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Does Li Xiaofeng's impassioned speech have an effect? It can only be said that there is a certain role, the introduction of the B17 project is temporarily preserved, but the first batch of signed orders have been greatly cut, from the initial intention of 100 orders, reduced to 50, as for the back of the full set of localization plans, it has been shelved for the time being, according to the resolution of the Military Commission meeting, whether it is localized, but also depends on the reaction of the troops after equipping B17.

While reducing the number of B17 purchases, the fast bomber designed by Tupolev that had just received the SB-2 code name was purchased in large quantities, and the General Armament Department placed an order for 300 aircraft at one time, and this is still the first batch, and there will be a second and third batch of orders later, if it were not for the limited industrial capacity, Voroshilov would have the heart to come to a thousand in one go.

Not only the SB-2 was purchased in large quantities, but even the Pe-1 dive bomber, which was still in the prototype stage, was ordered 100 units in one go. To be honest, Li Xiaofeng thinks this is too crazy, no one knows what the performance of the Pe-1 is, and he doesn't even know if he can complete the test flight, so he will give an order for a hundred aircraft. Nima, just now Trotsky was still crying poor, and in a blink of an eye he began to lose.

So what kind of dive bomber is the Pe-1? From the nose, it looks very traditional, but the back half of the body is as thin as a telephone pole, and at first glance it looks like a dragonfly. All in all, it's an ugly flying machine. At least when Li Xiaofeng saw the Pe-1 on the drawing board, it was hard to believe that it was a dive bomber. On the contrary, he is more like a conventional single-engine horizontal bomber.

Judging by the results of blowing in the wind tunnel. Pe-1 has a high speed. With a 960 hp 12Ycrs engine, the maximum speed can reach 430 km/h. But at the same time, it should also be noted that the Pe-1 armor protection is a bit fragile, the empty weight is "only" 2.7 tons, and the maximum bomb load is only 500 kg, and this is still a naval ship-based type with a strengthened structure, and the land-based model is as thin as a piece of paper in a certain word.

All in all. This is a "fast bomber" that reduces the weight of the structure as much as possible in order to increase speed. I have to say that in this year, the acceleration is still very marketable in the upper echelons of the Red Air Force, for example, the SB-2, for example, the Pe-1 on the drawing board, are all bombers that are faster than the fighters at that time.

Presumably, the top brass of the Red Army believed that the best way to avoid the bomber being shot down was to fly faster than the fighter plane, so that the enemy could not catch up. Speaking from the heart, this kind of design idea made Li Xiaofeng speechless. What's the use of flying fast but not being able to complete the basic task? For example, this Pe-1, the speed is really good. But it's hard to say what the dive bombing capability is, anyway, in Li Xiaofeng's opinion, there is a chance that the thin fuselage will fall apart when it is pulled up at the end of the dive.

At the time, however, Petlyakov was confident in the shortest line of the airframe structure used in his design, which he considered lightweight and sturdy for the dive bomber.

Of course, later test flights also proved this, and the Pe-1's body structure really did not have any problems, at least not as a certain immortal imagined that it would fall apart. However, the prophecy of a certain immortal has also been partially fulfilled, the dive performance of this fast dive bomber is indeed not very good, it is more difficult to change out after entering the dive, and the speed of the dive is a little too fast, for those novice pilots who have just started, the slightest operation mistake will fall into a tailspin, or change out of failure to crash headlong into the ground.

And the biggest problem of the Pe-1 is not that the dive performance is not ideal (the familiar hand does not have the problem of zài), but that the landing performance of this cargo is very bad, his minimum landing speed is as high as more than 200 kilometers, and the gliding angle when landing is relatively large, figuratively speaking, as if it was smashed on the ground, the pilot who flew the Pe-1 later gave Pe-1 a name - Jumping Bee.

It is precisely this point that pronounces the death sentence of Pe-1 as a naval carrier-based aircraft, landing on the undulating deck is already very testing, plus a bounce attribute, it is really a fate.

