Chapter 734: A Thorn in the Side

Flying has always been a human dream, and the people closest to this dream are undoubtedly fighter pilots. Why not the pilots of other aircraft? The reason is simple—if simply pulling a control stick smoothly from the driver’s seat counts as flying, would so many people still yearn for the sky?

Therefore, only flying freely in the sky, relying on one’s own control, is humanity’s true dream. To push and pull one’s own control stick, to use the rudder pedals to change the aircraft’s attitude, to avoid the unseen, dangerous undercurrents, to turn the rules laid down by God into one’s own wings—all of this is the charm of flight.

Watching Hartmann fly a plane in the sky is a very pleasant thing. This young man always uses dazzling flight maneuvers to challenge humanity’s understanding and perception of flight. Watching him shoot down an opponent’s plane is a pleasing process. You find yourself keeping time with his turns and rolls, right up until he tears the enemy fighter into pieces in the sky.

Compared to the duels between modern air forces, the aerial combat of the Second World War was more of a spectacle. In more professional terms, it was a dogfight between fighter planes. The two warring sides used the rules of aerodynamics, leveraging the best performance of their own fighters to lure or confine the opponent into a combat area where their own aircraft excelled. Circling, rolling, climbing, and diving to finally shoot down the opponent—for those with overflowing male hormones, there was probably nothing more exciting.

Hartmann’s squadron leader was at this moment flying his own plane high in the sky. His head was tilted, looking down at a brilliant dogfight. Hartmann’s Ta-152, with its black tulip paint scheme, almost a household name among Soviet Air Force pilots on the Eastern Front, had already gotten on the tail of the enemy fighter. Its wings wobbled back and forth, as if guessing the direction the opponent would try to break.

There was a relationship of showing off, comparing, and competing within the German Air Force. Therefore, every squadron, every wing, and even every air corps was competing in the quantity and quality of their ace pilots. Because of this, it was very common in the frontline combat units of the German Air Force to let a comrade have a kill. For example, a pilot who had shot down four enemy planes would soon be covered by his teammates to complete his fifth kill record and be promoted to an ace pilot.

By the same token, if someone’s kill count reached 49, his teammates would intentionally yield the 50th enemy plane to him, allowing him to achieve a quantitative leap. Of course, this situation mostly happened when approaching a round number, but there were some exceptions.

For example, the contenders for the throne of the number one ace pilot in Germany, and even the world, would often have their kill records padded by their own units. Hartmann’s current kill count exceeded 170, while a miraculous pilot in North Africa named Marseille, who had become famous later, already had a record approaching 130. Between him and Hartmann were 13 other German ace pilots. The total number of planes shot down by these 15 men was about the same as the total number of fighter planes that had participated in the entire French campaign.

“I bet he’s going to break to the right to shake me. Five Imperial Gold Marks!” Hartmann’s voice came through the headset, his tone teasing, sounding very relaxed. At this moment, his voice was like that of a big boy, still a little immature and full of spirit. If one didn’t know that this air combat ace had already shot down 171 fighter planes, one would really think he was just a kid from next door.

“Don’t even try! I’m not betting on such a sure loss,” the squadron leader said, watching the Soviet P-40 fighter turn to the right, exactly as Hartmann had predicted. He chuckled and then continued, “How did you know he was going to turn right? Tell me.”

Hartmann opened fire on the Soviet plane’s flight path in advance, firing ten rounds of 20mm cannon shells. The enemy fighter, as if it had had enough of life, adjusted its angle and flew right into the shells. In an instant, the entire plane caught fire and exploded, disintegrating into countless fragments in the air.

Only then did he answer, “This Soviet pilot flies well, but he has a bad habit. Every time he’s about to turn to one side, he’ll make a feint to the other. Last time, because I was trying to follow him, I was half a beat too slow to catch up to this move. This time, I just made a prediction of my own.”

“…” For this kind of monster, who could make such an accurate judgment just by catching an opponent’s unintentional little movement once, only silence could be the response. In the face of the huge psychological pressure of a life-or-death situation under the guns of the black tulip-painted fighter, many Soviet pilots would become nervous. This nervousness caused them to expose many small movements in front of Hartmann, and these small movements ultimately led to them being shot down even faster.

