On the eve of the Japanese fleet's attack on Songhu, the Wuhu airfield was already in full formation.

Major General Liu Yicheng, who was appointed temporary commander of the airfield, will personally lead the First Wing of the Western Sichuan Air Force to participate in the battle; after receiving the order from the Purple Mountain Air Command Center, he immediately took off a squad of high-altitude reconnaissance planes to provide real-time enemy intelligence for the all-out counterattack of the Huaxia Air Force.

At 9:16 a.m. on the 23rd, the mixed aircraft groups of China and Japan officially met in the Wusongkou area.

However, the air forces of both sides were surprised, because each other was equipped with a 22 mm cannon, the slight difference is that the cannon on the Huaxia side has 90 shells, while the Japanese only have 12 shells.

At 9:30, the air battle between Songhu and Shanghai officially broke out.

Under the command of the Nanjing Air Command, more than 100 Leopard II fighters, led by dozens of heavy fighters from western Sichuan, rushed towards the Japanese aircraft group without hesitation, ignoring the dense antiaircraft artillery shells fired by more than 50 Japanese enemy ships at sea.

Due to the great reputation of the Flying Bear fighters, the Type 96 warships wanted to retreat, so they only skimmed out a skirmish, and more than 10 Japanese planes were shot down.

The Type 96 battleships were really scared now, and they no longer cared about the spirit of bushido, and took refuge in places with dense anti-aircraft artillery.

Looking at their posture, they would rather be fired by their own anti-aircraft guns than face flying demons, and the Huaxia Air Force is not easy to mess with, Leopard II fighters rely on dexterity and agility, betting that the Japanese ships will not deliberately shoot down their own planes, so they follow the Japanese and gradually close the Japanese ships.

At the beginning, the Japanese ships were really embarrassed to shoot their own fighters.

However, as the small bombs on the Leopard II fighters fell on the warships one after another, blowing up the Japanese ships into a sea of fire, these Japanese navy, which "claimed to be gentlemen", also panicked.

So they no longer care whether they are their own people or not, as long as a plane approaches a warship, they will all serve shells.

All of a sudden, more than 100 Japanese fighters caught fire and exploded one after another under the combined blows of the antiaircraft guns of Japanese warships and Chinese fighters, which made the Japanese pilots feel a little remorseful for not being at the beginning.

In just about ten minutes, most of the Japanese fighters were lost.

However, because of the suddenness of the incident, even the "friendly forces" that could not evade - the Leopard II fighter plane were shot down more than 10 planes, but the losses in the 96 ship battle were heavier, about 30 planes, which is really fair.

Seeing that the Japanese warship did not recognize its six relatives, it fired indiscriminately, resulting in heavy losses for the Chinese and Japanese fighters.

The fighters of both sides raised their altitudes one after another, and did not dare to get close to the warships anymore, but the Japanese fighters seemed to be a little more fired, and seeing that the Japanese ships were so uncooperative, they flew away in a fit of rage, and they didn't even know how to turn around, and they flew towards the aircraft carrier formation of the combined fleet in a daze.

Aircraft carrier clusters such as the "Longxiang" are a hundred nautical miles away here.

Rear Admiral Liu Yicheng was overjoyed and hurriedly ordered the Flying Bear II high-altitude reconnaissance planes to follow the Type 96 warship battle from a distance, striving to reconnoiter the aircraft carrier formation, and at the same time ordered the fighter plane group over Songhu to bomb the Japanese ships in the Wusongkou area in turn to see if they could continue to shell the beachhead.

At 10:10 a.m., more than 200 Type 96 land attacks arrived over Songhu one after another.

When the enemy planes were preparing to bomb the ground positions, fortunately, the second wave of fighters from Nanjing also arrived in time, and the Huaxia fighters that were ravaging the enemy ships at Wusongkou also turned around one after another and encircled and suppressed the Japanese bombers together, and the Japanese fleet was also relieved and did not dare to continue the shelling.

Previously, under the attack of the Huaxia Air Force, even the battleship Nagato was heavily damaged, so they began to turn around.

It is often a tragedy for bombers to meet fighter planes.

At 10:45 a.m., more than 200 Type 96 land attacks had already lost more than half, and the rest of the bombers did not dare to linger any longer; after hastily dropping their bombs, they turned to Taiwan's Songshan Airport one after another.

It's not good, it's a plan.

Not only were the Chinese pilots cold, but even the army units on the ground preparing for the anti-landing were also crying without tears, knowing that this time they were afraid that there would be more than one bad luck, and everyone would have to hang up here.

Pilot fatigue is still secondary, and facing the problem of running out of fuel is the fatal problem.

Nine times out of ten, they would be shot down against the Japanese planes who were waiting for their work, but since they were soldiers, they were ready to die in battle, so they summoned up their courage and raised their flight altitude, preparing to fight the enemy to the death.

