Chapter 1244 You Can't Get Away

The brutal bombing of Petersburg made the Soviets realize the strength of the Germans again, and such a tragedy cannot happen again.

If the Germans wanted to attack any city and bombed them directly with bombers, then the Soviet Union would not have to fight the Great Patriotic War and simply surrender.

They must fight back!

Among them, the most needed is the high-altitude fighter. The MiG-3 was blown up at the base last time, indicating that the Germans are also afraid of this fighter, so now in the rear, the MiG-3 is being produced by the factory at full capacity, but in the During this war period, there are still many delays in materials.

They need the support of the United States. The United States gave this fighter jet. They do not dislike the difficulty of driving, nor the way the cockpit is opened. They only dislike the lack of a supercharger.

Must be able to fly high, to be able to intercept German fighter jets!

At the insistence of the Soviet side, the United States finally began to help the Soviet side by installing a supercharger on the engine.

In fact, this aircraft engine is relatively well-known in the United States. It originally has various models, some with a supercharger, some without, but when the Flying Snake was designed, it focused on low altitudes. Not a high-altitude fighter.

If the Soviets wanted it, they installed it, but if there is a problem with the flight quality at high altitude, then don't blame the American aircraft.

Greenland Sea.

This is already in the Arctic Circle, and large pieces of ice floes can be seen at any time, floating out from the north. For ships sailing here, those floes are a huge threat.

"Attention, ice floes are found ahead, slow down." On a cargo ship, Captain Chris shouted to his crew.

The entire hull of the Patrick-Henry is still quite new. It can be said that this cargo ship has just been launched for more than a month. Although this is not its maiden voyage, it is only the third voyage.

Now, their cargo ships are being built in large numbers by American shipyards. In the United States, there is a unified name, and they are all called Liberty Ships. The current ship, the Patrick, is the first ship of the Liberty Ship.

There are seas on both sides of the United States. For the United States, if it wants to communicate with the outside world, it has to rely on the sea. In the current war period, almost all the shipyards in the United States are working at full capacity to manufacture various warships for the United States Navy. .

But the US doesn't just need warships, they also need a huge fleet of transports.

Under this demand, the United States has placed orders for its own small shipyards to build cargo ships. The most emphasized one is to shorten the construction time and mass-produce them in batches.

At this time, Henry Kaiser, an outstanding figure in the United States, proposed to use the assembly line method to build, multi-department work at the same time, an average of 500,000 man-hours for a freewheel, and the method of segmented assembly was adopted first.

The shipyards where Liberty ships are built typically include a steel shop, a steel girder shop, a brass casting shop, a cable shop, a carpentry shop, a plumbing shop, a parts (pump, etc.) shop, a rigging shop, and a paint shop.

Marine main engines and boilers are shipped by rail from the subcontractor's factory. All shop products are shipped to the pre-assembly area for assembly and then to the final assembly area by crane or flatbed heavy-duty truck.

It took 244 days to initially build the current USS Patrick Henry and 232 days to build the Oregon Shipyard's first Liberty ship, the Oregon Star.

A year later, the Oregon Shipyard's "Tier" was launched in 10 days. The "Robert Peary" built by the Richmond Shipyard took only 4 days, 15 hours and 29 seconds to build, creating a miracle of industrial production.

Historically, from 1941 to 1945, 18 U.S. shipyards built a total of 2,751 Liberty ships.

This kind of cargo ship has a displacement of 7,000 tons and can carry more than 10,000 tons of cargo. It is the most suitable for the United States. Unfortunately, its appearance is quite ugly.

The bottom of the general cargo ship is U-shaped, but now the bow is indeed forward, and the bottom of the ship is V-shaped. This type of ship can reduce the resistance and increase the speed of the ship when the ordinary main engine is installed.

After it was built, Time Magazine called it the ugly duckling.

Roosevelt valued these freighters very much. He knew that only a strong maritime transport capability could allow the United States to win this war. Therefore, when the first ship, the Patrick Henry, was launched, Roosevelt himself presided over it. Launching ceremony.

"Free or die, these ships will bring freedom to Europe and freedom to the world." Roosevelt borrowed Henry's words, which became the origin of the name of the free wheel.

Now, the Liberty ship is full of cargo, including trucks, grain, high-grade fuel, and some disassembled Snake fighter jets, heading for the Soviet port of Murmansk.

They have no choice.

Although the Germans claimed to have established the European Maritime Joint Law Enforcement Committee to conduct maritime inspections here, and made it clear that they wanted to block this route, they were already full of cargo at that time.

It takes time to unload the cargo, and if they go around the Pacific, it will take many more months, so they can only take the risk of continuing to follow the planned route.

At the same time, for the sake of safety, they deliberately moved the route north.

Originally they were going to go to the slightly warmer Norwegian Sea, but now they crossed the Denmark Strait to the colder Greenland Sea, and from here they planned to go eastward, around the northern part of Jan Mayen, to the Barents Sea.

Can't be provoked, you can always escape, right? Going all the way around, the Germans really don't give people a way to live?

Navigation in the Arctic Circle is full of risks. The wind here sometimes exceeds 12, and the ubiquitous floating ice is a huge threat. Just facing these natural problems is enough to make people nervous. At this time, Surely the Germans will not come to trouble, right?

Chris was wearing his thickest clothes, his beard was frozen with ice, and almost everyone in the cockpit was the same.

The boat was supposed to have heating, but somehow, if they heated the cab, the front glass would quickly frost and couldn't see anything.

Now, they can only open the windows and keep the cockpit at the same temperature as the outside, so that the front glass is finally clear, and they are all shivering from the cold.

If they wear another hat, they all look like Santa Claus.

Holding the telescope and putting it in front of his eyes, Chris continued to look at the route ahead, as if the front was much better and no more glaciers were found.

"Go three, speed up!" Chris said.

Just then, his ears, which were almost frozen, heard some extra movement, and he looked up and saw a bright spot in the sky.