Chapter 1184 Searching for Targets at Night

A few days ago, when attacking the Baltic Fleet, the Goethe-class aircraft carrier had already conducted a combat cruise in the central waters of the Baltic Sea, but during the battle, a big problem was discovered. When the steam catapult catapulted the carrier aircraft, it would Causes deck icing problems.

This question has troubled researchers. In recent days, researchers with catapults have been conducting research on the aircraft carrier to investigate how to improve it.

And now, the deck is brightly lit, and several people are working on it.

"We use hand-held equipment to heat the deck, so that the ice on it can melt quickly." An operator said: "But this is not the best way. The catapults of our subsequent aircraft carriers should be equipped with electricity on both sides. The heating device, once it freezes, it melts quickly.”

If you want to de-icing, of course you need to heat it up. However, de-icing in this way will lead to an increase in the demand for power on the aircraft carrier. The aircraft carrier built later must take this power problem into account.

Squadron leader Franz Stiegler also followed, and he suggested to the personnel: "If you add salt to the steam, will it slow down the freezing?"

Seawater is difficult to freeze, because the salt will lower the freezing point. After hearing Franz's words, the researchers immediately shook their heads: "No, that will greatly increase the failure rate of our catapults."

It will indeed lower the freezing point, but salt will corrode. The internal structure of the aircraft carrier's catapult is precise. Once corroded by salt, it will be scrapped in a short time.

On the bridge not far away, the radar search antenna is still rotating normally. Since they came to this sea area, they have not stopped observing the sky above their heads, ready to meet possible attacks at any time.

What if an uninteresting Soviet plane comes over?

Now, on the radar console of the bridge, the radar operator suddenly saw a large area of ​​echoes, and he immediately exclaimed: "We found a large number of aircraft, at least a dozen!"

The air defense siren suddenly sounded on the entire warship. After getting the siren, Franz strode towards his plane, quickly jumped into the cabin, turned on the radio, and shouted to the tower: "764 has already please, request takeoff and interception."

Originally, the FW190 should be responsible for the air defense mission of the fleet, and the Stuka bomber was on the bombing mission. Unfortunately, the Goethe-class aircraft carrier has a small displacement and carries few types of carrier-based aircraft. Due to the limited output of the FW190, some Goethe-class aircraft carriers have been equipped with Stuka bombers, such as now.

Generally speaking, Stuka bombers do not carry out combat missions, but now it is different. Now it is night, and night fighters are all big men. Don't worry about maneuverability, as long as they can keep up with the bombers.

At night, it is impossible to have an air battle between fighter jets. All fighter jets are intercepting bombers. Even some night fighter jets are improved by bombers. For example, the Junkers-88 in history was the first to be improved to become a night fighter.

Now, Franz was quickly preparing for departure, and the machine gunner in his rear compartment was quickly in place, and at the same time, he also carried a few incendiary bombs.

"You can take off, 12 o'clock, 80 kilometers away." The voice of the tower was already coming from the earphones.

The deck crew has dragged the Stuka bomber to the takeoff line. Since Stuka does not carry the heavy one-ton bomb now, the aircraft carrier does not need to turn against the wind. With the help of the catapult, Stuka will Can fly easily.

In a powerful overload, Stuka has been catapulted off.

Of the entire Goethe-class aircraft carrier, only Franz took off alone.

To talk about the ability to eject at night, half of the carrier-based aircraft pilots on the aircraft carrier can master it, but the ability to land at night is different. So far, only Franz has it.

As for the other people, they are still in training, and once they have this ability, they are almost all transferred by the Count Zeppelin-class aircraft carriers. These escort aircraft carriers even play the role of training aircraft carriers.

After take-off, Franz pushed the lever, turned on the rudder, and headed in the direction of twelve o'clock, which is due east.

In this dark night, over the Baltic Sea, the planes flying from the east are definitely not German. Even if Germany bombs at night, it is enough to go over the land. The front-line bombers take off more than 100 kilometers, which is the target. There is no need to go all the way to the sea.

Therefore, it must be the bombers of the Soviets. They are flying over the Baltic Sea in this dark night. Then their task is very difficult. Maybe they are going to bomb Berlin!

Thinking of this, Franz was excited, and he must not let them succeed!

The night sky is not particularly dark. Above the head, a crescent moon shines on the sea, and the stars also show a bleak light.

In Franz's earphones, the voice of the guidance on the aircraft carrier continued: "The altitude is 4,000, and the other party is 15 kilometers ahead of you."

Franz adjusted his height and tried to be at the same height as the other party, so that the results could be easily observed.

"Go ahead, it's only five kilometers away, keep an eye on it."

In the air, the distance changes rapidly, and Franz carefully observes directly in front of him.

The radar guided at the back has been improved. The ranging accuracy is 100M and the angle measurement accuracy is 0.2 degrees. He only needs to search within the error of the guiding radar.

However, he saw nothing.

"It has flown."

The sound from the headset made Franz very depressed. He passed the other party, but he didn't see the other party. He firmly believed that there was no problem with the aircraft carrier's radar, so there must be a problem with his search just now. , the target cannot be observed.

Just as he pushed the control lever and wanted to continue turning the course to pursue, the machine gunner behind him suddenly shouted: "I saw a blurry mass below."

under? Franz immediately realized his mistake, the altimeter was wrong.

In this era, the most common is the barometric altimeter, and in different latitudes, the change of air pressure with altitude is different. There will be tens of meters of error.

In the usual attack operations, the error of these tens of meters is nothing, but in this night interception, the error of tens of meters is enough for him to ignore those airspaces.

In fact, with the development of technology, Germany has begun to develop high-precision radio altimeters and even radio speed measuring devices, but they are not installed on aircraft such as Stuka that need dive bombing. Those high-altitude bombers are the most needed. .

Just now, he mainly searched the airspace in front and above, and forgot to search the airspace below. Fortunately, he had a machine gunner and helped him search it. Now that he has searched, he will start attacking.

"Attention, prepare to throw the flare, and after the flare falls for two seconds, we will attack." Franz shouted to his gunner.

If several planes come up together, then they can fight together, one throws flares at high altitude, and the rest of the planes catch up to attack, but now, only Franz is the only one, he can only rely on himself. .

Throw a flare first to see how many are coming, the specific direction, and then catch up to attack.

Just when he was about to show off his skills, he heard the voice on the bridge coming from the earphone: "There is a group of aircraft behind, the Soviets are crazy!"