If the choice of fighters of the Germans remained almost unchanged under the strong historical inertia, then one of the ultimate reasons for maintaining the history of the same problem in terms of attack aircraft was the need of the German Army, that is, the German Army needed high-intensity and high-precision ground support firepower. The Luftwaffe also believes that the fundamental determinants of the success of an attack aircraft are as follows: first, whether it can provide sufficient firepower to cover the ground attack, and second, whether it can survive from the enemy's dense anti-aircraft firepower. Other aspects are relegated to the secondary level. And this also caused a very strict problem, that is, in the case of air supremacy, the German JU87 Stuka attack aircraft can be said to be a grim reaper, and when air supremacy cannot be guaranteed, it was decisively beaten into a dog by the opponent's fighters!

Is the Stuka a classic? The answer is yes, the JU87D dive bomber until the end of the war its powerful attack power is not inferior, with a maximum of 1800KG bombs. It is possible to hang a 1000KG bomb on the central axis, or a 250KG bomb on each wing. Moreover, the large dive angle gives this attack aircraft a considerable attack power. It did play a heavy role in the early days of the war. In terms of attack power and bomb load, the JU87D is much stronger than the Il-2 of the same period. What's even more powerful is that a certain modification of the JU87 can also be equipped with torpedoes, and if it is used as a carrier-based aircraft, it will be the world's first attack aircraft with dual use for dive bombing and lightning strikes. Xu Jie personally believes that the performance of JU87 is stronger than that of Il2. But this qiē has a premise, that is, air supremacy is in your hands! The JU87D, which has a maximum speed of just over 400, has no air supremacy. Every egg you touch is the result of being swept down!

The dive bomber concept proposed by Juncker (i.e., the historical JU87 idea) shone in the Luftwaffe tender, and according to the Luftwaffe's requirements, this dive bomber could carry at least 250KG of bombs for dive bombing. And there is a certain potential for upgrading. If nothing else, the development of German ground attack aircraft will be the same as in history, but at this time, an accident appeared, or it could not be an accident, but the German Army found that the Russian army attacking Dönitz in China and the Entente often used a large number of attack aircraft equipped with 12.7MM machine guns or 20MM machine guns in the later battles on the Western Front to constantly hover in the air and repeatedly strafe ground targets. ALTHOUGH THE 20MM CANNON HAS LIMITED POWER. But it was enough to attack the almost unprotected infantry and vehicles, and it was precisely because of this sustained low-altitude fire suppression by the Allies that the losses of German transport units and lightly protected targets were directed.

After a comparison the Germans found. The bombs of dive bombers are really powerful, and they are really useful for destroying solid bunkers and firing points, but the bombs are gone after one throw. If a wave of attacks doesn't work, it's a complete loss. Need to go back and re-hang the bomb. Even if the opponent's support point is destroyed. However, against the subsequent steady stream of reinforcements and the remaining infantry, the lethality was limited. However, the low-altitude attack aircraft equipped with a small caliber can hover over the target area for a long time, hunting lightly armored targets, and at the same time dragging down the opponent's movements. (Russia's Il-2 has an advantage in this regard.) THE 23MM CANNON OF THE IL-2 HAS A MAXIMUM RESERVE OF 300 ROUNDS PER GUN, WHILE THE NS37 CANNON ALSO HAS A RESERVE OF 50 ROUNDS, WHICH IS MUCH MORE THAN THE 37MM GUN OF STUKA, OF COURSE, THE ARMOR-PIERCING PERFORMANCE IS STILL INFERIOR TO THE 37MM GUN OF THE CANNON BIRD. ）

"Even if our attack aircraft can't destroy the opponent's tanks, as long as we can destroy the opponent's infantry and logistics vehicles. Then their tanks will not be able to move forward either. "At a meeting with the Air Force, an Air Force officer made such a point. At the same time, he also mentioned that it is difficult to destroy tanks with small-caliber machine guns or bombs. The former is not powerful enough. The latter is a difficult point to hit a small mobility target. Non-old birds can't do it! In fact, there are so many old birds. And it is much easier to hit trucks or infantry with rapid-fire weapons such as machine guns, and if you miss once, you can hit twice, and anyway, the amount of shells in reserve is much more than that of bombs. And you don't need to be too strong to hit a truck.

