At 8:57, when the last ship finished firing the torpedo, the first attack wave completed all the attack tasks and returned under the leadership of Mitsuo Fuchida. Although the results of this attack were quite remarkable, the losses were not small under the cover of the US fighters and the fleet's anti-aircraft fire, and after counting the four zeros lost in the halfway interception, a total of 21 planes were lost after the battle, and the loss rate was nearly 18 percent, which greatly exceeded Fuchida's psychological expectation of 10 percent.

But for the fast column, the attack, which lasted more than 30 minutes, was only the beginning of the suffering, because the 2nd attack wave, led by Captain Takashi Egusa, a total of 110 planes, would soon pounce again.

At the same time as Mitsuo Fuchida completed the mission and returned home, the attack wave released by the Raider aircraft carrier also found the Japanese aircraft carrier formation and tried to attack, but unfortunately they were intercepted by the Japanese Zero War halfway, and a total of 18 F4F and 18 SBDs were lost at the time of departure, 7 and 9 were lost respectively, and only 20 aircraft remained, but these 20 planes still bravely pounced on the Japanese aircraft carrier.

The 48 direct cover planes that were waiting in the sky over the Japanese fleet immediately divided 36 to meet the enemy, and the poor American attack wave was beaten down one after another by the zero battle pilots before they could get close to the core of the Japanese fleet, among which the most outstanding performance belonged to the squad led by Lieutenant Sasai Koichi (he was known as Rabaul Guizi because of his vigorous combat effectiveness, and was also nicknamed Fighting), and the four planes won 9 battles in one go, so angry that other pilots who did not grab the results shouted in the air.

The team was originally a member of the Rabaul Air Force, and not only participated in the Kuah Island Air Fighting Battle. The joint US-Australian air force, which was also stationed in Lae and Port Moresby, survived the fierce battles and had very rich combat experience. He is very familiar with the tactics of the US military. When Horiyoshi and Tsukahara 243 searched for excellent base pilots to fill the vacancy of carrier-based aircraft pilots, the team was all shortlisted because of its superb skills, but Sasai Koichi modestly said that the most outstanding skills of this team were not him, but Navy Ensign Sakai Saburo - but this guy is now injured and still recuperating.

To add to his persuasiveness, he cited an example: During a fierce battle with the US and Australian air forces a few months ago, Saburo Sakai and his wingmen Hiroyoshi Nishizawa and Toshio Ota pursued US bombers over enemy airfields and shot down enemy planes. The next day, when the US bombers bombed again, they humorously dropped a stunt to the effect that "yesterday, the pilots of your military came to perform superb flying skills, but they failed to meet the actual number of faux pas and were not rude." I hope that if you come again, our army will be grandly welcomed", the three of them were reprimanded by Sasai Junichi, but the fame of Sakai Saburo and others began.

Tsukahara 243 himself is also a figure who has served as an aviation battle captain. I was very interested in Saburo Sakai's story. After seeing his past achievements, instead of disliking his current injury and losing sight in his right eye, he asked the staff officer to write a letter to encourage him to recover well and invite him to fight on the ship, and comforted: "What is it to lose an eye? Do you think I'm missing a hand, and I'm still the commander of the fleet? "In the hierarchical Japanese army, it was rare for a lieutenant general to speak to an ensign so kindly in a letter, and Saburo Sakai immediately expressed his willingness to join the fleet, and the combined fleet served as a reserve pilot before departure. Facts have also proved his ability, although he has never fought on an aircraft carrier and is blind in his right eye, but he was training on the newly commissioned Dragon Phoenix. After only half a day, he mastered the essentials of take-off and landing, and after 3 days, he could no longer see that he was a new pilot.

After the Sasai alcohol squad shot down 9 enemy aircraft. The remaining 32 Zero Combat can only deal with the remaining 11 aircraft, which can be called more wolves and less meat, and after a while, all these American planes were dry and sunk in the rough Indian Ocean, and their harvest was pitiful, the Xianghe ate a near-missed bullet, 2 anti-aircraft guns were damaged, 6 sailors operating on the gun position were killed and 3 wounded, and the Americans in the air battle were also defeated, and they only shot down 1 Zero - the pilot was fished up by the destroyer after the successful parachute jump.

When Mitsuo Fuchida's first attack wave successfully returned to the ships and replenished the oil bombs, the British strike force that had taken off from Socotra Island arrived over the aircraft carrier belatedly, and they were all slowed down by the slow swordfish.

Although the skills of these British pilots were better than those of the Americans, their aircraft performance was so poor that the Swallows, Hurricanes and Swordfish were all old-fashioned goods, and it was the Italians who made their reputation for attacking Taranto in the first place, and they were already destined to be the dish of the zero war in the Battle of Ceylon, let alone come back now and the number is so small. Five minutes later, the group of old British planes were shot down by Zero Fight, and only one Swordfish dropped a torpedo from outside the range, but no one hit, and the pilot crashed into the Indian Ocean with a mind full of unwillingness.

