Chapter 617 Heavy Thunderstorm 5

"It's 0:30 now. The Western Front, Northern Front and Southwest Front should have started shelling!"

On the outskirts of Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, Stalin's hometown, the headquarters building of a large division-level military airport was also brightly lit at this time. Major General Alexander Yevgenyevich Golovanov, commander of the 8th Long-range Bombardment Aviation Division of the Soviet Red Air Force, was speaking in unfamiliar English to a colonel of the US Army Air Force.

The colonel had a square Slavic face and a tall build. He looked like an air force general. He is Curtis Emerson LeMay, the commander of the 305th Bomb Wing of the United States.

According to Stalin's request, beginning in April 1942, some wings of the U.S. 8th Air Force began to secretly enter the Soviet Union. By the end of May, a total of six bomber wings including the 91st, 92nd, 93rd, 100th, 303rd, and 305th were stationed.

The organization method of the American bomber wing is different from that of Germany, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union. There are not several bomber groups under one bomber wing, but functional groups under the wing, such as combat groups, ground support groups, etc. There is only one combat group under a wing. There are usually 3-5 flying squadrons under the combat group, and a squadron usually has 22-24 aircraft.

Colonel Li Mei's 305th Wing has just completed training in the United States not long ago, and its establishment is also very sufficient. There are a total of 88 B-17 bombers in 4 groups.

The 305th Wing is now stationed at this airport on the outskirts of Tbilisi. 88 B-17 Pe-8 heavy bombers belonging to the 8th Long-range Bombardment Division of the Soviet Air Force are neatly arranged on the super-large tarmac of the airport, and are ready to take off!

"We should be dispatched in one and a half hours." Colonel Li Mei took a sip of coffee and then took a puff of his cigar. "If everything goes well, we should fly to the Kirkuk oil field at 6 o'clock in the morning. ”

Comrade Stalin will certainly not forget to bomb the large oil fields of Kirkuk and Khuzestan. These two large oil fields can now produce more than 2 million tons of oil per month, all of which will be sold to the Bundeswehr Reserve and then distributed by the German High Command as needed.

If these two large oil fields were bombed, the German war machine would be paralyzed, not to mention paralyzed, and the Soviet Union would be very sure to win the war.

Therefore, Stalin used two precious bombing divisions this time, plus 6 American bomber wings. A total of 240 Pe-8s and 520 B-17s were prepared to dispatch, and there would also be an American fighter wing. The team's 72 P51s and 150 Soviet MiG-5 fighter jets served as escorts. The total scale of the attack was as high as 982 aircraft, which was almost a thousand aircraft bombing!

"Are you sure it will be blown up?" Major General Golovanov asked with some uncertainty. Although he was confident when formulating the plan, he believed that 760 bombers dropping three to four thousand tons of bombs at a time would be enough to destroy two large oil fields. However, the German Air Force has also achieved great prominence in recent years, and it seems difficult to deal with.

"It's impossible once," Li Mei said, shaking his head. "The German Air Force is difficult to deal with...especially at medium and low altitudes. The Fokker Zero and Fw-190 are very powerful, and the P-51 may not have a chance of winning."

The P-51 can deal with the Fokker Zero and Fw-190, but the P-51s deployed by the Americans to the Soviet Union are all high-altitude models equipped with Merlin 60 engines. The aerodynamics of high-altitude aircraft are different from those of mid- and low-altitude aircraft. These P-51s can play at high altitudes, but they are definitely no match for the Fokker Zero when they go down to low altitudes.

After the P-51 reached high altitude, it was not at a disadvantage against the high-altitude model of the Fw-190. The B-17 is very sturdy and has powerful self-defense firepower. As long as it is covered by the P-51, even if it is blocked by the Fw-190, it will not suffer too much loss. What really worries Li Mei is the recent appearance of the He-219. This aircraft has too much firepower and is very fast at high altitudes. Once it bites the B-17, it can bombard it with 30mm and 20mm cannons. Beaten down.

However, the Americans were still prepared to act recklessly regardless of losses - even a loss ratio of more than 20% was acceptable to Roosevelt, as long as it could destroy the German oil fields in the Middle East.

But Li Mei was still a little worried that the Soviets would not be able to bear it. He said: "Our B-17s and P-51s can fly very high and can drop bombs at an altitude of 11,000 meters. But your Pe-8 cannot fly high, meters The Ge-5 is a twin-engine aircraft and is not flexible enough..."

What he means is that if you Soviets can't bear it, don't go and just let American planes bomb it. However, Major General Golovanov misunderstood him and said that Soviet aircraft were not good. This is not acceptable.

"The MiG-5 is a good aircraft!" Major General Golovanov said confidently, "It can fly up to 680 kilometers, has a range of up to 2,800 kilometers, and can also carry 800 kilograms of bombs, and can even carry out long-distance operations alone. Bombing mission."