After several test flights of the Pe-1 on the aircraft carrier, HNA categorically announced that it would refuse to accept the aircraft that loves to dance when landing, and instead purchased a batch of SBD-1s for emergency purposes. At the same time, HNA immediately turned its attention to the SU-1 multi-role bomber, designed by another famous aircraft designer, Sukhoi.

Speaking of this SU-1 multi-role bomber, we have to mention the previously mentioned I-14 project that competes with the I-16. This project was under the sole responsibility of Sukhoi, which was codenamed ANT-31Bis at the time. At that time, Sukhoi was ready to build an all-round fighter with the high speed of a monoplane, the circling power of a biplane, and the super firepower of a ground attack aircraft.

But Sukhoi's design is exactly what it says, everything will be a little bit, nothing will be fine. The I-14 was such a thing, and the result was naturally killed by the scheming Polikarpov and he lost his armor.

However, although Sukhoi failed, the design of his all-round fighter attracted Li Xiaofeng's attention, not that a certain immortal was preparing to build a "fighter-bomber", but that he felt that the versatility envisioned by Sukhoi was still meaningful. Especially for carrier-based aircraft, the significance is considerable.

Why? Quite simply, the space on the aircraft carrier, both on the deck and in the hangar, is limited, which restricts the maximum number of carrier-based aircraft. Originally, the aircraft carrier capacity of an aircraft carrier was not large, and because of different mission constraints, it had to carry several different types of aircraft. For example, fighters, torpedo bombers, horizontal bombers, dive bombers, and reconnaissance aircraft.

Even after entering the thirties, the naval powers have integrated horizontal bombers, torpedo bombers, and reconnaissance planes, so that the newly developed torpedo planes have the above three capabilities, and the operation of aircraft on the deck of aircraft carriers has been greatly simplified. However, it must be noted that an aircraft carrier still has to operate at least three types of aircraft at the same time -- fighters, dive bombers, and torpedo planes.

Based on the maximum capacity of an aircraft carrier of 100 aircraft, there are only about 30 aircraft of each type. This also determines that the combat effectiveness of a single aircraft carrier or even two aircraft carriers is very limited. An all-deck sortie at once. A single aircraft carrier is at most sixty or seventy aircraft for attack. Excluding the escort fighters, there are hardly many fighters left that "parachute" the aircraft carrier formation. Moreover, the requirements for deck dispatchers and aircrews to operate three aircraft types at the same time are quite high, and if you don't get it right, you will make mistakes in the busy.

If the functions of dive bombers and torpedo planes can be combined into one, and an all-round maritime attack aircraft can be obtained, it will be advantageous to simplify logistics and optimize the structure of attack waves. In fact, the Navy also has such an idea, such as the British Barracuda and the Japanese Meteor, both dual-function fighters with torpedo attack and dive bombing capabilities.

According to Li Xiaofeng's thoughts. The scale of the Soviet aircraft carriers was not large, and it can be expected that in the future it will be six fleet aircraft carriers, and the total number of aircraft carried will be 600, and it is really not cost-effective to engage in several single-function attack aircraft at the same time, and it is very necessary to develop multifunctional attack aircraft.

So where are the difficulties in developing a multifunctional attack aircraft? Quite simply, torpedo bombers/horizontal bombers/reconnaissance aircraft require excellent low-altitude performance and large range, and are generally three-person configurations, while dive bombers require a solid fuselage structure and excellent dive performance.

If you think about it, let a fighter not only have good low-altitude performance, but also be able to hang an aviation torpedo that weighs almost close to a ton. It also needs to be strong and able to withstand the high overload pulled up by the dive, and it must have a certain speed that cannot be too slow. In the end, three crew members had to be installed. To achieve this qiē, there is a basic premise, that is, the engine must be powerful!

Judging from the experience of the Barracuda and Meteor reforms, without a 16,700-horsepower engine, you don't even think about building any multi-functional fighters. So did the USSR have such a powerful engine at this time? Obviously, there is no such thing, at this time there is a gap between the M-25 produced in the Soviet Union and the original Wright R-1825, and the power has shrunk by hundreds of horsepower. The introduced 12Y series has just begun to be localized, and historically, it will take time for Klimov to get the 12Y series, and the original M-100 series liquid-cooled engines also have problems with reliability and power loss.

