Neither Trotsky, nor Stalin, nor Sverdlov could be fooled casually, and since the decision to make the League of Nations had been made, it was a dream for the British to expect to fool them back by this means.

Therefore, after the British put forward their own proposal, they were immediately mercilessly ridiculed by Litvinov: "The position of the British government shows that they have never been prepared to act impartially in the Spanish question, and it also shows that they have never intended to defend the rights and interests of the Spanish people." This shameful imperialist gangster still thinks that he can use deception and intimidation to bring the world's people who yearn for justice to their knees. To this the Soviet government the answer was always - no! ”

Of course, Litvinov added: "If the British government really wants to solve the Spanish problem, it should adopt more effective means of patrolling, rather than allowing a group of countries to build plank roads in the dark." Only if an agreement on joint monitoring and patrolling of the countries is reached, the Soviet government will consider joining! ”

Litvinov's reply caused great repercussions in the international community, for example, the American media, which had always liked to watch the British cousin's lively scene, echoed the voice, strongly urging the British Empire to fulfill its international obligations more fairly and justly, instead of selling dog meat on the head of a sheep.

The British were immediately embarrassed and agreed to the Soviets' demand, that, according to the current situation, the Second Republic had a great advantage and was very likely to get rid of those fascist nationalists. This was tantamount to indirectly helping the Soviet Union to successfully export the revolution. This is definitely something that the British Empire does not want to see.

And with the adjustments, the reaction of Germany and Italy is quite difficult to say. In case these two countries resolutely refuse, then how to get it? In the end, the British Empire's dilemma will become a joke.

After a long period of thinking. The British chose to be an ostrich. I just didn't hear Litvinov's shouting. How communist bandits and fascist villains were willing to toss in Spain. Then how to toss it. Anyway, it's you dog-eat-dog!

After thinking about this, the British couldn't help but be a little happy, feeling that their previous foreign policy was indeed problematic. Before, they should not be so biased towards Germany and Italy, but they should be allowed to collide head-on with the Soviets and break the bloodshed!

If a small Spain could be used as bait to get the fascist villains to fight the communist bandits, then the British Empire could also reap the benefits of the fishermen!

Based on such considerations, the British simply played pure mouth cannons. He still condemned the Soviet Union, but in fact he did nothing, and even secretly and constantly hinted at Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union, telling them that you can toss as you like!

It seems that the British have found the right path, and in the end, whether Germany and Italy win, or the Soviet Union stands last, both factions will lose. Anyway, in the end, the British Empire controls the world, how good is that!

However, the British never thought of Germany, Italy or the Soviet Union. Spain is not the most central interest for them, and in Spain they may face each other. But that would not immediately turn into a decisive battle between the fascist gangs and the Comintern.

The attitude of both sides, while tough, leaves room for direct conflict. Everyone tacitly put on their vests and punched, and they used Spain as a rehearsal for future wars.

Beginning in May, both Germany and Italy stepped up their aid to the National Army, and Germany began to form the Vulture Regiment and sent its "advanced" transports, bombers and fighters to Spain. Including Ju-52, He-111, including He-51. Italy also refused to lag behind, sending SM-81 bombers and CR32 fighters in one fell swoop.

According to the views of Germany and Italy, with these "advanced" fighters, the Nationalist Army will soon be able to seize air supremacy, and then, under the cover of the air force, whether it is attacking Madrid or crossing the Strait of Gibraltar, it will be a piece of cake.

Why are Germany and Italy so sure? Quite simply, the Popular Front was not equipped with very good fighters, and the Spanish Air Force at that time had only 40 Newport-deraje Nid-52 fighters, 60 Breguet-19 biplane reconnaissance bombers and 20 torpedo bombers. These planes are backward old aircraft, especially the bombers with a speed of only 120 kilometers per hour, a bomb load of 80 kilograms, and only one machine gun on board.