Le Mei nodded without comment. He knew the MiG-5 aircraft. The development of this aircraft received technical assistance from the United States. The engines used were all imported from the United States, so it was more successful than the historical MiG-5 and met all the design requirements. It was successfully put into production in early 1942. Now it is a trump card in the hands of the Soviet long-range bomber aviation. It is indeed a good aircraft. But the Germans obviously have a killer to restrain it - the mosquito killer (He-219) must also be a MiG killer...

...

"Commander, commander, the Soviets have started shelling! Our war with the Soviet Union has broken out!"

The headquarters of Rommel, the commander of the German Middle East Front, is in Kirkuk. Here and Abadan in Khuzestan are the most heavily defended places in the Middle East. The number of anti-aircraft guns is more than that of Berlin, and there are also the most advanced air search radars. Several large airports have been built nearby.

In addition, General Rommel's own headquarters and General Alexander Lehr, the commander of the 4th Air Force, are also stationed in Kirkuk and Abadan separately - watching the oil fields firmly!

When the Soviets launched the war, Rommel was sleeping soundly. He was awakened by his adjutant, and then he put on his military uniform and walked into the operations room with sleepy eyes. He found that Lieutenant General Bismarck, the chief of staff of the Middle East Front, was already there and was talking on the phone with someone.

When Lieutenant General Bismarck saw Rommel, the call had already ended. He hung up the receiver and said to Rommel: "It was General Lüll who called from Abadan. He requested to send planes to bomb the Soviet Union's Baku, Batumi and Grozny oil fields."

The Soviets wanted to bomb the Middle East, and the Germans naturally wanted to bomb the Soviet Union's Caucasus oil producing areas! Although the second Baku in the Urals has been developed, the Caucasus oil producing areas still contribute more than half of the Soviet Union's oil. If the Caucasus oil producing areas are destroyed or occupied by Germany, then the Soviet war machine will be seriously damaged.

However, it is not easy to destroy the Baku, Batumi and Grozny oil producing areas. Since the French had done it once in 1940, the Soviet Union had strengthened the air defense in that area and deployed high-performance fighters such as MiG-3 and La-3.

In addition, after the bombing of Batumi in 1940, Stalin, who realized the vulnerability of the Batumi oil city, began to transfer the refining business to the Ural Industrial Zone. With the support of a large number of refining equipment provided by the United States, the construction of the second Baku oil industrial zone progressed rapidly. According to the estimates of the German intelligence department, the Soviet Union would be able to get rid of its dependence on the Batumi oil city by the end of 1943 at the latest.

"How many planes does the 4th Air Force plan to dispatch?" Rommel walked to the map table with his hands behind his back and looked down at the situation map of the Middle East battlefield.

The situation is still good. Muscat, the last stronghold of the British in the Middle East, was also captured by the 26th Army commanded by General Alfred von Goltz not long ago. Now the route from Abadan to the Suez Canal has been opened, and the largest oil field and refinery in the Middle East (the Abadan refinery has also been repaired) can finally supply continued fuel for the German Empire's war machine.

Moreover, before the Persian Gulf channel was opened, the Abadan oil field and refinery had resumed production one after another. Now there are as many as three or four million tons of crude oil and refined oil stored in Abadan - these are fuels that were not planned by the high command, just in time to meet the needs of the Eastern Front.

"The 4th Air Force is ready to dispatch 96 Do-217s and 64 Fokker Zeros to bomb the Baku oil field; dispatch 72 Ju288s and 32 He219s to bomb the Batumi refinery."

The oil wells in the Baku oil field are scattered, so there is no dense anti-aircraft fire cover, so the Do-217 and Fokker Zero with better low-altitude performance are sent to bomb.

The facilities of the Batumi refinery are quite concentrated, and there are a large number of anti-aircraft guns around them, so the high-altitude performance of Ju288 and He219 is used to destroy it with wire-controlled gliding bombs.

"What about the navy?" Rommel asked again, "When can the Mediterranean Fleet be dispatched?"

The navies of European countries that are now on the side of Germany have formed a joint fleet, called the European Combined Fleet. Several theater fleet commands were also established under the European Combined Fleet, namely the Atlantic Fleet Command, the Baltic-Northern Fleet Command, the Mediterranean Fleet Command and the Indian Ocean Fleet Command. Under these fleet commands, there are squadrons.

Among the commanders of these four fleets, the commander of the Atlantic Fleet is concurrently served by Marshal Gunther Lütjens, the commander of the European Combined Fleet. The commander of the Baltic-Northern Fleet is also a German, now Admiral Rolf Kars. The commander of the Indian Ocean Fleet is Admiral Laborde of France. And the commander of the Mediterranean Fleet is of course Admiral Inigo Campioni of the Italian Navy.

According to the provisions of the "Blue Plan", the Mediterranean Fleet, with Italian naval ships as the main force, will enter the Black Sea through the Sea of ​​Marmara and the Dardanelles after the outbreak of the Soviet-German War, and then use naval guns to attack Batumi, a Soviet oil town on the coast of the Black Sea.