Chapter 207 HE-177

Originally, Yannick was going to copy the American B-17, but the United States had already started developing and testing the B-17 a few years ago. If he drew the same design again, he would be laughed at.

After thinking about it, he remembered that Germany had its own heavy bomber HE-177.

Because of limited fuel and manpower resources, the German Air Force has always been a huge tactical force. Despite its huge size, it only stayed at the tactical level.

And perhaps because the Stuka performed too well, the German Air Force's obsession with dive bombing reached a paranoid level.

Of course, this obsession is also reasonable. Due to the limitations of this era, the accuracy of horizontal bombing is so low that it makes people collapse. Even Germany, which is famous for its optical instruments, does not have any good solutions for bomber aiming and bombing.

At this time, dive bombers that can accurately destroy bridges or bunkers in one dive have become the belief of the German Air Force.

But whether it is obsession or belief; it is a bit too much to let a four-engine heavy bomber also have a dive function.

The German Air Force leaders, based on their own likes and dislikes, required that all bombers equipped by the German army must have dive bombing capabilities! Ernst Udet, then director of the German Aviation Technology Bureau, even believed that bombers without dive bombing capabilities were not worth producing at all.

Under the pressure of such unreasonable requirements, the he-177 bomber actually adopted a twin-linked layout-two engines were installed on one wing, but only one propeller was driven, making the four-engine heavy bomber look like a twin-engine medium bomber in appearance.

It is not difficult to imagine how poor the reliability of this twin-linked coupled engine is.

First, the cabin space for installing the twin-engine is very small, and the hydraulic device of the landing gear must be squeezed in, resulting in the leakage of hydraulic oil from the hydraulic device burning as soon as it touches the hot exhaust pipe; second, the return oil pump is too large, and when the flight altitude exceeds 6,000 meters, the oil will produce cavitation and foam, resulting in lubrication failure; third, the leakage of the high-pressure injection pump. In addition, the position of the engine is too close to the fuselage, and there is not enough space to install the fireproof partition; the various electrical lines are too close to each other, which increases the risk of engine fire in the air.

Among the 8 prototypes manufactured by Heinkel, 2 crashed due to engine fire (He-177V4 and He-177V5); the other several also often had problems of fire in the air or engine overheating. Therefore, people jokingly called the He-177 "lighter in the sky". This poor performance made pilots complain about the aircraft, and few people liked to fly it to go on the expedition.

Even the Imperial Marshal Goering had to admit that "asking a four-engine bomber to dive is simply nonsense!" However, despite his annoyance, Goering did not order a change in the design of the He-177; nor did the entire German Air Force show a strong demand for heavy bombers. It can be seen that deep-rooted traditional ideas cannot be changed all at once.

And Yannick kicked out the short-sighted Ernst Udet early on, and ordered the He-177 to adopt a single four-engine structure similar to the American B-17 when designing, which greatly improved the reliability of the engine.

Moreover, he secretly "invited" the chief designer of the British Empire's Rolls-Royce "Merlin" aircraft engine a few years ago. With the concerted efforts of everyone, the performance of today's German aircraft engines has escaped the dilemma of the original time and space.

As for various rare resources that limit production, they have also been greatly improved. Poland in later generations is a world-class copper mine; Austria's tungsten mines are already in mining; Libya's oil can enter large-scale production at any time; Romania is a great treasure, with nearly 80 kinds of minerals mined, including iron, manganese, copper, uranium, gold, silver, molybdenum, etc. Even Hungary, which is relatively poor in natural resources, has a considerable amount of bauxite, and its reserves rank third in Europe.

In addition to the various rare metal mines imported from Ming Dynasty and the Soviet Union in recent years, Germany's current resource reserves are not rich, but at least there is no need to worry.

The engine problem has been solved, and the overall performance of the bomber has been greatly improved. It is deeply loved by the Air Force and has entered the mass production stage.

As mentioned earlier, although the battle of the German paratroopers airborne on the Eben Emael Fortress was very classic, Yannick wanted to change the means of attack this time.

That is to use the remaining Grand Slam to greet the Eben Emael Fortress.

At dawn, a HE-177 bomber carrying a Grand Slam and four Stuka bombers slowly flew over the Eben Emael Fortress under the cover of 12 BF109s.

It was indeed slow, because the Grand Slam bomb weighed ten tons, and the HE-177 could not go faster even if it wanted to. In order to fit this big guy in, this he-177 was specially modified. The turrets on the back and nose of the aircraft were removed, part of the armor was also removed, the bomb bay door on the belly was cancelled, and only a huge area was recessed in the belly to hang bombs, and the bomb rack was specially reinforced.

Not only the aircraft, but also this Grand Slam was specially modified.

You should know that there are many problems when bombers bomb at high altitudes. It stands to reason that when a bomber drops a bomb, due to inertia, the bomb has the same instantaneous forward speed as the bomber, so the trajectory of the bomb is like the trajectory of a horizontal projectile motion, which is the so-called parabola.

But the fact is that there are various influencing factors in this process, such as the state of the carrier aircraft, the impact of the aircraft's vibration on the initial state of the bomb, the effect of the wind on the bomb during flight, etc. The trajectory of the bomb's descent is definitely not a complete parabola. A slight mistake can lead to a huge error. When the bomb falls from a height of several thousand meters, it is unknown where it has gone.

Therefore, before the emergence of advanced computer-aided systems and guided bombs in later generations, carpet bombing was used to improve the hit rate. Seeing that the target is almost there, one bomb is dropped at a certain distance, and a large area of ​​the target area is blindly bombed, turning over the entire land of the target area like plowing land.

However, a big guy like the Grand Slam cannot be used for carpet bombing, so German engineers installed a control system on this big bomb so that the bomb can change its flight posture in the air.

This is not Yannick's idea. German engineers in the original time and space have already studied precision-guided weapon systems and developed two "smart bombs" "Fritz X" and "HS293". The "Fritz-X" missile body is equipped with a FuG-203 "Kehl" III/ FuG-230b "Strasbourg" type guidance component, and has a unique gyroscope for stabilizing the heading. During combat, the carrier aircraft controls the electromagnetically driven rudder installed on the tail wing through radio, and the hit rate for the round target with a radius of 30 meters is over 90%.

"Approach the target, prepare to drop bombs!"

The accompanying Stuka roared down and blew up the four anti-aircraft machine guns of the Eben-Emael Fortress.

In the cabin of the he-177, the bombardier Daniel put his eyes on the eyepiece of the bomb sight, stared closely at the target below, stepped on the target to enter the bomb reference point, and pulled the wrench hard.

"Drop bombs!"