It is true that the German He-51 and the Italian CR32 are not high-end goods, for example, the He-51 is garbage, with a maximum speed of only 310 kilometers per hour, which is half a pound and eight taels with the Japanese 91 and 92 fighters. And you have to see that this garbage turned out to be an "advanced" fighter that was put into production only in 1935.

It may be okay to bully Nid-52 with this product, but it is only for the sake of being abused that the Soviet Union supported the I-15 and I-16 of the Popular Front.

Not only will the He-51 be abused, but the Italian CR32 is not much stronger, although the CR32 is much faster than the He-51, but there is no zài advantage in the face of the I-15, as for the faster I-16, if it is not for the pilot of the I-16, the general CR32 will only be abused.

Historically, too, when the arrogant German devils and spaghetti men flew their country's most advanced fighter jets and prepared to give the Popular Front a little color and prepare to fully enjoy the fun of air combat, the on-coming I-15 and I-16 pounced on them and whipped them to the ground.

Especially the proud Germans, the He51 was almost abused to the point that he could not take care of himself, and directly withdrew from the front-line battle, and could only reluctantly serve as a ground attack aircraft and training aircraft.

The German pilots and Italian pilots at this time were very depressed, except for the occasional who was not familiar with the I-16 to relieve their boredom, and most of the time they were chased like rabbits.

Of course, the proud Germans would never admit to being defeated by the savage and backward polar bears, on the one hand, they strongly accused the I-16 of being a completely unchivalrous fighter (hit-and-run, refusal to fight), and strongly demanded that the Russians fight a fair battle with them; The other side denigrated the I-16 as an American aircraft. The Great Germanic peoples lost not to the Slavs, who were inferior to pigs and dogs, but to the American cowboys!

As we all know, this is pure falsehood. It's just the losers making excuses for themselves. Note that this is only historical. And in the present history. The Germans and Italians were even more miserable!

Why? Because this time they will not be the Russian novices who have played against them in history. Rather, they were qualified pilots who had been trained in the Battle of the Haraha River. Having been honed by the Japanese, they have basically mastered the combat performance of the I-15 and I-16, and there will never be a lesson in history that they paid an unnecessary price due to lack of experience.

Moreover, it was not the original models of the I-15 and I-16 that the Soviet Union sent to Spain to participate in the war. For example, the I-15 is the I-153, after switching to the M-62 engine, the speed of the I-153 has increased significantly, and the top speed has exceeded 400 kilometers per hour in one fell swoop, and the weapon has also been strengthened, using four 12.7mm machine guns.

And the I-16 is also equivalent to the later I-16-18 type. The M-62 engine was also replaced, allowing the aircraft to reach a speed of more than 460 km/h (464 km/h at an altitude of 3,000 km).

It has to be said that as the Soviet engines gradually began to give strength, especially the M-62 and M-63, which were deeply improved by the M-25 engine, began to come to the production line, the speed of the I-15 and I-16 series was slowly rising.

Not only has the speed improved, but more importantly, starting from the I-16-18, the poor stability of the early I-16 has also begun to improve, and the I-16-18 is a much easier fighter to fly.

Not only has the performance of the fighter been improved, but more importantly, the related tactics have also been improved. For example, the pilots of the I-16 are well aware. Their ride advantage is in the climb and speed, hovering compared with the biplane is still far behind. So when faced with vintage biplanes. The best way to do this is to make a fuss with excellent climbing and speed, fight and run, climb and somersault when you can't do it, and then dive down and continue to attack. Anyway, it is absolutely necessary to avoid circling and grappling, and not to give the enemy a chance to fight.

If you think about it, the planes provided by the Germans and Italians were not as good as the I-15 and I-16, and today's Maozi pilots have accumulated enough experience, and they are naturally abused and vomited blood after the confrontation. Except for a very small number of German ace pilots who were able to use their excellent circling performance to get rid of the entanglement of polar bears in the air, the rest were shot down by almost a firefight. This is still the German and Italian pilots, as for the pilots in Spain, it is even more miserable, and at one time they did not even dare to take off.

