Just after the Lantern Festival, Zhou Hexuan set off for Wuhan, accompanied by Vivien Li, Meng Xiaodong, Zhou Xuan and Yu Peichen, as well as several of Zhou Hexuan's bodyguards.

Meng Xiaodong and Zhou Xuan want to stay in Wuhan to give a condolence performance for the soldiers who are about to go to the front line. And Zhou Hexuan took Vivien Li and Yu Peichen to take the Guangdong-Hanzhou Railway to Guangzhou to go to sea.

On the deck, Zhou Hexuan looked at the river from afar.

Although it was wartime, the waterways of the three towns of Wuhan were obviously much more prosperous, because people and materials from all over the country were converging here.

In the distance, the sound of airplanes suddenly sounded in the sky, and I saw a large group of Japanese planes buzzing in the direction of Hankou like a swarm of flies, which was 12 bombers attacking Wuhan under the cover of 26 destroyers.

The three Chinese flying teams stationed in Hankou and Xiaogan flew 29 warplanes with Soviet aid to meet the attack. As soon as the two sides engaged in battle, 10 more Chinese Soviet-style fighters took off, ready to block the retreat of enemy planes.

The people of the city, as well as the passengers on the ship, came out to watch the battle, stretching their necks and looking up at the sky.

"Good!"

"Well played!"

"China will win!"

“……”

People danced and cheered, but it was Dong Mingde, Yang Arcfan, Liu Zhesheng and Liu Zongwu of the 21st Squadron who fought together and shot down a Japanese fighter plane, making a beautiful start.

At the same time, the 11 fighters of the 22nd Squadron and the 11 fighters of the enemy met in a narrow way, and the two sides soon fell into a situation of single-plane melee, and they invariably fought one-on-one. Squadron leader Liu Zhihan took the lead in shooting down one enemy plane, and other teammates also shot down four Japanese planes one after another.

"Oh my God, go and save someone!"

"Steady, steady, don't fall!"

“……”

At the same time that the Japanese plane was shot down, the Chinese plane was also poisoned, and five people, including group leader Li Guidan, squadron leader Lu Jichun, and pilots Ba Qingzheng, Wang Yi, and Li Pengxiang, were killed. But they played a good air record, shooting down a total of 10 Japanese fighters and 2 bombers.

The rest of the Japanese planes saw that the situation was not good, and immediately fled frantically, and the bombers even threw bombs indiscriminately to reduce weight and escape.

The main force of this air battle was the Fourth Brigade of the Chinese Air Force, which was founded in October 1936 and the backbone was Zhang Xueliang's Northeast Air Force. They confronted Japanese planes in Hangzhou for the first time last year, and won a proud record of 6-0 in one fell swoop, and then shot down dozens of Japanese planes in a row, but unfortunately the captain Gao Zhihang later died heroically.

Li Guidan, who died in this battle, is the second captain after Gao Zhihang, and he and Gao Zhihang are both from the Northeast.

Gao Zhihang was still a subordinate of Feng Yong before, when Feng Yong was the commander of the Northeast Air Force, Gao Zhihang served as the pilot of the Flying Eagle Team of the Northeast Aviation Department - there are five brigades of the Northeast Air Force, and the Flying Eagle Team belongs to one of them, and many of them became the backbone of the Chinese Air Force in the early days of the Anti-Japanese War.

So Feng Yong is very anxious, his former subordinates fought in the sky and was known as the "God of War of the Air Force", but he could only watch in the United States. If he can't bring a plane back to China, Feng Yong will only take the flight cadets back to China to participate in the war.

In fact, the Chinese Air Force in the early days of the Anti-Japanese War was not technically weaker than the Japanese Air Force. And the planes aided by the Soviet Union also made up for the disadvantage of the Chinese Air Force in terms of equipment, and often fought beautiful battles.

It is a pity that there are too few Chinese planes and too few pilots, and if you lose one, you will lose one, and if you lose one, you will lose one.

Today's air battle in Wuhan would not have been fought at all if it had not been for the planes aided by the Soviet Union, because there were not many planes left in China. During the Battle of Songhu, more than 300 Chinese planes fought against more than 800 Japanese planes, and the battle was extremely fierce, and countless heroic stories emerged.

