Chapter 145: Aerial Refueling Aircraft
Regarding the 29th Army’s combat deployment in response to the Japanese Army’s constant provocations of the bottom line, Zhou Wenhua had already collected the intelligence he wanted to know from his own informants deployed within the 29th Route Army, and it was basically the same as the trajectory of the original spacetime.
“The battle at Lugou Bridge and the battle at Nanyuan, then let the pilots I’ve been cultivating these past few years conduct the first battle support operation! Maybe the effect will be good! It’s also time to test the accumulation of actual combat experience for these rookie pilots!”
After reading the telegram, Zhou Wenhua immediately made up his mind and said.
So he then immediately had a coded telegram sent out by the cloned communications soldiers under him.
Soon,
at a secret airport somewhere in Qinghai,
one after another B-17 bomber, B-29 bomber, German Army’s Me-264 bomber, and Ju-390 long-range strategic bomber, British Army’s “Lancaster” bomber, “Halifax” bomber, and Soviet Army’s Il-4 bomber were stationed here, and they were also equipped with a batch of FW-190 fighter jets for escort operations.
As well as airplanes for aerial refueling,
The number of these long-range bombers was not large, all of them were test products from Zhou Wenhua’s research team, and all the various types of long-range bombers in this airport added together were only 8 aircraft,
However, the FW-190 fighter jet had been successfully researched and developed and could be produced in relatively large quantities, but due to the system settings of Zhou Wenhua himself, the number of fighter jets he personally owned that could conduct attack operations could not exceed 120, so the number here could only be produced to around 50.
Of course, there was still inventory,
Although he could not deploy more than 120 fighter jets at once, he could sell them to certain small countries that needed these airplanes as a munitions merchant’s money-making channel.
It was also considered a highly profitable industry and one of Zhou Wenhua’s major sources of income.
Originally Zhou Wenhua wanted to use JU88 bombers, but to avoid being immediately recognized by the Japanese Army as German Army airplanes, and since he also had no airport deployed around Beiping, he did not use JU88 bombers.
He could only use long-range bombers,
Of course, what Zhou Wenhua wanted to fully solve recently was that propeller-era airplanes were not as fast as fifth-generation fighter jets of later generations, so how to achieve aerial refueling?
The earliest aerial refueling was conducted between two DH-4B biplanes of the US Army in the airspace above Rockwell Airport in San Diego, where the tanker pilot threw down the fuel hose by hand, and the receiver pilot maneuvered the airplane to avoid the propeller and manually caught it to complete the connection. After refueling, these two DH-4B biplanes were also able to test fly continuously for nearly 40 hours, thus opening the prelude to aerial refueling technology.
And on one day in July 1921, in the United States Homeland, member of the flying circus E. Maye organized the first aerial stunt refueling, pilot Frank Hawks flew an SJ-1 biplane, while Il Maye had a can of gasoline strapped to his back and stood on the upper part of the wing. When this airplane rendezvoused with the “Jenny” flown by pilot Il Dofati, Maye walked onto the wing of the “Jenny” airplane and poured the gasoline into the fuel tank.
And the earliest developer of practical aerial refueling technology was the “Aerial Refueling Company” created by British long-range flight pioneer Sir Alan Cobham, and up to today’s Cobham Company, it is still a well-known brand company in the field of flying boom also known as “probe-and-drogue” hose aerial refueling.
And the later US military’s air strike bombing to retaliate against the Japanese Army’s bombing of Pearl Harbor also used B-25 bombers taking off from an aircraft carrier, performing aerial refueling over Hawaii, before flying to the Japanese Homeland for the world-shocking air strike bombing.
However, by the late 1940s, the British Homeland had already pioneered the development of a method consisting of a 22-meter to 30-meter hose and a conical funnel, where during refueling, the pilot only needed to insert the receiver’s front refueling port into the conical funnel to achieve aerial refueling.
By 1949, the US Air Force had modified a B-29 bomber, namely the KB-29 aerial tanker. In the experiment, the KB-29 bomber performed aerial refueling for the B-50 strategic bomber “Lucky Lady II”, achieving the first non-stop global flight, with 4 KB-29M tankers performing 4 aerial refuelings along the way, which was also sensational at the time.
After World War II, tankers received unprecedented emphasis and development. By 1948, the United States had purchased the complete set of aerial refueling technology from the United Kingdom and developed, for example, the KB-29 converted from the B-29 bomber and the KB-50 converted from the B-50 bomber as aerial tankers,
And by the mid-to-late 1950s, the United States began developing rigid pipe refueling technology, and by the late 1950s, rigid pipe refueling technology was applied on the KC-135.
And around this period’s time points, the United Kingdom developed heavy bombers modified into “Lancaster”, “Lincoln”, “Valiant”, and “Victor” tankers, while the US Air Force also developed several large dedicated aerial tankers such as KB-29M, KB-50, KC-97, and KC-135, which had large fuel loads and long ranges, and could refuel multiple airplanes in one sortie.
British tankers all used hose systems, while American ones mixed hose and Boeing-developed flying boom rigid pole refueling methods.
So at this moment, Zhou Wenhua had already prepared to develop the KC-97L with jet engines in the future, because it could safely perform aerial refueling for the two large jet bombers B-47 and B-52.
But now, he first prepared to research and produce heavy bombers modified into “Lancaster”, “Lincoln”, “Valiant”, and “Victor” tankers, as well as several large dedicated aerial tankers such as KB-29M, KB-50, KC-97, and KC-135, to conduct aerial refueling.
And currently, he only had 13 “Lincoln” and “Victor” tankers.
So he still needed to work hard.
