Chapter 211 Air Combat (2)

At a glance, the other side had eight three-plane formations, 24 406s; while they had ten two-plane formations, 20 BF-109Fs. Although they seemed to be at a disadvantage in terms of numbers, Garand believed that the performance of his fighter planes far exceeded that of the French 406s, not to mention that they had already taken the lead in occupying the high ground.

As the attack order was issued, 20 BF-109Fs began to dive in batches, and the speed soon exceeded 600 kilometers per hour.

In later generations, one of the important indicators for measuring the performance of a fighter plane is the thrust-to-weight ratio. Unfortunately, the thrust-to-weight ratio of fighter planes has always been shockingly low until the 1950s and 1960s, not to mention the propeller fighter planes of World War II today.

Therefore, "altitude + speed + firepower" is the only way in the air battles of World War II. Those pilots who became fighter aces are almost all masters of using this tactic.

As we all know, the engine generates energy, and the energy is reflected in the air battle in the form of speed. With speed, you can freely choose whether to engage in battle and how to engage. But you can't stack speed infinitely, and it's impossible to quickly increase the speed at will by relying on the engine alone.

But by gaining altitude and accumulating gravitational potential energy, you can convert it into kinetic energy when necessary. Altitude is equivalent to an energy bank for fighters, especially early fighters. The engine capacity is deposited in the bank in the form of altitude, and when needed, it is taken out in the form of speed to be used to woo enemy aircraft.

Therefore, both sides of the war have to seize altitude. Although the French have also begun to increase their altitude, they can only admit defeat because their aircraft performance is not as good as others.

However, they did not sit idly by. Seeing the German fighters swooping down from a high altitude, they immediately dispersed their formation, circled and descended in altitude, trying to use dogfighting to drag the German fighters to low altitude, and use low-altitude and low-speed dogfighting to make up for the lack of speed performance of their own fighters.

Seeing this, Garand sneered contemptuously. "These French guys can also play these little tricks. It seems that they are a little better than the Poles."

This tactic of the French is one of the few reasonable tactics that the slow side can adopt in air combat. It's just that these French pilots don't know that their opponent's BF-109 has been upgraded to 109F, and 109F is the most maneuverable model in the 109 series, which can be said to have reached the peak of 109.

Although Garland is confident that he will not suffer in low-altitude dogfights, he can't guarantee it for others. Because after the Battle of Poland, the German Air Force expanded the number of fighters by nearly one-fold in one breath, and now most of its pilots are novices with little combat experience!

He can't let these fledglings run down to fight with others at low altitudes, so he can only use the training methods in daily life. "Everyone pay attention, come to a standard BZ; don't fight with them at low altitude!" The so-called BZ, the full name is BOOM ZOOM, simply put, is a high-altitude dive attack. Regardless of whether it hits or not, it will climb again to gain altitude advantage and wait for the next opportunity. Of course, this is just a general explanation, and there can be millions of changes in specific implementation.

At this time, the speed of the fighter exceeded 650 kilometers per hour. Garland enjoyed this unparalleled sense of speed and aimed at a 406 and pulled the trigger.

"Bang, bang, bang." Four 7mm machine guns fired hot bullets, forming a dense fire net covering the French fighter. The hard bullets crashed into the fuselage, penetrated the fuselage, broke the keel inside, destroyed the oil line, destroyed the equipment inside, and then continued to wreak havoc with the remaining energy until it broke through the fuselage on the other side and proudly left.

Watching the plane falling down with thick black smoke, he immediately pulled up the joystick and let his back suddenly press against his seat.

Back in the sky, he pressed the communicator. "All formations report the situation."

The other nine formations reported the situation one after another. Several fighters had several holes in their fuselages, but they were all hit by 5mm machine guns, so it was no big deal. Although there were 4 machine guns, this thing not only had a slow firing rate, but also had poor performance. Unless someone was unlucky, they would be hit by it.

Garland found that this attack shot down at least 11 enemy planes, which was a good result for a group of novices.

"Okay, let's do it again, and try to shoot them all down!"

After circling a circle, the BF-109 formation began to dive again, and the French, who had lost nearly half of their fighters at once, seemed to have lost the courage to continue fighting, and they scattered and fled for their lives.

It's a pity that the performance of the 406 was not as good as that of the BF-109F. How could it be possible to outrun the diving BF-109F.

And Garland was lucky enough to catch up with the two 406s that were fleeing together. They didn't even have the evasive action that could kill them, and just focused on running forward.

This allowed Garland to catch up with them calmly to a close enough distance, and he pulled the trigger calmly. The 7mm bullet sprayed out again, easily hitting the wing of a 406, and the wing was directly shot into a sieve and broke off instantly. Birds that lose their wings will fall to the ground, and planes that lose their wings will also turn and return to the embrace of Mother Earth.

"Wingman, you try!" Garland left another prey to his wingman.

"Got it!" The wingman's tone was full of excitement, but at this moment the remaining 406 seemed to finally remember that there was evasive action, and began to frantically perform various evasive actions, trying to get rid of the pursuit of the two.

"Keep calm, the other side is already nervous and scared, and once a person is scared, he will reveal many flaws." Seeing that the wingman could not find an opportunity to fire, Garland comforted him.

Sure enough, the wingman seized an opportunity and fired a string of bullets, one of which hit the rear of the opponent's fuselage, and another penetrated the canopy.

"What a lucky guy!" Garland couldn't help but sigh. If the trajectory of this bullet was a little lower, it would definitely open the skull of the pilot inside.

This bullet seemed to scare the French pilot. The 406 first raised its nose to the upper left, then turned over, with its belly facing up. After maintaining the original height for half a second, it pressed its nose down and entered a dive.

"Keep chasing! I'll cover you from behind."

Garland and the wingman also dived down, and the speed of both sides was getting faster and faster.

The French pilot found that as the speed soared, the aircraft control stick became heavier and heavier, making it difficult to make flexible evasive movements.

Just as he was thinking that it was not good and preparing to get out of the dive state, he heard a series of dull hitting sounds in his ears, and then he felt the fuselage was shaking violently, and then several streams of burning heat pierced his waist and back.

"Yeah!!" Watching the 406 spinning and falling like a fallen leaf, the wingman cheered with great excitement.

"Well done, keep up the good work, you will become an ace sooner or later." Garland gave a thumbs up to the wingman in the cockpit, and then returned to the formation with the wingman. "All formations report the situation."

They shot down all the French fighters, and a voice said a little frustrated. "The wingman of Group 3 was shot down, but I saw him parachuting."

Garland smacked his lips, but the battlefield was like this, especially for novices, being shot down was commonplace. And they did it in 1:24, which was already a great victory. "I hope he can hold on until the ground troops arrive."