From the very beginning of its establishment, everything went wrong with the dive bomber regiment, and the pains of the run-in period were indispensable for new planes and new pilots. Several sorties did not achieve decent results, but continued to lose troops. For example, three days ago, the regiment commander Ivanov unfortunately collided with the fighters of the Entente countries during a bombing mission, and the slow Lenin 1 was the opponent of the nimble "camel", and Ivanov was shot down in just one round.

The regimental commander was killed, and the blow was undoubtedly huge, but before the young men of the dive bomber regiment could recover from the blow, the commissar Cheryshev's car exploded inexplicably in the air.

In just two days, the first and second in command kicked Xian'er one after another, and on the third day, they had to carry out a large team attack mission. Anyway, no one at that time was optimistic about the dive bomber regiment, believing that such a disappointing aircraft would soon be ruthlessly eliminated.

Among those who held this view was Sukhoi, who, as a pilot, was deeply disappointed with Lenin I and the dive bombing. I am ready to mention to Li Xiaofeng that we should invest precious resources on other aircraft that can see the benefits better, instead of throwing them into the pit of dive bombers!

However, Sukhoi immediately regretted his narrow-mindedness and short-term exploitation, and the dive bombers told him with practical actions that they were not wreck!

As the deputy commander of the dive bomber regiment, Kanunnikov was under a lot of pressure during this sortie, even as he sat in the open cabin, his hands and back were sweating in the swishing cold wind. He knew very well that this sortie was the last chance to justify the name of the dive bomber. If they don't take advantage of this opportunity, they are likely to be ordered to change careers.

"You can do it! Andy! ”

Andy was the name Kanunikov had given to his car, which he had previously intended to give to his first son. Until after he had "Andy". He couldn't wait to change his mind. In his mind, "Andy" is his child.

"Daddy has taken you to fight the enemy!"

Kanunnikov took a deep breath and jerked the joystick, and the nose of the "Andy" flew down like a stabbing man. This action is not very beautiful, because Lenin I is a very bulky airplane, and to put it mildly, Kanunnikov's action is like a brick thrown out of a window, so dull and stupid.

But it doesn't matter if the posture is not good-looking, as long as the effect is good. "Andy", swooping down from mid-altitude, took the combined Anglo-American fleet on the surface of the sea by surprise. Before, their attention was completely attracted by the torpedo planes that were rushing straight at low altitude, and they did not notice at all that in addition to the constantly fighting fighters, there were also "bricks" falling overhead.

The anti-aircraft firepower of ships in this year and month cannot be compared with twenty years later, for example, the previously unlucky multi-turret god cult holy relic "Agincourtt", how many anti-aircraft guns does this "giant ship" with a displacement of more than 20,000 tons have?

Two doors!

That's right, you read that right, it's two 76-mm MK1 anti-aircraft guns.

So how useful can these two 76 guns be? Probably it's symbolic. Don't think that Agincourt is a special case, and don't think that this battleship is not taken seriously because of its wonder. In those days, when the aviation industry was just in its infancy, the noble navy really looked down on the little mosquitoes that buzzed in the sky.

No one believed that a mosquito could sink a battleship, not to mention battleships, battle cruisers. It's impossible to even sink a destroyer! This was the most common perception of that era. So you can see that the Agincourt only has two 76 guns, and the Iron Duke class only has two 76 guns (later increased to four). The main force of the five queens also has only two slightly more advanced L50 76 anti-aircraft guns, and the representative of the Royal Navy, the battle cruiser Hood, also has only four 102-mm anti-aircraft guns.

It can be said that the warships of this era are almost non-air defense, have no radar, no advanced fire control, and rely on only a few anti-aircraft guns with weak firepower to block the swarms of enemy planes, which is almost a dream.

After Kanunnikov entered the dive, he was barely harassed, and the Agincourt became larger and larger in front of his eyes, until it dived to a height of 300 meters, and only then did Kanunnikov pull up the bomb handle, and as the fuselage shook violently, he quickly pulled up the operating lever, and finally almost rubbed over the Agincourt's back mast.

It has to be said that the performance of Lenin 1 is really enough, Kanunnikov is almost a little bit reimbursed, and if he does not try to lower the height of the bomb, the accuracy of the bomb cannot be guaranteed. Anyway, it's a very lethal plane, and if you want to hit the target accurately, you have to be prepared to land on the target with the bomb.

This time, Kanunnikov had good luck and picked up a small life. He threw the 250-kilogram bomb and accurately hit the junction of the two turrets of "Tuesday" and "Wednesday", and a fireball quickly erupted from the middle of the projectile, and with a loud bang, the two turrets in the middle of the Agincourt were pushed away from the hull by the flames and air waves of the explosion, rising dozens of meters high and then smashing down heavily.

When the two turrets fell back to the hull, the slender warship with seven turrets had split in two, and the sailors ran around in panic, a little smarter chose to abandon ship and flee for their lives, while more people were either stunned or simply didn't know what was happening, and three minutes later the "holy relic" disappeared into the waves of the Baltic Sea.

