New World War II Eagle Strikes the Sky

On the night of the end of the big air battle, Li Mei's bomber fleet went to Osaka again, burning the most prosperous area in Osaka city to the ground.Then, early the next morning, U.S. fighter jets appeared on the Japanese air defense radar screen again.

This time the Americans acted quite bachelor, and did not play any more tricks of letting fighter jets form dense formations to imitate bombers. Now the status of those fighter jets can be clearly read on the radar screen: the flying altitude is 7000 meters, and the speed is [-] kilometers per hour. , about three hundred in number.

For these fighter jets, the Japanese really can't afford to take off and intercept them.American fighter jets have good performance and fast speed, and obviously have the right to choose whether to fight or not. If the battle situation is favorable, the Japanese will not be easy to escape.So if you win, it will be a small victory at most. Once you lose, it will definitely be a big defeat.Although the Japanese are a bit war-crazy, they are unwilling to do such an obviously uneconomical thing.Anyway, it's just a group of fighter jets, so what if we let them fly around in the sky?Are they still going to swoop down and shoot the streets with machine guns?

Therefore, the Japanese did not send out an interceptor fleet as a matter of course, but took off some fighter jets to cruise at low altitude just out of insurance.

However, the information sent back by the radar immediately made the Japanese hesitate again.That is, the US bomber fleet appeared.

"Found enemy bombers, the number is more than 430, the speed is 7000 kilometers per hour, and the altitude is [-] meters."

The altitude of 7000 meters is the classic altitude when the American bomber fleet attacked Germany. At present, this altitude is just enough for few aircraft to fly in such a short period of time, except for a small number of Raiden 21s and Gale with a messy completion rate. climbed to this height.If you don't consider that the Japanese will use the air strike strategy, even if there is no escort fighter jet, the firepower of the b-29 fleet itself is enough to deal with this interceptor.

Now that the bombers are here, the interceptor unit must of course take to the air to fight. Otherwise, what are the interceptors for?So under the escort of some Zero Fighters and Type 21 fighters that had already taken off, some Japanese fighters with better climbs, such as Raiden 84, Zhong Kui fighters and some Ki-[-] Haifeng fighters, began to take off urgently.

But at this time, it is not so easy for these planes to get up.Just now, those American fighter jets had been divided into many groups and stayed near the Japanese airport.When the fighter jets that climbed in an emergency began to overtake the Zero Fighter and Type [-] fighter jets that took off earlier, the American fighter jets that had taken advantage of the altitude began to swoop down towards them.

Shawshank is a half-novice who has only flown for less than 600 hours, so he is still serving as a wingman honestly.His lead plane was a veteran named Marbury with two thousand flight hours and at least seventy combat missions.At this time, the command of the lead plane came from his ear: "Follow me closely, prepare to refill the gun!"

There were several Thunderbolt 21 fighters in the direction of Marbury's dive.This fighter, which has the same nickname as the p-47, is an outlier among the fighters of the Japanese Navy.This kind of aircraft is well armored, climbs and dives quickly, but hovers very generally.Once this kind of aircraft has an altitude advantage, it is still very scary.But when the guy is lower down, it's not in a good place.Under the enemy's dive attack, things like Zero War can also avoid the enemy's attack by turning sharply, but it is more difficult for the J2M3 Thunderbolt with poor hovering performance to avoid the dive attack of others.

Shawshank followed closely behind the lead plane, and as it dived, its P-51 fighter jet was getting faster and faster.In a blink of an eye, the speed has exceeded 740 kilometers.At this time, Shawshank saw the lead plane start to fire. Shawshank could see the flames flashing randomly on the wing of the lead plane 200 meters ahead. Shout: "Roll right!"

Shawshank immediately made a roll to the right. At this time, he saw an enemy plane rushing out from the lead plane's gun with smoke, flying to his right, and he happened to make a right The roll of the machine only needs to pull the nose to cut into the opponent's six o'clock direction.Without thinking too much, Shawshank pulled up the nose of the plane vigorously, and immediately cut into the six o'clock of the j2m3, which was only about 300 meters away from the enemy plane, and the two sides were still approaching at high speed.Shawshank didn't care about careful aiming, so he fired a long burst with all four guns, and then pulled up the fighter plane.Relying on the high speed brought by the dive, quickly climb to a safe height.Then the leader's praise came from his earphones: "Good job!" Shawshank looked down and saw a fighter plane falling to the ground surrounded by thick smoke and flames.

