Six Hundred and Fifteen Can Be 1 Battle

The Zero fighter piloted by Sato found his opponent in the clouds, and the US Naval Air Force took off to face 40 P-40 fighter jets. As usual with the American planes, he spread out and prepared to fight the oncoming American fighter group, but just a face-to-face, Sato felt that these American planes were not the same as in the past.

In the early days of the Pacific battlefield, American pilots were all novices. These novices were inevitably a little nervous when facing enemy pilots, but the base of American pilots was too large. They had a complete training and learning system, so they could quickly make up for losses. quantity.

In another time and space, as soon as American fighter pilots show up as aces, they are immediately transferred back to China to train novice pilots. This system ensures that although American pilots suffer heavy losses, they can always be supplemented with more powerful pilots. To put it simply, the American flying masters all went back to the rear to teach the novices, so that the American frontlines always had only novice pilots fighting. However, the "novices" recruited by the United States have improved their flying skills from generation to generation. This is a strategic supplement based on a large base.

But Japanese pilots can’t do that. In addition, there are far fewer people in Japan who have access to flying than in the United States. For most Japanese, flying is definitely a distant and mysterious thing. Therefore, Japanese ace pilots can only fight on the front line all day long. When Japan loses a pilot, it is very difficult to replenish.

Therefore, this has to be brought back to the level of competition of comprehensive national strength for analysis. Don't underestimate how many cars a country has in peacetime, because it is not difficult to teach a car driver to drive a tank. In the same way, American farms use planes to spray pesticides. There are tens of thousands of people who drive planes and people who have been in contact with planes. This is actually a huge war potential that Japan cannot match.

Akado has vigorously increased the penetration rate of cars in Germany, so the German mechanized army can recruit enough manpower to supplement and expand. Thanks to his efforts, compulsory education in Germany has been popularized to high school, which has reserved a large number of outstanding reserve talents for the German army. Once these people become soldiers, those who have studied subjects such as mathematics and geometry can receive training such as artillery aiming faster.

The Treaty of Versailles still exists when Germany secretly builds its own flying club. However, dozens of flying clubs, large and small, have reserved at least 50,000 flying talents for the Luftwaffe. These Air Force pilots were trained a little in the early days of the war and became the elite Luftwaffe that swept across Europe. Coupled with world-leading weapons and equipment, they are still the most daunting air force in the world.

After research, the high-level German Air Force determined a blood circulation method that is more suitable for the German Air Force. They regularly return ace pilots on all fronts to Germany to train novice fighter pilots who are about to become fighter pilots. Doing so can not only ensure the elite combat effectiveness of front-line pilots, but also ensure that the training of German pilots is more advanced and avant-garde.

But Japan still can't learn this trick, because Germany's perfect education system and the general "mechanical quality" of its citizens are much higher than Japan's.

Therefore, the speed at which the two sides replenish pilots is not at the same level. Thanks to Akado's efforts, Germany is now replenishing pilots at almost the same speed as the United States, and the quality is higher.

Sato didn't have so many twists and turns in his mind. He only knew to shoot down the American planes in front of him, so as to gain a safe environment for the Japanese torpedo attack planes that followed to attack the American ships. He was flying his own plane, relying on the light flying state of the Zero fighter, and quickly bit an American fighter.

"Strange!" he muttered, because when he just bit the opponent, he felt that the opponent's plane was obviously different from the p-40 fighter he had seen before. After he adjusted the angle of attack, he found that the distance between the two sides had not been shortened at all, and remained relatively far away.

At this time, he suddenly realized that his feeling was correct, and the American planes were indeed different from the previous ones—these p-40s were faster! He had no way to fire, so he could only bite the American plane tightly, hoping to find a suitable opportunity to attack.

It wasn't that he was not accurate enough, because Sato was considered one of the best fighters in the Japanese naval aviation, but that the cannon of the Zero fighter he was driving was too weak, and the ballistic trajectory was severely curved when attacking distant targets. . What made him feel even more helpless was that he only had 60 rounds of cannon shells. After all of them missed, he could only bid farewell to the battlefield and return to replenish ammunition.

Why not change to a more powerful cannon? Sato also wanted to ask the design department of the Type Zero fighter this question, but the various reasons for this were beyond the comprehension of a small pilot like him. In fact, Japan has entered a devil's circle in aircraft design, which is also a typical sad ending caused by "adding wrong technology points".