At 9:16, Takashi Ekusa led the second attack wave to the battlefield, the sea was in chaos, the British and American destroyers were busy fishing people from the sea, and the entire fast fleet suffered heavy losses in the first round of strikes, and the complete wheeled air defense array did not have time to be arranged, and there was a large air defense gap, so anxious that Cunningham and Peters jumped to their feet. However, Ekusa Takashi did not rush down to attack, but first led a huge group of planes around the entire fast column for half a circle, and the remaining F4F fighters were confused by the actions of the Japanese fleet, mistakenly thinking that they were going to attack the transport fleet in the west and desperately fleeing to the shore, and immediately rushed up to intercept it.

Jiang Cao smiled contemptuously in return, first lured these F4Fs out of the fleet's air defense fire network, and then commanded the Zero Fighters who were responsible for the cover task to pounce over, and more than 30 Zero Fighters swarmed up, and wiped out all the remaining ten or so air defense fighters outside the fleet's air defense fire network. Cunningham and Peters, who were watching the battle from below, changed and changed, and now they finally knew how terrible their opponents were—they were like wolves peeping at their own side, waiting for their own side to show their flaws before pounce! The target of the attack of this batch of aircraft is not the transport echelon at all, it is still itself!

The heavy anti-aircraft fire began to fly in the sky again, but since the opponent's F4F had all been shot down, the covering Zero fighters could free up their hands, and they rushed down and suppressed the anti-aircraft guns of each ship with machine gun fire, and then the ship explosion and ship attack were divided into left and right wings to attack simultaneously. Ekusa himself firmly targeted the Massachusetts, the largest, most powerful and smoky one. However, there was also a heavy cruiser Tuscaloosa (New Orleans-class) on the outer edge of the Massachusetts, and he decided to attack the heavy cruiser first.

He saw black smoke rising from the middle of the starboard side of the ship, and also saw the ship tilted to the right, so he concluded that the ship had a major gap on the starboard side, so he personally led the three ships to burst down, the three planes have already cooperated many times, the technology is very skilled, and the continuous follow-up into the route and almost at the same height after the bomb was pulled up, three bombs hit the starboard center one after another, the center of the explosion was not more than 4 meters apart from each other, and immediately opened 3 big holes on the starboard side, and the 3 big holes were strung together to form a large hole 7 meters long and 2 meters high, and there was no way to plug the leakage. I could only watch the sea water rush in frantically, and in less than 3 minutes, this 10,000-ton treaty-type heavy cruiser capsized due to too much water.

In the war-weariness commander tower, Peters didn't care about the rest of the battle, and hurried to report the latest information to Cunningham: "Sir, the slow column has sent a telegram, they are about 1,100 nautical miles away from us, and all the fighters have been arranged, but even with the auxiliary fuel tanks attached, these fighters will not be able to fly so far. They made a suggestion, should they fly to Kenya first for refueling, and then fly over to cover the fleet? ”

"It's hard for them to have a heart, ......forget it," Cunningham smiled bitterly, and pointed to the Japanese carrier-based aircraft that were still attacking frantically outside, "When they arrive, it is estimated that they can only collect the corpses for us, or keep covering the slow column, transfer the command to Rear Admiral Hewitt of the US Navy, and ask him to take full command, the current reinforcement mission is suspended, and the follow-up combat orders please contact South Africa or London directly, and be sure to save the slow fleet." ”

"Yes."

"Did the Kenyan cover fleet come out?"

"The Coast Guard Command in Mombasa reported half an hour ago that the aircraft were ready, but there were not many of them, only six B-25s, nine Handsome Fighters and eight Tuna were available, and it was estimated that they had taken off from Mogadishu."

Cunningham was furious: "What can they do? Attack aircraft and bombers without fighter cover were all live targets for the Japanese. What about hurricanes? What about Spitfire? ”

"But the distance is so far that both the Spitfire and the Hurricane have the problem of short legs, and they can only stay over the fleet for 10-15 minutes if they hang up the auxiliary fuel tank and take off from the nearest Mogadishu, and if they go to attack the Japanese fleet, they will have to fall from mid-air if they can't reach it at all -- this is no longer a situation where the plane is forced to land on the surface of the sea without considering the return trip, and if the return trip is considered, there is no need to send it at all. The only thing that can fly long distances without having to think about the return trip is seaplanes - but they are okay with anti-submarine operations, and anti-ships are not at all. Originally, there was a little Tomahawk, but two days ago I was transferred from the desert air force to support the direction of Egypt......"

"Alas......" Cunningham slammed his fist against the wall and sighed helplessly, "the operation is canceled, let them keep the pilots and planes, and don't give the Japanese any more results." (To be continued.) )