Not every group of American aircraft that launched the attack achieved results. In fact, the pilots who had the opportunity to fly fighter jets such as Raiden 21 and Hayate were also the few "experienced" pilots left in Japan. .Therefore, it is indeed unrealistic to obtain a lot of results with only one round of attack.However, these attacks are not without effect.Apart from other effects, at least, such an attack prevented the Japanese interceptor from climbing.

It is very interesting to compare the similarities and differences between the situation of the Japanese and the situation of the Germans when facing the US bomber fleet.Compared with the Germans, most of the Japanese fighters have a good range, so you can't expect the Japanese fighters to have the same problems as the Germans when they fight with the escort fighters and they run out of fuel and need to land.Of course, you can't expect to wash the airfield with bombers that "just arrived" when they are landing.However, due to the limitation of the island's terrain, the early warning time that the Japanese can obtain is far less than that of Germany.Therefore, when the Japanese are intercepting air defense, they face a huge problem, that is, there is too little time for fighter jets to climb. Most Japanese fighter jets have no chance to climb enough to intercept the bombers before they finish dropping their bombs.This problem almost offsets the advantage of the longer range of Japanese fighters, because most of those long-range fighters climb, especially high-altitude climbs are very bad.

When facing the Allied bomber fleet, the German army can use the escort fleet + assault fleet to fight.The bf-109 series fighters, which are lighter, more dexterous, and have better climbing and high-altitude performance, act as escort aircraft, escorting assault aircraft such as fw-190a8 that perform assault missions against bombers.They are responsible for entanglement with the escort fighter jets of the US military, covering the climb of aircraft such as fw-190a8 or bf-110, and launching attacks on the Allied bomber fleet.

But the Japanese were also unable to adopt such tactics.Because most of the maneuverable and flexible fighters in the hands of the Japanese are very poor at high altitudes, and they don't have enough warning time to slowly climb to the appropriate altitude.So these planes cannot provide protection to fighters that climb well.When performing interception missions, we can only rely on those fighter jets that have climbed to fight alone with the escort fighter jets of the US military.In this way, in fact, the vast majority of Japanese fighters have become soy sauce in this kind of battle.

And those so-called good fighter jets, such as J2M3, have a total of less than 500, and they have to be stationed in various places. When it is the turn of a region, the number that can be dispatched is very limited.Another example is the ki-84 blast fighter jets. Although there are more than 400 fighters in total, they are scattered throughout the Pacific Ocean—the Chinese theater. At that time, the total number of ki-84s capable of launching into the air was never less than 84.Then it was divided into various regions. As a result, in a certain interception, the amount that could be used was even pitifully small.

In this way, in fact, when facing the Allied bomber fleet, the Japanese are in a much more difficult situation than the Germans.For example, now, the number of fighter jets that can climb to a sufficient height on time is much smaller than that of the US military's escort fighter jets.They immediately fell into the siege of the U.S. fighter jets, and were forced to dodge left and right, constantly consuming energy to avoid the enemy's attack.Under such circumstances, it is not easy to maintain the current altitude, let alone continue to climb.

All in all, the Japanese interceptors were all suppressed at an altitude below 6000 meters, and they could not pose any decent threat to the bomber fleet at all.They could only watch helplessly as the bombers dragged long silvery white trails, flowing unstoppably over their heads like a big river.

This time, the target of the bomber fleet was still Tokyo, and the bombing method was almost the same as that of the night attack, except that the height of the bombing was a little higher, and the time changed from night to daytime. In addition, it is still the same as before. First draw an extra-large death circle with napalm bombs, and then other bombers throw napalm bombs into the circle.

Although it was daytime, and although the Japanese were prepared to a certain extent, in fact, in the face of a fire of this scale, any firefighting force would be useless.Soon, the soaring fire burned again...

After completing the incendiary bombing of the area, the bombers began to return.But part of it, about a dozen B-29 bombers actually flew over the area that had not been engulfed in flames, and dropped another batch of bombs.When these bombs fell to a height of 700 meters from the ground, they exploded suddenly, and then a large number of leaflets were scattered all over the sky.The content of these leaflets is very simple: In two days time, we will attack Tokyo again with incendiary bombs from ten to eleven o'clock in the morning.