Chapter 571 Summer Thunder (3)

On the vast North Atlantic, rows of giant steel ships are heading northeast at a high speed of 24 knots. If someone observes carefully, they will see some unusual scenes - the flagship of this fleet is not the largest it looks. The ship was actually another smaller flat-deck ship.

Yes, this is a warship with an aircraft carrier as the core formation. Judging from the flag and fleet, it belongs to the aircraft carrier formation of the British and American Atlantic Combined Fleet. The flagship logo is the British Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Unicorn, which is larger but not The flagship is the US Navy aircraft carrier USS Bunker Hill, and the other two smaller aircraft carriers are two newly commissioned Independence-class light aircraft carriers. Surrounded by escorting cruisers and destroyers, this is the only aircraft carrier formation currently available to the two navies in the North Atlantic.

In the commander's tower of the Unicorn, US Navy Vice Admiral Spruance was respectfully reporting to a general in a wheelchair: "Sir, there are still two days to reach the designated sea area... However, there are several There was no news of the enemy, and the reconnaissance planes continued to conduct reconnaissance and found nothing."

The person in the wheelchair is Admiral Andrew Brown Cunningham, who lost a leg in the Indian Ocean Battle. He served as the commander of the Atlantic Fleet aircraft carrier group, and Spruance was his chief of staff. These two figures were casual. Whoever is taken out is the commander of the main fleet alone, but now due to the defeat in the early war and the shortage of warships by Britain and the United States, they can only huddle together to keep warm.

Cunningham frowned and asked, "When was the last enemy report?"

"Four days ago, that is, at 17:00 pm local time on June 30, one of our submarines observed the German fleet moving southeast, but the enemy was faster and lost track of it the next day, and in the following days it disappeared. No news."

"Have you found anything along the route of the long-range patrol aircraft?"

"No, either, but there is no information about encounters with enemy planes."

"If the crows didn't come with any information, then they probably went back." Cunningham thought for a while and came to a conclusion.

Spruance raised his eyebrows: "Do they know we're coming?"

"Not necessarily." Cunningham explained, "Look, they have appeared on the British-Canada route for more than half a month. We had to stop the entire transportation line because of this. The enemy could not get the ships to break the relationship. We don’t dare to move within the control range of our land-based aircraft, so we have no choice but to go back.”

"It's a pity that the trip was in vain." Spruance was a little annoyed, but after thinking about it, he felt relieved, "At least the British-Canada route can be resumed, right?"

Cunningham nodded, then smiled and said: "Perhaps we can think more positively. At least the boys have been trained. They have grown a lot compared to their original performance in the South African waters where they were busy and at a loss."

At the mention of this, Spruance nodded involuntarily. When he just took over the newly formed aircraft carrier formation, he was full of hope. He was like a gambler who lost a bet and suddenly got a large sum of money. He immediately rushed over with the idea of ​​​​recovering his money, but after he really pulled out the troops, he thought The thought of making a comeback came to an abrupt end because the fleet's performance was disastrous.

After repeated defeats in naval battles, especially after losing all their aircraft carriers twice in a row, the British and American navies suffered heavy casualties. Taking two U.S. aircraft carriers as an example, the proportion of experienced aircraft carrier officers and soldiers deployed on new warships has dropped sharply, to less than 60%. This is not because the Navy cannot find enough skilled officers and soldiers to support two warships, but because new aircraft carriers will be put into service in the future. Experienced officers and soldiers must be arranged in a unified manner, otherwise only veterans will be given to the front-line troops, officers and soldiers on newly commissioned aircraft carriers or escort aircraft carriers. The configuration will be even worse.

The performance of the British side is relatively better, with about 80% of experienced officers and soldiers retained, but Spruance was privately lamenting - this is not because the British are better at escaping, but because the British aircraft carrier establishment has been greatly reduced. . At its peak, the Royal Navy had as many as 8 fleet aircraft carriers, but now it only has a pitiful Unicorn to support the scene - this ship was originally designed to repair aircraft carriers. Unexpectedly, when it was commissioned, it would be responsible for maintenance. All lying on the bottom of the cold ocean.

Why Cunningham chose the smaller Unicorn rather than the larger Bunker Hill as his flagship was obviously to preserve the last vestige of dignity in the Royal Navy, which Spruance understood very well.

What made him feel more desperate than the sailors was the performance of carrier-based aircraft pilots. Even though the U.S. Navy boasted that it could train thousands of pilots with aircraft carrier take-off and landing certificates every year, he knew how wet it was here.

