After careful inspection, the Flying Tiger helicopter gunship has the conditions for a test flight, and at this time the most critical first flight is about to begin, which is a test flight that affects everyone in the Dragon Soul Ordnance Industry Complex. The importance of the Flying Tiger gunship is no less than that of the Weilong jet fighter, which is the world's first real gunship, with a take-off weight of 6 tons, which can be said to be a super helicopter in this era. And it also has a transport version, of course, the transport version is enlarged to 10 tons, which can carry 18 soldiers, or 2 tons of supplies.

The Flying Tiger helicopter gunship is a 6-ton heavy helicopter gunship, which adopts a single-engine, normal rotor and tail rotor layout, four-blade rotor and four-blade tail rotor, and a stepped tandem two-seat design, with the gunner in front, the driver in the rear, and the rear three-point fixed landing gear. The engine is mounted on the top of the fuselage, the rotor is made of composite material, which can resist the direct hit of small-caliber cannon shells, the fuselage adopts a narrow fuselage design, and the tandem two-seat layout can effectively reduce the bombed area and wind resistance, and the two crew cockpits are independent of each other, with bulletproof glass windshield and armor reinforcement. The nose landing gear is equipped with heavy-duty struts with hydraulic cushioning, which can effectively absorb the impact force in the crash state to ensure the safety of the occupants.

Although the Flying Tiger helicopter gunship uses a thunderbolt engine, which seems to have a lot of power left, the helicopter is a special aircraft, which is fundamentally different from an airplane, and most of its lift and propulsion power comes from the rotation of the rotors, so it is particularly sensitive to power. The power load refers to the power power that can be distributed to the unit weight of the helicopter, which is actually equivalent to the thrust-to-weight ratio of the fixed-wing aircraft, but it is more important for the helicopter, which directly affects the hovering altitude, hovering weight, flight altitude, plateau take-off weight and other capabilities of the helicopter.

In order to meet the operational needs, the armed helicopter needs to ensure a high climb rate and high acceleration, so it needs a high-power engine to meet the needs of high-power loads; At the same time, due to the wide range of combat areas, it is generally required to ensure sufficient flight performance in hot weather and plateau environments. In the high-temperature plateau environment, the engine power mainly drops sharply due to insufficient air intake, and only the power system that usually appears to have excess power can have enough power margin to meet the demand in the high-temperature plateau environment.

During the Vietnam War, the U.S. Army Air Force encountered difficult tests in Laos and other places with a similar environment to the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, and even more difficult was the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the roof of the world in the northwest, with an average altitude of more than 3,000 meters, and some border areas even more than 4,000 meters, and a large number of mountains above 7,000 meters are a natural danger for helicopters.

Take, for example, a typical advanced helicopter gunship AH-64 "Apache". Its maximum take-off weight reached 9525 kg, at least 50% larger than the Flying Tiger gunship, and its early version used the S-70 "Black Hawk" engine belongs to the same series of General Electric T700-GE-701 turboshaft engine, a single power of 1285 kilowatts, the later version of the T700-GE-701C type, a single power of 1417 kilowatts, plateau performance and S-70 "Black Hawk" equivalent, it performs tasks in Afghanistan in the plateau terrain, Gun reserves had to be reduced to meet the required fuel reserves.

So the Flying Tiger gunship. As a world gunship, it will be possible to fight anywhere in the world, and its power must be large enough. Of course, because it is a single engine, its safety is definitely not as good as that of a twin engine, which is also due to the fact that the wind and thunder turboshaft engine is directly developed from the wind and thunder turbojet engine. In the case of a specially designed turboshaft engine, two smaller ones can be used to achieve the same power. This way the security is higher.

The combat performance of the Flying Tiger helicopter gunship is roughly comparable to that of the UH-1 Huey helicopter gunship, which was successfully developed by the United States in the early 50s and used in the early stage of the Vietnam War. However, in terms of flight performance indicators, it is comparable to the later Chinese Zhi-10 armed helicopter. The UH-1 helicopter gunship is not famous, but it is based on it. The Black Hawk helicopter developed is world-famous.

In the first test flight, the short wings on both sides of the Flying Tiger gunship were hung with rocket launch nests, using 90mm caliber rockets, each rocket nest has only 19 rockets, and there are a total of 4 rocket nests on both wings. Of course, all three are models, and only one is live ammunition.

This is definitely a super-killer of helicopter gunships, and in front of it, this period, including the Tiger tank. When a 90mm rocket is attacked from the top, it will turn into a pile of scrap metal.

Xiao Weiguo nodded with satisfaction, and walked over to touch the rocket launch nests, what a familiar thing, on the helicopter in the previous life, this was standard, but at that time, rockets were more used for fire coverage. And now, if the war requires a large number of helicopters to launch an attack on the cluster of armored forces, the effect of rocket coverage is still very good.

Of course, it is still too difficult to rely on single-shot rockets against tanks, and it is necessary to hit them accurately.

Overall, this is definitely a quasi-modern version of a helicopter gunship armed to the teeth, and like a jet fighter, although it may only be a decade advanced in terms of development ideas, it is definitely an innovation in military technology.

Xiao Weiguo waved his hand: "Let's test fly." ”

After the technicians finally checked the plane, the two pilots skillfully climbed onto the Flying Tiger gunship, Xiao Weiguo and the others also stayed away, the noise and movement of the helicopter take-off was not small, and the wind could blow the people standing close to the eyes of the people.

Watching the Flying Tiger helicopter gunship start under the command of the ground crew, the propeller on the top rotates from slow to fast, and finally the plane slowly leaves the ground, and after half a minute of hovering, the plane begins to rise rapidly.

I saw that after the Flying Tiger helicopter gunship rose into the air at an altitude of more than 50 meters, it began to hover again, and then it flew forward at a speed of about 250 kilometers per hour, and soon the helicopter began to reduce its altitude and sank into the woods next to the airport.

Then, the first to emerge from the treetops were the propellers of the helicopter, followed by the entire aircraft. In the whole process, the Flying Tiger helicopter gunship sometimes hovers, sometimes flies, sometimes the nose does not move, keep the fuselage maneuverable, sometimes it is an emergency climb, on the whole, the performance of the helicopter is very prominent, the maneuverability is strong, and the strong wind and thunder turboshaft engine gives it good maneuverability and speed. (To be continued.) )