Japan itself does not have a solid engine technology reserve, so when Japan needs a new type of fighter, it can only make a fuss about the world's second-rate engine to create a "deformed" fighter that can meet the needs of the army. This made Japanese aircraft an outlier in the history of fighter jet development in the world, and became one of the few major participating countries in World War II that embarked on the "point of no return" in fighter jet design.

The Zero's engines are underpowered, so they are fuel-efficient. However, in order to pursue flight performance, the weight of fighter jets could only be reduced crazily. In the end, Japanese aircraft began to use a large number of aluminum-magnesium alloys to reduce the weight of the aircraft to the extreme. This allowed the Japanese aircraft to have extremely low wing loads, excellent flight performance and a terrifying range.

But this allowed Japanese aircraft to experience a short-lived "invincible" at the beginning of 1938, and at the same time, it also made Japanese aircraft design go into a dead end at the same time. The aircraft engine power is low so the aircraft is light in weight, which leads to insufficient structural strength, and insufficient structural strength makes it impossible to equip more powerful weapon systems. Having said that, I have actually stated the biggest shortcoming of the Zero fighter - there is no way to improve this kind of aircraft!

If a high-power engine is installed to increase the flying speed of the Type Zero, then the aircraft will disintegrate in the air due to insufficient strength, so the structural design of the Type Zero aircraft needs to be changed to replace the engine, and changing the structural design will lead to a change in weight , The increased engine power will be wasted, and the increase in fuel consumption will also lead to a decrease in the aircraft's range. Conversely: changing the engine, changing the structure, deforming the performance curve... How is this different from redesigning an aircraft?

Therefore, it is very difficult for the Zero fighter to be equipped with a more powerful weapon system. The greater the recoil force, the structural strength of the Zero aircraft will be problematic, so the Japanese Air Force pilots can only endure it from beginning to end. Curved ballistics, you can only helplessly accept the fact that the range of your own 20mm machine gun is not as good as the opponent's 12.7mm machine gun.

Sato was driving the plane and biting the tail of the American fighter jet. His opponent seemed to know the shortcomings of the Type Zero fighter's lack of rolling ability, and was using this action to get rid of Sato's entanglement. However, Sato's flying skills were very powerful, and he drove himself carefully. The aircraft always bites the opponent at the extreme distance.

Suddenly, he sensed the danger. This was an intuition that had been tempered on the front line for a long time. So he hurriedly got out of his flying state, and quickly started the climbing movements that Zero fighters are good at. Just as he pulled up the plane suddenly, a row of bullets swept towards the position directly in front of him, scaring him so much that he almost opened the hatch and jumped out.

"Baga!" Sato cursed loudly, and he drove the plane to climb out of the entanglement of the flanking US planes at a high speed. At this time, he discovered that the two US planes used a strange hovering mode, which could Fighters found an opportunity to fire during the rolling maneuver, which fighter jets were least good at, and shot down the pursuing Zero aircraft.

Sato was lucky, because he changed his flying posture at the most dangerous time, but the other Japanese pilots in the fighter formation were not so lucky. After he managed to get rid of the pursuit of American planes, he found his own Three of his planes have been shot down by the US military.

"Baga! Ah! The whole army is attacking! It's a fight to the death!" Furious, Sato raised his eyebrows and pushed the joystick of the plane fiercely. His familiar minions took revenge. However, the speed of the American aircraft has increased, which made him very uncomfortable, and he was unable to find a suitable attack method for a while.

...

At the same moment, an American combat staff excitedly walked behind General Spruance, the commander of the aircraft carrier fleet, and stood at attention to salute: "General! The fighter unit that Major Hawke is in sent back news that they are fighting with the Japanese. Fighting, we have achieved the result of shooting down 5 fighter jets!"

Spruance's eyes lit up, then he turned around and took the report, read it carefully, and then he showed a smile on his face, and handed the information back to the officer who delivered the report: "There is nothing to worry about now. That's it! We've regained the initiative! Send a telegram to General Nimitz! One sentence: 'We can fight'!"

On the morning of August 30, the U.S. Pacific Fleet began to turn left, and all warships joined the second Pearl Harbor battle without hesitation. Every American captain received a short telegram from Nimitz, with only one sentence on it: "We can fight!"