President Dewey was woken up in his sleep by the guards around him, and then dragged him into the basement of the hotel where he lived to avoid a possible air raid. This is also the first time in half a century that the president of the United States of America has been so close to the war.

Before being sent into the basement, President Dewey heard a loud bang from the USS Alabama's ammunition depot.

"Is it the Japanese who are attacking Hong Kong? Damn, what do radar soldiers eat? And what about our night fighter wing? ”

President Dewey yelled and cursed dissatisfiedly, and then was dragged into the underground air-raid shelter of his residence by the bodyguards and guards. He had just made a show in front of the news media during the day, but before he could do that, the fleet that had completed the bombing of Tokyo was slapped in the face by the Toei dwarf in the home port.

The Night Fighter Wing, which was called by President Dewey, was also urgently taking off from the airfields around the port of San Francisco. However, another unfortunate thing for the Americans is that before the outbreak of the Pacific War, the United States did not think of developing a professional night fighter at all, and it did not think of it immediately after the outbreak of the war. It was not until the end of last year, when Japan's fast aircraft carrier squadron hit the waters off San Francisco for the first time and attacked the port of San Francisco at night, that the Americans realized that they still lacked a night fighter.

In Europe, the British encountered only brief night battles in Northern Europe and France, and most of the air battles at that time were fought by the British and defended by the Germans. Then the British soon began to develop their own night fighter: the Mosquito, and with great success.

But because history was changed beyond recognition, the war in Europe ended after only one year. Many of the weapons that the United States should have developed long ago, but they have never had a chance to be born, and one of them is a professional night fighter.

Historically, it was the British who paid the Americans to also help develop night fighters, but this plane. After the end of the French campaign, because Hannah did not want to launch the air battle of Britain, the British did not have the pressure of home air defense at all, and they also had a mosquito type, so naturally they would not burn money to ask the Americans to help develop night fighters.

The chain reaction was that San Francisco was bombed at night by Japanese planes for the first time. When the United States realizes that there is a shortage of its own types of air weapons, no matter how powerful the US aviation community is, it will not be able to immediately come up with the night fighters it urgently needs. In a hurry, they could only choose among the fighters in service, tow out the P38 Lightning fighter that had been abused in the Pacific Ocean, improve its cockpit, change from a single seat to a two-seater, and then use it as a night fighter, but this temporary P38 Lightning fighter night version. What kind of table can be put into a big question mark.

As for the professional night fighter, the P61 Black Widow, it is only now a development aircraft that has just been established, and a wooden prototype model has been created, and it is still far from being officially put into service.

As for the supporting tactics of night air combat, since they have no similar experience, the Americans are also in the dark, and they are still in the stage of exploration.

When the poignant air raid sirens sounded in the harbor of San Francisco. The P38 night fighters of the local airfield hurriedly took off, and then arrived with the guidance of searchlights and radars on the ground. Fly into the port of San Francisco to expel the bats that are wreaking havoc there.

Unfortunately, due to the late issuance of the air defense siren, by the time the P38 took off in a hurry, the first wave of Japanese attack aircraft had already begun to attack the warships in the harbor. When the first batch of eight P38s hurried to the port of San Francisco, the first wave of four groups of Bat attack planes had already completed their attack mission and were preparing to retreat.

Inside the old Golden Harbor at this time. Looking down from the sky, you can see the burning figures of warships everywhere, and under the light of the big bear fire, you can even see the biplane attack planes that are not so small and "small" as mosquitoes raging in the sky inside the harbor. The air defense units of the US military in the harbor had already reacted at this time, and all the anti-aircraft artillery that could fire was firing frantically. However, the US air defense units, which lacked training, were in a hurry, and the timing fuses of their small-caliber antiaircraft artillery shells did not set the correct time for detonation, and most of the shells fired exploded far behind the Japanese fuselage. And their shooting corrector was originally set up for medium-high speed aircraft, who knew that the speed of the bats was too slow, so slow that it was less than their minimum correction number, and this fatal design mistake led to a big drop in the hit rate of small-caliber anti-aircraft guns.

Moreover, the large-caliber antiaircraft artillery shells with extremely advanced VT radio proximity fuses installed on them also did not react to the bats covered with wooden planks and canvas and became ornaments -- advanced does not mean the best, and the VT signal was used in the wrong place, and when it encountered an attack plane with a "backward" canvas skin, it was completely ineffective. In the air defense operations that night, the threat of the incomparably advanced VT shells to our own aircraft was far greater than that of the enemy's aircraft, and their effect was completely negative.

The U.S. ground air defense force was very bad, and the 120 bats that entered the port of San Francisco were shot down by it in total, and the P38 Lightning, which temporarily served as a night fighter, also repeated the embarrassment that its knockoff BF110 encountered at night when it was in the port of Oslo: the Japanese plane flew too low and too slow.

When the P38 night fighters flew to the port of San Francisco, almost all the Bat attack planes were crowded at an altitude of about 100 meters, or even 50 meters, or 30 meters above the sea surface.

For the P38 fighter with a non-night professional background, it is an extremely risky thing to ask it to descend to 100 meters at night when the light is unclear and the visibility is poor to catch this kind of "low-altitude and low-speed" rogue plane.

With a wing load of nearly 240 kg, the P38 fighter is a high-wing fighter, and the benefits of high wing load bring higher flight speed, and the disadvantage is poor performance at low speeds.

And the opponent opposite them is a Bat attack aircraft with an average wing load of less than 50 kilograms after throwing away aerial bombs or torpedoes.

For American pilots, tonight's battle will be one they will never forget.

In order to protect the warships that were being attacked, the P38 could only ignore the airspace over the old golden harbor and was forced to choose the worst tactics and opponent air combat at an altitude and speed that was not suitable for them.

There are no worst planes, only the worst tactics and the worst battlefield shapes. That night, all the American airplane pilots were faced with such a situation. (To be continued......)

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