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Is Li Xiaofeng's generous speech effective? It can only be said that it has a certain effect. The project to introduce the B17 was temporarily preserved, but the first batch of signed orders were greatly cut, and the orders were cut from the initial intention of 100 orders to 50. As for the full domestication plan behind it, it has been temporarily shelved. According to the resolution of the Military Commission meeting, whether it will be domesticated depends on the reflection of the troops after the B17 is equipped. ○

While reducing the number of B17 purchases, the fast bomber designed by Tupolev, which had just obtained the SB-2 code, was purchased in large quantities. The General Equipment Department placed an order of 300 aircraft at one time, and this was the first batch, and there was a second batch of third batches later. If it weren't for the limited industrial capacity, Voroshilov would have been willing to come to a thousand aircraft at once.

Not only did they purchase SB-2s in large quantities, but even the Pe-1 dive bombers that were still in the prototype manufacturing stage were ordered 100 at once. To be honest, Li Xiaofeng thought this was too crazy. Who knew what the performance of the Pe-1 was, and even whether it could complete the test flight, so he gave an order of 100 aircraft. Damn, Trotsky was still crying and was losing his fortune in a blink of an eye.

So what kind of dive bomber is the PE-1? From the nose, it is very traditional, but the rear half of the fuselage is as thin as a telephone pole, and at first glance it looks like a dragonfly. In short, it is an ugly aircraft. At least when Li Xiaofeng saw the PE-1 on the drawing board, it was hard to believe that it was a dive bomber. On the contrary, it was more like a traditional single-engine horizontal bomber.

Judging from the wind tunnel blowing results, the PE-1 has a faster speed. When using a 960-horsepower 12ycrs engine, the maximum speed can reach 430 kilometers per hour. However, it should also be seen that the PE-1 armor protection is a bit fragile, with an empty weight of only 2.7 tons and a maximum ammunition load of only 500 kilograms. This is a naval ship-based model that strengthens the structure. In a word, the land-based model is as thin as a piece of paper.

In short, this is a "fast bomber" that can increase speed and reduce structural weight as much as possible. It has to be said that in this day, the speed-up is still very popular in the upper layer of the Red Air Force. For example, the SB-2, and the Pe-1 on the drawing board are all bombers with faster speeds than fighter jets at that time.

Probably, the senior Red Army leaders believed that the best way to avoid bombers being shot down is to fly faster than fighter jets, so that the enemy could not catch up. To be honest, this design idea made Li Xiaofeng speechless. What is the use of flying fast but not completing the basic mission? For example, this pe-1 has a good speed. But it is hard to say what the dive bombing capability is. In any case, in Li Xiaofeng's opinion, the thin fuselage will most likely fall apart when it is pulled up after the dive is pulled.

However, Petlyakov was very confident in the shortest-line structure of the reverse thread interwoven in his design. He believed that this structure was light and sturdy, and was very suitable for the dive bomber model.

Of course, later test flights also proved this point. The structure of the pe-1 did not have any problems, at least it would not fall apart as a certain immortal imagined. However, the prediction of a certain immortal was also partially realized. The dive performance of this very fast dive bomber is indeed not very good. It is difficult to modify it after entering dive, and the dive speed is a bit too fast. For those novice pilots who have just started to use it, if there is a slight operation error, they will fall into tail spin, or fail to modify it and crash into the ground.

Moreover, the biggest problem with the PE-1 is that the dive performance is not ideal (the problem does not exist with experienced people), but that the landing performance of this guy is very bad. His minimum landing speed is as high as more than 200 kilometers, and the gliding angle when landing is relatively large. It is vividly said that it seems to be hit on the ground. The pilot who drove the PE-1 later vividly gave the PE-1 a name - Tiao Jue Bee.

It is also this point that the death penalty for the Pe-1 as a naval carrier-based aircraft is a test of landing on the undulating deck. Adding a bounce attribute will really make you die.

After HNA tested the PE-1 on the aircraft carrier several times, it flatly announced that it would refuse to accept such aircraft that danced during landings, but instead purchased a batch of SBD-1 emergency response. At the same time, HNA immediately focused on the Su-1 multi-purpose bomber designed by another famous aircraft designer Sukhoi.