However, at this time, Liu Yicheng officially took over the Purple Mountain Air Finger Center and temporarily commanded the air battle over Songhu.

He calmly issued an order: All fighters that had run out of ammunition and fuel should immediately return to their homes, and other fighters that still had spare strength should temporarily entangle or dogfight with enemy planes, because the third wave of backup fighters, on their way to the scene, would arrive over Songhu in more than 10 minutes.

At the airfield near Nanjing, there were more than 200 Leopard II fighters.

Now it is basically all over Songhu, and even if they want to send Leopard I fighters, there are not enough pilots, but although many pilots are skeptical, no one dares to speak out, for fear of causing chaos in their own formation.

More than ten minutes later, Huaxia's huge fleet finally arrived.

Among them, there were more than 100 Bear heavy fighters and more than 50 Leopard fighters, which made the Chinese pilots feel shocked.

At this time, the total number of enemy and enemy fighters over Songhu had already exceeded 500, and they were entangled with each other, making it difficult for them to run away if they wanted to.

However, it is strange that the third wave of attack groups did not participate in the melee in the air.

They immediately bypassed the air battle area and went straight to the rear of the enemy planes, and only then did the Japanese aircraft group react that the purpose of these fighters was not them at all, but to stay in the aircraft carrier formation on the surface of the East China Sea.

The big thing is not good, the aircraft carrier formation is no longer escorted fighters.

In order to defeat the Huaxia Air Force in one fell swoop, the Japanese army played a Hasuo and dispatched all the fighters, because from the beginning of formulating tactics, the Japanese army did not consider whether the Huaxia Air Force would raid their aircraft carrier group.

Because there are few professional bombers in Huaxia, all fighters carry some small bombs, and they make temporary cameos as light bombers.

Therefore, in the eyes of the Japanese army, it was a joke to want to attack the aircraft carrier.

But in the face of the Bear fighter, it is completely different, it is a twin-engine heavy fighter, if it is a cameo bomber, the weight of the bomb is definitely not much worse than the Type 96 land attack.

What made the Japanese pilots even more panic was that during their visual inspection, they found that under the wings of these heavy bombers, they actually carried two heavy bombs, estimated to be at least four or five hundred kilograms, and once they were thrown into the aircraft carrier group, it would be a catastrophe at all, and they would lose their landing nests.

All of a sudden, Japanese fighters wanted to escape from the Songhu battlefield.

It is a pity that the Chinese fighters in the sky over Songhu are not vegetarians, so where are they allowed to slip away, not to mention that the speed of both the Flying Bear fighters and the Leopard II fighters is far faster than them, resulting in the Japanese Army's Type 96 warship, which cannot be separated at all.

As a result, the air battle became unusually bloody, and at the craziest moments, many fighters crashed into the enemy with red eyes and exploded with the enemy planes.

At 11:51, the bomber group that took off from Wuhu had reached the depths of the East China Sea.

This place is located about the north of the Zhoushan Islands and the east of the sea surface of the Daji Ocean, which is completely unfamiliar with the depths of the ocean that the Chinese Air Force is not familiar with.

Looking down from the air, I saw a cloud of smoky steel monsters, such as the Japanese aircraft carriers "Kaga", "Ryusho", "Fengxiang", "Akagi", and "Flying Eagle", as well as more than a dozen cruisers and destroyers, circling around the aircraft carrier.

It may be that the Japanese ships have already received the early warning message sent back by the front-line air force. There is a significant displacement phenomenon in the large and small hulls.

When the lookouts on the ship's mast saw the attack of the Huaxia aircraft group, they immediately sounded a terrible air raid siren, and one by one, the Japanese sailors who were like ants came out of all corners of the cabin.

They hastily pulled off the anti-aircraft gun jackets and prepared to deal with the low-altitude bombardment of the Huaxia bomber group.

At 11:59, the bomber group officially launched an attack.

Nearly 100 Flying Bear bombers, divided into four air attack groups, launched dive attacks on the Japanese aircraft carriers in turn, while more than 50 Leopard II fighters stood guard to prevent the Japanese carrier-based aircraft group returning from the Songhu battlefield from carrying out a sneak attack from the flank and rear of the bomber group.

In order to ensure the success of the bombing, Major General Liu also fought hard.

After the strengthened, the West Sichuan Flying Wing was almost dispatched, with Li Weili commanding the Leopard II fighter group to conduct air alert, while Yin Yihang and Jiang Chongguang each led a bomber group and immediately launched a dive attack.

Because the Akagi and Kaga are heavy aircraft carriers, they are also significantly larger in size among a group of ships, so they naturally received enthusiastic attention from the bomber group.