Agincourt was just the beginning, another holy warship St. Vincent was also targeted, four dive bombers entered the dive, the first bomb was dropped too early, the bomb grazed the stern of the St. Vincent and rushed straight to the bottom of the sea, and the exploding water column rushed up nearly thirty meters high. The No. 2 plane, which dropped the bomb immediately after dropping the bomb, dropped the bomb more than 100 meters in front of the St. Vincent.

The third plane was even worse luck, the terrible bomb could not be dropped, and even the poor pilot could not change the dive, roared and crashed into the mainmast of the St. Vincent, and after taking the gift, it was blocked by the rear mast, and rushed to the bottom of the sea by grazing the port side of the St. Vincent.

The pilot of the No. 3 plane died a particularly tragic death, and it is estimated that he has been flattened. However, his defeat also marked the end of the St. Vincent's good fortune. The bomb drops of the fourth machine are quite accurate. Or maybe it's God. The bomb was miraculously dropped into the rear chimney of the St. Vincent at a near-vertical angle, smashing directly into the rear boiler compartment without hindrance, and only exploded under the rear ammunition magazine.

According to Colonel Brontë, captain of the battleship Thundering on the starboard side of the St. Vincent, "The St. Vincent was still calm for a second or two after she was shot, as if nothing had happened, but in the third second she trembled violently, like a human shiver, and then flames erupted from her back chimney, yes! It's just squirting! Then the three turrets in the rear began to smoke and breathe fire. About a minute and a half later, an even more violent explosion occurred, all three turrets were blown away, and the back half of the St. Vincent was completely enveloped in flames! ”

The St. Vincent lasted a little longer than the Agincourt, sinking to the bottom of the sea about twenty minutes later, and less than 100 of the ship's 750 officers and men were rescued.

Again, this was still just the beginning, and Marshal Jackson's fleet was in a state of turmoil as more and more Lenin I selected targets and dived. The USS Utah, the U.S. Navy's tragic target ship in the Pearl Harbor attack, also sank to the bottom of the sea ahead of schedule. The battleship was hit three times in a row by the whistling bombs, and was almost cut off by the waist. The New York was a little lucky. Although it also received two bullets, one of which was a rotten egg, and the other only blew its bow to pieces, and with a huge hole in the port side of the bow and nearly 500 tons of seawater, the New York finally struggled into Keel.

The Arizona, on the other hand, was as unlucky as it was in history, being hit directly by a bomb at the ammunition depot, killing 1,104 people on board, and never again having the opportunity to become a memorial as it was in history.

The worst was the Royal Navy's battle cruiser Lion, I don't know why this ship was particularly favored by the dive bomber regiment, and finally six Lenin I, which had never found a chance to drop bombs, aimed at him at the same time, and in the blink of an eye, six bombs were thrown on the Lion's brain, almost all of them were hit from beginning to end, and after a series of violent explosions, the thin-skinned battle cruiser sank in minutes, and no one on the whole ship was spared.

Twenty Lenin I went on the attack, one of which crashed, another pulled up and crashed into Royal Navy fighters, and two more had mechanical accidents on their way back. The slight loss of only four aircraft was exchanged for the brilliant result of sinking one battlecruiser, four battleships and one heavy damage.

To tell the truth, Sukhoi, who was hovering in the sky, was stunned, completely unable to believe what his eyes were seeing. Indeed, I don't know if it was because the dive bomber regiment had accumulated enough character before, or because the Anglo-American combined fleet forgot to look at the yellow calendar, all in all, the hit rate of the dive bomber regiment reached an astonishing 50%, and those 10 bombs were as accurate as missiles!

Of course, the more important reason why the dive bomber regiment was able to achieve such a brilliant war drum was the Anglo-American combined fleet itself. The air defense of this powerful fleet is too watery, and those few anti-aircraft guns are more of a symbolic meaning.

Not only is the anti-aircraft firepower too weak, but more importantly, the problem of the fleet itself is also very serious, you must know that Lenin I only used 250 kg of aerial bombs, which is considered small in World War II. For example, the first tragic Agincourt, the thickest horizontal armor is less than 65 mm, which is not enough to see in the face of shells and bombs that fall vertically.

There are even more tragic than Agincourt, such as the New York, which narrowly escaped the catastrophe, with only 50 mm of horizontal armor, and the Arizona only had 76 mm of horizontal armor before it was modified in 1930.

However, this cannot be blamed on the British and American designers, after all, when these warships were designed, ultra-long-range artillery battles were still considered fantastic, as for the air threat of aircraft? This one is more fantastic than the Arabian Nights. It was only after the Battle of Jutland that designers from various countries realized that it was not enough to give power to the side armor alone, and the shells falling from the top of their heads would be secondary!

It stands to reason that the results of the dive bomber regiment were brilliant enough, but for Sukhoi in the sky, it was painful and happy. The reason for the joy is simple, the dive bomber was simply a windfall. If there are no of them. This air raid is a big joke of thunder and rain. More than fifty torpedo planes were busy for half a day, just enough to tickle the enemy. It's really disappointing.

