1855 United States Tycoon

Chapter 619, Wolves (1)

The technology Donald said is more suitable for air combat is actually a machine gun shooting coordination device. Obviously, in the air combat between high-speed aircraft, air-to-air rockets, such a mess of accuracy, are very unreliable. This type of thing is barely enough for hitting huge and slow airships, but it is used for attack. A much smaller, much faster, and much more flexible airplane is like throwing stones and playing dragonflies, basically, it’s useless at all.

Therefore, the machine gun was the most suitable weapon in air combat. It was just that the machine gun at that time could only be installed in the back seat and fired to the side and back. It was quite inconvenient to use. Some people thought that the machine gun should be fixed on the nose, facing the front. . This setting is not only convenient, but also saves the next occupant. And it makes the airplane a lot lighter, and the lighter the airplane, the faster and more flexible it will naturally fly.

It’s just that this idea has a very difficult problem, that is, there is a set of flying propellers in front of the nose of the aircraft. If you fire directly ahead, the result must be that the own machine gun bullets smashed the own propeller, and then The own plane was planted from the sky.

With regard to the information MacDonald has obtained, the French have already begun to study how to solve this problem. Of course, the Frenchman’s method is quite simple and rude. Their method is actually to armor the propeller and let the bullets hit him. However, this kind of cheating design soon brought another problem, that is, the bullets hitting the propellers would be thrown around by the armored bullets, or even bounce back directly, and then either the pilot hung up or the engine hung up.

A few days ago, McDonald’s Infantry Weapons Company provided some technology assistance to the French to help them design a more reasonable bulletproof propeller, which can basically determine the rebound direction of the bullet at a fixed angle. In this way, the machine gun mounted on the nose can barely be used.

At that time, although this set of equipment made the forward machine gun barely usable, compared with what Donald is now preparing to sell to the Germans, the gap is quite obvious. Because this technology recommended by Donald now allows the bullets of the machine gun to shoot out of the propeller, and it will never damage the propeller. In the original history, the Germans invented this technology in 1915, and then later For a period of time, their Fokker fighters equipped with this device created a Fokker disaster for the British and French. Now MacDonald has just advanced the disaster a little bit.

In Scrooge’s plan, the British and French would first obtain a large number of attack aircraft using “airborne torpedo”, plus the French fighter technology that can barely be used. These things will occupy the sky of the battlefield. , And caused a serious threat to the Germans on the front line, and made the balance move towards the British. Then, they sold the technology of the aircraft with this device to the Germans, so that they could fight the British aircraft. The British and French planes were swept away, and then they could do another business with the British and French…So the world war is really wonderful.

The Germans are indeed very interested in the technology that allows bullets to pass through the propeller, but McDonald offered a very high price (it is said to be higher than the transfer fee of the entire plane plus the “air torpedo”. ) And insisted that only after paying a certain percentage of the deposit, they can be allowed to see the samples. Therefore, the Germans hesitated for a while, and only bought the related technology of the Sea Breeze fighter and the related technology of the “airborne torpedo”.

“When the French fighter jets are put into production, the Germans will re-negotiate the deal with us. And by that time, they won’t feel that our prices are high.” When Donald reported the German actions to Scrooge At the time, Scrooge replied.

“Is there no similar research done by the Germans?” Downer asked.

“At least not at the moment. As for the future? Who knows.” Scrooge smiled. Historically, Falkl and Heinrich Lueber, who had played a key role in this invention, were already in Macdonald. The subordinate works, and there is another one. Unfortunately, the watch expert Heinrich Lueber died in a traffic accident two years ago.

“Donald, how are the Germans doing at sea now?” Scrooge asked.

“After the German attack fleet was wiped out, Germany began to use submarines to launch attacks. In the past two months, it has sunk many British ships. The British are now starting to adopt escort formations again. The number of escort ships is limited, and it is not possible to provide escort services for all merchant ships for a while. Now it is different from the time when the attack ship was when the British domestic inventory was still large, and the scale of the war was not as large as it is now, of course. The consumption is not as large as it is now, so at that time, the British could still reduce the efficiency of the merchant ship a bit, and get together to wait for the escort warship to go together.” At this point, Donald sneered.

