Traveling Back to the 1960s: The Entire Internet Teaches Me How to Build Missiles

Captain Shi and Xu Haifeng, who were standing at the entrance of Xinxi Temple observing the lightning strike, were both dumbfounded by what they saw.

On the Gobi Desert, silver snakes danced wildly, like lightning rolling across the earth. The thunder in the sky was all drawn away by the grounding rod in the middle of the river, and the river was shrouded in mist, like a boiling fairyland.

Captain Shi exclaimed in amazement, "How could anyone design such an amazing thing!"

Xu Haifeng exclaimed in surprise, "This lightning-attracting rocket is indeed feasible... More than two hundred years ago, there was a guy named Franklin who used a kite to attract lightning... But Comrade Zhou Yunxiao's homemade rocket is truly impressive, with a success rate of at least 70%!"

The soldiers of the Third Launch Battalion looked up at the gloomy sky above with anticipation, their faces beaming with joy.

These lightning bolts seemed to have eyes; they all aimed at the riverbank and struck down in one fell swoop.

Of the ten homemade rockets, seven successfully established discharge channels with free charges in the clouds, while the other three failed to attract lightning.

However, this does not affect the release of charge from cumulonimbus clouds. Zhou Yunxiao asked his colleagues at the meteorological station, and they said that this kind of dry autumn thunderstorm has a loud thunder and small raindrops, with a maximum of only one hundred kul of energy.

If more than 30% of the charge can be released, the remaining charge in the thunderstorm cloud will not be able to reach the electric field strength required to continue breaking down the air, and thus it will lose its ability to generate lightning!

Thirty percent of the charge, or thirty coulombs, when spread evenly across each rocket, requires at least three weak discharges to be effective.

Judging from the current situation, these thick, pillar-like lightning bolts are no longer just weak discharges, but super-strong discharges!

The clouds in the sky seemed to wish they could unleash a torrent of lightning to strike them dead.

Each bolt of lightning that strikes along the wire is like Sun Wukong's Ruyi Jingu Bang, piercing through heaven and earth.

Fang Xiaotian, the military representative stationed in Jincheng, only reluctantly put away his Seagull camera after he had used up all the film, jokingly saying:

"I'm someone who's survived being struck by lightning in my life, haha!"

Jiang Weimin patted Zhou Yunxiao on the shoulder heavily, "Not bad, you're a real hidden talent! I didn't expect that little rocket assembled from a bunch of junk to be so powerful. Even the Dragon King can't control the Thunder God and Lightning Goddess. You're even more capable than the Dragon King!"

Zhou Yunxiao crossed his arms and proudly accepted his roommate's praise.

Netizens watched the launch of the homemade rocket and the detonation of the mine from his perspective, and cheered as if they had also made a great contribution.

[About My Experience Surviving the Nascent Soul Tribulation in the Gobi Desert in the 1960s]

[In fantasy novels, sword cultivators have to withstand heavenly lightning head-on. To put it bluntly, they suffer from a lack of education. If they had even a little knowledge of science, they could weld an iron cage and hide inside, and even if the Thunder God or the Lightning Goddess came to strike them, it wouldn't be a problem...]

[Thunder God and Lightning Goddess: Who the hell threw that firecracker? Holy crap, what was that thing? It drained all my magic power!]

I'd only ever seen meteorological bureaus use lightning strikes in documentaries before, and the quality was always terrible. Watching this from a first-person perspective today, the power of nature is truly terrifying! I could feel the lightning striking my face even through the screen!

[The launch team's worldview is undergoing a magnitude 10 earthquake; is this anchor some kind of reincarnation of Lei Zhenzi?]

These veterans probably never imagined that behind the anchor was an entire modern weather intervention and devastatingly powerful team (tactical hands on hips)!

As the plasma channels from the vaporized piano strings dissipated, the lightning bolts striking the clouds visibly decreased, clearly losing their momentum.

Rumbling thunder still echoed across the sky, but it was no longer able to gather a large amount of charge and release lightning in the short term.

Zhou Yunxiao glanced at his watch; the time was exactly four hours.

He left Jiang Weimin and Representative Fang to clean up the mess, while he hurriedly opened the cage, trudged up the earthen slope with mud and sand under his feet, and ran back to Xinxi Temple.

In a dilapidated temple made up of a few mud houses, the telegraph beeped and ticked. Captain Shi held a short-range walkie-talkie and spoke with the squadron leader at the launch site, summarizing intelligence from the early warning radar.

"Report: Bearing 270, Distance 250, Unidentified target detected, moving towards our unit!"

