() After New Year's Day in 1944, the "Reverse Cross", which had just completed its expansion, welcomed its first batch of new students. Actually, it is not particularly appropriate to call them "new students". Not all of these students had just left the aviation school.

Brand new rookies, most of them are veteran pilots who came to learn from other wings fighting on the front line.

Most of this group of pilots are from Europe, and they will mainly conduct safari and ground attack training; there are also some fighter and bomber pilots coming from the South Pacific, and the fighter pilots among them will mainly conduct safari training, while

Bomber pilots will mainly be trained to attack moving targets on the ground or on the sea.

Many of these pilots came to the "Reverse Cross" for the second time, such as P-38 pilot Arthur. Arthur was a German-American. After joining the war, he had been dealing with Germans and Italians in North Africa.

After the Italians withdrew from the Axis and joined the Allies, there was no business in North Africa, and the P-38 was not easy to use on the European continent - the P-38's cockpit was missing.

There is no heating device. In the high altitudes of Europe, where the temperature is higher and the temperature is lower, pilots on missions often get frostbite or even suffer from unconsciousness due to freezing. Arthur is particularly afraid of the cold, and once he was on a reconnaissance mission.

During that time, he fainted from the cold and almost had a plane crash. And he was not used to flying other types of aircraft, so he was transferred to the South Pacific.

When he arrived in the South Pacific, he found that he often had to perform a job that he rarely did before - ground-to-sea attacks. In order to master this new skill, he was sent to the "Reverse Cross" again.

"Arthur, what is the training of 'Reverse Cross' like? Are the instructors good?" asked a newbie named Tosca in the dormitory of "Reverse Cross".

"What is the training of the 'Reverse Cross' like? It's basically constant abuse. You are tortured until you think you are the biggest idiot in the world, and then you can graduate. And after you graduate and go to the battlefield, you

You will find that your opponents often make stupider mistakes than you."

"Then were you severely abused back then?"

"I am a special case. I have an innate aura for dodges, and my dodges are always just right. This was shown when I first entered the 'Reverse Cross'. I was the number one rookie pilot at the time.

The only one who lasted more than one minute in the confrontation with Commander Ron. Commander Ron praised Uncle Ben at that time and said that I was the most promising among this group of pilots to survive until the end of the war..."

"Arthur," Tosca interrupted Clausewitz's boast, "you are so outstanding, how come you haven't single-handedly shot down an enemy plane yet?"

"What nonsense are you talking about? I shot down 4 of them together! And, until now, has any guy actually hit me with even one bullet?" Arthur still looked arrogant.

"Come on, Arthur!" A guy who came to visit said this, "Don't lie to the rookie. The four of you shot down together were all trying to steal other people's cabbage."

"What nonsense are you talking about? It's obviously someone who robbed me of my cabbage." Arthur retorted, turning his head to see who was making such rude remarks.

"Ah? It's you!" Arthur said, "John, I heard that you were transferred to the 'Reverse Cross' as an instructor?"

"Yes!" John J. Wall from the Mediterranean said, "I heard that an old teammate came here to study, so I came here to visit him."

"I understand, you're just here to show off?" Arthur said with envy, "Brother, for the sake of the many life-saving skills I taught you back then, why don't you also give me a hand and move forward?

Would you like to recommend me to a friend? If nothing else, isn't the 'Reverse Cross' currently training on how to attack the ground? This will definitely involve how to avoid ground fire. Is there anyone better than me in this aspect?"

"Stop bragging. As far as I know, there is a guy named Yoselin in the heavy bomber force who is better than you! He has flown a big guy like the B-24 on more than a hundred missions to bomb German targets, several times.

Facing the German interception, people

There isn't even a bullet hole on the wing of my aircraft. That's a heavy bomber! But your evasion skills are really good. I'm afraid the students will learn everything from you. By then, although the enemy won't be able to hit him, he won't be able to touch him either.

To the enemy!" John continued to sarcastically attack Arthur.

"That guy is just a bit lucky. Compared with the 'Memphis Beauty', what does it mean?"

…

The learning process for new students learning ground-to-sea attacks is actually very similar to the process of learning air combat. The first training subject is target identification. All students are issued two thick target identification manuals. The manuals are made of coated paper.

Color printing, extremely beautiful. Commonly seen in the first edition

Pictures of our own and enemy ships from various perspectives, as well as various data on enemy ships, especially data related to their anti-aircraft firepower configuration. However, the data in this area is also the most confusing. The war has been going on for so long, and our warships

They are constantly being modified, and the anti-aircraft firepower is even more modified.

The key point is to install it. It is no different now than at the beginning of the war. At that time, everyone underestimated the power of air strikes, so the anti-aircraft firepower of most warships was average. For example, the German battleship Bismarck actually

It's so weird that it has to be pulled like a bolt-action rifle.