“But now, the situation is different. The war is so costly. Britain and France need a lot of supplies every day, much more than before, so they can no longer tolerate a merchant ship waiting for more than a week in the port with nothing to do. In order to wait until the escorted warships. Therefore, the routes are full of independent merchant ships. This of course gave the Germans a chance, so their sinking numbers have been ascending. However, the British are accelerating the production of destroyers, and their production capacity is also considerable. , And they are also buying destroyers from us and other shipyards. Uncle, if we take all the orders from the British to us, we can make a lot of money, but the good days for the Germans may soon come to an end. Because submarines have very few options when facing escorted fleets. In this way, as the number of escorted destroyers increases, the loss rate of merchant ships will drop rapidly, and this will directly reduce the impact on merchant ships. The total demand is not a good thing.”

At this point, Donald couldn’t help frowning.

“What’s more damn it is the news, Uncle, I think you may already know that the British and French have made a lot of progress in underwater listening devices, and they are even imitating bats and dolphins to develop a A device that actively emits sound waves and then locates by echo. You know, in principle, this kind of device is completely possible to succeed.”

“Yes, in fact, in large laboratories, this kind of equipment has been successful.” Scrooge said, “and it was installed on an experimental ship, and successfully tracked potential underwater submarines. The British and French. In the current situation, I must be willing to invest money in this kind of technology. In this way, I think it will not be long before this kind of thing may appear on their warships. Well, Donald, do you think we should take it? What about the contracts to build destroyers for the British and French?”

“Of course, Uncle, because even if we don’t pick it up, other people will pick it up. Rather than let the money be earned by others, it’s better to let us make it. Even, Uncle, I think the equipment in the big laboratory is performing It should be better than the one jointly developed by the British and French?” Donald asked.

“Our technology capabilities are not necessarily stronger than those of the British and French. But after all, we will conduct this research first. Under normal circumstances, our products will naturally be better.” Scrooge replied.

“Then Uncle, I think if the British and French are successful in technology, we should immediately sell this equipment to them, but this will reduce the demand for building merchant ships.”

When others have just obtained a technological breakthrough, they immediately sell more mature and cost-effective products to others. This is also a tactic used by the Macdonald consortium. Because under such circumstances, the rival’s products are mostly difficult to compete with MacDonald’s products, so it is difficult to recover the large amount of scientific research expenditures. At the same time, if any new technology wants to be perfected, it must accumulate a large amount of operating data and a large amount of improved data. If the opponent’s products are not widely used, the accumulation of these things will naturally be slow, which will make them continue to lag behind MacDonald.

In later generations, this trick is also very common. For example, the White Eagle Gang has always blocked the Chitu Kingdom, and whenever the Chitu Kingdom develops a technology that breaks through the blockade, the White Eagle Gang immediately approves the sale to the Chitu Kingdom, which is similar, but more important. As a mature thing, it will take this to combat the related scientific research of the Chitu Kingdom.

“Selling this thing to them is not a problem.” Scrooge replied, “The problem now is that we must work hard to help the German submarine force to ensure that the balance is not easily destroyed. Donald, here is an important document. , You go find Greystone, take a look at this document, and then discuss how you can provide the content of this document to the Germans without knowing it. Note that you must never let it go. Anyone, including the Germans, knows that these things are sent from us. It’s best to make the Germans feel that this kind of good method is their own thought.”

Scrooge said again, while opening a safe in the office, took out a document from it, and said to Donald.

“This is?” Donald asked suspiciously.

“This is our latest research result. It is a brand-new method of submarine warfare that will change the history of naval warfare.” Scrooge said to Donald with a smile, while showing Donald the name of the file. The name of the document Donald saw was: “Wolf Pack Tactics”.