My German Empire - Chapter 37:

After discussing the other performance data of the tank in detail, Wilhelm went on to talk about aircrafts.

“Although the Treaty of Versailles restricts us from owning aircraft, I can guarantee that we will restore the air force before 1935. So I need new aircraft, specifically new fighters, attack aircraft, and bombers.”

According to the treaty, the German Army can only retain 7 divisions and cannot exceed 100,000 people. There were more than 2 million soldiers who died on the front lines in World War I, but now they can only have an army of 100,000 people. And the German Army can’t have tanks, heavy artillery, or even heavy machine guns! In this way, the German army left is equivalent to only a police force, and even foreign defense has become a problem.

As for the navy, the German navy cannot exceed 15,000 people, and there are no submarines, aircraft carriers, and battleships. The German fleet was pulled to the British naval anchorage, sank and destroyed. As for the air force, they are not allowed to possess even a single plane. The Allies wish that Germany can fly nothing but kites.

But the Germans were very smart. Although the agreement restricted Germany from producing machine guns, they invented the world’s first general-purpose machine gun. The bipod one was a light machine gun and the tripod one was a heavy machine gun. If they were not allowed to have a tank, they made it secretly. Aren’t the Allies limiting the number of their army? let all the veterans become policemen and spies. If there is war, they can immediately pull up a force of hundreds of thousands. Not allowed to have an air force? set up an aviation club, use civil gliders to secretly reserve aviation talents.

“The fighter has only one mission, and that is to shoot down the enemy aircraft and gain air superiority. I need this fighter to have excellent climb performance, whether it is a stable climb function at an elevation angle of 20 to 30 degrees, or to use speed after diving. The function of instant climb should be above average. At the same time, it must have excellent diving performance, and the structural strength that allows it to pull up at extremely high speeds without breaking the wing. Simply put, what I want is a high altitude high-speed fighter that can dive down quickly and perform ‘hit and run’.”

“This kind of fighter needs retractable landing gear, openable canopy, automatic flaps, lower wing, etc.” Speaking of the cockpit, when I used to play War Thunder, I always felt that the fw190 should have a “water drop” cockpit.

The characteristic of this “drop” canopy is that it can provide a 360-degree unobstructed view, and there is almost no deformation of the scenery from the inside.

Although he didn’t know if the German technicians could solve this technical problem, he still drew this “drop” cockpit cover. In this way, the shape of the “improved” fw190 fighter was drawn on the blackboard by him. Finally, simply mark the data of each part. “The fighter is equipped with six machine guns in the early stage, and later upgraded to 12.7mm or 20mm cannons, which can also be combined appropriately. The maximum flight speed must reach at least 600 kilometers per hour.”

As soon as he said this, everyone was too embarrassed to speak. After all, the British “cockfighting” fighters in service in the previous two years only had a speed of 250 kilometers per hour. Now Wilhelm’s requirement of 600 kilometers per hour is a bit difficult.

Wilhelm also saw everyone’s reaction and smiled. “I don’t want everyone to develop it right away. Just like the tank, everyone has five years of development time. I think it should be enough.” The original space-time bf109 was tendered by the Luftwaffe in 1934. The design of Messerschmitt, the chief designer of the Bavarian Aircraft Factory, was developed in only one and a half years. Although the bf109 is skipped and the fw190 is developed directly, five years of time plus the design plan given by him should be enough for successful development, right?

Sure enough, after hearing the deadline given by Wilhelm, everyone’s expressions finally relaxed, and they nodded.

As for BF109, Wilhelm did not know what to do.

The Bf-109 fighter is the first German military aircraft to have a practical cantilevered monoplane and retractable landing gear. It adopts more straight-line modification in appearance, and reasonable selection of high-strength thin aluminum plates and precision die-casting parts in structure, reflecting the advanced level of German industrial technology at that time.

It was not only the fighter that shot down the most enemy aircraft in World War II, it was also the symbol of the Luftwaffe in World War II and the cradle of the Luftwaffe’s trump card. Marceiu, the ace pilot known as the “Star of Africa”, flew the Bf-109F “Yellow 14” plane and created a record of shooting down 12 enemy aircraft in one day; Germany’s number one ace, Major Hartmann, also used the Bf-109K for a long time. He personally shot down 352 enemy aircraft, creating an absolute record of air combat in the history of human warfare.

But the shortcomings of this aircraft are also obvious. First, its single-wing beam design is very backward, which directly leads to the BF109 being a conservative and backward aircraft from birth. The structural strength brought by the single wing beam is insufficient, resulting that the landing gear can only be installed at the root of the wing. The distance between the landing gears is too small, making take-off and landing more difficult, and the high-lift nose obstructs the forward vision, making the Bf-109 very skill demanding when taking off and landing, which makes many new pilots very uncomfortable. According to statistics, 10% of the damaged Bf 109 were caused by take-off and landing accidents.

Because of the limited room for improvement, the later Bf-109 did enter a dead end. The German engineers were forced to increase the weight of the body while continuously increasing the firepower and speed, and the weight of the body forced them to continue to increase the engine horsepower and body structure. As a result, the weight increased, resulting in an extreme model, the BF-109K4 (but even so, the K4 still had the climbing performance and firepower that can compete with all opponents. For an old model from the 1930s, this is not easy).

Various reasons such as this made Wilhelm hesitate to approach Bf-109.