Today's second update

As the monsoon moves northward, Shanghai enters a continuous sunny summer.

During this period, there was no war between China and Japan.

The fighting took place mainly over Fujian and the Taiwan Strait, and in order to retaliate for the air raid losses suffered in the early stage of the war, the Japanese Army Air Force in Taiwan repeatedly sent planes into Fujian to retaliate by bombing, and as a result, they encountered the Chinese and German air forces there.

From the very beginning, the Fujian Air Force has been determined to focus on defense, fight on the mainland, and not take the initiative to fight in the air on the opponent's territory.

The reason is very simple: Compared with the side that takes the initiative to attack, the biggest advantage of the air force on the defending side is that as long as the pilot of the downed plane is not killed or injured, he can quickly turn back and fight again after parachuting. And the air force of the attacking side, once shot down, the pilot's end is only to go to the prisoner camp. In addition, the defenders have the advantage of range and can even be supported by ground anti-aircraft artillery.

The biggest advantage of the current Red Air Force, compared with the Japanese Air Force, is the overwhelming advantage in aircraft performance, but the biggest disadvantage is that China is not an industrial country, it cannot produce its own aircraft, and it is difficult to replenish the lost aircraft and pilots.

Under such circumstances, in line with the principle of "living a rich life and living poor," the Fujian Air Force adopted an active defensive posture in the air battles at the end of June and the beginning of July. Every day, fighter planes were dispatched to patrol and fly over the coastline of Fujian over the strait to lure Japanese planes to air battles, and the Japanese Army Airlines, which was bent on shame, also sent planes to the skies over Fujian every day to challenge.

Air battles were fought every day, from the end of June to the beginning of July. The Japanese Army Airlines, whose aircraft performance was inferior to that of its opponent and took the initiative to go to someone else's house to invite the battle, suddenly suffered a big loss. In the 15 days from 20 June to 5 July, the Army lost more than 80 fighters in air battles (some of which crashed on their own territory after returning home), more than 10 were shot down by ground anti-aircraft fire, and more than 30 planes were scrapped after barely flying back to the airfield for landing, and nearly 100 pilots were killed or entered the Red Army's prisoner camps.

The price paid by the Red Army was the direct loss of seven planes in the air battle, eight scrapped on the ground, more than 30 planes injured, only five pilots killed and killed, and all the planes lost in the air battle were Hawker II with poor performance. In air battles, the FW90 has often been beaten to the ground. But he was able to escape with speed. The airport is on the edge and highly protected, always able to staggering back to the airport. The loss of the FW90 was all reported at the airport for scrap for two main reasons.

One is a bulletproof seat for the pilot, although the weight increases greatly and reduces the performance of the aircraft. But it greatly protects the safety of pilots. There was a FW90 that was beaten and covered with holes, and after a successful forced landing, it was declared by the maintenance personnel that it had no repair value. Finally, the useful parts are dismantled for recycling. In total, the ground crew picked out twenty-one bullet warheads from behind the bulletproof seats during the disassembly. In contrast, the Japanese aircraft at this time did not have bulletproof seats installed, and the cockpit was hit. The death of the pilot was almost the result of an iron nail plate.

The second reason is the landing problem, compared to biplanes, monoplanes with large wings are relatively difficult to land, and injured aircraft are more likely to have accidents when landing. The FW90 miraculously suffered no losses in air combat, but during landing, due to injuries or personal reasons of the pilots, there were frequent accidents. The pilot's own factors alone led to the damage to the aircraft, and even forced to scrap five planes, and seven were injured (repairable). Most of the accidents are "taking the big top" when landing, rushing out of the runway, breaking the landing gear and so on.

(Note: In World War II, it was common for aircraft to be scrapped in accidents and serious injuries after landing after the end of the air war, and it is not surprising that the aircraft reported scrapped at the airport were even equivalent or even more than those that were shot down in the air battle.) The famous F4U Corsair fighter in history scored an excellent exchange ratio of 12:1 in air combat, but half of the lost planes were dropped by themselves. ）

The losses during landing were greater than those in air combat, mainly because the young Red Air Force pilots did not have enough training time and lacked experience in dealing with such situations after the aircraft were injured in air combat. However, as the air combat continued, the young pilots gained combat experience, maturity and understanding of the temperament of the aircraft, and these conditions began to gradually decrease in July.