Speaking of this Su-1 multi-purpose bomber, we have to mention the I-14 project that competes with the I-16 mentioned before. This project is fully responsible for Sukhoi, which was code-named Ant-31. At that time, Sukhoi was planning to build an all-around fighter with the high speed of a monoplane, the hovering nature of a biplane, and the super firepower of a ground attack aircraft.

However, Sukhoi's design is exactly the same as saying, he knows everything at all and is not good at anything. Yi-14 is just such a thing, but he was naturally killed by the scheming Polykapov and lost his armor.

However, although Sukhoi failed, the design of his all-around fighter attracted Li Xiaofeng's attention. It was not that a certain immortal was preparing to build a "fighter bomber", but that he felt that the multipurpose in Sukhoi's imagination was still meaningful. Especially for carrier-based aircraft, it was of considerable significance.

Why do you say that? It’s very simple. The space on the aircraft carrier is limited, both on the deck and hangar, which restricts the maximum number of carrier-based aircraft. Originally, the aircraft carrier had a small capacity, and due to different mission constraints, it had to be loaded with several different aircraft models. For example, fighter jets, torpedo bombers, horizontal bombers, dive bombers and reconnaissance aircraft.

Even after the 1930s, various naval powers have integrated horizontal bombers, torpedo bombers and reconnaissance aircraft, allowing the newly developed torpedo aircraft to have the above three capabilities, greatly simplifying the operation of aircraft on the aircraft carrier deck. However, it must be seen that an aircraft carrier must operate at least three models of aircraft at the same time - fighter jets, dive bombers and torpedo aircraft.

With the maximum carrying capacity of one aircraft carrier of 100 aircraft, each aircraft model has only about 30 aircraft. This determines that the combat effectiveness of a single aircraft carrier or even two aircraft carriers is very limited. A full-deck attack is launched at most. A single aircraft carrier is at most sixty or seventy aircraft used for attack. If the escort fighter jets are removed, there are almost not many fighter jets left that "pawn" for the aircraft carrier formation. Moreover, the requirements for deck dispatchers and air crew members at the same time are quite high. If you don't do it well, you will make mistakes.

If the functions of dive bombers and torpedoes can be combined into one, it is beneficial to create an all-around maritime attack aircraft, whether it is simplifying logistics or optimizing the attack wave structure. In fact, the Navy also has this idea, such as the British Barracuda and Japan's meteor modification, both are dual-function fighters with torpedo attack and dive bombing capabilities.

According to Li Xiaofeng's idea, the scale of the Soviet aircraft carrier was not large at all. In the future, it can be predicted that it would be six fleet aircraft carriers, with a total carrying capacity of only 600. It is really unpaid to build several single-function attack aircraft at the same time, so it is necessary to develop multi-function attack aircraft.

So what are the difficulties in developing multifunctional attack aircraft? It is very simple. Torpedo bombers/horizontal bombers/reconnaissance aircraft require excellent low-altitude performance and large range, and are generally three-person configurations, while dive bombers require solid fuselage structure and excellent dive performance.

Think about it, to make a fighter aircraft have good performance at low altitudes and can hang aerial torpedo weighing almost one ton. It also requires a solid body and can be uncomfortable with high overloads caused by diving and pulling, and it also has to have a certain speed not too slow. In the end, three crew members have to be installed. To achieve all this, there is a basic premise, that is, the engine must be powerful!

Judging from the experience of Barracuda and Meteor modification, there is no engine with 1,600 horsepower, so don’t even think about making a multi-function fighter. So did the Soviet Union have such a high-power engine at this time? It is obvious that there is no one. At this time, the domestic M-25 of the Soviet Union was far from the original Wright R-1825, and the power of the first 100 horsepower was reduced by about 100 horsepower. The imported 12y series has just begun to be domestically produced, and from a historical perspective, it took time for Krimov to get the 12y series. The original M-100 series liquid-cooled engine also had the problem of reliability and power loss.