The so-called takeoff and landing certificate refers to a qualification certificate that can be awarded after successfully completing 6 takeoffs and landings on the training aircraft carriers Sable or Langguan. But the problem is that these two training aircraft carriers are both paddle wheels modified from freighters, and the training location It's in the calm Great Lakes region. In his own words: "Hell, there's no wind or waves at all there. It's as flat as a piece of land." When these rookies who had obtained the aircraft carrier takeoff and landing certificate excitedly thought of occupying a pilot position on the aircraft carrier formation, tragedy struck. It started.

First of all, without the veteran leader and constant calls from the tower, they couldn't find their way home. Of course you can do this in training. In actual combat, if the tower keeps calling, it is basically telling the enemy aircraft that I am here.

Secondly, when there is a little wind and waves and the deck is up and down, take-off and landing operations are frightening. Either they can't take off and fall into the water, or they rush down and hit other aircraft. The accident failure rate of novice pilots exceeds 11% - there will be an accident every 9 take-offs and landings.

To be honest, Spruance also felt that the F6F cockpit was too far back and the nose was too thick, which was not conducive to mastering landing skills. But the problem is that this is already the fighter with the best combination of power and maneuverability. If it is replaced by F4U, it is estimated that these rookies will crash every time they fly one. So even though there is a more powerful F4U to choose from, it still cannot become a carrier-based aircraft.

Finally, it is impossible to maintain a stable formation. In internal confrontation training, fighter pilots always swarmed over interception targets, often only shooting down a few before a large group of enemy planes roared over the aircraft carrier formation, which made Spruance furious every time. The performance of attack aircraft pilots was not much better. Once the 40-60-plane dense attack formation continued to fly for more than 200 kilometers, the formation was scattered and could only be deployed in small groups, and then easily torn to pieces by the simulated air defense aircraft.

As for aerobatics, Spruance did not dare to have any expectations now.

The enemy fleet's night attack on New York was analyzed countless times by naval aviation experts, and almost all the actual scenes at the time could be simulated and replayed. However, the more this was done, the more shocking the conclusion was: experts believed that the factors for the success of the attack were the superposition of long-range navigation, night raids, and ultra-low-altitude flights. Any of these items would be considered a stunt in the US Navy, but the enemy did them all. The Navy itself tried to conduct a 300-kilometer ultra-low-altitude raid during the day, but 12 of the first 16 attack aircraft were lost. Although the people were fine, the fleet was scared enough that Admiral King strictly prohibited such dangerous aviation training - Spruance guessed that he must have been heartbroken when he issued this order.

In contrast, the British side performed much better. They retained more experienced carrier-based aircraft pilots, so now the US Navy has also learned its lesson. British aircraft carriers are no longer equipped with American pilots, but instead require American aircraft carriers to be equipped with a few British veteran pilots as grassroots officers.

However, the United States still has a deep foundation and enough capital. Based on the principle of quantity instead of quality, it has increased the number of training for reserve carrier-based aircraft pilots, hoping that the survival of the fittest will allow the top ones to emerge on their own. Spruance suggested that new pilots first serve on escort carriers, and then be further absorbed into fleet carriers after excellent performance, and select excellent seedlings through layers of screening. In this way, fleet pilots are guaranteed, but the quality of pilots on escort carriers is worse. The reason why the German fleet can easily destroy a fleet this time is that the American pilots on escort carriers are not strong enough.

In order to find out the performance of the main carrier-based aircraft of Germany and Japan, the United States racked its brains and spent a lot of money to collect 3 He-218 bombers from the Soviet Union (pieced together from multiple aircraft shot down on the Eastern Front, and also with a batch of scattered accessories), and tried every means to transport them back to the United States through the Far East route, and installed the United States' own landing equipment on these land-based dive bombers. There was no problem at all when testing at the land airport, and its various performance and shortcomings were studied. Everyone admitted that this was a good plane.

The Americans even couldn't help but think about designing a dive bomber with a liquid-cooled engine. Even though the U.S. Navy has always disliked liquid-cooled engine aircraft on board, believing that maintenance is too troublesome, they had to admit that compared with the He-218, the SBD was scum except that it was more durable and had a slightly longer range.

But just as this idea came into being, it was quickly doused with a basin of cold water: the excellent He-218 was a complete disaster when taking off and landing on an aircraft carrier. The result was directly maddening. More than 10 excellent pilots crashed their planes one after another during the test flight. There were ways to repair them once or twice, but they could never be repaired after the crash. Only one plane became a bare commander and was quickly pulled back to test and study it again on the land airport.

No one said that the German and Japanese pilots were pitiful and had to fly such "immature" aircraft to fight. Everyone just felt scared - it showed that the quality and level of the enemy pilots far exceeded their own. They also knew that the German side directly captured dive bomber pilots from the Air Force to serve as carrier-based aircraft pilots, and had the equipment basis. Even if the U.S. Navy wanted to capture people from the Army, it would not be able to catch any available dive bomber pilots, and finally had to give up in disappointment.