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Text Chapter 928 Japan¡¯s Counterattack (6)

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    Tetsu Iwamoto tapped the fuel gauge, but the needle showed no response, which made him very worried.  The fighter plane has been flying for more than two hours, and the auxiliary fuel tank was thrown away an hour ago. According to his experience, it should be able to fly for another two and a half hours.  In other words, the attack must be launched within an hour before there is a chance to fly back to Naha.  He looked to the left and right. Sixty-eight Nine-Sevens attacked, seventy Nine-Nines exploded, and eighty-two Zeros were divided into three large formations to maintain a fuel-saving altitude of four thousand meters.  Two hundred and twenty fighters, accounting for 70% of the total aircraft capacity of the four aircraft carriers of the First Air Fleet, except for the Shuanghe (Zuihe and Xianghe) at Rabaul, the Ryukyu and the Ryukyu at Truk  Shoho, this is already the strongest air attack lineup that the Japanese Navy can muster at the moment. It can be described as an all-out effort.

    But no one regretted it, because everyone already knew from the radio how serious the situation was.  The failure of six battleships and two aircraft carriers brought to naught the dream of the Japanese navy to blockade the island chain, and also caused a fundamental change in the naval power of China and Japan.  Although Zuiho and Hosho are two light aircraft carriers, and the latter was modified from a submarine carrier, for the Japanese Navy, losing two aircraft carriers just after the war started is not a good sign.  As for the two battleships Matsushima and Itsukushima, they were the fifth and sixth battleships lost by the Japanese Navy in just ten hours.  The number of battleships that was leading 12 to 8 before the war suddenly turned into a lag of 6 to 8!  To make matters worse, the two leased French Dunkirk-class battleships will be completed and refitted into the Chinese Navy early next year, and the first two Shandong-class battleships that keep Japan awake at night will also be delivered at the end of this year and early next year respectively.  .

    This means that even if the Yamato can be commissioned by the end of the year, Japan will go from being four ships ahead to five ships behind.

    The only chance of recovery is to destroy the attacking China fleet.  It is already known that there are two battleships and two large aircraft carriers in the fleet, as long as they can be sunk.  The gap between the two navies can be narrowed again.  So he took a deep breath, stretched out his finger to the radio, and wanted to ask his friend, Captain Mitsuyoshi Tarui, who led the final attack on Okinawa, if he could hold on until he arrived?  How powerful is the Lightning fighter jet that China keeps strictly confidential?  But he hesitated and put his hand down again.  Breaking radio silence early was obviously not a wise move for the Republic of China, which could manufacture electrical detectors (radar).

    "There are still forty minutes." Iwamoto Tetsuzo looked at his watch.  There are still forty minutes to the target distance he calculated, which means that he will be able to enter the outer airspace in half an hour at most.  So he decided to forget his troubles for a while.  Shake the wings as required to notify the formation to start preparations.

    At this time, the battle was still fierce over the waters southwest of Yae Mountain. All the attention of the escort fighters was attracted by the incoming Japanese planes. The fleet was also retreating at a high speed towards Keelung Port, so no one noticed that the danger was quickly approaching.  "Stop those two Zero Fighters!" Zhang Peng just passed under the belly of a 96 Land Attack (Mitsubishi 96 Army bomber) that he turned into a fireball.  I saw two Zero Fighters cooperating tacitly and hitting their comrade's wing fuel tank.  In the billowing black smoke, the comrade's lightning screamed and plunged towards the sea.  Although the Lightning has thicker armor, more horsepower, and comprehensive advantages than the Zero Fighter, it is very good for pilots who encounter the Zero Fighter for the first time to deal with this climb rate.  Being maneuverable, especially a fighter with a very small turning radius, is still a chore, so Zhang Peng has lost three fighter jets since the war started.

    When he saw the two planes being the only zeros on the battlefield, he realized that they might be the plane of the leading officer.  So he quickly shouted to his wingmen to block the attack, then rolled three times in a row to avoid the incoming 96-ship battle, and then chased away fiercely.  "Be careful, be careful!" inside the cockpit.  Captain Mitsuyoshi Tarui had just shot down the lightning, and before he felt any relief, he felt as if he was being targeted by something.  Wait until he looks back.  I saw a Lightning using continuous rolls to avoid a Nine-Six Ship Battle and rushing towards me.  He was too familiar with this fighter jet, numbered 511, with a gleaming golden outer wall of the cockpit (the shot down mark outside the cockpit is golden, and the golden light will be reflected when the sunlight is reflected).  Because in just fifteen minutes, he saw with his own eyes three (actually four) friendly aircraft were shot down by this Lightning.  "Sang Beijun, cover me." So he immediately yelled for cover, turned quickly and rushed straight ahead.