Yan Haiwen, a native of Liaoning. On the way back from the bombing of the Japanese Hongkou Naval Headquarters, he was hit by Japanese anti-aircraft guns, and while parachuting, he was blown down by the wind to the enemy position, and was immediately surrounded by dozens of Japanese soldiers. Yan Haiwen took out two matching guns, killed five Japanese soldiers and wounded several others, kept the last bullet for himself, and shouted "China's no captured air force" and died heroically at the age of 21.

Shen Chongzhi, a native of Hubei. Chen Xichun, a native of Hunan. When they were on a bombing mission, the plane temporarily malfunctioned, and smoke came out of the tail, and according to the regulations, they should have parachuted to save their lives. However, they knew that there were not many Chinese planes and could not abandon them in vain, so they drove a malfunctioning plane to ram the Japanese battleship Izumo and died a heroic death. At that time, Shen Chongzhi was 27 years old and Chen Xichun was 22 years old.

Le Yiqin, a native of Sichuan, shot down 7 enemy planes in two months. By the time the Japanese army attacked Nanjing, there were few Chinese planes left, and Le Yiqin resolutely took to the air to meet the battle, was outnumbered, and died outside Nanjing at the age of 23.

Liu Cuigang, a native of Liaoning, shot down 11 enemy planes in two months. Because the plane ran out of gasoline, he sent the last flare to guide the wingman to land, and he was reluctant to parachute in order to keep the plane, so he smeared to find a suitable place to land, and unfortunately hit the building and died, only 24 years old.

There are also Gao Zhihang and Li Guidan mentioned earlier, who jointly composed an aerial war song for China.

Unfortunately, there are too few Chinese planes, and the fewer they fight, leading the pilots to sacrifice themselves in order to keep the planes. If it weren't for the Soviet Union's arrival of aircraft aid at a critical time, Wuhan would have had no chance to fly at this time.

……

On board, the people were still cheering at the victory just now.

Zhou Xuan chirped Meng Xiaodong to speak, pointed to the Chinese plane that was landing, and blushed and laughed.

"Air Force athletes, what a big boost to my country's popularity!" Yu Peichen was also inexplicably excited, his hands were clenched into fists, and he couldn't wait to run to the airport to comfort the hero.

Zhou Hexuan could only smile bitterly, Wuhan could fight an air war, that was because Lao Chiang's military commission was located here, and other places could only be ravaged by Japanese planes.

What Zhou Hexuan did not expect was that because he funded the construction of the Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge, the Pinghan Line and the Guangdong-Hanzhou Line were completely connected, which was equivalent to a heart bypass surgery for China Transportation. Japan's bombing of Wuhan will become more frequent, and the focus of the bombing will be on the Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge, and as long as the bridge is blown up, China's transportation of troops and materials will be greatly reduced.

Chang Kaishen also regarded Wuhan's air defense as the top priority, and transferred several of China's most elite flight squadrons to garrison around the Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge.

In the next two months alone, China and Japan launched seven large and small air battles over the three towns of Wuhan - these are the effects of Zhou Hexuan, and if he did not pay for the bridge repair, the Japanese would not have stared at Wuhan.

"Boom, boom!"

"Boom, boom!"

"Boom, boom!"

From Chongqing to Wuhan and from Wuhan to Guangzhou, Zhou Hexuan suffered four bombings along the way.

One of the most dangerous was on the railway, where a bomb hit the railroad tracks in front of it, and then the Japanese bombarded the train indiscriminately. Zhou Hexuan was pierced by a splash of glass, blood gushed on his forehead, and Yu Peichen and Vivien Li were also slightly injured to varying degrees, due to the train overturning.

Before the fall of Guangzhou, the Japanese bombed the area for 14 months, with the Guangdong-Hanzhou Railway being the primary target.

As a last resort, Zhou Hexuan could only get off the train and walk, walking for two days and two nights in a row, before he got a truck in Lianxian County (later Qingyuan City) and came to the main city of Guangzhou without danger.