Chapter 621 Heavy Thunderstorm IX
With the arrival of daylight on June 1, 1942, fierce air battles unfolded across the thousands of kilometers of front lines.
The Soviet Red Air Force launched a large-scale air strike, not only attacking the Kirkuk oil fields in Iraq and the Paladin oil fields in Iran, but also launching large-scale air strikes against targets in Poland, the Baltics, Lithuania, Western Ukraine, East Prussia, Romania and Finland.
And facing these Soviet planes in the air was the 6th Air Force commanded by the German Air Force's tough general Hans Jeschonnek. As early as March 1942, the 6th Air Force, which was under the command of the German Eastern Front Headquarters, was greatly strengthened. As of mid-May, the number of commonly used aircraft owned by the air force reached an unprecedented 3,300, accounting for nearly one-third of the total number of commonly used aircraft owned by the German Air Force and Naval Aviation (more than 10,000)! Among them, the number of commonly used fighters with excellent performance, such as Fw-190, Bf-109, He-219 and Fokker Zero, exceeded 2,000.
By the end of May, the air forces of Finland, Romania, Croatia and Hungary (the German monarchy did not have independent naval and air forces, and the defense forces only had land forces), as well as the volunteer air forces sent by the two neutral countries of Sweden and the Netherlands, were also under the command of the 6th Air Force. At this time, the number of advanced (1940s level) common aircraft owned by the 6th Air Force had reached 4,500, of which 2,500 were fighters.
However, compared with the 12,000 common aircraft deployed by the Soviet Union in the Northern Front, Western Front and Southwestern Front, Jeshunnek's 4,500 aircraft were still too few.
And Jeshunnek, who had a relatively small capital, had no way to compete with the Soviets for air supremacy on the entire front. As a last resort, he could only divide his defense zone into two air superiority zones and one air guerrilla zone.
One of the two air superiority zones is the Baltic Air Superiority Zone, which includes the area near the Finnish capital Helsinki, the Baltic States, Lithuania and East Prussia. About half of the fighters under the 6th Air Force are deployed on airports in these areas. In order to avoid being destroyed by a sudden attack by the Soviet Air Force, all these fighters were deployed at airfields far from the Soviet border. Since both the Fokker Zero and He-219 have a long range, and the Fw-190 has a decent range after adding auxiliary fuel tanks, fighters deployed in depth can still engage in air combat on the front line.
The other air superiority zone is the Central Air Superiority Zone, which includes central Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Bohemia and other regions. The remaining fighters of the 6th Air Force are deployed in this area, and the principle of deep deployment is also adopted.
As for the air guerrilla zone, it is Poland, Western Ukraine, and northeastern Romania. In these areas, all the airfields have only fake targets and basically no real aircraft. But this does not mean that Jeshunnek handed over the air supremacy in these areas. In fact, Jeshunnek's goal is to use these areas temporarily controlled by the German army as a battlefield to consume the manpower of Soviet pilots. In these areas, the fighters of the German 4th Air Force are not defenders, but hunters. Under the guidance of ground radar stations, they attack the Soviet bomber groups that have penetrated. Try to destroy Soviet planes over German-controlled land as much as possible - this means that for every plane shot down, the Soviet Red Air Force loses an excellent pilot.
This set of tactics to eliminate pilots is the most commonly used by the German Air Force in this time and space over the English Channel and the North Sea. The Royal Air Force was crippled by this set of tactics. At first, they had good pilots but no good planes. Now they have good planes but no excellent pilots.
And now, the same fate is about to befall Soviet pilots!
"Erich, listen to me, kid, don't get entangled with the Yak-1 later. This kind of aircraft has good low-altitude performance. Let the Fokker Zero deal with it. Our target is the Soviet Il-2, Pei-2 or SB bomber, understand?"
Lieutenant Hermann Graf, who was flying a well-performing Fw-190 fighter at an altitude of 5,000 meters, was talking to his wingman pilot Erich Hartmann through the radio. Erich Hartmann is only 20 years old this year. He was still in high school when the war broke out in 1939. He joined the German Air Force half a year later. Today is his first time on the battlefield.
Hermann Graf was already a glorious Nazi German fighter pilot at this time. Although he did not participate in the Battle of Poland, he participated in most of the subsequent battles, from the skies over France to the North African desert, and also participated in the bombing of the British mainland (not many people have participated in it), and his combat experience is very rich. However, Graf's record of hundreds of combat missions is a big goose egg, without any victory!
Most of his contemporary fighter pilots who are still serving in the German Air Force/Navy Aviation have more than 10 achievements, and at least 30% of them have won the Blue Max Medal and become eye-catching figures.