In other words, the most powerful engine in the Soviet Union at this time was the M-25, and that was 740 horsepower, which was far from the actual requirement of 16 or 700 horsepower, and it could be said that there was no joke at all.

And this is the fundamental reason why Sukhoi's multi-role fighter is not popular, there is no published engine, multi-purpose is just a joke that looks beautiful!

So why did Li Xiaofeng make up this joke? The reason is very simple, Li Xiaofeng feels that the problem of the engine is not without a solution, of course, this is not to say that someone is ready to purchase a batch of high-power engines from the cornucopia to cheat, someone does not have this idea. But he felt that the thinking of the big guy had entered a misunderstanding, a single engine with a power of more than 1,600 horsepower really did not exist in 1935, but 1,600 horsepower could be shared by two engines! Who said that only single-engine aircraft can be used on aircraft carriers?

Judging from the experience of using US imperialist carrier-based aircraft, the later US Navy welcomed twin-engine fighters more, believing that twin-engine fighters were more reliable, and even US imperialism even developed a three-seat, three-engine hybrid freak carrier-based aircraft such as the A-2.

In this case, why do carrier-based attack aircraft have to guard the pit of single engines?

It is true that twin-engine attack aircraft are more expensive and larger, but the length and height of the single-engine TBD, TBF/TBM and TBY wingspan are not small, and a comparison with the Twin-engine Pe-2 at that time shows that the TBF/TBM is not much smaller than the Pe-2. Even the Pe-2 is much shorter than the TBF / TBM height.

This means that a twin-engine "dive bomber" such as the Pe-2 can be used on an aircraft carrier, and if the design is optimized, a twin-engine fighter with two 960-horsepower 12Ycrs engines about the size of the Pe-2 can completely replace torpedo aircraft and dive bombers (and even in the case of the Pe-2, it can also make a cameo appearance as a high-altitude and high-speed fighter and night fighter).

Therefore, after discovering that Petlyakov's design deviated from his requirements from the beginning, Li Xiaofeng could only choose a substitute plan, that is, to let Sukhoi use an all-metal all-metal all-round attack aircraft as a replacement.

However, what Li Xiaofeng didn't expect was that his move inadvertently contributed to the birth of three new fighters. The first naturally fully functional SU-1. The second is after Petlyakov found out that his Pe-1 was abandoned. Angry research and development of the real all-encompassing Super Jack-of-all-trades Pe-2 to get back to the field. As well as the previously mentioned "Italian" designer Roberto. The Ro-1 torpedo machine developed by Bartini.

Pe-2 aside, let's talk about Roberto. Bartini's Ro-1 torpedo machine, which, according to the original design requirements, was supposed to be a single-engine carrier-based torpedo bomber. However, in the design process, Bartini suffered from Soviet engines, whether it was the M-22 and M-25 star-type air-cooled engines, or the domestic M-100 series liquid-cooled engines based on the 12Y series, which could not meet his needs.

Batini Tong Guò made calculations and found that if the existing engine was used. Then the developed torpedo machine will turn into a slow-moving big stupid bird, and it will be difficult for the maximum flight speed to exceed 350 kilometers per hour. And the range will be very limited (no more than 800 km), which will not meet the needs of the Navy for torpedo / reconnaissance aircraft at all. All in all, this will be a very mediocre or even bad performance of the aircraft (look at the TBD of the US imperialists, that goods are a lesson from the past).

At that time, Bartini thought of a lot of ideas, such as reducing the number of people (torpedo planes generally have three members, pilot, navigator/bombardier, radioman/rearblock gunner), and reducing the number of "cumbersome" radiomen can save hundreds of kilograms, but at the same time, it will also greatly increase the work intensity of the pilot/bombardier. Moreover, even if one person is reduced, the improvement of flight performance is relatively limited, and it will not meet the requirements of the Navy anyway.

Caught in a contradiction, Bartini is out of options. After thinking about it, he came to the conclusion that the only way to solve the problem before there were more powerful engines was to put on two engines.

