The Germans and the Japanese fought each other on land, but unexpectedly, another war with an equally disparity in strength was unfolding between the blue sea and blue sky of Qingdao.

On September 5, engines roared and fighter planes flew over Qingdao. The protagonist of the air battle is the German Qingdao pilot Lieutenant Pryusov, he and the Japanese carrier-based aircraft carrier carried four fighters in the sky over Qingdao to launch a fierce battle, which marks the first in the history of world war by the army, navy and air force to carry out a joint three-dimensional offensive and defensive war against a city military target, in Qingdao, the bay city of land, sea area, sky in an all-round way, this is also the first actual combat action of carrier-based aircraft carriers and seaplanes in the history of world war, this is also the first real air battle in the history of world war!

At that time, the Japanese Navy seaplane aircraft carrier Wakamiya Maru was carrying three Morris Farman 1912 biplanes and one Lu B biplane seaplane, and this naval air force consisted of seven pilots, including Captain Yozo Kaneko, Lieutenant Yamada Tadaharu, Wada Hidehui, Lieutenant Fujise Katsu, Osaki Kyonobu, Takebe Takao, and Iikura Sadazo, and a total of 46 ground crews. Due to bad weather, the Wakanomiya Maru did not make its first aerial reconnaissance sortie until September 5, and the flight lasted two hours, and in addition to reconnoitring Qingdao at an altitude of 1,100 meters, the plane also bombed the German positions, but the Japanese plane was immediately counterattacked by German anti-aircraft fire, and was hit by two machine gun shells, one of the skeletons of the wing was broken, and the skin was torn. The Japanese planes found out the situation in the harbor and found out that the cruiser "Emden" had already left, and that only the Empress Elizabeth and the S-90 and several small ships were in the harbor. This successful flight reconnaissance and safe return greatly boosted the morale of the Japanese troops, but the anti-air attack of the German ground artillery fire caused the Japanese plane to be hit and crashed, and the Japanese plane felt that the sky was also full of dangers!

In the contest between the Japanese and German armies in World War I in Qingdao, compared with the four Japanese fighters and the extremely maneuverable aircraft carrier, the German planes in Qingdao were completely weak, and one of the original two planes was destroyed before the war, and only one plane could be lifted into the air during the war. The number of fighters was 4 to 1, and the Japanese had the advantage. German Navy Lieutenant Bryushov was the only pilot of the German army in Qingdao, but in addition to high-altitude reconnaissance and bombing in the air, he was also in a fierce air battle with Japanese fighters.

Lieutenant Bryushov's Fokker aircraft was still of the first generation, and there were no machine guns and other weapons installed at all, and in addition to reconnaissance, grenades could only be thrown down with external grenade * shell racks. The last time he encountered a Japanese plane, Lieutenant Bryushov had no other way than to glare at those obscene mongrels, did he want to spit on his opponent? So during this reconnaissance, he specially brought a Luger pistol and four magazines, just waiting to give those Japanese seaplanes a good look.

After some cruise, two clumsy seaplanes from the south sea were flying towards Guanxiang Mountain. Bryshev pulled the nose of the plane, seized the high-altitude position, turned his plane away from the sun as much as possible, and attacked with the help of the cover of the sun. The Japanese pilots did not expect the other side to attack them at all, so they flew in a straight line without defense. Observers in the back seat watched with naval telescopes, writing and drawing on the map to record the movements of the German army. Bryushov's plane collided with the Maurice Farman 1912 biplane in a single dive, and the Japanese pilots were frightened and looked to the right to avoid the impact of the other side, and when the two planes intertwined, Lieutenant Bryshov's pistol had been opened, and the lieutenant raised his hand and fired a series of shots at the Japanese plane close at hand, until the pistol magazine was empty. Then with a control stick, he turned his head and continued to pursue the Japanese army, and the Maurice Farman 1912 biplane behind him also accelerated with all his strength to catch up, but the two planes in front were in a dive, and the speed was not at all that a slow plane could catch up at once.

Brysheov, who clamped the joystick with his legs, quickly changed the magazine, and then accelerated to catch up with the Japanese plane in front, and continued to fire at the Japanese plane with a pistol in the middle of the flight, but unfortunately it was still dodged by the other party, at this time the observer in the back seat of the Japanese army threw an object, almost hit the aiming Bryshov, Bryshov saw that it was a fountain pen, it turned out to be a fountain pen used by the other party to make marks, and the observer in the back seat saw that the other party was chasing after him and kept shooting himself, but unfortunately he was not armed, and he could not fight back, In desperation, he threw the pen as a hidden weapon, not wanting to force back the German plane. However, the slightly separated German plane did not give up, and flew to the upper left of the bulky Maurice Farman 1912 biplane with a slight turn of the head, and the third magazine of the Luger pistol was also empty, except for scaring the opposing pilot into a cold sweat. The Japanese plane behind was already approaching, Bryushov changed the magazine and flew directly above the opponent's plane, the pistol in his hand poked out of the cabin and continued to fire, maybe it was shit luck, waiting for the movement of the empty compartment hang-up, before Brushov changed the magazine, the Japanese plane suddenly trembled, and began to spin and fall uncontrollably, and the upper wing of the plane was broken before falling a few hundred meters of strong centrifugal force, and although the pilot tried his best to control it, the plane still crashed into Jiaozhou Bay outside Huiquan Bay.

