Iron Cross

"Damn, this broken system still can't achieve positioning. Before setting off, I had a premonition that today would not be so smooth. I didn't expect the situation to be worse than I thought." The four Rolls-Royce "Merlin" engines made a low sound. In the echo, the angry voice of the navigator Harry kept roaring, as if he was about to overturn the top of the cockpit.

"Don't be like this, Harry, this is a common thing." Captain Robinson, the captain, reassured him, "It would be nice to have this system. Didn't we still fly here and bomb before there was no system? And you see, at least now Our small formation is still very neat and the formation is maintained quite well.”

"How far have we flown?" Machine gunner Karak couldn't help but ask, "I feel like it's not long since we left the base."

"There is still nearly 80% fuel. Don't worry, guys. If you still can't find the target when the fuel level is less than 50%, I will take you to fly back - trust my experience, as long as you fly across the strait, there is no positioning system I can also find a home." Robinson comforted everyone, "When the time comes, you can just throw the bomb wherever you want. Anyway, it is either a German or a German-controlled territory."

Karak couldn't help but vomit: "The Germans are smart. In the past, the light control was implemented very sloppily. We can use the city lights to achieve rough positioning. Now we look at the dark area. You can tell me that the bottom is the Atlantic Ocean." letter……"

The pilot Paul sneered: "This is not because of imitation, but because of our bombing. When they dropped bombs over London, they probably didn't expect that today would happen, right?"

In the era before GPS positioning and satellite navigation, Britain and Germany put a lot of effort into achieving accurate positioning of aircraft and introduced various systems that use radio signals to navigate. The one Harry just cursed was what the British called Gee. system, which mainly uses the principle of hyperbola to achieve positioning: when the aircraft maintains a constant distance difference from the two navigation stations, its flight trajectory is a hyperbola with the two navigation stations as the focus. If the distance between another set of navigation stations is different, the aircraft will appear on another hyperbola at the same time, and the intersection of the two hyperbolas is naturally the current position of the aircraft. During use, the aircraft navigator can use 20-85MHz pulse signals to achieve distance determination, and based on the received results, use a specially made map printed with a colored hyperbolic network to find the intersection point and achieve successful positioning. The advantage of the system is that it can achieve simultaneous positioning, that is, it can guide multiple aircraft, which is very convenient for large formation flights. The disadvantage is that there are errors affected by the curvature of the earth. The farther away from the navigation station, the greater the error. The positioning accuracy is 350 kilometers away. It descended very quickly and could only be roughly located within 10 square kilometers.

The reason for getting lost is not because the British system or principle is not good, but because the navigation stations they use are all on the British Isles, and the locations they want to go to are all in the hinterland of the European continent, and they have to fly so far to the Ruhr Industrial Area. Of course problems are bound to happen.

Due to the heavy losses of Royal Air Force crews in the summer air raids, many newcomers formed the crew after hurried training. Robinson was originally the pilot of other crews. He was promoted to captain because he had successfully carried out more than ten air raid missions. , Harry had only successfully sent out three or four missions before he was selected as the navigator of this small formation. The manning of this aircraft was relatively ideal, otherwise it would not have been selected to be the formation leader, because the other wingmen did not even have qualified navigators and were simply following the lead aircraft. Harry only knew that the higher the flying altitude, the higher the accuracy of the system, so he asked the captain to raise the flying altitude to the ceiling of Lancaster, but completely forgot that the range of the Gee system was only about 550-650 kilometers. Covers the Ruhr area but not Berlin. Now it is obvious that there is not a problem with the system, but that they have broken away from the system's maximum scope of action, but no one understands this truth, and no one can teach him now.

"Attention all units, four large enemy aircraft have entered the Berlin air defense circle in a tight formation. The current altitude is about 5,500 meters, the speed is 400 kilometers per hour, and the heading is 110 degrees..." The speaker in the command hall sounded, and everyone's attention was They all raised a level and cast their gaze on the huge aviation map. Four tight red light spots appeared on it, and some blue light spots were scattered in the distance. According to the dispatch of the command hall, it was very easy to see Soon, 8 blue light points began to surround the red light point.

"This should be the aircraft of the NJG1 wing." Kamhuber pointed to the map and explained, "The other aircraft are temporarily stationary to deal with possible emergencies."

"Is our radar always effective? Could it be a false target or false interference?"

"No." Camhuber answered firmly, "If it was interfered with, there should be a snowflake on the radar screen. No one has reported this now, which shows that the British did not interfere."

Jeshunek added: "When bombing in large formations, the British usually interfere with us. At first we were helpless, but then we adapted. These millions of signals in turn It is also guiding the flight path of the British - after all, interference does not occur out of thin air, it must be dropped by aircraft in the sky. Wherever there is interference, there are British people in that direction. "

Hoffman understood through the explanation that electronic interference is still very basic now. At most, it is to throw aluminum foil or use the same frequency radio waves to interfere with the enemy. Means such as creating false targets and blocking communications are far from appearing.

"Very good, you can command with full authority, and you don't need to ask for my opinion." Although Hoffman is also the commander-in-chief of the Air Force, he does not understand air defense operations at all, so he consciously does not interfere, just quietly watching the light spots flashing and approaching each other.

"Harry...flying like this is not a solution. How about we lower the altitude and see? Maybe we can see some reference objects from the ground." After flying for more than ten minutes, seeing that Harry still could not achieve positioning with the system, Robinson could not help it.

"Okay." Harry put down the equipment, closed the hyperbolic positioning map in his hand, and shouted through the transmitter, "Members of the formation, please pay attention, the altitude below is about to drop to 12,000 feet (about 3,600 meters), please follow closely."

"Received!"

"Received!" The huge Lancaster swung its ailerons and began to dive downwards.

"The enemy planes are starting to lower their altitude..." The guide received a call from the front-line early warning radar station and immediately began to report, "The direction remains unchanged, the speed is increased to 420 kilometers per hour, and the altitude is 5,000 meters... 4,800 meters... 3,600 meters."

As the guide reported the numbers, the marks on the light spots began to adjust in an orderly manner. The staff officers on the other side used rulers and compasses to draw tracks on the map paper, and made tense predictions about the subsequent routes of the enemy planes. In the era when there were no computers to process data, the level of manual mapping often showed the quality of the staff officers.

"This altitude is not the bombing altitude. What do the British want to do?" Kamhubel muttered. Usually, the command center was commanded by Colonel William. Today, since the head of state came to inspect in person, he took over the command without hesitation. The problem was that he was not familiar with the details, so he had to turn around and ask the colonel, "How long will it take for the enemy planes to enter the air defense position?"

"No. 7 position will meet the enemy in 5 minutes..." Colonel William consciously became a staff officer and reported information to Hoffman and others in real time. It was nothing to let General Kamhuber take over the command. It was worth everything to be able to show his face in front of the Führer. Moreover, the Führer was accompanied by Marshal Keitel, Minister Speer and other big figures who were rarely seen today. His heart was already beating "bang bang". He prayed more than once that the air defense forces would do better.

"The enemy aircraft is at an altitude of 3,600 meters, a speed of 380 kilometers per hour, a heading of 117 degrees, and the No. 7 position is ready..." Hearing this, Kamhuber waved his hand heroically, not caring that the commander of the anti-aircraft artillery position could not see such a cool action at all, and directly ordered "Fire!"