Chapter 682: Not Enough
No sooner said than done, Hartmann had already circled around the edge of the American bomber formation and was once again approaching the American planes from the other side. The poor American fighters had just detached a dozen or so planes when Hartmann broke through their formation’s defense from another direction.
Rat-tat! Rat-tat! It was Hartmann’s signature, precise burst fire again. This time, because the distance was a little closer, he fired a long burst, letting loose a full 10 rounds of 30mm cannon shells. These rounds, as if they had eyes, almost all struck the fuselage and wings of a B-17 bomber.
The two engines on the left side of this B-17 immediately began to emit thick black smoke. Even more pitiful than its predecessor, which was losing altitude and slowing down, was that one of the cannon shells had happened to hit this plane’s flap, blowing away the huge aileron on the wing and causing the two wings of the aircraft to become uneven.
Moreover, two shells that had struck the wing root might have damaged the structural support of this huge bomber. Just a few seconds later, the wing that had been hit by the shells broke off due to air resistance. After losing a wing, the plane began to spin and fall, smoke and burning fuel spewing everywhere.
“Heavens! Fire! Fire! All defensive weapons on the bombers, free fire!” Although a B-17 had been hit earlier, the news over the radio was that the plane had only been hit with three holes and was not in immediate danger of crashing. Therefore, relying on the huge size of their aircraft, the American bomber pilots, who had somewhat underestimated the German fighters, were not too nervous. They felt that the weapons on the enemy fighters could not cause irreparable damage to their planes, so everyone was waiting for their escort fighters to crush the two buzzing German flies.
But now the situation had suddenly changed. That German plane, with one short burst, had ferociously shot down a B-17 bomber, and it was a real crash. The visual impact on everyone was huge, almost to the point of collapse.
And so, the bomber commander had shouted the previous order. He had ordered his bomber units to begin firing at will to prevent the enemy fighters from getting close to the formation. However, he had clearly overlooked one thing: the men on the bombers were not battle-hardened veterans; they could only be said to be very well-trained new recruits.
And so, at his command, the gunners on these American bombers began to drive away their inner fear in their own way. They began to furiously pour their ammunition at the target with the weapons in their hands.
Rat-tat! Rat-tat-tat-tat! Because Hartmann’s fighter had made a climbing maneuver, the gunners in the electrically-powered dorsal turrets of almost all the American bombers could see the German plane, which was still at a long distance. So, a hundred 30mm cannons were all aimed at their target, and tracer rounds swept towards the enemy’s direction like a torrential downpour.
“God! 035, you almost hit me!” a B-17 pilot cursed loudly in his headset. Before his voice had faded, another pilot was complaining that the plane in front of him had fired so fiercely it almost blew the nose off his own plane.
In fact, this was not the most frustrating problem. The most important problem was that the enemy plane, due to its high speed, was now clearly no longer within the attack range of the B-17’s twin-gun electric dorsal turret. But the American bomber group was still firing fiercely, wasting their precious defensive ammunition.
“Idiots! He’s no longer in attack range! What are you firing for? Just aim at him, follow his position! Wait until he charges in, then open fire to interfere with his attack!” an American veteran who had participated in the bombing over the North African front shouted, reminding his teammates. But unfortunately, his intercom could only connect to the soldiers in the other gun positions on his plane; it could not be used for full formation communication.
“Shut up! I can’t hear the lead plane’s orders! Hey!” The pilot in the cockpit was clearly not used to such a grand scene of a thousand guns firing at once. Although he was also an old pilot who had experienced the flames of war in North Africa, in fact, he had only flown a total of three combat missions. The most terrifying one was the bombing of Tobruk. Although they had been fiercely attacked by German ground fire, they had unexpectedly only encountered a small number of enemy aircraft attacks.
But it was clear his luck was not very good today. He had been assigned to the periphery of the bomber formation. After all, the United States rarely carried out such long-range bombing missions, so pilots like him with combat flight experience were all assigned to the more exposed positions.
Unfortunately, the only plane flying on his outer flank had just been shot down by Hartmann. Now he had to face the enemy’s attack directly. But from the movements of the German fighter with the black tulip painted on its nose, the opponent was clearly an experienced and formidable character. To have to deal with such an enemy on the periphery was simply a nightmare.