    Seeing Ling Zhan charging head-on uncharacteristically (under normal circumstances, fighters try to avoid head-on shooting), Zhang Peng's pupils behind his sunglasses shrank to a little cold star.  Anyone who is familiar with it knows that this is his reaction when he becomes fierce and enters the state.  When Mitsuki Tarui saw that the lightning did not change its course, he sneered in his heart, thinking that his opponent had been fooled.  He was not stupid enough to use four 7.7mm machine guns to fight six 12.7mm machine guns, so when he got close to the shooting range, he suddenly rolled to the lower left with a negative G action!  This is a commonly used evasive maneuver when being attacked head-on. It allows the aircraft to avoid the blind spot below the opponent's head.  Of course, even if other fighters know this tactic, they cannot do it as easily as Zero Fighter.  Before the action was over, he pushed the joystick lightly again, preparing to make a detour behind the lightning that was overtaking him.

      But when he was halfway through the second movement, he suddenly discovered that Zhang Peng had pulled diagonally to the right, climbing upward at a large angle, and the distance was immediately widened so that he could no longer bite his tail.  "This is impossible! How can such a heavy fighter be more flexible than the Zero Fighter?" Mitsuyoshi Tarui has become familiar with the general performance of the Lightning and understands that the armor and weight of this fighter jet are far greater than the Zero Fighter.  Therefore, he never imagined that Lightning could actually make such light movements, and he began to panic subconsciously.  When he regained his level and reconsidered the pursuit, Zhang Peng on the opposite side was already facing down, diving toward him with a high-g roll.

    "No matter how much you play, you are still a rookie!" Zhang Peng snorted coldly.  The speed of over 700 helped him quickly catch Zero War. Six black and red flames only flashed twice before smashing the tail and right wing of Mitsuyoshi Tarui.  Poor Mitsuki Tarui didn't know until he was captured after parachuting that his opponent was not an ordinary Chinese HNA pilot, but a real butcher in the sky who had gained experience in the northwest for a year and had shot down more than forty people!

    At the same time that Zhang Peng shot down Tarui Mitsuyoshi, the fleet in the distance had already ejected hundreds of fireballs.  Although the Lightning fighter jets were better, and their pilot skills and practical experience were not bad, after all, the total number of Japanese planes attacking this time was sixty-seven, so there were still many bombers that successfully avoided interception and broke into the fleet's air defense circle.  Once the fleet's anti-aircraft fire circle fires, it will be a disgrace.  Therefore, he did not want to be shot down by his own shells, so he had no choice but to abandon Mitsuyoshi Tarui's wingman who rushed into the circle of fire, and aimed at a 97 ship that broke through at a low altitude of 500 meters, and continued to be a butcher.

    Thanks to Yang Guochang's caution and the electronic communications officer's guess, the 23rd Fleet has deployed an air defense network.  Six destroyers are in the outermost circle, guarding submarines and acting as the outermost air defense barrier. Four light cruisers and four destroyers are in the middle circle. "Dinghai" and "Ninghai" lead the remaining three destroyers as personal guards. In the innermost circle,  The two aircraft carriers have a total of sixteen twin 80mm, twenty-four quadruple 40mm and 40 single-barreled 25mm anti-aircraft guns.

    "Port side! Ninety-nine ships exploded!"

