Although the main fighter P51D of the U.S. military escort strategic bomber is completely unable to compete with the jet Me262, the U.S. military as the party that launched the bombing has the right to choose the time and place of attack, and although the four most important characteristics of the German jet fighter are speed, acceleration, climbing, and diving, they are extremely good, making it almost invincible in air combat, but the range is too short (the range performance of the jet fighter will not be greatly improved until the third generation, And that will have to wait until the 1960s at the earliest, and Germany is naturally less capable of solving this problem now. The airspace that can be controlled is too small

If the number of Me262 jet fighters equipped by the German army is large enough, then this problem is not difficult to solve, and if some are deployed at each important stronghold, the US military will definitely not dare to come, but the production cost of Me262 is several times that of piston fighters, and the production speed, especially the speed of training pilots, is even more different, and because the service time is not long, the production capacity of jet fighters is far from being fully formed, and the new pilot training mechanism that adapts to the combat mode of jet fighters is still not mature. Therefore, even with Germany's second largest industrial strength in the world and the world's first reserve of excellent pilots (Note 1), the number of equipment is still only more than 2,000, and even the strategic bombing of Western Europe by the Allied forces from the three British countries is somewhat reluctant, so that most of the hundreds of Me262s originally deployed to the Soviet battlefield have now been transferred to the Western Front to strengthen air defense forces, and it is naturally impossible to deploy many planes in the West African theater, which is not as good as the Soviet theater

Although fighters with inferior performance can ignore the numerical disadvantage in air combat, that is only a specific single battle. However, as far as a theater of operations is concerned, the US military dispatched at least 1,000 sorties of strategic bombers and a larger number of escort planes every day after the second half of 1945, but the number of fighters is seriously insufficient, and the air forces of the West African Axis countries, which are scattered, cannot cope with it at all, because of the difference in numbers between the two sides that is more than 10 times and the superior protection of strategic bombers, even if the interceptors of the German army and the Arab Federation perform almost perfectly, a sortie will kill at most one-tenth of the enemy planes and run out of ammunition. The remaining Allied planes were still enough to blow up enemy airfields that were intended to be attacked, and jet planes demanded much more airfields than piston planes, and after the destruction of the few regular airfields in the Arab Federation, Morocco's air defense system could no longer be aided by the Me262

Although with the help of a proximity fuse and a rod warhead. Large-caliber anti-aircraft guns on the ground also pose no small threat to the B-29. However, after the red-eyed US pilots carried out indiscriminate bombing of the cities of the Arab Federation, and even took residential areas as the main targets for bombing, the limited number of large-caliber antiaircraft guns could not be taken care of at all because the area to be protected was too large

In fact, not to mention the Arab Federation, the same problem arose even in the three Low Countries where the Luftwaffe and anti-aircraft artillery units were mainly responsible for defense, and in the Ruhr area of Germany itself. It's just that the deployment of fighter jets, especially the Me262, is much higher than that of Morocco. But even so. More than 100,000 German civilians died in the Allied strategic bombing that year, and the number of civilian casualties in the three Low Countries was even higher, and the industrial capacity of Germany and these occupied territories was even higher. The decline after the Allied strategic bombing was even more striking.

Of course, because Germany was stronger in this time and space, and had mastered the two key technologies of proximity fuse and gunsight radar, as well as the Me262 jet fighter, which was far more powerful and reliable than in history, and even the performance of the piston fighter was better than in history, so the Allied strategic bombing inevitably paid a much heavier price than in history.

According to some documents declassified by the US government after the war, in 1945 alone, the total number of planes shot down and destroyed by the US military exceeded 60,000, including more than 20,000 high-cost strategic bombers alone, so the number of killed, missing, and captured by the Allied air force in 1945 was also close to 200,000. However, the United States produced more than 120,000 combat aircraft this year, trained no less than 200,000 new pilots and a larger number of crew members, and it seems that the United States' air power has not weakened, but has become stronger

However, at this time, the United States had already exerted all its strength (Note 2), and it was impossible to retain any spare strength until the end of World War II as in history, and it was impossible for the American people to enjoy prosperity in the war, in fact, before 1946, the United States, which had always been the best in the world for its abundant materials, began to ration more and more materials, and the depletion of amateur pilot reserves also caused the quality of new pilots in the US military to plummet, or the training time was greatly extended. It can no longer afford to be called "an assembly line for training qualified pilots", although the United States is still in the best position compared to other countries involved in the war

In addition to industrial losses and civilian casualties, Germany also paid a lot of price in air defense operations, losing more than 10,000 planes alone, including hundreds of jet fighters, which were basically swept down by the machine gun towers on the Allied strategic bombers, because the number of large-caliber machine guns and even aircraft guns on strategic bombers was too large, and basically every direction could be taken care of, even if it was a jet fighter, it was difficult to be completely undamaged when attacking. On the contrary, when fighting with enemy fighters, it is easy to go around the back of the enemy aircraft to attack, and the loss rate is relatively small.

After discovering this, the Luftwaffe simply let the jet fighters specifically deal with the enemy's escort fighters, and the task of dealing with the Allied strategic bombers was handed over to the piston fighters, and achieved good results, but after all, it could not be completely satisfactory in actual combat, coupled with other unexpected factors such as crashes caused by mechanical failures, it was still difficult for the German army to completely avoid losses of these jet fighters, which the Germans regarded as treasures

Note 1: The training period of jet fighters from novices is too long, and elites are generally selected from excellent active pilots for training, so the disadvantage of insufficient reserves of German amateur pilots has no effect, but has a certain advantage because of the number of ace pilots in the world.

Note 2: In 1945, the total production of American tanks also exceeded 50,000 units, not counting armored vehicles and self-propelled guns, and the navy, at the same time, the construction of 7 Midway-class giant aircraft carriers, 8 Essex-class heavy aircraft carriers, and the modification of 30 new escort aircraft carriers also pushed the American shipbuilding industry to the limit. (To be continued......)