USSR 1941

  Chapter 713 Assault aircraft

  The air battle between the Soviet and German armies was clearly divided into two areas, one area was the area of ​​high-speed dogfighting fighter planes and the other was the area of ​​low-speed attack aircraft.

  The Soviet fighters are all MiG-3s.

   This was rectified during the reform of the Air Force. According to Shulka’s streamlined thinking to integrate fighters, the goal is to facilitate maintenance and command, so of course an aviation division must be equipped with the same fighter.

This fighter is a new type of fighter from the Soviet Union, and its performance is quite excellent. It is not an exaggeration to say that its performance exceeds that of the BF109 used by the German army. For example, it flies faster than the BF109 at an altitude of 5,000 meters. 5.1 minutes. (Note: MiG 3 and Yak 1 are two fighters that the Soviet Air Force can compete with German fighters)

  The reason why the Soviet Air Force suffered a crushing defeat in the early days of the war was because, on the one hand, it was unprepared for the war and the command of the Air Force was chaotic, so that a large number of aircraft were blown up at the airport before taking off. Another aspect is the quality of pilots.

   Another important point is that the performance of the MiG-3 is only on paper, or the performance during the test, but in actual combat, its performance is greatly reduced due to many such and other problems.

  For example, heavy weight and large turning radius... The most important thing in air combat in this era is speed and flexibility. Of course, fast speed can have an advantage, but if you are not flexible enough, you will be easily thrown off by the enemy if you fall behind in a turn.

   In addition, there is the problem of lack of and backward radio equipment, which is related to the coordination between fighters.

  However, these are only small problems, or it can be said that most of the Soviet Air Force fighters have problems. The more serious problem of MiG-3 is the combination of two problems:

  One is the overheating of the engine, which will cause the cabin to overheat.

  If it’s just this problem, it’s fine, because there are still ways to solve the overheating of the cockpit, such as opening a part of the canopy to dissipate heat during cruise flight, and closing the canopy when there is a need to fight.

  The problem is that the MiG-3 still has a very strange problem, the canopy cannot be opened during flight.

  This will not only make it impossible for the pilot to escape, but also make the continuous heating up in the canopy unbearable for the pilot, especially in this hot summer.

   Therefore, MiG-3 pilots usually have a habit of keeping the canopy open when flying...the canopy is useless.

  The result of flying with the canopy open is that the flight speed drops sharply.

   In this way, the MiG 3, which was originally faster than the German BF109, was slower than the opponent. In addition, it was not flexible enough, so its performance fell behind.

   This is one of the reasons why MiG-3 was discontinued.

But even so, the MiG 3 is still capable of fighting against the German BF109. What's more, the number of MiG 3 at this time is more than twice that of the German BF109, which makes the German BF109 embarrassed. Several MiG 3s but also BF109 were shot down and injured.

  Colonel William yelled through the walkie-talkie while manipulating the fighter plane to deal with the enemy fighter plane: "All teams report the battle situation!"

   "The first squadron lost one and shot down three!"

   "Second Squadron, lost one and shot down two!"

   "The third squadron lost two and shot down four!"

  Colonel William simply analyzed the battle situation, including the two fighters he shot down, they shot down eleven enemy planes, and their own side lost four.

  For the ambushed side, the battle loss ratio is close to three to one, which is a good result.

  If the fight continues with such results, the Russian fighters in front of them will lose all their casualties before the German fighters.

  However, Colonel William knew that this calculation could not be done.

The reason is that there is an ammunition problem... the number of enemy planes is more than twice that of our own, which means that the enemy has at least twice as much ammunition, and our own planes need to consume more ammunition to shoot down enemy planes one after another. In particular, some of these fighters were not shot down but were injured.

   That is to say, if the fight continues like this, the German fleet will undoubtedly suffer.

  After thinking for a while, Colonel William ordered: "Hold on for a few more minutes, and I will cover Group B!"

   As soon as Colonel William pulled the nose of the aircraft, he led his wingman towards the direction of the attack aircraft...

  At this time, Colonel William discovered that the main target of the enemy is actually the B fleet, because the B fleet has suffered heavy losses and has been beaten to the point where it has no power to parry.

  In fact, the Soviet army did not have much advantage over the German attack aircraft in the number of attack aircraft, 80 vs. 60. It stands to reason that as long as the quality of the German pilots is excellent, this difference in number is nothing at all.

  The problem is that the air combat performance of the German attack aircraft lags behind that of the Soviet attack aircraft.

   This depends on the definition and requirements of the Soviet and German armies for attack aircraft.

  The German army generally did not pay enough attention to attack aircraft, which was determined by the widespread belief that fighter aircraft were not suitable for attacking ground targets during World War I.

  This kind of thinking was correct for World War I, because fighter planes at that time were too fragile and slow, while ground targets such as infantry and artillery had a large number of machine guns, anti-aircraft machine guns and other air defense equipment.

  Seeing several fighter planes approaching from a distance, the ground troops had already set up machine guns and waited. When the planes flew close, the planes often disintegrated before a row of bullets passed by.

  So, World War I aircraft either carried out air combat, reconnaissance, or bombed fixed targets that were basically unprepared for air defense.

  The German army was influenced by this kind of thinking, and the attack aircraft started late.

   Then the German scientists made a total calculation... If you want to produce ground fighters, you should stagger the engines of fighter jets and attack planes. Only in this way can the production of fighter jets be guaranteed.

   Otherwise, if the two use the same engine, the attack aircraft will seize the production speed of the fighter.

   Then it is obvious that the German army believes that fighter jets are more important than attack planes, because fighter jets are used to compete for air supremacy, and after having air supremacy, attack planes do not need any air combat capabilities and only need to concentrate on dealing with ground targets.

   As a result, the German "Henschel" attack aircraft basically abandoned its air combat capability and used backward engines, which determined the shortcomings of the "Henschel" such as slow speed and clumsiness.

The Soviet Army did not think so about the development of attack aircraft. The Soviet Army was a country with land power. They once believed that fighter aircraft were to provide fire cover for infantry, so they began to develop attack aircraft since 1938. Before the war broke out, "Il The 2" Strong Strike entered mass production and entered service, and also retained a part of its air combat capability.

More importantly, the goal of the German army in this battle was to deal with Soviet tanks, so the ammunition carried by the "Henschel" were all aerial bombs and armor-piercing bombs, while the Soviet "Il-2" was here for air combat from the beginning , The rockets that are mainly used for ground combat have been completely saved.

  (end of this chapter)