Captain Shi ordered: "Assess attributes! Mapping soldiers, prepare to continue mapping! Dr. Xu..."

Xu Haifeng and his team of calculators were already in position, and they even brought a precious Fryden computer to compensate for the computational power of the slide rule and hand-cranked calculator.

Soon, the early warning radar operator's reply came:

"Report! Target altitude 20,000 meters, speed 675 km/h, radar cross-section indicates it's a large aircraft, an enemy U-2 reconnaissance plane!"

Captain Shi instructed: "All personnel, Level One combat alert! Enter Level One combat readiness! Attention all units, fire control radars must remain silent. Do not activate without orders! I repeat, do not activate fire control radars!"

As soon as the order was given, the launch team soldiers, who had just been immersed in the thunder and lightning, immediately took their positions.

At this moment, everyone at the Xinxi Temple position is in a state of dormancy.

Apart from the bulky early warning radar that was still slowly scanning the sky, all the soldiers of the First Company of the Third Battalion held their breath and waited for the moment of decisive battle to arrive.

They rehearsed those 14 movements repeatedly in their minds—

Once the fire control radar is activated, the enemy aircraft will turn around and take off within two minutes to escape the missile's attack range; therefore, the entire process of activating, aiming, launching, and shooting down must be completed within two minutes!

Not a single movement can be wrong.

Seeing Zhou Yunxiao walk in, soaking wet, Captain Shi grabbed a dry towel and tossed it to him to dry his hair, then gave him a thumbs up.

"Thanks to you this time, otherwise Red Chess No. 1 would have rotted on the launch pad!"

Zhou Yunxiao waved his hand and asked, "How's the target tracking going? How long until U-2 enters attack range?"

"Expected arrival in 20 minutes. Fortunately, it's a dry autumn thunderstorm, all thunder and no rain. Otherwise, even if the lightning is diverted, the heavy rain would severely interfere with the radar waves. The screen would be filled with a white, static-like display, making it impossible to distinguish the U-2 reconnaissance aircraft's signal..."

Captain Shi poured another mug of hot water. "Have some to warm yourself up. You've been out in the rain all day, don't catch a cold."

"I'm fine, it won't make a difference."

Zhou Yunxiao was worried about Xu Haifeng and the others, so he went over to check on their work.

Early warning radar can only perform a rough scan of the sky, so each time it captures a U-2 signal, it only covers a general area and is not precise. Sometimes the error can be as large as several kilometers.

To achieve precise missile guidance, a more sophisticated and larger fire control radar must be activated to narrow the range to within ten meters or even a few meters.

However, since the U-2 reconnaissance aircraft can detect high-power radar waves, the fire control radar must remain silent until the last moment to avoid alerting the enemy.

The calculators could only rely on manual plotting and drawing auxiliary lines to blindly predict the U-2's next route.

Xu Haifeng, along with several calculators, is doing this.

The abacus clicked away, and everyone stared intently at the draft paper in front of them, listing lines of formulas and equations, trying their best to derive analytical solutions.

Zhou Yunxiao also picked up a pen and paper and sat down to write.

Xu Haifeng nodded slightly at him and continued to work diligently.

He had an American-made Frieden calculator in his hand, which was said to be a trophy captured at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir and was considered the most valuable treasure of the Third Division's technical team.

This thing is about half the size of a table, but it can only perform simple addition, subtraction, multiplication and division operations. After you type the formula to be calculated into the input end, the output end spits out a card with the answer, just like the paper output of a printer!

In front of the plotting table is a large blackboard.

The map plotter, wearing headphones, sat at the table and reported the coordinates scanned by the early warning radar every ten seconds or so. Then, everyone worked hard to calculate and draw a predicted coordinate point on the blackboard.

Once the new coordinates were marked, the three missile launchers at the Xinxi Temple field position began to rotate their fire control radars little by little, based on the blindly calculated azimuth angles transmitted from the command post, aiming them at the direction where the U-2 reconnaissance aircraft was about to arrive.

Just like a sniper opening the scope in advance and aiming the bullseye at the intersection the target is bound to pass through.

This is done to ensure that the radar can locate the enemy aircraft as soon as it is turned on, allowing enough time to complete a set of combat maneuvers within 80 seconds.

As time went by, the number of coordinate points on the blackboard had increased to more than sixty!

The chalk marks, densely packed with dots, were connected to form a smooth flight path, indicating that the U-2 reconnaissance plane was about to enter the heart of the Badain Jaran Desert and approach the edge of the Dongfeng Air Base.