USSR 1941

Of course, the Soviet Air Force also had a problem similar to that of the German army, that is, the problem of attack planes and fighter planes grabbing engines.

However, unlike the Germans who left the backward engines to the fighters, the Soviets would rather leave the advanced engines to the fighters, and even did not hesitate to scrap the fighters using the same engine... and the "Il-2" fighter The fighter with the same engine is the "MiG-3" fighter.

In the case of insufficient production capacity, "Il-2" and "MiG-3" can only choose one, and the Soviet army firmly chose "Il-2".

This approach should be said to be wise, because the Soviet army has another excellent fighter "Jacques 1", and the more advanced "Jacques 3" has also been finalized.

Therefore, there is no great need for the Soviet army to keep the "MiG 3" with various defects. It simply stopped production and left all the engines for the "Il 2".

As a result, one side is slow, clumsy, and has no air combat capability with ground-to-ground equipment. The other side is faster, more flexible, and has considerable air combat capabilities...

Needless to say, the 80 "Il-2s" had an absolute advantage over the 60 "Henschels", and one after another "Henschels" rolled from the sky with black smoke and flames and fell to the ground.

This is also the reason why Colonel William rushed to rescue "Henschel". His so-called "cancellation of the protection of the B fleet" order was just to let his subordinates fight freely, but it did not mean that he did not need to take care of the B fleet.

Colonel William hoped that he would take his wingman two fighter planes into the enemy's attack fleet, and use the absolute advantage of the fighter planes over the enemy's attack planes to disrupt the position of the enemy's attack fleet, so that the B fleet would have a chance to breathe.

This thinking may be right.

Because although the Soviet "Il-2" attack aircraft retained a part of its air combat capability, it was still powerless to face the BF109 piloted by an old pilot with rich combat experience like Colonel William.

Soon, Colonel William locked on an "Il-2" from the bottom up. With a burst of "da da da" machine guns, dense bullets poured from Colonel William's car towards the target.

Some miss and some hit.

But Colonel William looked back when he passed the enemy plane, and found that the enemy plane that was hit continued to roll and chase "Henschel" as if nothing happened.

"Fuck it!" Colonel William cursed, and soon understood... "Il-2" is an attack aircraft. In order to deal with the machine gun fire from the ground, the attack aircraft for ground attack,

So there is thick armor on the bottom, especially the engine, fuel tank and cockpit, so attacking them from the bottom up is basically useless.

The facts are indeed true. The "Il-2" attack aircraft is famous as a "flying tank" in the Soviet army...the reason why it is called a "flying tank" is because its armor protection even reaches the level of a light tank, not only the engine, fuel tank, but also The ammunition compartments with coolers are protected with a thickness of 7 mm, and the pilot's cockpit even reaches 12.7 mm.

This makes "Il 2" often bruised and bruised but still able to return to the airport safely after participating in the war.

"Attack the tail of the target!" Colonel William ordered to the wingman: "Or attack from the top down!"

"yes!"

The wingman followed Colonel William very tacitly, raised the nose of the aircraft and then swooped down to the enemy aircraft group below... The fast speed has this advantage, you can adjust your position and angle at will to occupy a favorable position, while the slow side does not care. No matter how you dodge the game, you can't escape the opponent's Wuzhishan.

Colonel William bit the tail of an "Il-2" attack aircraft, but Colonel William did not shoot.

The reason is that this "Il-2" is constantly doing serpentine maneuvers trying to get rid of Colonel William's lock.

Since there was not much ammunition left, Colonel William did not dare to shoot bullets to try his luck. He hoped to get closer and take a bigger shot... The target was an attack aircraft with a top speed of only more than 400 per hour. He escaped under the pursuit of BF109 with a speed of more than 600 hours per hour.

What's more, Colonel William is very confident in his skills.

It's getting closer, it's getting closer... However, at this moment, Colonel William suddenly saw in the rain curtain a thing on the back cabin of the target that would make all soldiers feel dangerous: a long barrel, and it was still aimed at his own The barrel, you can't see the muzzle because of the poor visibility, but there's no doubt it's the barrel.

"No, it's impossible!" Colonel William steered the plane to avoid it reflexively, and at the same time ordered his wingman: "Dodge, danger..."

But it was too late, the gun barrel in the rain "squeaked" a flame, the bullet hit Colonel William's cockpit with a crisp "snap" sound, and when the bullet collided with the body Aroused crumbs.

However, Colonel William escaped the catastrophe in the end, and the wingman was not so lucky. Colonel William saw it lose control and fall to the ground at high speed on his flank.

Colonel William knew what was going on, although the plane looked fine, no smoke or fire, but if the pilot was directly killed by a bullet...

Colonel William sighed for this subordinate, but when he turned his head, he found that his fuel tank was leaking oil.

Oil spills are almost a dead end for combat pilots, unless Colonel William chooses to parachute.

But Colonel William thought about it for a while, and finally gave up doing it, not only because the area was controlled by the Soviets, and parachuting would not have a good ending, but also because he still had something to say.

"Attention all!" Colonel William said to the walkie-talkie: "We are facing the enemy's new attack aircraft. They have added a rear cockpit and installed a backward machine gun on the rear cockpit. When approaching the target from the tail, you must Watch out for this machine gun!"

At this time, the plane was out of control, and Colonel William finally said: "Good luck!"

Then, the plane plummeted to the ground.

Colonel William is right, this is indeed the latest modification of "Il-2", named "Il-2M".

This modification has not changed anything else, that is, the single seat is changed to a two-seater, and the rear seat is not a co-pilot, but a 12.7mm Berezin UBT revolving machine gun is directly installed, and then a machine gunner.

Since this modification has almost no technical difficulties, the production is very fast, and the old single-seater model will be replaced soon... The pilot in the rear cockpit is not even a pilot but a machine gunner. Fighters will not vomit and can shoot normally.

But it was such a small change that increased the survival rate of "Il-2" by 30% when facing the pursuit of enemy fighter planes.

Colonel William became the first victims of "Il-2M" because he didn't know that there was such a modification.