Then. Bartini secretly began the design of the twin-engine carrier-based torpedo bomber, and after adding an engine, although the size of the fuselage became larger and the price soared, the performance finally met the demand.

Even in the semi-underground design work, Bartini came up with an idea, since the twin-engine design has been used, the design is much less difficult, why not make a set of dive bombing, low-altitude torpedo attack and medium-high altitude horizontal bombing as one of the full-featured bombers?

The "brainy" Bartini did what he wanted, completely abandoning the rules and regulations that bound him before, and made a "full-featured" bomber with similar performance to Sukhoi.

So at the end of 1936, when three twin-engine multi-role fighters of similar shape were placed in front of the heads of the Air Force and the Navy, things became very interesting for a while, and the bigwigs, including Arksnis, had the idea of strangling the three designers. Thanks to the different emphases of the design of these three people, the performance of the guide zhì is not completely identical, otherwise Trotsky's urine would not have given Arxnis and Li Xiaofeng a counter-revolutionary hat of repeated construction waves and expensive resources and funds.

For example, Petlyakov's Pe-2, he gave his mentor Zhukovsky a long face, which can be a dive bomber, a high-altitude interceptor, and can also be turned into a long-range escort fighter, a night fighter, and a reconnaissance aircraft. All in all, it's a jack-of-all-trades. However, unlike in history, the Pe-2 in this time and space still appeared on the battlefield as the original high-altitude and high-speed fighter, and escorting long-range bombers such as the B17, Pe-8 and Yer-2 was the most important task it did.

As for the Sukhoi SU-1, after the elimination of the folding device and the reduction of one crew due to the design of the wing folding device, it was widely in service with the ground forces of the naval aviation and the front-line aviation of the air force, with a cumulative production of more than ten thousand units, making it the most widely used bomber of the Red Red Army after the Il-2.

Bartini's Ro-2 was on the deck of the aircraft carrier because of its more outstanding comprehensive performance (dozens of single-engine Ro-1 torpedo planes were produced, acting as carrier-based trainers) and became a real full-featured bomber, which achieved good results in World War II.

However, it is a bit too early to say these for the time being, before 1937, these advanced fighters could not enter people's field of vision, in May 1935, the Red Air Force had to use the poor performance of TB-1, TB-3 to complete the ground attack mission, and the actual effect of these two bombers is very unsatisfactory. So much so that the Air Force had to find temporary solutions, such as adding underwing pylons to the I-16 fighters, or temporarily adding a 7.62 mm machine gun to the nose as an attack aircraft.

Fortunately, the Japanese army's air force and air defense force were a grade lower than the Red Air Force, and the air supremacy on the battlefield could basically be controlled in the hands of the Red Army.

After entering late May, as the Japanese 23rd Division was completely divided and surrounded, and with the failure of the 8th and 19th Divisions in their second efforts to break the siege, the shape on the battlefield was very unfavorable to the Japanese. In this case, the devil began to play tricks again, trying to play a delaying tactic.

"The Imperial Government of Japan considers the military conflict that took place in the Haraha Valley to be a tragedy in the true sense of the word, a tragedy caused solely by misunderstanding and accident...... I believe that the two governments should exercise as much restraint as possible to prevent the conflict from escalating further...... And we should try to use diplomatic means and negotiations to resolve differences...... Here, I appeal to the Soviet government for an immediate cease-and-greet between the two sides, preferably an immediate disengagement......"

Li Xiaofeng smiled at Yakov and said sarcastically: "Hirota Hiroki (then Japanese Foreign Minister) is treating us as idiots, thinking that this childish delaying tactic can fool us!" ”

Yakov also smiled and said: "Don't say it, some people in our People's Commissariat and Politburo are still idiots, and they actually responded to the Japanese delaying tactics very naively, such as Kamenev, this idiot applauded Hirota Hiroki loudly, and almost did it immediately!" (The novel "Heavenly Soldiers in 1917" will have more fresh content on the official WeChat platform, and there will also be a 100% lottery gift for everyone!) Open WeChat now, click on the "+" sign in the upper right corner to "add friends", search for the official account "qdread" and follow, hurry up! (To be continued......)

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