Munitions Empire

"Hurry! Hurry! Move faster!" clutching his parachute, a pilot sprinted forward while urging the ground crew following him.

The young members of the ground crew held bright orange life jackets and fuel sticks that could burn intensely as they ran towards their planes.

As they ran, they donned their gear with the base's alarm blaring shrilly; all the duty pilots were already preparing to strike.

On the runway, one plane after another was being fueled, with ground crew members running back and forth with hoses.

Special vehicles laden with ammunition for the bombers trembled as they drove past the planes being prepped, as ground crew awkwardly removed 500-kilogram aerial bombs from their racks.

Technicians constantly checked the condition of their aircraft; all instruments had to function normally, and engines had to be in good working order to carry out bombing missions.

Shouts were everywhere, people used hand signals to pass messages, and the first planes prepped were being pushed to the long takeoff runway.

The Stuka Dive Bombers were ready—though their range was not as far as the Flying Fortress and they had smaller payloads, they had one advantage: precision!

In an age without missiles, how to accurately drop bombs on the enemy's head from high altitude was always a topic, a tough one that made countless engineers scratch their heads.

To solve this, dive bombers were introduced, minimizing the bombing distance, lowering the altitude, and aiming at the target with the nose of the plane—the dive bomber was the most accurate air-to-ground attack solution of its era.

The same was true for naval combat! Dive bombers could drop bombs as close as possible to warships, with a precision that was noticeably higher than that of the Flying Fortress.

However, this time, the Flying Fortress would also participate in the attack, these massive planes were to launch an attack in a rare, desperate manner against the enemy.

"Let the Stuka Dive Bombers attack first! If they cripple the enemy fleet, our low-level bombing can proceed more easily!" an officer under the wings of the Flying Fortress stressed the discipline of this bombing run to all the participating pilots.

The tactic they were adopting was insane, reliant solely on the enemy's lack of serious anti-aircraft firepower.

"All flying altitudes are set at 1,000 meters! Keep formation! If the enemy has anti-aircraft weapons firing, do not make evasive maneuvers!" he said, demonstrating with gestures and repeatedly stressing the importance of maintaining formation.

Carpet bombing, covering the enemy fleet with a rain of bombs, might be an insane early aerial naval combat tactic.

After finishing his briefing, the officer also comforted the somewhat anxious pilots, "Theoretically, the enemy doesn't have powerful anti-air weapons! The Maxim gun is the best they can find!"

You see, the Flying Fortress was not designed for low-altitude bombing; such tactics certainly ensured coverage efficiency but also meant significant risks for these large aircraft.

"Bomb from a high altitude! Destroy those warships with carpet bombing! We only have one chance to attack! I don't want to waste any of them!" the officer continued to emphasize, as night would fall after their raid, preventing any further strikes against the fleet.

Elsewhere, the ground crew technicians were explaining survival techniques to the navigators and other aircrew: "If you get shot down, try to crash your plane in a secure location! The sea surface is very smooth, your planes can float for ten minutes!"

In fact, during the past tens of days, the factories on Dragon Island had manufactured many thoughtful small devices for planes involved in naval operations.

These devices had only recently been made and, though regularly mentioned in training, the staff tirelessly repeated how to use this new equipment for this large-scale combat mission.

"Pay attention here! This is an inflatable lifeboat! Next to it! There's a cylinder! See this valve on top? It can help you inflate the lifeboat quickly!" a ground crew member holding a compressed gas cylinder raised it up, and the instructor pointed to the valve on top, shouting to everyone.

"Be careful with the sequence! Don't mess it up! Open the lifeboat's restraining straps first, then inflate! If you inflate first, the straps are likely to tear the lifeboat!" Another staffer raised a lifeboat, roughly the size of an explosives pack, and pointed to the criss-crossed straps, saying,

He kept miming the action of unfastening the straps before turning the valve on the inflation bottle, "If you follow the sequence correctly, the lifeboat will open! Then you can wait for search and rescue at sea! If you don't complete the inflation steps for the lifeboat, you'll be soaking in the water! Got it?"

"Our patrol planes will be nearby all the time! Navy search vessels will also arrive quickly! You can light your fuel sticks when you hear the sound of the ships or see them coming!" alongside the instructor, a female ground crew member shook her bright orange sticks in her hands, adding to the explanation.

