooled engines with turbochargers. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 As a result, the Me264, which weighs nearly 10 tons less empty, can fly higher and faster than the B-29 after dropping the Silver Reaper jet. So Commander Genda was able to witness the battle between the "Silver Reaper" and the B-29 at an extremely high altitude of 11,500 meters.

Through a 6x military telescope, Minoru Genda clearly saw that the two "Silver Reaper" formed a two-plane formation, first chasing behind the US military's B-29 large aircraft group at an altitude of about 10,000 meters (the current jet engine has the problem of slower acceleration), and after flying for about 3 minutes, the two "Silver Reaper" have flown to a speed of about 800 kilometers per hour, as if two silver falcons crossed the sky and pounced on an American heavy bomber that looked bigger than the Me264.

"It's going to be finished!" Minoru Genda said to himself. According to his experience, two "Silver Reaper" four 20mm cannons firing together were enough to shoot down one Me264 - the Me264 was not a solid aircraft, nor was it powerful in firepower, and in these two respects it was not at all comparable to the Japanese own "Swallowing Dragon", "Flying Dragon" and "Milky Way", its strengths were that it could fly high and fast, it could avoid anti-aircraft fire on the ground and water, and it could also be caught by enemy fighters.

Therefore, Minoru Genda and most of the commanders of the Japanese Air Force, after hearing that the United States has a B-29 similar to the Me264, took it for granted that the B-29, like the Me264, is a thin and large aircraft.

According to Minoru Genda's estimate (estimated with reference to Me264), using 40 "Silver Reaper" to intercept only one round of attacks can ensure the shooting down of 20 American B-29s, and if you count the results of the army's "Feiyan" fighters and ground anti-aircraft artillery, there is no problem in achieving 40-50 downed results in the first battle against B-29, even if the Americans dispatch 150 B-29s at a time, they will suffer a loss rate of more than 30%.

This is an absolutely unbearable loss for bomber aviation!

However, when the two "Silver Reapers" that swept over the B-29 at high speed opened fire, Minoru Genda was taken aback.

Two of the four strings of fire clearly hit the fuselage of the B-29, which looked big and stupid, and several large holes were opened in an instant. But the B-29 still swaggered forward as if nothing had happened.

"Baga, I didn't beat it down, it's too strong......" Minoru Genda was so shocked that his jaw almost dropped.

He quickly shook the telescope from side to side, trying to see if the other B-29s had been knocked down. It turned out that the B-29 group in the sky was still layered and mighty, and although there were two planes dragging black smoke forward, it didn't seem to be about to fall.

The attack of the 40 "Silver Reaper" just now may have shot down one or two B-29s and wounded several others. But compared to the huge fleet, that loss is simply insignificant.

Minoru Genda's face was already pale, because the interception of the "Silver Reaper" was over!

Although the high-altitude performance and speed of the "Silver Reaper" were enough to deal with the B-29. But it was not a real fighter, it had no air combat flaps, and the two 20mm cannons had too little ammunition to support one round of heavy fire. Moreover, the endurance of the "Silver Reaper" is very short, only 300 kilometers, which is simply not enough to support the aircraft for a long time, and after completing an interception operation, they must fly back to the Singapore base.

After the Japanese Army's Type 3 "Feiyan" and the Japanese Navy's "Silver Reaper" failed to intercept one after another, the only weapons that can protect the Palembang oil field are now the Taisho 11 Type 75mm anti-aircraft gun, the Type 88 75mm anti-aircraft gun, the Taisho 14 Type 105mm anti-aircraft gun, and the Type 3 120mm anti-aircraft gun.

Although the Army deployed a powerful anti-aircraft division (5th Anti-aircraft Division) around the Palembang oil field, it also deployed more than 200 75mm, 105mm and 120mm anti-aircraft guns (including only 36 Type 3 120mm anti-aircraft guns).

But Minoru Genda, who is an expert in aviation warfare for the Japanese Navy, of course, knows how bad anti-aircraft guns of medium and large calibers can perform in real combat. Unless equipped with sufficiently sophisticated fire control radar and radio proximity fuses, these anti-aircraft guns pose no threat to targets at about 10,000 meters.

Palembang Oilfield, this time there are going to be a lot of bombs!

