Chapter 62: Aerial Hunting Banquet
Although important changes are taking place in China on the other side of the globe, these changes have not yet affected the British-based Eagle Squadron. Now the commander of the 56th squadron, Wong Sun-shui, is flying a P-40B fighter to compete with Liu Zesheng of the 55th squadron.
When it comes to this batch of P-40Bs, also known as Tomahawks by the British, Huang Xinrui has a deep feeling. This fighter is an upgraded version of the Hawk 75 that the Chinese Air Force was very familiar with in the past, with a new engine and head, such a good fighter was abandoned by the British and scattered to various air force training schools as trainers, and some were not even assembled after being transported from the United States. After learning about these situations, Huang Xinrui urged Ambassador Guo Taiqi to help get a batch of such planes to equip his 56th squadron, although the performance of these fighters was not as good as the British Spitfire, but slightly better than the Hurricane, only slightly lacking in firepower, but already sufficient for air defense.
The key is that this fighter plane was very familiar to the Chinese, and most pilots quickly mastered its driving skills, even more familiar than driving Spitfires and Hurricanes for a few days, after all, everyone has been driving Curtiss company's fighter planes since the Anti-Japanese War in 1937.
Wing Commander Yellow Sun and Liu Zhe Sheng's two daytime fighter squadrons are competing to hunt down the BF 109. Originally, the BF 109 was a very troublesome opponent, even the Spitfire had to be careful when dealing with it, let alone the Hurricane and P-40. However, since the German air force's bombing on September 15 was intercepted by the British air force on a large scale and suffered heavy losses, the German air force command, especially Goering, realized that using slow bombers for bombing was inefficient. Moreover, they noticed that the Royal Air Force only intercepted bombers but did not organize large-scale interceptions of German fighter planes. So Goering came up with a good idea: to use high-performance BF 109 fighters carrying two large bombs as fighter-bombers.
But little did they know, this idea worked well in the initial stages. The rigid-thinking British Royal Air Force saw the German air force's fighter planes coming and gave way to a road far away, waiting for the bomber planes behind to intercept. However, after waiting and waiting, there was no sign of the bomber planes, but news came from the ground that London had been bombed, leaving them bewildered.
Until one day, Huang Xinrui of the 56th squadron led a small team to patrol the air and encountered several BF109s attempting to pass through the defensive zone. Huang Xinrui was fighting against the BF109 for the first time and did not know that the BF109 did not carry external fuel tanks during combat. From a distance, he saw the two large bombs under the BF109's wings and thought they were its external fuel tanks, which could not be discarded like those of the BF110. Therefore, Huang Xinrui led the 8 P-40s to charge forward. Although the P-40 had average level flight speed, it had the advantage of being heavy, allowing it to quickly reach high speeds during dives. As a result, when the sneaky BF109s saw the P-40s diving down from above, they did not have time to drop their bombs, and even if they did, they would not have had time to accelerate.
Huang Xinrui watched as his squadron quickly closed in on the sluggish BF 109, and he couldn't help but curl his lip. At such a close distance, even if the BF 109's performance was excellent, it would be hard to resist. It seemed that the German air force wasn't so great after all. The 8 P-40 fighters came in with a simultaneous burst of fire, although each plane only had 4 machine guns, half the number of the Hurricane and Spitfire, but the two at the head were caliber. As a result, the BF 109 was devastated, 3 planes were shot down, and many others were damaged by bullets.
Huang Xinrui's precise shooting hit the German air force fighter he aimed at, blowing it up in mid-air. He then led his wingman to make a small inside cut and frame another BF109 that had just dropped its bombs and dodged the first wave of attack into his sights. He quickly pressed the fire button. The two machine guns on the head of the plane and the two machine guns on the wings fired simultaneously, and the bullets flew a certain distance before accurately hitting the head of the BF109, destroying its engine. The powerless fighter flew a certain distance along the inertia and then crashed to the ground. Huang Xinrui's wingman also shot down a BF109, and the entire 56th squadron achieved results, with at least 9 BF109s being shot down, scoring a beautiful 9:0.
After landing, Huang Xinrui boasted to Liu Zesheng about his achievements, but Liu Zesheng didn't believe that the German air force's troublesome BF109 would be like a sitting duck. It wasn't until they drove to the nearest crash site to investigate that they discovered the reason. It turned out that these sitting ducks were all carrying nearly half a ton of bombs. To put this into perspective, at that time fighter planes weighed around 3 tons, and with the added weight of the bombs, air resistance increased, making it impossible for the planes to maneuver before dropping their payload and gaining speed.
Since the discovery of this secret, the 55th and 56th squadrons have been busy, with small teams patrolling the skies every day to search for bombers carrying bombs. Although not every sortie yielded results, they quickly accumulated flying experience through such high-density flights.