The good news was that after the enemy had made a circle, they were driven out of attack range by the friendly fighters that had rushed over. The turrets on the more distant B-17s had also finally stopped firing. Heaven only knew if it was because they saw the enemy was no longer in range, or because they had run out of ammunition.
Before he could even let out a sigh of relief at the departure of the German fighter with the black tulip on its nose, this American pilot saw the two P-40s that had chased after the enemy get caught in a beautiful loop-the-loop, their tails bitten. The attacker instantly became a lamb to the slaughter. He only saw the enemy fire fiercely, and the two new American fighters were turned into fragments in the air, exploding into a brilliant firework.
“Don’t leave the formation. The enemy has very few planes. We are very close to the target. He is using a large-caliber cannon, similar to the Zero’s, so this guy’s ammunition is not enough to shoot down many of our planes. Try to maintain the formation and use mutual cover to force him to waste his ammunition. Soon these two planes will have to return to base!” the experienced old pilot, who was also the commander of this bombing mission, shouted, reminding his comrades how to deal with this troublesome situation.
Although the Americans had maintained a large air force in the Middle East and had also participated in combat with German aircraft, large-scale air battles like this were not common. When carrying out bombing missions in a godforsaken place like Africa, if they encountered enemy aircraft interception, the mission would in most cases be temporarily canceled, so large-scale battles were rare.
In the few combat encounters they had, although the Americans had also suffered considerable losses, they were more willing to believe that these were ace pilots that Germany had deliberately sent to North Africa and did not represent the general combat level of German pilots. As for the intelligence from their British and Soviet allies, which said how skilled the German Air Force was, it was subjectively attributed by the American pilots not to the enemy being too strong, but to themselves being too weak and making excuses.
Therefore, the American pilots were not very familiar with the German pilots, especially those on the Eastern Front. And a few minutes ago, they had rather looked down on these counterparts, believing that most German pilots relied on the superior performance of their fighters, not on their own piloting skills.
But when countless pairs of eyes saw the German fighter, which was gracefully drifting back and forth in the wind like a leaf, once again charging back towards the American bomber formation, these American pilots knew they had made a mistake, a huge mistake: the overall quality of the German pilots was already very high, so high that it was terrifying.
Under the gaze of the American pilots, Hartmann made another daring flight. He dived and accelerated, approaching the periphery of the American bombers at top speed. Then, with a barrel roll, he dodged the fire from the dorsal turret of one of the bombers and directly punched five holes in the cockpit of the third B-17, turning the pilot and navigator inside into a pulp.
Without any suspense, this American bomber lost control, wobbled back and forth twice, then suddenly veered sharply to the left and plunged from the sky. In the process, this out-of-control plane also clipped the wingtip of another B-17.
All the American pilots found that their palms were starting to sweat, because they remembered this scene, as if they had seen it somewhere before. In someone’s mind, the image of a shark circling a school of fish appeared. Even with a hundred weak sea fish, they were still just food in the eyes of the shark, posing no threat at all.
What they didn’t know was that Hartmann, on his side, also felt that this kind of battle was more difficult than the previous fight for air superiority. He had fired almost half the ammunition for his 30mm cannon to achieve a confirmed kill on two B-17s. In fact, the first B-17, although damaged and returning to base, had clearly not been shot down. And the B-17 with the broken wingtip was still flying fine in the formation, with no intention of leaving.
“Damn it! These American bombers are tougher than I thought! We don’t have enough ammunition!” Hartmann complained to his wingman, the squadron leader, as he pressed the control stick, evading the two American fighters that were trying to entangle him.
“Hartmann! We can only interfere with them. Two planes could never have shot down all of them in the first place. We knew from the beginning that we didn’t have enough ammunition!” the squadron leader replied with a bitter smile as he covered Hartmann, shot down an American fighter, and then pulled up to gain altitude.
Published: 2025-09-18T11:04:17.000+00:00
Last Edited: 2026-02-21T20:05:21.000+00:00
URL: https://www.patreon.com/caleredhair/posts/mtr-c682-not-139175404
Advance chapters at Nightjar Reads · nightjarreads.com