……

On June 5, 1944, at 10:20 a.m., 133 B-29 Super Fortress bombers had flown over Palembang. Contrary to the original imagination of the Japanese, these American planes with excellent high-altitude performance did not drop bombs from an extremely high altitude of 10,000 meters, but circled down to a medium-altitude altitude of less than 5,000 meters before they began to drop a series of bombs.

The Japanese anti-aircraft artillery positions had already begun to counterattack, and all the anti-aircraft guns were desperately spitting tongues of fire, shooting countless black smoke clouds in the sky. However, the American bombers directly ignored the shrapnel fired by the Japanese anti-aircraft guns and passed through these black smoke clouds, and dropped strings of bombs and napalm while circling.

Looking out from the wheelhouse of the "Walsburg Hill" on the Mussi River, along the east coast of the Mussi River, where the derricks of oil production are lined up, suddenly a fiery red light rolls by. Suddenly a vast expanse of land was enveloped, then there was a thunderous sound, then a scorching wave extinguished through the open windows of the cockpit, and finally a sky-high fire burned everywhere.

The fire was so fierce that it spread out at once, setting everything on fire. At first, it was still burning piece by piece, but in a blink of an eye, the fire on the east bank of the entire Muxi River burned into a large area, and there was a sound of "boom, boom, boom", as if the earth was also burned by this sudden heavenly fire.

Major Knopman, who had fought in the First World War, had seen many scenes of artillery bombardment, but he had never seen such a scene as if the world was on fire. Major Knopman also did not think that ordinary explosives could explode such an effect, and this was not even an incendiary bomb that could cause a fire (in fact, napalm), could it be that an incendiary bomb dropped by an American plane happened to ignite the light oil stored in the Palembang oil field?

Major Knopman thought to himself: the Japanese were too careless......

At this moment, a string of bombs fell in the sky with a piercing whistling sound. The target of the bombing was the city and refinery of Palembang west of the Musi River – the so-called Palembang oil field is actually a general term for a series of oil production areas along the upper and lower reaches of the Musi River near Palembang, which had just been burned down by napalm dropped by American bombers. All the oil that is extracted will be transported by pipeline to the refinery and oil storage facilities in Palembang for processing and storage, and finally transported through the Palembang terminal.

Therefore, it is relatively difficult to destroy scattered oil fields, and it is necessary to carry out repeated air raids, while it is very easy to blow up concentrated oil refining and storage facilities. Therefore, in the bombing plan of the Americans, the oil refinery, oil storage facilities in Palembang and an oil production area near Palembang City were the first targets to be blown up.

The ship Valsburg Hill was relatively close to the oil refinery in Palembang, so the violent explosion of napalm immediately gave the crew a sense of the collapse of the sky. And the waves of air that rushed into the ship were even hotter, and every crew member who was exposed to the outside world felt as if they were in a furnace, and the fiery smoke filled their respiratory tract and lungs, and the heat was so hot that it was breathless.

"Major," shouted the first mate of the Valsburg Hill at Major Knopman, "we must get out of here...... Otherwise, you'll be caught in a damn fire. ”

Major Knopman suddenly reacted and shouted, "Camera, get the camera...... Take a picture of the scene outside, you'll need these pictures on it. ”

"Yes, Major!" The second mate of the steamer was also an old German navyman, but his legs and feet were quite neat, and he flew to get his Leica camera somewhere in the middle of nowhere.

"Anchor! Let's get out of here first. Major Knopman then gave the order to the first mate to lift anchor and leave. His luck was not bad, just now when the boiler was not extinguished, the air defense alarm sounded. So Major Knopman did not give the order to turn off the boiler, and now the freighter can be started at any time to sail to the lower reaches of the Mussi River, avoiding the terrible fire and air raids.

Minoru Genda, commander of the 343rd Air Force of the Japanese Navy, was also witnessing the fire in Palembang at this time, and the Me264 he was riding in was seven or eight thousand meters in the air near Palembang.

It is clear that all of them underestimated the power of the B-29...... No, it should be an underestimation of the strength of the United States!

This opponent is only on the same level as the European Community, and compared to Japan's strength, it is completely heaven and earth.

In the past, Japan was exhausted by the use of submarines, mines, and shipwreckers (including aircraft carriers), and now there is a difficult guy like the B-29, and Japan can still fight like this?

It seems that we should accept it as soon as it is good, make peace with the United States, and then sit back and watch the fight between the United States and Europe to the death......