In other words, the most powerful engine in the Soviet Union at this time was the m-25, and that was 740 horsepower, which was far from the actual requirement of 1,600 horsepower, and it could be said that there was no drama at all.

This is also the fundamental reason why Sukhoi's multi-purpose fighter is unpopular. There is no engine used, and multi-purpose is just a beautiful joke!

So why did Li Xiaofeng make up this joke? The reason is very simple. Li Xiaofeng thinks that the engine problem is not that there is no solution. Of course, this is not that someone is preparing to purchase a batch of high-power engines from the treasure pot to cheat, and someone has no idea. Instead, he thinks that everyone's thinking has entered a misunderstanding. A single engine with a power of more than 1,600 horsepower was really not available in 1935, but 1,600 horsepower can be completely shared by two engines! Who said that only a single-engine aircraft can be used on an aircraft carrier?

Judging from the experience of using carrier-based aircraft in the United States, the later US Navy welcomed twin-engine fighters, believing that twin-engine fighters are more reliable. The United States even created a three-seater, three-engine hybrid freak carrier-based aircraft like the A-2.

In this case, why do carrier-based attack aircraft have to guard the pit of single-mover attack?

It is true that the dual-engine attack aircraft is more expensive and larger, but the single-engine TBD, TBF/TBM and TBY wingspan are not small in length and height. By comparing it with the double-engine Pe-2 at that time, you can find that the tbf/tbm is not much smaller than the PE-2. Even the PE-2 is much shorter than the tbf/tbm.

This means that twin-engine "dive bombers" like the Pe-2 can be used on aircraft carriers. If optimized design is carried out, two 960-horsepower 12ycrs engines, which are about the same size as the Pe-2, can completely replace torpedoes and dive bombers (even for the Pe-2, they can also play guest roles as high-altitude high-speed fighters and night fighters).

So after discovering that Petlyakov's design deviated from his requirements from the beginning, Li Xiaofeng could only choose a substitute, that is, let Sukhoi launch a full-metal structure all-round attack aircraft as a substitute.

However, what Li Xiaofeng did not expect was that his actions unintentionally led to the birth of three new fighter jets. The first is the natural and full-function Su-1. The second is the super panacea that Petlyakov discovered that his PE-1 was abandoned. He developed anger and found the scene to regain the scene's super panacea Pe-2. And the RO-1 torpedo machine developed by the "Italian" designer Roberto Bartini as mentioned earlier.

Let’s not mention the PE-2 for now. Let’s talk about Roberto Bartini’s RO-1 torpedo aircraft. According to the initial design requirements, the RO-1 should be a single-engine carrier-based torpedo bomber. However, during the design process, Bartini suffered from the Soviet engines. Whether it is the m-22 and m-25 star air-cooled engines or the domestic m-100 series liquid-cooled engines based on the 12y series, it cannot meet his needs.

After some calculations, Bartini found that if the existing engine is used, the developed torpedo aircraft will become a slow big stupid bird, with a maximum flight speed of more than 350 kilometers per hour. Moreover, the range will be very limited (no more than 800 kilometers), which will not meet the Navy's needs for torpedo/reconnaissance aircraft at all. In short, this will be a very mediocre or even bad aircraft (look at the US TBD, that product is the lesson of the past).

At that time, Bartini thought of many ways, such as reducing a crew (the torpedo aircraft generally has three members, pilots, navigators/buzzers, radios/back-seat gunners), and reducing a "cumbersome" radio can save about 100 kilograms of weight, but at the same time it will greatly increase the working intensity of the pilots/buzzers. Moreover, if one person is reduced, the improvement of flight performance is relatively limited, and it will not meet the requirements of the navy.

Bartini, who was trapped in a conflict, had no choice. After thinking about it, he came to a conclusion: before there was no higher-powered engine, the only way to solve the problem was to use two engines.

At that time, Bartini secretly began the design of a twin-engine carrier-based torpedo bomber. After adding an engine, although the body size became larger and the price soared, the performance finally met the demand.