A few days ago, the two squadrons embarked on an aerial dogfighting competition. As of today, the 55th and 56th Squadrons have shot down 20 and 25 enemy fighters respectively. The reason why the newly formed 56th Squadron, equipped with American P-40 fighter jets, has achieved better results than the 55th Squadron, which arrived in Britain earlier, may be due to the fact that the P-40 is more suitable for this type of attack on German bombers. Its speed is higher than that of the Hurricane fighter jet, making it easier to launch surprise attacks on BF109s carrying bombs. Moreover, the effective firepower of the P-40 is not much different from that of the Hurricane and Spitfire, with larger caliber machine guns having greater power, more ammunition types, and a longer effective attack range. As a result, Huang Xinrui's 56th Squadron, consisting of three P-40 squadrons with 24 fighter jets, achieved better results than Liu Zesheng's 55th Squadron, which had one Spitfire squadron and two Hurricane squadrons with 30 fighter jets. This made Liu Zesheng extremely frustrated, exclaiming that the German Air Force was too stupid and that Huang Xinrui had taken advantage of them. It is worth noting that if the BF109s were not carrying bombs, the P-40B's performance would be roughly equivalent to theirs, making it almost impossible to achieve such a large number of enemy planes shot down.
What's even more depressing is the German Air Force, where disobedience has already appeared within the air force. The elite fighter pilots originally sent to their deaths or filled the British prisoner-of-war camps due to this sudden stupid order. Hermut Wick, the captain of JG2 squadron I, was furious and scolded the orders he received today. Captain Wick is a typical brave and combative ace pilot who does not want his teammates to die because of such foolish tactics, but there is no way out. Although he can complain for two sentences, military orders are military orders after all. Captain Wick began to regret why he returned to the unit so quickly after being shot down over Dunkirk and encountered the execution of this damn order.
"This is a damned stupid order, I wonder how those fat-headed staff officers at Air Force Headquarters thought it up!" Captain Wick muttered to himself as he walked towards his plane. Although unable to change the entire order, Captain Wick still made some adjustments within his own authority, and shortly after takeoff, he ordered half of his fighter planes to drop their bombs into the sea, escorting the others that still carried bombs. Thus, more than 70 BF109s flew towards the British coast.
Today was a fine day, and early in the morning, Huang Xinrui and Liu Zhaosheng separately dispatched patrol planes. By noon, Airport Commander Major Pei reported to them that there were fighter jets approaching, and the two exchanged a smile, quickly ordering all fighter jets to take off. Only Xu Huan's night fighter squadron stopped training and returned to the airport to hide.
The airfield of the Chinese Aviation Squadron is located in the southern suburbs of London. German planes flying from the French coast must pass over the airport, so they can adopt a waiting-for-the-rabbit approach. Today's sky has some clouds, and two squadrons of fighter jets are hovering among these clouds, waiting to deliver a fatal blow when the German fighters arrive.
Oberleutnant Wick's JG2 Geschwader I Gruppe was apparently unaware of the threat in the air, encountering several RAF patrol fighters en route but quickly driving them off under the protection of the bomb-laden Bf 109s. The British fighters also broke off when they realized that this formation consisted entirely of elite Bf 109s. Fighter aircraft posed little threat to ground targets at present and the RAF was primarily concerned with intercepting German bombers; besides, the Bf 109 had a notoriously short range and would have only ten minutes loiter time over London, making it not worth expending effort on them.
Lieutenant Wick was delighted to see this, he didn't expect himself to cause much destruction in London, he just wanted to get the two big guys under his wing back into the city of London and consider the task completed, and then he could get rid of this burden. But at the moment he was distracted, a squadron of Spitfire fighters swooped down from above, the red paint on their noses piercing his eyes in the reflection of the sun.
"It's them!" Captain Vick suddenly remembered the strange camouflage of the flamethrower planes over Dunkirk. But before he could issue a warning, the eight machine guns on the flamethrower began firing. A string of bullets hit the aviation bomb hanging under the wing of Vick's BF109. "Boom" went the sound, and where Vick was, only a ball of flames remained, the shockwave from the explosion clearing out the entire area, even affecting Ryu Jeosung who was at the head of the flamethrower fighter formation, using all his strength to steady his plane.
"My goodness, the Germans are really playing with fire!" Liu Zhesen climbed higher while looking back at the explosion, the continuous shockwaves made him a bit dizzy and also made him unaware of the group of BF 109s behind him that didn't carry large bombs.
Rudi Bahr's lieutenant played the role of escort fighter, when he saw that group of Spitfires rushing towards the slow-moving bomb-carrying Spitfire, he urgently issued a warning on the wireless and then accelerated to dive down. However, it was too late, he witnessed Captain Vick's fighter being blown into pieces, and several BF109s were quickly shot down. He stared at the culprit climbing in altitude with red eyes, originally the maximum speed of BF109 was slightly lower than that of Spitfire, but now one was climbing and the other was diving, covering up this speed difference, Rudi Bahr's lieutenant soon entered the shooting position, he fiercely pressed the fire button, the two 20mm cannons and two machine guns on the BF109 fuselage fired simultaneously until the cannonballs were exhausted before releasing the trigger, Liu Zesheng's Red Dragon No.1 aircraft left wing was shot into pieces.
Liu Zhesen was not flustered after being suddenly attacked, he quickly pressed the machine head to end the climb and start diving, while making a small inward cutting motion to the right. It was this action that saved his life, causing the shell that was originally aimed at the cockpit to hit the wing instead. After the wing was shattered, Liu Zhesen's plane entered a spin, and he struggled to push open the cockpit cover, fortunately without injury. He quickly jumped out of the falling plane.
Business trip in Chongqing on this red land.
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