Containing elements like magnesium, this substance could burn swiftly, emitting a dazzling light and thick smoke, making it a perfect marker for signaling one's location.

After finishing, she pointed to the whistle hanging on the life vest over her shoulder, "Every soldier has a whistle on their shoulder! When you come across search and rescue vessels or aircraft, you can blow this whistle to increase the probability of being found!"

"Hey! Beautiful, can aircraft really hear the sound of a whistle?" one pilot called out with a wry smile on his face, expressing skepticism about the seemingly useless device.

"Otherwise, do you have a better idea? We've already used every method we can think of! Your best bet is not to get shot down! Do you understand? Do not get shot down!" The robust female ground crew member, not exactly pretty, looked at him and answered his doubt.

"The Flying Fortress has a very sturdy frame! Typically, Maxim machine guns won't be able to shoot you down easily! Pay attention to your altitude! Follow the plane in front of you! That's it!" Seeing that the pilots had dispersed, the leading ground crew officer began his final summary.

He clapped his hands, "Theoretically, the enemy has no anti-aircraft weapons! So all you need to do is drop bombs!"

"The Stuka Dive Bombers will launch the first strike, destroying the enemy warships' air defenses! By then, their warships should already be up in thick smoke, catching fire and exploding. Nobody will attack you! It's actually quite safe!" Having said that, he gestured to disband, and the crewmembers huddled around him ran towards their respective planes.

Watching the Flying Fortress briefing, a Stuka pilot, while climbing into the cockpit, complained to the ground crew helping him, "Damn it, those Flying Fortress pilots have lifeboats and inflatable bottles. What do we have? This lousy vest?"

"At least this thing can scare away sharks, it's orange. I've heard sharks don't like this color," the ground crew member helped him put on his hat, trying to reassure him.

The pilot was not convinced, "Nonsense, disguise ourselves as swimming carrots and then pray that sharks don't have a taste for vegetables? Cut it out, who came up with this idea?"

In this world, since there are no carrots, those long orange root vegetables were thus called red radishes…

The ground crew member laughed and patted the pilot on the shoulder, "Heh-heh-heh-heh! If you are afraid of dying, fly back here, bomb our enemies into the sea, and let them feed the sharks!" After finishing, he turned to help the machine gun operator, or perhaps the navigator, behind him.

"Right! Let them feed the sharks!" The navigator echoed loudly with a laugh.

"Hahaha!" The pilot also started to laugh.

On another Stuka plane nearby, the pilot had already pressed the transmit button and loudly tested, "Radio check!"

The voice from the tower came through clear and distinct, "Radio check complete! Communication normal! The channel is very clean!"

The pilot was also very satisfied with the signal, "I can hear you! Command tower, command tower, the signal is very clear!"

Since the plane could trail a very long communications antenna on its back, and because the interference was relatively weaker in the sky, the aircraft's radio communication was actually much less disturbed than that of the Tank Troops.

From the tower, permission to take off was transmitted, "You are cleared for takeoff! Pay attention to the radio navigation signals."

"Understood!" The pilot adjusted the plane, aligning it with the runway. The engine roared laboriously into life, and the propeller, spinning rapidly, vanished from the pilot's view.

"The lead Flying Fortress is at your 3 o'clock!" At the same time as this plane shot off the runway and left the ground, the reminder from the tower reached the pilot's headset.

"Climb! I'm in front of you!" The lead plane was already waiting in the air, "Climb, climb! Begin formation!"

"What a joke, do we have fighter escorts?" The Stuka pilot muttered as he climbed, spotting the formations of Butcher Fighters in the sky. Stay tuned with My Virtual Library Empire

"They're not escort fighters; they're on attack missions like you guys, just responsible for cover," the navigator behind him explained.

"Cover?" the pilot mumbled in surprise, not believing these fighters had any offensive capabilities against naval targets.

"Yes, cover!" The navigator affirmed with a nod, not caring that the pilot couldn't see him.

"Hope they don't get in the way then," the pilot gave up on questioning and controlled the plane to catch up with the lead aircraft. A dark mass of Stuka Dive Bombers surged towards the distant horizon of the sea.