It had a manual 37mm anti-aircraft gun that could only fire one round for air defense. As a result, this powerful warship encountered several Swordfish torpedo aircraft that were far behind the times in technology and had a top speed of only 225 kilometers.

These masters were paralyzed by the machine. In the end, they were watched by onlookers and buried in the sea.

After learning such a series of lessons, the number of anti-aircraft guns on the ships of the major powers participating in the war began to increase crazily. Battleships, cruisers and other large ships with more than 10,000 tons were all filled up wherever there was space.

Various anti-aircraft guns look like hedgehogs from a distance. And destroyers and other little guys with more than a thousand tons are also increasing the number of anti-aircraft guns as much as possible, even if they have to pay for it, the center of gravity will increase, and the navigation

The price of performance degradation is not hesitant.

And the anti-aircraft guns themselves are constantly changing. In addition, due to the urgency of the war, many warships have to wait for a break before they can return to port for modification. Therefore, even warships of the same model often have different configurations of their anti-aircraft firepower. Even the same warship,

The situation last month and this month are different. Therefore, in this identification manual, their descriptions are full of words like "maybe" and "maybe".

As for the second book, there are pictures and descriptions of various local ground targets, such as various vehicles, artillery, tanks and armored vehicles.

The pilots must memorize all these things within a week, at least the things related to the strategic direction of their unit. So, on the way to the canteen, during the spare time of daily training, there are hand-held

The guy who recited the pamphlet. Seeing this scene, Ron smiled unconsciously.

"General, what are you laughing at?" Scott asked.

"Ah, I remembered some things from the past." Ron said seriously, "When I was studying in the past, every time there was an exam, there would be a lot of things to memorize. So at that time, I was furious in my heart.

I made a wish that one day, when it is my turn to test others, I must memorize more content and memorize them to death!"

…

In fact, recitation and the like are just trivial matters. The subsequent identification training is the really difficult stuff. The identification training is the same as the previous identification training for enemy aircraft. It uses a movie to display various targets on the screen.

for students to identify.

The identification of targets at sea is easy to say, it just adds some interference from some climatic conditions. Clouds, light, but after all, the sea is unobstructed, so the difficulty is not particularly great. But the identification of ground targets is really difficult.

It's not that difficult anymore.

In line with the principle of step-by-step, at the beginning, the students were exposed to directly exposed convoys, armored clusters, etc. in the classroom. They were also allowed to play it repeatedly several times so that the students could clearly see what was inside. But soon

, the difficulty begins to rise. The video is only played once and the target appears for a short time. After the video is played, the students are asked to answer.

The driving speed of the convoy, as well as how many anti-aircraft guns are in the convoy, where they are located, and what type they are. The guy who answers the worst condition will naturally be punished. He usually goes to help in the cafeteria, and then stands in a row in the cafeteria to watch other students eat.

, and was also observed by other students, and then after everyone had finished eating, they had to wash the dishes before eating.

To be honest, this kind of punishment is much gentler than the education of fists, kicks and whips in the Japanese army or police. But the effect is not necessarily bad, for those pilots who enter the "reverse cross" study

, it is definitely not a glorious thing to be the laughingstock of teammates. As a result, many students even claimed that class is more tiring than fighting. During fighting, at least they can desert while flying into dangerous airspace. And it is not necessarily possible to fight.

You can see all of these with the same requirements.

But this level of difficulty was not the end. Soon, the students’ nightmare—the hidden target appeared.

In a large classroom, the movie screen showed this clip, which was obviously shot on an airplane:

A dense forest was approaching from below at a very high speed and then quickly moved away. Then in the middle of the forest, a monorail appeared, followed by a small station, with a military train parked beside the platform, and then the clip ended

, and then the lights in the classroom came on.

The teaching assistant handed out paper and pen to each student. On the paper was a map near the small station that just appeared.

"The military column you just saw is the target. Now I give you 3 minutes to mark on the map the enemy's anti-aircraft firepower you discovered in the clip just now!" the instructor gave instructions.

"There are two carriages on the military column, six quadruple 20-gun guns, and then..." Tosca bit the end of his pencil, "Damn it, I have to watch people eat again today!" He turned his head and glanced at his seat.

Arthur over there took a look and saw Arthur writing furiously, "Arthur, this guy can eat normally again at noon."

…

During lunch time, Tosca stood obediently against the wall in the cafeteria, watching everyone eat. Arthur also stood beside him with a look of disgrace.

"Arthur, do you have any anti-aircraft guns that you haven't discovered yet?" Tosca asked since the punishment was not to prohibit them from talking while they were eating.
Chapter completed!