It must be admitted that the nickname "Brute Bull" is indeed worthy of its name.

At 8 o'clock, more than half of the escort fighters had not yet flown away when they were spotted by the seaplanes of the 41.2nd detachment. The point is that these fighters take off with full fuel, so if they stay, they will be able to stay in the sky over the fleet for at least a few hours.

Switching to Frye will definitely keep these fighters behind.

When the seaplane was shot down, it was only about 10 kilometers away from the "Lek", and in addition to the clear weather, the pilot must have seen the "Lek".

More importantly, the seaplane had already sent a telegram.

In addition, the seaplanes flew from the south, and not from the northwest!

All of this indicates that there is also a task force of the Liang Xia Empire nearby, and it is not too far away, maybe it is the 41st task force fleet that has not been exposed before.

Immediately after the discovery of the "Lek", Task Force 41 will attack.

Within two hours, the carrier-based aircraft of Task Force 41 would be killed. What if he couldn't withstand the thunderous blow of Bai Zhizhan and killed Liu Xiangzhen?

It's just that Hal obviously didn't think about it that much.

By 8:15, the last "Wildcat" on escort duty flew away from the "Leke", and the "York" also sent the last fighter almost simultaneously.

At this time, the crews of the two aircraft carriers were still busy.

By order of Hal, it was not the fighter who was sent to the flight deck first, but the SBD "Dreadnought".

Not to launch an attack, but to send out on a reconnaissance mission.

Presumably having learned the lesson of the Narrow-Minded Navy, the Nuland Navy no longer used the slow TBD for reconnaissance missions, but let the fast SBD carry out the heavy lifting.

To say, the Nuland Navy was the first to eat crabs.

Because dive bombers only have two pilots, they are easily tired when carrying out reconnaissance and search missions.

However, at 8:25 a.m., the "York" sent a report that its whereabouts had been exposed, and that a Liang Xia seaplane was shot down after flying to a sea area less than 15 kilometers away.

Even by this time, Hal had not changed his order.

Just after 8:35, the SBD, which was on reconnaissance mission, began to take off from two aircraft carriers.

It's flying south.

At this time, Hal had not received a report from the rear, and was unaware that a heavy cruiser of Liang Xia had sent a telegram to the south.

If he had known, he would have immediately sent out all the remaining carrier-based aircraft.

By 8:50 a.m., the crews of the "Leke" and "York" began to send the fighters to the flight deck in preparation for liftoff.

According to the arrangement, the two aircraft carriers each sent 8 F4Fs.

Although eight F4Fs had been dispatched to carry out air defense missions and 12 F4Fs had been dispatched to escort missions before that, after removing the additional air defense fighters, there were still eight F4Fs on board the "Leke" and six F4Fs on the "York".

At the time, Hal did not let the fighters take to the air.

Worse still, these fighters were lined up behind bombers and torpedo machines.

Hal seems to feel that there are already a full 32 F4Fs, and the problem of air defense is not big, so there is no need to continue to increase the number of air defense fighters.

In addition, if the previously dispatched SBD finds Task Force 41, it will need to attack immediately.

At that time, it will be necessary to arrange fighter escorts.

There's no doubt that Hal is a bit overconfident in the F4F's performance.

Perhaps in his eyes, the F4F "Wildcat" is the best carrier-based fighter.

This understanding is also related to the zero battle of the narrow navy.

The Nuland Navy has already obtained a batch of zero battles, and it has also been compared with the F4F. The conclusion is that with the right tactics, F4F is capable of crushing zero.

Then, it is naturally easy to deal with Liang Xia's carrier-based fighters, who can't even beat zero battles.

According to the pre-war understanding of the Nuland Navy, even if the F4F cannot crush the "Roaring Sky" in the air, it can still be on a par with this fighter that replaces the "Typhoon".

The first shot of the aerial battle was fired over Task Force 43 against the carrier-based fighters of both sides.

The 16 F4Fs sent by Frye confronted the 8 "Roaring Heavens" dispatched by Liu Xiangzhen.

"Wildcat" fights "Roaring Sky".

Although the number is fully twice that of the "Roaring Sky", and the performance of the "Wild Cat" is not bad, and on the whole it is slightly better than that of the "Typhoon", but the numerical superiority has not been transformed into an advantage on the battlefield, and in the face of the "Roaring Sky", the performance of the "Wild Cat" is not half a star.

Speed, rate of climb, dive stability, stable angular velocity, instantaneous circling angular velocity, etc., the "Wildcat" is no better than the "Roaring Sky".

Even the firepower, these F4Fs are inferior to the "Wheezing".

The F4Fs of the Newland Task Force 18 were all from the Sunset Fleet, and they were all early models, with only 4 F4F-3 aircraft guns.

The F4F-4 model, equipped with 6 aviation machine guns, has only recently been put into production, and all of them are produced in the Guia Fleet.

The battle began at 8:50 a.m.

In just ten minutes, in fact, in just two round-trips, 9 F4Fs were shot down, and none of the "Roaring Sky" was lost.

Strictly speaking, in fact, two F4Fs collided during evasion, and only seven were shot down by the "Roaring Sky".

By around 9:10 a.m., the battle over Task Force 43 was officially over.

All 16 Wildcats were shot down, three were wounded, one crashed on the way back, and the other two were forced to land after returning to the fleet.

It's just that another battle is about to begin.

The attack aircraft group of the 21st Task Force at 7:45 a.m. had reached the periphery of the 18th Task Force after an hour and a half of flight.

Although divided into two squadrons, a total of 16 "roaring days" on escort missions took off last, with their faster cruising speed, these fighters overtook all the torpedo planes and bombers in the middle of the way, and one squadron even went tens of kilometers forward.

This is exactly the standard "attack escort" tactic.

To put it simply, the escort fighters took the initiative to go out to find the enemy's air defense fighters and take out the enemy's air defense fighters before the bombers and torpedo planes arrived.

If properly arranged, it can also pose a considerable threat to the enemy's air defense warships and disrupt the enemy's air defense ranks.

This tactic is only suitable for use when you have a performance advantage.

What kind of escort tactics to use depends on the actual situation.

Usually, a commander with the rank of group commander will lead a squadron of escort fighters in front to find out the enemy's situation before making arrangements.

Now, leading this squadron is none other than Wei Chengwen, the first air combat ace of the Imperial Navy, who became famous in the "Battle of Yanhai".

It's just that his task is not only to deal with the cover attack aircraft group.

According to the arrangement, he also had to find two fleet carriers to point the way for the bombers and torpedo planes behind.

Don't forget, the bombers and torpedo planes dispatched by Task Force 21 have no fuel to waste.

Relatively speaking, the situation with fighters is much better.

If the fighters can find the enemy's aircraft carriers, bombers and torpedo planes can directly attack, a lot of fuel can be saved.

It was precisely because of this that Wei Chengwen, who was the captain of the group, participated in the first wave of attacks, instead of staying in the fleet to carry out more important air defense tasks.

In fact, in the absence of an attack, air defense patrols are very boring.