But what hurt Sukhoi was that the dive bombers had a really bad eye and were attacking some of the old warships. Obviously, there are rich and handsome people like the Queen, R, New Mexico, and Tennessee in the formation, why do you say hello to the dick? Is Dick Silk a damn?

Especially what St. Vincent and Agincourt, what is the need for these two "old antiques" to attack? What a waste!

Anyway, Sukhoi is going to educate those "illiterate" dive bombers after returning home, and they must be told to memorize all the shapes of the capital ships of the British and American fleets, and they will never make the mistake of secretly throwing pearls like today.

Well, if Marshal Jackson knew what Sukhoi was thinking. It is estimated that he has to vomit blood, today is an out-and-out disaster day for him, Jericho and Betty lost three battle cruisers, three armored cruisers and 8 destroyers in the Battle of Jutland, which made public opinion furious.

And today, he lost one battle cruiser and four battleships, which significantly surpassed the Battle of Jutland both in terms of tonnage and quality. What's more, Jericho and Betty have sunk a few enemy ships, but he didn't even hurt the hair of the enemy ships, only shot a few flies, and there is really no way to explain such a result!

It's not just that there's no way to explain. Jackson had an even bigger conundrum ahead of him – what next? Should we continue our advance towards Szczecin as originally planned, or should we turn around and retreat?

It's risky to move on. The enemy's air raid has already shown that his intentions have been discovered, and the enemy is already prepared, and if he continues to charge hard, he may kick the iron plate. And it's still eight or nine o'clock in the morning, and who can guarantee that the enemy will not continue to launch air strikes?

Jackson was frightened anyway if the enemy aircraft had been maintained so efficiently. In less than three turns, his fleet will be wiped out! At that time, he was truly a sinner of the Empire!

Then just retreat! But Jackson couldn't accept it even if he retreated like this, and when he returned to his dignified Imperial Admiral, he was scared away by a few flies, and there was really no way to mix it up, and what was waiting for him was probably not the throne of the First Admiralty, but the seat of the court-martial.

All in all, Jackson struggled and didn't know whether to give it a go or the wind was blowing, and for Sukhoi there was no need to think about it so much. In his opinion, the effect of the air raid was amazingly good, and if it were not for the fact that the dive bombers made mistakes in the choice of targets, they could have achieved greater results. Of course, there is still plenty of time to launch a few more waves of attacks with the hot iron!

But Sukhoi soon discovered that there seemed to be a problem with that, too. The first problem was that the number of planes that the dive bomber regiment was able to strike again was too small. Originally, only 16 fighters were left to return safely, and after some overhaul, it was immediately discovered that at least four of them had more or less mechanical problems, and there was definitely no way to go into battle again.

What is 12 planes enough? Four planes in one wave, which is enough to attack three targets. Well, Sukhoi regretted it for the first time, he should not have underestimated the dive bomber before, it was much stronger than the torpedo machine, sixty torpedo sorties did not even hit a single target, this efficiency and cost-effectiveness ratio is too low.

What the? What's the matter, you ask? Torpedoes don't cost money, huh? Torpedoes are considered high-tech weapons at any time, and you can count them on two hands in the 21st century when all countries in the world can independently produce torpedoes. Torpedoes are much more expensive than iron bombs! Sixty torpedoes is a fortune!

For the first time, Sukhoi began to want to have more dive bombers, and if he could, he could have a few hundred of them, and drop bombs that would kill the Royal Navy.

"You ask for more Lenin I?"

While the ground crew was busy overhauling the plane and refueling it, Sukhoi dialed the phone of a certain immortal, and as soon as he opened his mouth, he asked for a few dozen Lenin-1. However, a certain immortal poured a basin of cold water on his head: "Lenin-1 will produce 56 more aircraft, and after the production task is completed, it will be discontinued!" ”

"What!" Sukhoi immediately jumped to his feet: "Why should such a good aircraft be discontinued?!" Isn't that a joke! I strongly protest against this kind of indiscriminate piano playing! ”

Li Xiaofeng was laughed at angrily, it was Sukhoi who had been complaining that Lenin No. 1 was a waste before, and at that time the mustache didn't even want one more Lenin No. 1. The follow-up order of fifty-six aircraft was still strongly ruled out by him.

"Didn't I understand the effectiveness of dive bombers at that time!" Sukhoi replied a little embarrassed, "Today's results prove that dive bombers are useful, and naturally they should be produced more!" ”

However, Li Xiaofeng still rejected him: "There is no need for that, Lenin I must be discontinued as planned!" ”

Sukhoi yelled, "You're crazy! ”

"I'm not crazy!" Li Xiaofeng replied calmly, "Lenin 1 does have too many problems, and as a dive bomber, it is not completely qualified. It makes no sense to produce too much, and I have already instructed Tupolev and Sikorsky to produce a dive bomber that really meets the requirements. In the future, the task of Lenin I will be more of a trainer! ”

Sukhoi was not entirely satisfied with this result, but it was acceptable, so after putting down the phone, he had to plunge into a new wave of attacks with a slight regret, and the veteran Basilev on the sea could not wait to rush into the battlefield...... (To be continued......)

PS: Bow and thank you to Sand Boy Boy, Mr. Jane and Comrade Juventus!