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After thinking about the situation for a while, I decided to do nothing. They were clearly not going to shoot me immediately, and I never heard any accusations of treason, although there were hints of it in the words of the investigators, but who cares about hints in a case like this? Anyway, I decided to use the time I had gained to think about my future plans, in case I did get out of here.
Back when I was running with Ignatov through the woods and fields near Uman, I decided that this world needed Space. That's right, with a capital letter. It is the only way I know of, if not to prevent, at least to delay the death of the local civilization, to turn it away from the path of self-destruction that dozens of other worlds, including, unfortunately, my Sixth Republic, have passed before it.
Now, of course, it's too early to talk about it. People on Earth have found a fascinating thing to do – World War II, but it is always war that gives a powerful boost to technology, and it would be absurd to miss such an opportunity.
Can I push the development of the very field of science and engineering that will take people into space in the future? I think so. Of course, we are not talking about any direct transfer of alien miracle devices, but I have other options. In some foreseeable future, I will undoubtedly be harnessing the high-tech materials and products at my disposal, to provide a powerful scientific breakthrough, but I will do so no sooner than I am confident that I am in complete control of the situation. Neither Comrade Stalin nor Roosevelt and Churchill will receive any extraterrestrial artifacts, at least as long as they are the ones in charge of the relevant parts of the planet.
Nevertheless, I will help the Soviet Union. I originally chose this country as having the largest territory on Earth, as well as the richest natural and human resources. In addition, the USSR was able to rise to a level of industrialization that is quite decent by local standards. It was not ruled by an amorphous democratic mechanism, but by a totalitarian regime, which was not very efficient economically, but it was fine-tuned. Now, however, another important factor has been added to all of these considerations: people. Not human resources, but living people, with whom I went into battle, defending their homeland and gradually beginning to treat it as my own.
Okay, let's skip the lyricism. So, what does mankind need at this stage to get closer to reaching outer space? The answer is obvious – everything related to jet propulsion and rocket technology. Ideally, I should have consulted the historical experience of my Sixth Republic, but the computers of the escape pod and the satellites had no information on that period of technological development, and I've never been interested in pre-space-age weapons and technology, so I'll have to use local knowledge.
Let's go. What do we have here and now? I opened the search interface and dug into the Satellite Network databases. The country sampling showed me a widespread and comprehensive primitivity in the field I was looking for, which, however, was quite normal for this level of development.
The USSR, unfortunately, was far from being at the forefront of rocket science, although there was some progress here as well. It is worth remembering, for example, the BM-13 division, which dropped rockets on the German motorized battalion and thus saved my platoon near Uman. But that's not all. The Soviet Union was also working on turbojet engines, but with the outbreak of war all this work was curtailed. True, back in 1933, just the year Hitler came to power, the Reactive Scientific Research Institute was founded in Moscow by order of the Revolutionary Military Council, which was renamed NII-3 in 1937.
This institution brought together a variety of people, but undoubted talents were found among them. The institute was engaged in the creation of solid and liquid fuel engines and rockets, and, of course, primarily developed for the army. In addition to the aforementioned rockets, the third department of the Institute dealt with cruise missiles.
From this point on, I became noticeably more interested. The first flight of the 212 missile took place in early 1939, and a month and a half later the tests were repeated. Surprisingly, the cruise missile even had its own control unit based on a gyroscopic automatic stabilizer, and it had a range of 80 kilometers. The missile could deliver a warhead weighing up to 30 kilograms to that distance. It is not much, and the accuracy, despite the gyroscopes, left much to be desired, but the development was certainly promising, and I was surprised that the research stopped there.
The reason came out pretty quickly. The chief designer of the 212 missile Sergei Pavlovich Korolev was arrested in the summer of 1938, as well as many other employees of NII-3. The missile was brought to testing without him, and then, apparently, the old developments had run out, the team, considerably thinned, was unable to move forward without Korolev's ideas.
The designer was accused of sabotage and participation in a Trotskyist organization. His colleagues from the institute became, as usual, witnesses and denunciators. Korolev went through Butyr prison in Moscow, a transit point in Novocherkassk, and in April 1939, just a month and a half after the second test flight of the cruise missile he developed, the designer found himself at the Kolyma gold mine in Maldyak.
After numerous misadventures and a serious illness, Korolev was transported back to Moscow, where his case was reviewed. A new trial was held in 1940. The designer was sentenced to eight years in prison and placed in the NKVD special prison, where Korolev, along with another prisoner, Andrei Nikolaevich Tupolev, worked on the development of the Tu-2 and Pe-2, the same plane in which I conducted aerial reconnaissance and bomber escorts.
I took note of this story and decided to come back to it later. Cruise missiles, of course, are a very serious thing, but no one would let me in on such developments – I was not yet good enough. First I had to prove my competence on something simpler and yet in demand at the moment.
The next object of my interest was Germany. Here the developments were noticeably brisker. Back in the early summer of 1939 the Heinkel He-176 jet made its maiden flight, and just a month earlier, on September 1, 1941, the Messerschmitt Me-163 rocket-powered interceptor aircraft made its first flight. The flying characteristics of these machines, to put it bluntly, were not too impressive. What can you do in eight minutes in the air? And there was simply not enough fuel for more. But right now at the plants of Messerschmitt, a prototype of the experimental fighter Me-262 with two BMW-003 turbojet engines was being prepared for testing. The Germans were still a long way from series production, but in a year or so they could expect to get a very serious aircraft capable of raising a lot of unpleasant questions for the Reich's enemies.
This is very promising, but again, too complicated to begin with. Let's keep looking. In addition to airplanes the Germans did not forget about jet projectiles. They developed their six-barreled Nebelwerfer back in the early thirties. It was originally designed to fire smoke and chemical shells, but in the realities of World War II only high-explosive shells were used. Structurally, the German projectiles differed in the way they stabilized in flight, but the Germans did not invent anything particularly breakthrough for this era, and their system was generally inferior to the Russian Katyusha rocket launcher, even though it had a higher shot grouping. For me, the Nebelwerfer is obviously useless. Let's put it aside.
Okay, now the proud British. What are they doing in the jet field? Here we go again with airplanes. The first flight of the Gloster Meteor Mk.1 took place in May 1941. The British have a turbojet engine, but the islanders are clearly far behind the Germans, although in general they follow the same path. Not interesting. Do they have rocket artillery? They have no analogues of Katyushas and Nebelwerfers… О! Anti-aircraft rockets! Unfortunately, they're unguided and outrageously primitive – only suitable for barrage fire. All in all, garbage.
Strange as it may seem, the original development in the field of jet aviation was even found in Italy. Their Caproni Campini N.1, with a strange hybrid of piston and jet engines, even managed to make a successful flight, but this design did not evoke in me anything but a sad smile, and it was even more useless to me than the British anti-aircraft missiles.
Okay, let's leave Europe behind. What's going on overseas? The U.S. Air Force was not interested in jets. In 1939, Lockheed tried to apply to them for funding for research in this area, but was