There is no fighter in the world that is perfect in all aspects. There are gains and losses. In the case of comparable engine performance, the pursuit of flying faster will inevitably cause the aircraft to become a "flying slate", and pay the price of reduced maneuverability and handling performance. The aircraft has excellent instantaneous maneuverability and good hovering performance, and often has poor course stability; If the course is stable, the hovering performance will inevitably be affected.

Although the FW90 fighter is a good aircraft, Lin Han has put forward many excessive requirements for him: he can get on the ship, can fight in the air, can dive bombing, and has high speed. Dr. Tan Ke met all of Lin Han's requirements, but the price he paid was not very friendly to novice pilots, especially when the plane was injured and it was not easy to control - in fact, when Dr. Tan Ke was designing the FW90, he was greatly interfered by Lin Han, Lin Han gave him the structural sketch of the F4U Corsair fighter for reference, and Dr. Tan Ke referred to his external aerodynamic shape, and made a reduced version of the "Corsair" into the FW90, which has the advantages of excellent air combat dive performance of the F4U at the same time. Also inherited the shortcomings of his unfriendliness to novice pilots.

In the hands of elite pilots like Gao Zhihang or Yu Sheng, the FW90 is a terrible weapon, but in the hands of rookie pilots who have only two hundred flight hours, the FW90 is a wild horse that is difficult to handle. In addition, there is another reason that most of the best FW90 pilots in the Red Army are concentrated in the front line of Shanghai and Hangzhou, and among them, the bomber unit that uses the FW90 as a dive bomber is the highest, and half of the air force here in Fujian is a novice who has just left the aviation school.

Allowing novice pilots and veteran pilots to mix in a one-to-one ratio and participate in a large number of air battles over Fujian is also a factor that takes into account the possibility that the war may become protracted. Don't take advantage of the generation gap between Japanese planes and let these rookies who have just left the aviation school fight in the sky, in case the war becomes prolonged. When Britain and Japan got better planes, the situation was even worse. After half a month of air fighting, the nascent Red Air Force grew a lot.

In the air battle that took place in Fujian, the Fw90's maiden Fokker company attached great importance to it, and they, like the HE51's maiden henkel company, sent a group of technicians to be stationed in Fuzhou, and in view of the various faults and deficiencies of the aircraft reported by the pilots after landing, they immediately sent it back to the German headquarters by radio in guò, and then the relevant test pilots conducted test tests according to the information fed back by intelligence, so as to find a solution as soon as possible. Finally, it will be sent back to China. The ground staff will improve the aircraft according to the solutions fed back by the headquarters. Of course, some minor problems will be solved by the ground staff, technical personnel, and pilots after discussion and on-site minor repairs and minor repairs and improvements.

Even in the era of piston fighters, the perfection of the performance of a fighter. Again, it is measured in years. Even the fastest F4U. He was after entering the war. Solved all the minor design problems and turned it into a perfect fighter, and it took more than a year and a half to get left and center. And the famous Spitfire of World War II, BF109, took even longer to perfect the design.

War is the best catalyst for technological development, and the air battles over Fujian and the Taiwan Strait have only been fought for half a month, and the two types of aircraft participating in the war have each found more than 10 defects that need to be improved.

The HE51 cold fighters that participated in air combat were all elite veterans of the Luftwaffe who had flown more than 1,000 hours, and some were even test pilots. Their flying skills are higher, and they have not lost a single loss in the air battle, and they participated in the battle of 12 HE51s at Fuzhou Yixu Airport, and a total of 36 Japanese planes were laid down in half a month, giving birth to a bunch of trump cards.

And the first ace of air combat born on the Red Army side was actually Gao Zhihang, the pilot of the artillery party of the uprising.

For the name of this air battle in the history of the Anti-Japanese War, Lin Han has long known his name. After the Hangzhou uprising, some in the air force were initially reluctant to give them the most advanced fighters out of distrust of the "enemy pilots" of this temporary uprising. However, after Lin Han sent a telegram to the upper echelons of the Red Army, the leaders of the Red Army listened to Lin Han's advice, and in line with the idea of employing people without doubt, they directly handed over the FW90 that had just been transported from Germany to the newly assembled FW90 to the elite pilots of the Hangzhou Air Force School headed by Gao Zhihang.