"It's a shame, a great shame that our fighters turned out to be vulnerable in front of the Russians!"

After the reaction of the front-line pilot was fed back into the mustache's ears, the overly excited Führer was surprisingly angry. As a proud German, he would never accept the loss of Germany to the Slavs, and he urgently demanded that he get back to the field immediately!

"To speed up the selection of new fighters, we must speed up! I'm going to see it enter service with the Air Force in October at the latest! ”

This requirement is not simple, because the historical Bf-109 made its first flight in 1935 and entered service in the army in 1937, according to the mustache's requirements, it was four months in advance, which was not easy.

However, it is more interesting that at the same time that the mustache expressed great dissatisfaction with the fighter, in Moscow, another person reacted similarly.

"I don't want to listen to your nonsense, and I don't care what difficulties you have. In short, I do not accept any postponement of the production of the Yak-1 and MiG-1 in the evening! Yes, tomorrow, not the day after tomorrow, the production plan of these two new fighters must be implemented, and any delay is unacceptable and will be punished according to the crime of counter-revolution! ”

Li Xiaofeng almost hysterically sprayed Khrushchev in the face, as the leader of the medium-sized industrial committee in charge of fighter production, this cargo dared to tell Li Xiaofeng that it was difficult to switch to the production of the Yak-1 and MiG-1, and also said that the performance of the I-15 and I-16 was already very good. Anyway, this goods means not to rush to produce the MiG-1 and Yak-1.

However, this goods angered Li Xiaofeng, and Ordzhoniqize, who was in charge of the aviation industry, didn't dare to chirp anything crookedly at him, you are a little shrimp with many mouths, and you dare to question the decision of the Military Commission, but you are against you!

So at that time, Li Xiaofeng didn't give this product a good face, sprayed Khrushchev in the face, and forced him to implement it immediately. Otherwise, you're not welcome.

This frightened Khrushchev. Hurriedly asked the old leader Kaganovich for help. However, as soon as Lao Ka heard that it was a certain immortal with such a tough attitude, he could only sigh: "Nikita. Comrade Sergeyevich, you should do this according to the orders of Comrade Andrei! Now the focus of attention of the Central Committee and the Military Commission is on the Spanish issue, and the Spanish issue is actually a military issue, and now it is a military priority! There is no difficulty to go up, and there are difficulties to go on! This is a political task, do you understand? ”

Khrushchev hurriedly nodded, he knew too well that he was in a state of affairs. That is the will of the chief. In the USSR, the most important thing was to follow the chief, and the rest, it didn't matter!

So after coming out of Kaganovich's office, Khrushchev immediately changed his face, no longer mentioned any difficulties, and directly issued a dead order to the factories below: "Great attention must be paid to the production of Yak-1 and MiG-1, and one hundred of them must be produced by the end of the year!" ”

Wufeng Jevic was a little strange, because Li Xiaofeng was not an unreasonable person before, as long as there were practical difficulties below, he would not usually come hard. But how has it changed this time?

Li Xiaofeng sneered: "You don't understand, do you think Khrushchev is really in trouble?" This is actually what Ordzhonikidze meant. He was very satisfied with the I-153 and I-16-18 and felt that there was no need to mass-produce more advanced signals for the time being...... If I don't take a hard line, these grandchildren will be fooled. We have a limited amount of time, and according to intelligence from the German side, the newest fighter of the Germans will enter service by February next year at the latest. At that time, it will inevitably appear first on the Spanish battlefield, and then our I-15 and I-16 will have no advantage......"

It is clear that the Germans and Soviets have accelerated the development and production of new fighters at the same time, and if nothing else, the MiG-1 and Yak-1 will compete with the Bf-109 in Spain. Before that, the new German and Soviet bombers had already landed on the Spanish battlefield first.