And Graf... is also quite famous. He is the holder of the "no shooting" record of German Air Force/Navy Aviation fighter pilots! He did not fire a single shot in 21 consecutive attacks throughout the entire Western Front campaign. As a result, his superiors thought his skills were too poor and sent him back to the pilot school for re-education. The instructor who taught him how to fly a plane turned out to be his classmate when he first joined the Karlsruhe Air Force Academy.
Because he had kept a record of "no shooting" for 21 consecutive battles, and the subsequent combat missions were often "missed", Graf, an old bird with rich "experience in avoiding battles", became the "old hen" of his 52nd Fighter Regiment, responsible for taking rookie pilots to the sky to experience the atmosphere of the battlefield - anyway, it was very safe to follow him, the probability of encountering enemy aircraft was very small, and most of the time they would not fight...
"Lieutenant Graf, enemy aircraft were spotted ahead!"
At this time, the voice of another lead pilot in Graf's detachment (4-aircraft detachment), Flight Sergeant Steinbarz, sounded from Lieutenant Graf's headset.
"At 9 o'clock, at an altitude of about 4,000 meters, there are about 20... Oh, they found us! About 8 planes flew towards us!"
Graf's detachment encountered 12 Il-2s and 8 Yak-1s, which were ordered to bomb a ring fortress held by the Polish Defense Forces. Because of the active withdrawal of the German Air Force, most of Poland's air supremacy now belongs to the Soviet Red Air Force.
After successfully bombing several airports in Poland and destroying thousands of "model aircraft" on the ground. Major General Kobetz, commander of the Soviet Western Front, believed that Germany's air force was basically suppressed on the Polish battlefield. So he ordered the start of the second phase of the air strike mission, sending a large number of Il-2 attack aircraft under the escort of Yak-1 fighters to attack the ground targets of the Polish Defense Forces. Because the targets to be attacked are relatively scattered and not large in scale. Therefore, the fleet dispatched is relatively small, with a scale of more than ten or twenty aircraft.
The experienced German Air Force staff had long anticipated this situation. They themselves fought in the Polish battlefield, the Western Front battlefield, the North African battlefield, the North Sea battlefield, the English Channel battlefield, and the Atlantic battlefield. So the German Air Force took out their old method, the high-low matching tactics of the double squadron.
To put it simply, 4 Fw-190 or Bf-109 formed a "high-altitude (actually medium-high altitude) squadron", and 4 Fokker Zeros formed a "low-altitude squadron". Two squads coordinated to attack, the high-altitude squadron was responsible for the high altitude, and they would leave after one strike, while the low-altitude squadron would hover and fight below. The British, who had fought the Germans for many years, also adopted the same tactics. Now they used Spitfires and low-altitude Mustangs (P51) to cooperate.
However, although the Soviet Red Air Force also knew that there was such a way of fighting, they believed that using 8 aircraft separately would disperse the forces. It would be better to concentrate 8 aircraft to kill one of the squadrons first, and then fight the other one.
So now the 8 Yak-1 fighters bravely rushed towards the 4 Fw-190A-4 fighters!
"It's the Yak-1, be careful not to be entangled by them, and run away after hitting them!" Lieutenant Graf didn't want to fight with this Soviet aircraft with superior combat performance. He just wanted to use the powerful firepower of the Fw-190A-4 to shoot down an Il-2 safely, but now there was no way, and he had to fight.
He was now driving a long-range combat model of the Fw-190A-4, which had two MG17 machine guns, two MGFF cannons and two MG151 cannons, which were enough to shoot down relatively solid enemy aircraft. Moreover, the speed of this Fw-190A-4 was also very fast, and it could fly up to 670 kilometers per hour with the W50 afterburner system. This was almost 100 kilometers per hour faster than the Soviet Yak-1, so Lieutenant Graf quickly bit the butt of a Yak-1, but at the same time, there was also a Yak-1 following behind him.
However, Lieutenant Graf did not choose to dodge, but wanted to kill the Yak-1 in front first. But just after he pressed the firing button, the two machine guns and four cannons did not respond. Only then did he notice that he, the old bird, actually opened fire after releasing the safety. And at this moment, he found a string of tracer bullets passing by the canopy! This was the Yak-1 behind firing!
"Damn it!" Graf noticed that the tracer bullets were very close to him! This was not a good sign. At this moment, he suddenly heard an explosion from behind, but there was nothing wrong with his plane. He looked back and saw that the Yak-1 was falling with flames.
"Second Lieutenant, I shot down an enemy plane. It was easy to shoot. Now it's your turn." The cheerful voice of Erich Hartmann, a rookie who had just entered the battlefield today, came from Graf's headphones.