Chapter 377: Hunger Action (1)

Before that, Germany announced that it would conduct unrestricted submarine warfare in British waters, and many neutral countries announced that they would suspend flights to and from Britain.

The British colonies, of course, ignored this, especially Canada.

Canada is a traditional British colony and has a very close relationship with the British, similar to the British overseas provinces. Except for Quebec, the local residents are almost all British, and they are hardcore pro-British. During the American War of Independence, most of the American royalists fled to Canada, so Canada has a special feeling for Britain, and they believe that Canada is part of Britain.

In the original time and space, due to the bombing of Britain, a large amount of capital, factories and technicians from Britain and other European countries were transferred to Canada, and orders from Britain and the United States and other places made Canada's industry and economy grow rapidly. By the end of World War II, Canada had become the world's fourth largest industrial power dominated by heavy industry. It was precisely because of Canada's rise that Canada became the "arsenal" of the Commonwealth of Nations, transporting various weapons and materials to Britain and other places, becoming a stable rear area for the British.

In order to support Britain, Canada not only provided Britain with a large amount of supplies, but also sent millions of troops to Britain to fight side by side with the British. The Canadian army is well-trained and brave in combat, and is the backbone of the British army. In battles in North Africa, Normandy and other places, the Canadian army has always been at the forefront and performed very well. It is a tough character who can fight the German army head-on.

That night, the German version of "Operation Hunger" officially kicked off.

A large number of aircraft, minelayers, and submarines dispatched from Iceland, Norway, and Brest, France, began to lay mines in British waters.

In the flight formation that took off from Iceland, Felix, a Mosquito bomber pilot, looked out the dark window and frowned slightly. Usually they have conducted night flight training, but this operation still gave him a brand new experience. Usually, there are lights on the ground during night flight training, but now there is a dark sea under the fuselage, and there are stars in the sky.

This strange contrast gave Felix an illusion that he was flying backwards and wanted to shake the joystick to flip the fuselage 180 degrees.

In fact, this illusion is very normal. This is a typical phenomenon of loss of balance.

Just like a person who rotates rapidly in place for dozens of circles, he will definitely feel dizzy and unable to tell east, west, north and south after stopping. Although this is not an illusion, the discomfort caused by the loss of balance itself is enough to make people uncomfortable for a while.

Pilots may experience similar phenomena during the flight process, which is the flight illusion that pilots are afraid of.

The flight state perceived by the pilot is inconsistent with the actual state of the aircraft. To put it simply, the pilot feels that the aircraft is climbing, but it is actually flying level; the pilot feels that the aircraft is flying in reverse, but it is actually flying forward. What is scary is not the occurrence of these illusions, but the physical and mental torment caused by the illusion. The human body has its own "conditioned reflex", and when an illusion occurs, the corresponding response mechanism will be activated. When the tilt illusion occurs, the body will unconsciously tilt in the opposite direction to maintain the balance of the body.

Fortunately, after observing the instrument, the pilot can fully know that he is already in an illusion state. At this time, as long as the flight is carried out according to the original plan, there will be no problem. The difficulty lies in overcoming the psychological barrier. In the contest between feelings and reality, people often cannot control their first reaction, resulting in tragedies such as the plane flying directly into the sea.

In 1999, during a day and night flight in complex weather, the pilot of a certain country's aircraft had a typical inverted flight illusion. When the pilot descended from a high altitude to about 1,100 meters and flew out of the clouds, he turned his head and saw the lights scattered on the ground. For a moment, he thought he was upside down. According to the pilot's own description, he was extremely nervous at the time, sweating coldly, and every second was like a year.

Fortunately, he reported to the tower in time, and then followed the command to switch to instrument flight. In the end, the man and the plane returned safely. It took six minutes from the occurrence of the illusion to the end. The pilot said: "I am still very scared when I think about it." Everyone who has experienced the illusion of flying will say this: flying is originally a matter of getting rid of gravity and escaping the laws of nature. Pilots who have illusions will inevitably experience pain and struggles that are different from the norm. They must have a strong will to overcome panic and physical discomfort.

In many cases of flight illusion, the illusion time period can be as short as a few minutes or as long as dozens of minutes. There are also many inexplicable crashes. After all the hardware indicators have been checked and found to be normal, experts are still unable to know whether the tragedy occurred because the pilot had an illusion of flying backwards.

After holding it in for a while, Felix finally couldn't help turning his head to look at the co-pilot next to him. "Hey Eric, do you think our flight status is normal?"

"Are you having a flight illusion?" Co-pilot Eric knocked on a small instrument on the dashboard. This is a small device with a red glass tube and a blue glass tube connected together. There is liquid in it. When the plane flies normally, the liquid will remain in the blue glass tube, and when the plane flies backwards, the liquid will flow into the red glass tube.

At this time, the liquid inside is still swaying in the blue glass tube. "Our flight status is normal, how about I take over?"

"Uh, it's okay, I'm fine." Felix glanced at the small instrument and shook his head. When training at the flight academy, the instructors often emphasized that when you feel something is wrong in the sky and suspect that you have an illusion, you must stay calm and trust the instrument; because the instrument rarely fails, especially the probability of a simple small device like this having a problem is far less than the probability of a person's brain being confused.

Seeing that Felix was not too abnormal, Eric did not insist, looking out the window and muttering. "There is a big black area below, it's just like the earth has disappeared, it's really scary to look at."

Flying forward for a distance, Felix's strange feeling gradually dissipated, and suddenly the buzzer on the instrument panel sounded, which was a signal from the pilot plane.

Eric came to the bomb bay and carefully checked the parachutes on the mines.

Surface ships only need to throw mines into the sea to lay mines, but mines in the air are different; to prevent accidents, especially at night, aircraft cannot fly too close to the sea surface. When the water surface exceeds a certain height, the impact force is not much different from that of concrete ground. A mine dropped directly will either explode or its fuse will fail and turn into a stone.

Therefore, it is necessary to equip the mine with a parachute to reduce the mine's descent speed by taking advantage of the parachute's resistance in the air and ensure that the mine structure is not damaged when it enters the water.

"Start dropping bombs!"

Eric, who received the order to drop bombs, pressed the bomb wrench and watched the four big guys in the magazine fall down one by one.