The He-111 on the German side appeared, while the SB-2 on the Soviet side. The take-off weight of the two is about the same (the He-111 is a little larger), but the A0 version of the He-111 has a larger wingspan and is slower. The SB-2 was a veritable fast bomber, and its speed performance was much higher than that of the He-111, so to speak, there were not many fighters that could catch up with the SB-2 at that time.

The first batch of 12 SB-2s had actually just stepped off the production line at this time, and the troops were still in the process of being re-equipped. However, following an order from the Military Commission, the aircraft, spare parts, pilots and ground crews were all packed into ships and arrived in Bilbao in late May.

After reassembling, the fast bombers, together with ground crew, were immediately transferred to Malaga to join the blockade of Ceuta, Cadiz and the Baleari Islands. Its main task is to conduct aerial reconnaissance, identify rebel ships at sea, and of course launch attacks if necessary.

For example, on May 25, these 12 SB-2s visited the port of Ceuta and carried out a wanton and indiscriminate bombardment. The mission was so sudden, and the SB-2's performance was so unexpected, that when the CR32 arrived on the scene to try to catch up with the retreating bombers, the Italian pilots were taken by surprise:

When the Italian pilots pushed the throttle stick all the way to the end, regardless of the acceleration of the chase, their target was also accelerating. The pursuit lasted half an hour, and while the SB-2 group was still accelerating, and the CR32 couldn't go any faster, the Italian pilot looked at the speedometer - 380 km/h. Truth be told, this is already beyond the CR32's ultimate speed, at which point its Fiat engine has begun to smoke, and it quickly overheats and the speed drops in an instant.

This speed is too shocking, there are not very few bombers that can fly so fast in this era, but there are no bombers at all! In particular, it should be noted that the SB-2 is still accelerating when it flies out of 380 km/h, even in the most conservative estimates, it is not a problem for the cargo to fly at a speed of more than 400 km/h, right?

This information shocked the German and Italian pilots, and the pilots involved in the pursuit were immediately called for questioning from above, because they were very suspicious of whether the gang was hallucinating.

This proved to be not a hallucination, because in the next few days, when the SB-2 continued to visit the port of Ceuta, it easily dropped bombs and easily shook off the pursuit of the German-Italian fighters. A series of evidence suggests that this is an unprecedented high-speed bomber!

Hugo. In his report to the country, Spiegel wrote: "This unprecedented high-speed bomber is beyond imagination, and it poses no threat to it with the existing warplanes of our army...... The only thing to be thankful for is that the enemy has only a small number of fast bombers, and the bombing techniques of the enemy pilots are rusty and do not cause much damage to us...... But the situation itself is worth worrying, and it shows that the Bolshevik devil is more creative than we think! We need to be wary of these devils' creative powers! ”

The debut of the SB-2 was stunning, while the He111 was much more mediocre, with the original A0 type He111 having a large wingspan and being more like a transport aircraft than a bomber. And its speed is too slow (more than 300 km). Chased by the I-15 and I-16, there was little chance of escape. The only thing to be thankful for is that the aircraft is very durable, and the Second Republic has too few I-series fighters.

"Judging from the table of the past two months, the overall performance of our air force is very good, although whether it is the Yi-16 or SB-2, a series of problems have been exposed, but as the latest fighter, it is normal for problems to occur. What is really unsatisfactory is their number, the Popular Front desperately needs more planes, the sooner the better! ”

Frunze made a report to the Politburo on behalf of the Military Commission, mainly commenting on the air force and navy. It is not difficult to see from his report that the excellent performance of the Air Force not only shocked the whole world, but even surprised the Politburo.

Of course, the focus of the discussion was not on the Air Force, but on the Army, for Trotsky had put forward a striking proposal...... (To be continued......)

PS: Bow and thank you to Comrade hzwangdd and Comrade Juventus!