Transmigrated as the Crown Prince

Originally, Yanik planned to imitate the American B-17, but the United States had already begun to develop and test fly the B-17 a few years ago. If he drew the exact same design again, he would not be laughed at.

After thinking about it, he remembered that Germany had its own heavy bomber HE-177.

Due to limited fuel and manpower resources, the German Air Force has always been a huge tactical force. Although it is huge, it only stays at the tactical level.

And perhaps because the Stuka's performance was so outstanding, the Luftwaffe's obsession with dive bombing reached a paranoid level.

Of course, this obsession has its merits. Because of the limitations of this era, the bombing accuracy of horizontal bombing was so low that it was devastating. Even Germany, which is famous for its optical instruments, does not have a good solution for bomber targeting.

At this time, dive bombers, which could accurately destroy bridges or bunkers in one dive, became the Luftwaffe's belief.

But whether it is obsession or belief, it is a bit too much to allow a four-engine heavy bomber to also have a dive function.

Relying on their own likes and dislikes, the top brass of the German Air Force required that all bombers equipped by the German army must have dive bombing capabilities! Ernst Udet, then director of the German Aviation Technical Bureau, even believed that a bomber without dive bombing capability was not worth producing at all.

Forced by this unreasonable requirement, the He-177 bomber actually adopted a double-linkage layout-two engines are installed on one wing, but only drive one propeller, making the four-engine heavy bomber look like a Like a twin-engine medium bomber.

It is not difficult to imagine how poor the reliability of this kind of double linkage coupling engine is.

First of all, the cabin space where the dual-linkage engine is installed is very small, and the hydraulic device of the landing gear must be squeezed inside. As a result, the hydraulic oil leaking from the hydraulic device will burn as soon as it comes into contact with the hot exhaust pipe; secondly, the oil return pump If it is too large, when the flight altitude exceeds 6,000 meters, the oil will generate cavitation and foam, leading to lubrication failure; the third is the leakage of the high-pressure fuel injection pump. In addition, the engine is located too close to the fuselage and there is not enough space to install a fireproof barrier; the various electrical lines are too close together, etc., which increases the risk of engine fires in the air.

Among the eight prototypes manufactured by Heinkel, two crashed due to engine fires (He-177V4 and He-177V5 respectively); several others also often suffered from mid-air fires or engine overheating problems. Therefore, people jokingly call the He-177 "lighter in the air." This poor performance made pilots full of complaints about the aircraft, and few liked to fly it on expeditions.

Even Reich Marshal Göring had to admit that "it is nonsense to ask four-engine bombers to dive!". However, to his chagrin, Göring did not order changes to the He-177 design; the entire Luftwaffe did not show a strong need for heavy bombers. It can be seen that deep-rooted traditional thinking cannot be changed all at once.

Yannick kicked out the visionary Ernst Udet early and ordered the He-177 to adopt a separate four-engine structure similar to that of the American B-17 during design, which greatly improved the engine reliability.

Moreover, he secretly "invited" the chief designer of the British Empire's Rolls-Royce "Merlin" aero-engine a few years ago. With the joint efforts of everyone, the performance of German aero-engines has now gotten rid of the original time and space dilemma.

As for the various rare resources that limit production, they have also been greatly improved. In later generations, Poland was a world-class copper mine; Austria's tungsten mines were already being exploited; Libya's oil could enter large-scale production at any time; Romania was a great treasure, with nearly 80 types of minerals mined, including iron, manganese, copper, Uranium, gold, silver, molybdenum and more. Even Hungary, which has relatively poor natural resources, has considerable bauxite reserves, ranking third in Europe.

Coupled with the various rare metal ores imported from the Ming Dynasty and the Soviet Union over the years, although Germany's current resource reserves are not rich, at least there is no need to worry.

The engine problem was solved, and the overall performance of the bomber was greatly improved. It was deeply liked by the Air Force and has entered the mass production stage.

As mentioned before, although the battle in which German paratroopers airborne the Eben Emaar Fortress was a classic, Yannick wanted to change his attack method this time.

That is to use the remaining Grand Slam to greet the Eben Emaar Fortress.

Just after dawn, a He-177 bomber carrying a Grand Slam and four Stuka bombers flew slowly over the Eben Emaar Fortress under the cover of 12 BF109s.

It's really slow, because the Grand Slam bomb weighs ten tons, and the He-177 can't go fast even if it wants to. In order to fit this big guy in, this He-177 was specially modified. The turrets on the back and nose of the aircraft were removed, part of the armor was also dismantled, and the belly bomb bay door was cancelled. Only a huge area was recessed in the belly to hang bombs, and the bomb rack was specially reinforced.

Not only the aircraft, this Grand Slam also underwent special modifications.

You must know that bombers have many problems when bombing at high altitudes. It stands to reason that when a bomber drops a bomb, due to inertia, the bomb has the same forward instantaneous speed as the bomber, so the trajectory of the dropped bomb is like a horizontal throwing motion, which is the so-called parabola.

But the fact is that there are various influencing factors in this process, such as the state of the carrier aircraft, the impact of the vibration of the aircraft on the initial state of the bomb, the effect of the wind during the flight of the bomb, etc. The trajectory of the bomb's descent is definitely not a complete parabola. A slight deviation can lead to a thousand miles. After the bomb fell from an altitude of several thousand meters, it was unknown where it went.

Therefore, before the advent of advanced computer-assisted systems and guided bombs in later generations, carpet bombing was used to increase the hit rate. It looked like it was almost close to the target, and a bomb was dropped at a certain distance, and a large area of ​​the target area was blindly bombed, turning over the entire land in the target area like farmland.

However, a big bomb like the Grand Slam cannot be used for carpet bombing, so German engineers installed a control system on the big bomb so that the bomb can change its flight attitude in the air.

This was not Yannick's idea. German engineers in the original space and time had already been studying precision-guided weapon systems and developed two "smart bombs", "Fritz X" and "HS293". The "Fritz-X" missile body is equipped with a FuG-203 "Kyle" III/FuG-230b "Strasbourg" type guidance assembly and has a unique gyroscope to stabilize the heading. During combat, the carrier aircraft controls the electromagnetic drive surface installed on the tail through radio, and the hit rate on a circular target with a radius of 30 meters is more than 90%.

"Close to target, prepare to drop bombs!"

The accompanying Stuka roared down and blew up the four anti-aircraft machine guns of the Eben Emaar Fortress.

In the He-177 cabin, bombardier Daniel put his eyes on the eyepiece of the bomb sight, stared closely at the target below, stepped on the target into the bomb release reference point, and pulled the wrench hard.

"bomb!"