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Sure enough, more than an hour later, the German aircraft group made a comeback again, although the US fleet was much closer to Iceland at this time, but the German fighters still all carried auxiliary fuel tanks, so as to have enough fuel to deal with the possible interception of the US carrier-based aircraft group, as a result, after the American reconnaissance planes discovered them, the US carrier-based fighters on the three aircraft carriers really quickly rose into the air to meet the battle, and some German fighters who had been prepared for this had dropped their auxiliary fuel tanks and bombs one after another to prepare for battle. The remaining half of the German planes continued to carry heavy bombs, but their role was no longer to bomb the American fleet, but only to prevent the American fighters from shrinking back obscenely after the group lost its threat to the American fleet, and the proud Luftwaffe pilots were convinced that even if only half of the fighters were engaged with the American carrier-based air group, they could easily win

Although the number of fighters the Germans faced was more than 30 percent less than the group of fighters intercepted by the US forces in the air (Note 1), the German pilots were all veterans of a hundred battles, and their level was so high that they had few opponents in Shijie, and the pilots of the US carrier-based aircraft, despite their good quality, generally lacked actual combat experience, and what was even worse was that the gap in the performance of the main fighters of the two sides was too great

At this time, the main carrier-based fighter of the US military, the F4F "Wildcat", only had a speed of more than 500 kilometers per hour, and in addition to high-altitude performance, other performance parameters did not reach the advanced level of Shijie. To some extent, the historical prestige of the Zero in the early days of the Pacific War is not exactly how powerful the Zero is. The main reason is that its opponent F4F is too inferior, and the F4U and F6F developed by the United States are much more powerful than them. We must admit that the timing of Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor was really well chosen, precisely when the United States had not yet succeeded in developing new carrier-based aircraft and a large number of new warships had only been built by more than halfway, but on the other hand, Japan could not hurt the vitality of the United States under such favorable circumstances, and there was no suspense about the outcome of the war

It is worth mentioning that the F4F fighter was still a "new aircraft" that began to equip the troops at the end of 1940, thinking of the strength of only 3 divisions in the US Army in 1936. ”。 After the start of the war, the speed at which the US military expanded and upgraded its equipment was even more alarming. The latter is not simply because the United States has developed industry, abundant resources, and abundant manpower. Roosevelt's New Policies were also crucial, as the establishment of the National Laboratory System, for example, had a profound impact

At that time, in order to save costs, Roosevelt ordered the United States to engage in forced reunification. All production companies have to pay some money every year to the national laboratory, which then entrusts the development to various schools and jishu development institutions. Businesses have the right to share jishu from these jishu development departments. And every once in a while, production equipment and jishu must be forcibly eliminated. Especially later in the space race with the USSR. The United States has pushed this system to its limits. In a sense. The United States defeated the Soviet Union with a system learned from the Soviet Union, because the United States itself had a much thicker foundation than the Soviet Union, and it had a much larger number and stronger allies to help. Even if the United States only learns seven or eight percent, the Soviet Union will not have the slightest chance of winning

However, no matter how easy the national laboratory system is, the research and development of weapons and equipment still takes time, not to mention that Germany in this time and space is far more powerful than in history, so at least now most of the weapons and equipment of the US military are not comparable with the German army, which can be seen just by looking at the gap between the performance of the F4F fighter and the German FW190B fighter

In terms of speed alone, the maximum speed of the FW190B fighter is more than 200 kilometers per hour faster than that of the US F4F "Wildcat" fighter (Note 1), which is even greater than the advantage of early jet fighters in history over piston fighters in the late stage of World War II. What's more, the superior performance of the FW190B fighter compared with the F4F "Wildcat" carrier-based fighter is far from the speed, but the all-round lead, which is particularly worth mentioning is that the FW190B fighter is equipped with four 20mm aircraft guns with extremely powerful firepower, once the US fighter is hit, nine times out of ten it will crash on the spot, The U.S. F4F fighter has only 6 12.7mm aviation machine guns, which are obviously powerless to deal with the FW190B fighter with strengthened armor protection, and it is difficult to shoot it down unless it can hit a few vulnerable points, so this battle is completely a one-sided slaughter, but it is no wonder that once there is a class difference between fighters, the numerical advantage is no longer of much significance, not to mention that the numerical advantage of the US aircraft is actually not very large

In a short period of time, more than half of the US fighters were shot down, but the Germans did not even have a single downed plane, which shocked all the officers and men of the US fleet watching the battle below, and the commander of the US fleet, who was like a knife, immediately ordered the plane group to withdraw, but the speed gap between the two sides was too great, how could it be so easy to escape? Moreover, because the US pilots were too confident at the beginning, the airspace of the engagement was not at all within the range of the US fleet's anti-aircraft fire, and the distance was not one or two kilometers, as a result, only 13 US fighters of the more than 100 US fighters that took to the air to meet the battle managed to escape, while the German army lost only 3 planes, and they were all needlessly lost after accidentally rushing into the range of the US anti-aircraft guns because of the relentless pursuit, and judging by the results of the air battle alone, the exchange ratio between the two sides is likely to be unprecedented in history at 0:131

Due to such astonishing losses, the total number of US aircraft carriers is less than 20 fighters, of which only 13 can be lifted into the air at any time.

By this time, the commander of the US fleet finally realized that it was a major mistake for him to send a group of carrier-based aircraft into the air to intercept it, but it was too late to regret it at this time. However, the Luftwaffe commander did not lose the traditional rigor of the Germans in the joy of the victory, and he soon realized that the excessive losses of American fighters made it feasible for German aircraft to carry out low-altitude penetration

Note 1: Since the main responsibility of the attack on the Icelandic aircraft carriers was to protect the battleships, the number of fighters was almost half as large as normal, and the excellent design and tonnage of the American aircraft carriers allowed most of them to be released in a single batch. (To be continued......)