Even in the semi-underground design work, Bartini had an idea. Since he had used a dual-engine design and the design was much less difficult, why not a full-function bomber integrating dive bombing, low-altitude torpedo attack and medium-high-altitude horizontal bombing?

Bartini, who had "opened his brains" just wanted to do it, completely threw the rules and regulations that had previously bound him aside, and created a "full-function" bomber with similar performance as Sukhoi.

So at the end of 1936, when three double-engine multi-purpose fighter jets with similar shapes were placed in front of the heads and minds of the Air Force and HNA, things became very interesting at one time. The big guys, including Alqueznis, had the idea of ​​strangling these three designers. Fortunately, the focus of the designs of these three people was different, resulting in the performance not being completely consistent. Otherwise, with Trotsky's urinary nature, Alqueznis and Li Xiaofeng would have been given a counter-revolutionary hat that cost valuable resources and funds.

For example, Petlyakov's Pet-2 gave his mentor Zhukovsky a face. This thing can be a dive bomber or a high-altitude interceptor, or it can be turned into a long-range escort fighter, night fighter and reconnaissance aircraft. In short, this is a panacea. However, unlike in history, this time and space Pe-2 appears on the battlefield as the original high-altitude high-speed fighter, and escorts for long-range bombers such as B17, Pe-8 and Yer-2 is the most mission it does.

As for Sukhoi's Su-1, after canceling the folding device and reducing one crew, it was widely served in the Navy Air Force Land Force and the Air Force Frontline Air Force, and accumulated more than 10,000 aircraft, making it the most widely used bomber of the Red Red Army after the Il-2.

Bartini's RO-2 was more outstanding in its overall performance (the single-engine RO-1 torpedo aircraft produced dozens of them, acting as a carrier trainer) boarded the aircraft carrier deck, becoming a real full-function bomber, and achieved good results in World War II.

However, it is a bit too early to say this for the time being. Before 1937, these advanced fighter jets could not enter people's sight. In May 1935, the Red Air Force had to use the tb-1 and tb-3 with poor performance to complete ground attack missions, and the actual effect of these two bombers was very unsatisfactory. So much so that the Air Force had to find a temporary solution, such as adding a lower wing mount to the I-16 fighter, or temporarily adding a 7.62mm machine gun to the nose to serve as an attack aircraft.

Fortunately, the Japanese aviation and air defense forces were one level lower than those of the Red Air Force, and the air supremacy on the battlefield could basically be controlled by the Red Army, so this temporary dodgy did not cause too much loss.

After entering late May, as the Japanese 23rd Division was completely divided and surrounded, the 8th and 19th Division failed to resolve the siege for the second time, the situation on the battlefield was very unfavorable to the Japanese. In this case, the Japanese began to play tricks again, trying to slow down the army.

"The Imperial Government of the Great Japanese Empire believes that the military conflict that occurred in the Haraha River Basin is an absolute tragedy. This armed conflict is entirely caused by misunderstandings and accidents... I think the two governments should try their best to maintain restraint and prevent the scale of the conflict from further expanding... and should try to use diplomatic means and negotiations to resolve differences... Here, I call on the Soviet government that the two sides will immediately cease to fight, and it is best to disengage from contact immediately..."

Li Xiaofeng smiled at Yakov and said sarcastically: "Hirota Hirota (the then Japanese Foreign Minister) regarded us as idiots, thinking that such a childish slowdown strategy could fool us!"

Yakov also smiled and said, "Don't say that some people in our People's Committee and the Politburo are just idiots, and they actually responded to the Japanese's delaying plan very naively. For example, Kamenev, this idiot applauded Hirota Hirota, and he almost said that he would do it immediately!" (The novel "The Heavenly Soldiers in 1917" will have more fresh content on the official WeChat platform, and there is also a 100% lottery gift for everyone! Open WeChat now, click the "+" sign in the upper right to "Add Friends", search for the official account "qdread" and follow it, hurry up!) (To be continued, please search Piaotianwen, the novel is better and faster!

ps: Bow to thank Prince Chu, hzwangdd and comrade Juventus!
Chapter completed!