Watching the Soviet fighter explode in the sky, the pilot unable to even open his parachute. In the face of the German Air Force’s terrifying large-caliber cannons, small fighters could only rely on agile evasion and attrition of ammunition to turn their disadvantage around. But in terms of the destructive power of a single shell, the large-caliber aerial cannons, specially prepared to deal with large bombers, could be described as terrifying when it came to destroying small fighters.

This was also one of the reasons why the German Air Force was most criticized by its counterparts in various enemy countries. Because they were equipped with large-caliber cannons, there was generally little chance of bailing out after being shot down by the German Air Force. Of course, while loudly cursing the Germans for being shameless, without realizing it, Britain’s newest Meteor jet fighter also used large-caliber aerial cannons on its nose to deal with the German bombers that might appear in the skies over Iceland.

Generals Kesselring and Dick had indeed proposed a plan to bomb Iceland, because the British military facilities on the island were becoming more and more numerous and threatening. This place could be used as a forward base for attacking and influencing the British mainland, and also as a buffer zone, which caused great trouble for the German Atlantic Wall.

It was precisely because of this forward base that large-scale anti-Chamberlain demonstrations had broken out in northern Britain. And the British main fleet, which was gradually concentrating, also had a larger room for maneuver. With this depth, and with the cover of land-based aircraft, it was impossible for the German carrier fleet to participate in the blockade of Iceland any longer.

In addition, in fact, another main reason was that there were finally some targets on Iceland that were worth attacking for the German Air Force. A few months ago, there was only a small military base here, and it was clearly not worth the cost to attack it with long-range strategic bombers. But now that a radar station, an airfield, and barracks had been built here, its value had immediately become different.

Therefore, whether it was Admiral Raeder and the carrier fleet commander Admiral Lütjens on the navy side, or Kesselring and Dick on the air force side, or even General Leeb, the commander of C Army Group stationed in the British homeland, all these generals believed that strategic bombers should be used to carry out high-intensity, continuous bombing of Iceland to break the last of the British resistance.

However, Akado was still a little undecided, because the submarine force commander, Dönitz, felt that with more and more new types of submarines, the German submarine force had the ability to strangle any effort by the Allies to strengthen their troop reserves in Iceland. “Maintaining Iceland’s consumption requires resupply. Once the wolf packs formed by the new submarines cut off the supply lines, Iceland can at best only maintain the status quo.”

And another reason that made Akado undecided was still the fundamental problem of the lack of fighter escort. The range of the new Ta-152 fighter was not sufficient for the needs of flying to Iceland to kill and burn, and the range of the older Fw-190D fighter was even shorter. So if “Butcher” bombers were to be used to fly to Iceland, the only option was to use naval fighter escort.

But what was worrying was that the navy’s Fw-190 fighters were only the air-cooled model, and their performance had also declined slightly after the structure was strengthened. They were more than enough to deal with the Allied naval carrier-based aircraft, but in a high-altitude environment, against the P-40 improved version equipped with Rolls-Royce engines and the even more terrifying Meteor jet fighter, they were a bit out of their league.

This led to a problem: these naval fighters had insufficient high-altitude escort performance and could not cope with the new Allied fighters in the skies over Iceland. The escort mission was beyond the capabilities of the naval fighters, and the “Butcher” bombers could only carry out the bombing mission without escort. This method, similar to the one used by the United States in the early stages of bombing Germany in another timeline, was essentially a war of attrition.

To use the loss of a large number of bombers to wear down the enemy’s war potential, to put it bluntly, was like in a real-time strategy game, where you rely on having more barracks, mass-produce troops, and throw them at the enemy’s forces to tear down their buildings. It was a shameless tactic with no aesthetic appeal but very high attack efficiency.

But Akado felt that it was an unwise thing to trade precious airmen for a war of attrition with the British Air Force on Iceland. After all, Iceland was not the Allied production base. Even if they could trade a large amount of Allied resources there, they could not truly strike at the enemy’s production chain. In the end, they would only fall into the rhythm of “trading losses for losses,” which Germany was most unwilling to see.

So Akado was subjectively more inclined to believe Dönitz’s words, and therefore had made some shifts in production. At least starting two months ago, the German army had accelerated the speed of submarine production, and because of this, the production of four new destroyers had been reduced. According to Dönitz’s plan, in the next few days of this month, five new types of U-boats would be launched. After a brief inspection, they would head to the designated sea area to form a new wolf pack with Prien’s new U-47, to try a larger-scale attack on the shipping lanes between Iceland and the United States.

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