A group of air force elites in the former Nanjing government headed by Gao Zhihang, most of whom were also elite veterans with thousands of flight hours, took only ten days to quickly adapt to the temperament of the FW90. By 5 July, Taiwan's Japanese Army Air could no longer bear the huge losses in the away air battle, and until the temporary truce, Gao Zhihang had shot down eight Japanese planes in six days, seven of which were Type 92 fighters.

Although it won an overwhelming victory in the air battle over the Taiwan Strait, the Red Army did not make a big deal of propaganda and deliberately exaggerated its own losses.

And this is from Lin Han's construction, the purpose is to make the British and Japanese sides continue to misjudge the difference in the performance of the aircraft on both sides.

"If you are strong, you will show that the enemy is weak, and if you are weak, you will show that the enemy will be strong."

As soon as he explained his thoughts, the upper echelons of the Red Army immediately understood what he meant. As a result, the planes lost during the landing were all turned into losses during air battles during the propaganda, and at the same time, the number of planes shot down by the Japanese was deliberately increased several times to more than 50.

After the survivors returned from flying back from the Japanese pilots who had suffered a disastrous defeat in the air battle over Fujian, they all began to brag about the number of hits and downs -- the problem of bragging about the results of air battles during air battles was a common phenomenon in the air forces of all countries during World War II, and the Japanese were no exception. After half a month of air fighting, the pilots of the Japanese Army Airlines, who were obviously on the losing side, bragged about their achievements twice as many as all the Red Army planes on the Fujian airfield combined, and there were more than 200 planes.

On 5 July, Taiwan's Army Airlines was forced to suspend this "loss-making business" of conducting away air battles at the opponent's home because of the heavy losses suffered in the early stage, and began to investigate the reasons for the huge losses in the early stage.

Although the military began to realize the gap in the performance of the aircraft after the investigation, the Red Army's initiative to increase the number of losses combined with the bragging record of the Japanese pilots really confused the personnel who came to investigate.

"The number of losses announced by the Red Bandits is fifty, and this number must be false, shrunken, multiplied by two or multiplied by three, is the real loss. And the more than 200 planes that we announced were downed, and those guys from the Army Aviation must have also been flooded."

At this time, the Japanese military was also unable to accept the reality that the opponent had a stronger air force than itself, and they cleverly came to the "conclusion" that the air combat losses of both sides were one to one, and they pushed all the Red Army's gains on the Soviet Union and Germany. -- It is no secret that German pilots fought in the skies over Fujian, and this is no secret among the Japanese Army pilots who fought against them. On more than one occasion, the pilots of the Army Aviation saw the "big nose" and blonde hair of the opponent's pilot at close range, and they even heard the opponent's German communication many times during radio monitoring.

Therefore, the Japanese blamed all the losses in the air battle on the heads of the Germans and the Soviets, believing that this was mainly the result of the Soviet-German pilots.

Failure in air combat is not terrible, but what is terrible is that after defeat, you do not know how to reflect on your own failures and cannot find your own shortcomings. This erroneous result led the Japanese Army Air Force to the wrong conclusion: As long as it intensified its efforts and fought several more air battles, the Red Army's air force could be exhausted in the skies over Fujian.

On the other hand, because Shanghai was far away from Taiwan, Japanese planes could not fly there, there was no air battle there, and the Red Army was not inactive with the outside world.

The two HE111V bombers sent by the Germans for testing are also secretly being remodeled, and according to the plan, they will go on an expedition to Japan in early July to carry out a long-distance "leaflet bombing" and use the method of airdropping leaflets to block the Japanese military headquarters, which is now full of contradictions, and the purpose of this is to further intensify the contradictions among various factions in the Japanese military headquarters.

In this bombing, the political significance is far greater than the practical significance, and the kung fu outside the battlefield is sometimes more important than the kung fu inside the battlefield. In today's Japan, the Imperial Road faction and the unification faction have become more and more radicalized. This so-called "leaflet bombing" is precisely to provide the two sides with better weapons to attack their opponents in the intensification of contradictions.

From the assassination of the unification faction officials in the Liuting Explosion to the assassination of the emperor later, Lin Han's series of actions were all very targeted, and their purpose was to promote the outbreak of the "226" mutiny in history at this critical point, so as to promote civil strife in Japan and allow the Red Army to gain more time for development and preparation. (To be continued......)