It turned out that a bullet had just happened to break the connecting line of the wing of the Japanese plane, causing the wing of the Japanese plane to crash due to uneven force. In Prushov's later memoirs and relevant German sources, Pruszov shot down a Japanese plane with a Luger pistol in an air battle with a Japanese plane, and a Japanese plane did crash shortly after the battle took off. However, the Japanese recorded that the plane fell in a flight accident, not by Bryushov's pistol. In the history of the German army, it is recorded: Bryushov fired at the Japanese plane with a Luger pistol, fired 32 rounds in a row, and shot it down!

On page 72 of the 1927 edition of Plyushov's book "Pilots from Tsingtao", he explicitly wrote that in an air battle, he fired thirty-two rounds in a row from a Japanese plane with a Luger pistol, and the Japanese fell in front of his eyes, but he did not write that he saw the Japanese plane crash on the ground, when he was already quickly out of the air battlefield, because there were still Japanese planes coming to attack him. There are also two theories in Germany about whether Pruszov shot down a Japanese plane, most of them believe that this is a fact, and disagree with the view that there is no official report of Pruszov shooting down a Japanese plane in the wartime records of the German army at that time, but in the books and articles published in Britain, the United States, and Germany, there is a clear record of Pruszov shooting down a Japanese plane.

As the earliest and most famous fighter pilot in Germany, Pruszov also has an undoubted combat example, in addition to fierce air battles with Japanese planes, he also flew planes to launch many surprise attacks on Japanese ships. On 30 September, the seaplane carrier Wakanomiya Maru was damaged by a mine in Laoshan Bay, and the flight team had to move to a land base and rely on the repair ship Kanto Maru for emergency repairs. On October 2, Prishov flew to discover the repair ship and immediately dropped bombs on the Kanto Maru, dropping two bombs, one of which hit the target and exploded. As a result, the Wakamiya Maru, which was waiting for repairs, had to return to the Japanese military port of Sasebo for major repairs on October 8, six days later.

Plushov's successful air raid greatly weakened the combat capability of the Japanese navy and air force and greatly relieved the tremendous air pressure on the German army. The later experience of this German pilot in the original history can be described as legendary. When the German army was about to be defeated, he was ordered by the German governor of Qingdao, Wadeck, to fly out of Qingdao with important confidential documents to break through in the direction of Shanghai, and flew 250 kilometers to the suburbs of Lianyungang. After handing over the secret documents to the German consulate, he set off by ship from Shanghai to return to Germany, but when he passed through Gibraltar in the Mediterranean Sea with a fake passport and posed as a Dutch sailor, he was interrogated and captured by British soldiers, who found that he was a famous German pilot from Qingdao, and was immediately sent to a war criminal camp at Donnington Castle in Leicestershire, England. Three days later, he escaped from prison in a storm and finally returned to Germany, but as soon as he arrived in Germany, he was arrested as a spy, because no one believed that he could complete the feat of breaking out of the Japanese encirclement from Qingdao and returning to Germany on his own. However, he soon became known as the "hero of Qingdao", Kaiser Wilhelm II awarded him the Iron Cross, and two years later in 1916 he published the memoir "Pilot from Qingdao", which caused a sensation in Europe and became the most famous bestseller at that time, with a circulation of nearly 600,000 copies at that time, and then translated into 11 Chinese, translated into Japanese in 1918, the German version had sold 790,000 copies by 1945, and by 2014 the global circulation of the book was difficult to count, according to conservative estimates of at least about six million copies, The first knowledge of Qingdao in China in Germany and the world at that time came from this book.

Later, Plyushov moved to the Americas, worked as an instructor at a civilian flight school, and became a famous explorer, and many places discovered by his expeditions are named after him, and the plane he flew was named Qingdao by him, and he named his station Qingdao Bay. On January 28, 1931, he died in a plane crash during a flight in Argentina, ending his legendary life in flight......

It's a pity that this time, history didn't go along this line. When the air raid ended on October 2, Bryushov looked at the Japanese maintenance ship full of fireworks and set out on the way home with satisfaction, but unfortunately this time he was destined not to return safely, because in the sky not far away, four light Swift fighters had quietly followed...