    Three nine-nine ships exploded.  After emerging from the dense shells, the Dinghai air defense control tower immediately discovered the fish that had slipped through the net and fired a string of 120mm radio proximity-explosive artillery shells at the enemy aircraft.  As an old ship from the European War, Dinghai has undergone two modifications, especially the one before the war.  Not only were the nine main guns replaced with powerful 330mm/L55 naval guns, the air defense was also upgraded again.  Eight twin 120mm/L56 semi-automatic high-level dual-purpose naval guns are distributed on both sides. Twelve twin 40mm anti-aircraft guns and 24 single-barreled 25mm machine guns are scattered throughout the ship. When the firepower is fully activated, it looks like an angry ship.  The big hedgehog held up all its spikes.  But this is still external. The internal centralized fire control, new air defense control tower and radio proximity artillery shells are the real trump cards.  For this mission, all 120 and 85 mm anti-aircraft guns of the 23rd Fleet (the electronic industry of World War II. It is difficult to achieve proximity fuzes below 70 mm) were issued with radio proximity artillery shells.  Radio proximity explosion technology is a new technology developed by the 3010 plan of the Republic of China. It was equipped with the Navy for trial in early 1938. For confidentiality purposes, its use on land is prohibited. All artillery shells are also numbered.  The call must be signed by the supreme commander of the fleet.

    After the four twin 120mm semi-automatic anti-aircraft guns on the port side of the Dinghai opened fire at a rate of 15 rounds per minute, the 85mm anti-aircraft guns of the Sichuan and Guizhou also used close-explosion shells to bombard the target. The three ships coordinated in just a few seconds.  Zhong set off a steel storm just before the Nine-Nine Ship exploded.  Immediately, two ships were shot down by fragments, and the remaining one was also targeted and shot down by hundreds of 40mm anti-aircraft guns at the same time.  "Commander. The escort fighter jets are back." At the officer's reminder, Yang Guochang quickly picked up the binoculars.  More than twenty Lightnings escorting the attack fleet were seen in the southeast.

    At this moment, Fleet 23 is more than 500 kilometers away from the Yuji Inland Sea, and it takes less than an hour at lightning speed.  But because it needed to escort the attack fleet, it kept flying at cruising speed.  After receiving the news that the fleet was attacked, twelve ships were immediately left to continue to protect the attack fleet. The remaining twenty-two (five were lost during the attack, and the Tianquan Squadron did not follow because the Air Force was bombing Ryukyu again) all rushed as quickly as possible.  return.  But now they can't participate in air combat, because high-speed flying consumes a lot of fuel, so most fighter jets don't have much fuel at this time and must land to refuel first.  As soon as the plane landed, the aircrew who had been on standby for a long time immediately refueled and reloaded the fighter plane. Some people took out small aluminum sheets that had been cut in advance and used rivets to repair the bullet holes one by one.  As there were fewer and fewer Japanese aircraft in the sky, just when Yang Guochang and everyone were about to breathe a sigh of relief, the destroyers on alert sent a very bad news.

    "Commander! The Wumeng reported that at 79 degrees northwest, 113 nautical miles away, and an altitude of 4,000 meters, a large number of unidentified aircraft were found approaching!"

    "What?!" Yang Guochang jumped up from his chair: "What did you say? Be clear!"

    "The destroyer Wumeng's radar was at 79 degrees northwest and 130 nautical miles away from us. It found a large number of unidentified aircraft. The number was at least 150 aircraft!  "

    "Yamamoto, must be the main force of Yamamoto Isoroku! This bastard!" Yang Guochang felt his body go limp, and then he sat down on the chair.  Lin Ruosheng even yelled: "Commander, what should I do about the attack fleet?" He was sweating profusely, and even the officers and staff members changed their colors!  Calculating the time, the attack fleet will return in half an hour. At that time, the air defense is at its most intense, and they will definitely not be able to land.

    "I can't care so much anymore! Let the seaplane find a safe place and be prepared to guide the attack fleet to make an emergency landing." Yang Guochang slapped the navigation table hard, gritted his teeth and jumped up: "Order Zhang Peng to intercept immediately! The landing  As soon as the fighter jets are replenished, one will take off! Order each ship to abandon the ring defense, move closer to the aircraft carrier, and change to a central contraction defense formation! Go, send a telegram for help! Notify all aircraft in the nearby sea area, as many as they can come within twenty minutes! Hurry!  Ah! Don't be in a daze, all return to their posts. All officers must take the lead and stay on the front line!" After saying that, he grabbed the helmet from the guard and ran towards the air defense control tower at the top of the bridge.

    Lin Ruosheng quickly stopped: "Commander, it's too dangerous up there."

    "Can the pilots be in danger?" Yang Guochang glared at the blocking officer and said angrily: "Tell everyone, I'm up there. Either the Japanese have the ability to blow me up, or they die first!"
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