This set of ideas is a bit like the attack idea of the 2 wartime Il-2, but there is a problem that the survivability of such an aircraft when performing combat missions is also a serious problem, because you have to hover over the opponent's land-based head for a long time, and the opponent's air defense weapons are definitely not ornaments, which requires the aircraft to have strong protective performance. And the result of the increase in armor is an increase in weight. The allowable load of an engine with the same aerodynamic layout is limited, so the bomb load will inevitably decrease. And because of the increase in weight, the dive performance of the aircraft also decreases sharply. One of the reasons why the Il-2 can't drop a big bomb at a large angle is that it is too heavy, with an empty weight of more than 5 tons, which is almost the weight of a twin-engine aircraft. (There is a theory that the Il-2 is a steel body, and this lateral position cannot be determined, but the Il-2 is too empty-weighted for sure.) ）

You can't have both fish and bear's paws. However, for Germany now, it is not a problem to develop and equip two attack aircraft at the same time, so the Germans began to develop another attack aircraft. Carry small-caliber cannons and small bombs to carry out long-term sustained damage to soft targets on the ground. In the future, this weapon will also carry rockets and other weapons to attack the ground, and this DO-87 low-altitude attack aircraft, which was later called the Scythe of Death, was born, and the JU87 attack aircraft, known as the Screaming Death, was called the most feared aircraft of the Allied army in the early stage of the war. The results were quite brilliant.

After solving the problem of tactical support for the army, the navy came to the door again, and they also hoped that the air force could get a carrier-based attack aircraft according to the actual needs of the navy. In this plane, the Germans realized early on the importance of dive-bombing and mine-strike compatible attack aircraft. This is still thanks to the British, in the later battles, the British Swordfish torpedo machine brought great damage to the German high seas fleet, if it were not for the existence of these terror killers mounted on this torpedo, the German fleet still had a chance to completely and completely defeat the high seas fleet. Although the German bombers also inflicted a lot of damage on the other side, the Germans found that the effect of attacking the capital ship with bombs with limited weight alone can only be described as general. At present, it is obviously difficult for a single-engine aircraft to carry a bomb weighing more than 500KG to dive. So the only thing that can really inflict fatal damage on the capital ship is the torpedo. The development of carrier-based torpedo machines is necessary, but at the same time, the German Navy also found that torpedo machines also have great drawbacks, the first of which is that the bomb load of torpedoes is too small! According to the aircraft carrier planning of the German Navy, the number of aircraft torpedoes on large German aircraft carriers is only between 36 and 45 rounds!

Aviation torpedoes are not the same as bombs. THE LENGTH OF EACH TORPEDO IS MORE THAN 5 METERS, AND THE DIAMETER IS AROUND 450MM. The huge volume occupies a lot of space in the ammunition depot, and it also needs space for debugging before use. According to the German Navy's plan for the first stage of 16,000 tons of aircraft carriers, the number of aircraft carriers is about 72, according to the ratio of 1 to 1 between fighters, dive bombers and torpedo planes, the number of torpedo aircraft is about 24, and the torpedoes have a total of only 36 rounds, that is to say, there are only 1.5 base torpedoes! This means that after the two aircraft carriers engage in battle, at most two attacks, the torpedo planes will face the problem of running out of torpedoes. And if the torpedo machine cannot be loaded with torpedoes and can only bomb horizontally or dive at a small angle, then both in terms of bombing accuracy and power, will be greatly reduced. Therefore, the German Navy asked the Air Force to come up with an attack aircraft that could take into account both lightning strikes and dive bombing in this tender. At least in terms of future potential, it is necessary to have the ability to be compatible with both attacks.

In addition to the single-engine attack aircraft, the Luftwaffe also planned to make a small twin-engine aircraft as a supplement. This seems redundant in terms of attack power alone, and the positioning between a single-engine attack aircraft and a normal twin-engine bomber seems to be very embarrassing. In terms of bomb load and range, it is not necessarily much larger than a single-engine attack aircraft, and far inferior to a twin-engine attack aircraft. However, two engines are needed, and the cost of the guide remains high. So much so that many people inside questioned whether it was necessary to produce such a bomber?

To this kind of question from the government and enterprises, the front-line personnel in the Luftwaffe gave a very positive answer, "In terms of bomb load and range, this aircraft does not have any advantages, but in terms of flight speed, the twin-engine light bomber has a clear advantage under the same load, which means that in the face of some positions with relatively high defensive strength, the twin-engine light bomber will have better survivability." Richthofen said. In addition, there is another reason that cannot be said to outsiders, that is, the Luftwaffe is preparing to develop an "electromagnetic detection device" and use it on fighter planes as a night combat aircraft.

After a period of discussion, the attack aircraft project was finally located in three small projects, namely a dive bomber, a shallow dive attack aircraft and a twin-engine light bomber. In addition, according to the different needs of the three armed forces, there are some sub-items under these small items. If the fighter and attack aircraft projects were jointly planned by the army, navy and air force, and the air force had to take into account the needs of the navy and the army, then in the last twin-engine medium bomber project and the four-engine strategic bomber project, Richthofen's air force would dominate! This is also the power that he and his colleagues in the Air Force dream of! Crush the ground with the Air Force!

Thanks to the book friend zhouyu1976, hukaikaka for the reward~~~, and the book friend Xue Wu Lingshuang's monthly pass support ~~~. (To be continued......)