The Flying Bear Bomber is a tactical bomber developed by borrowing from the German Stuka bomber, once it dives at a high angle, it will emit a terrible scream, which will cause great psychological pressure on the Japanese army.

As a result, the hit rate will be greatly reduced, and the bomber group will have a certain chance of survival.

Yin Yihang and Jiang Chongguang, both battle-tested pilots, quickly found the dead end of the enemy's air defense network, and after a burst of instant communication, they fine-tuned the attack tactics and strived to carry out a multi-angle cross-attack, but it was a tragedy for the Japanese aircraft carrier.

Due to the limitations of the times, the development of aircraft and aircraft carriers is changing with each passing day.

In 1937, the Japanese aircraft carriers had not yet experienced the test of real air anti-ship, so there were still many areas to improve in the air defense of aircraft carriers, especially the density of anti-aircraft guns, which was far from keeping up with 1941 - the beginning of the outbreak of the Pacific War.

What's more, because the aircraft carrier formation was in a hurry to respond to the battle, the air defense force was already seriously insufficient, so that the fire network of the antiaircraft guns was very cheerful, but for the bombers in the dive, it did not have much impact, and I saw one bomb after another, thrown down like thunder, blowing up the sea water and the warships into a sea of fire.

Everyone is a rookie, and the hit rate is not very high.

After two waves of dive attacks, the aircraft carriers Akagi and Kaga were hit by 750 kg of bombs in succession, and even if Akagi suffered the least, it was hit by three bombs and nearly missed two.

And the Kaga is even worse, the entire flight deck has been twisted and deformed, and thick black smoke and flames have been ignited, resulting in the entire aircraft carrier formation being shrouded in black smoke, and it is estimated that even if it is not heavily damaged, it will not be able to take off and land fighters, which is a big result for the Huaxia Air Force.

Japanese carrier-based aircraft over Songhu have gradually appeared in the southwest.

The three wing commanders were aware of the urgency of time, so they had no choice but to order the remaining bombers to find the targets they were bombing on their own, and as for the bombers that had already dropped their bombs, they would help cover the sky and confuse the air defense line of sight on the Japanese ships, and stipulate that after 15 minutes of attack, they would return to the sea in unison.

At the same time, the Leopard II fighter brigade laid an air interception net in the southwest direction.

When seven or eight returning Japanese planes were shot down one by one by the air interception network, the rest of the Japanese planes did not dare to support the aircraft carrier alone, but circled in the distance, hoping that the large forces would gather together and break through the interception network together.

Fifteen minutes passed quickly.

The Japanese fleet suffered heavy losses, and even heavy aircraft carriers such as the "Akagi" and "Kaga" were damaged to varying degrees.

As for the light aircraft carrier, the "Longxiang" has been hit hard and its speed has been greatly reduced, while the "Flying Eagle" has been hit by a bomb at the oil depot, and is frantically burning and exploding, and there is a clear tendency to sink.

The bombing mission has ended, and the Huaxia fleet has begun to return en masse.

As a result of this unexpected anti-ship bombing operation, three of the five light and heavy aircraft carriers of the Japanese Combined Fleet were severely damaged and one was sunk, achieving extremely brilliant results.

The more than 100 Japanese planes that returned one after another did not dare to pursue them, but escorted a group of aircraft carrier formations to retreat to the sea area of the battle as soon as possible.

And the losses of the Huaxia Air Force were also extremely heavy.

Nearly 40 of the nearly 100 Flying Bear bombers were shot down, and the other bombers that successfully evacuated were also somewhat damaged, and more than 10 of them were seriously damaged, and it is estimated that they will not be able to return to the Wuhu airport, but Major General Liu suggested that it is best to fly over Taihu Lake before making a forced landing or parachuting.

Because of the forced landing in the waters of Taihu Lake, the safety factor of the pilots is much higher, and the Chinese military and civilians can also carry out rescue in a timely manner, and many pilots who are not sure of returning safely have been ordered to carry out their orders, as for whether they live or die, it all depends on luck.

I have to say that the luck of the Japanese aircraft carrier formation is really high enough, and when the aircraft carrier formation sailed away, the Huaxia submarine arrived in the warring waters.

The submarine formation, which had been belated, had no choice but to line up and watch the enemy fleet fly away.

The first appearance of the Huaxia submarine force turned out to be in vain.

The submarine force had no choice but to ask Nanjing for help, whether to pursue the Japanese aircraft carrier, or to search and rescue the pilot who fell into the water on the spot?

Since the submarines of this year were still relatively backward, and the speed was like a turtle crawling, and there were more than 10 destroyers and more than 100 fighters in the Japanese fleet, it was estimated that even if they really caught up, they would not be able to get any benefit.

Therefore, Nanjing ordered them to "immediately rescue the pilots and not pursue them without authorization."