Vladivostok, also known as Vladivostok by the Chinese, is the capital of Primorsky Krai of Russia, the terminus of the Trans-Siberian Railway, a famous port city on the Pacific coast of Russia and the largest city in the Russian Far East. Biquge.infoDuring the First Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, the initial construction of the fortress of Vladivostok played an important role in preventing the Japanese army from occupying Vladivostok. In 1910-1916, the engineering general A-P. Fernand proposed a new design for the fortress, which was strongly approved by the commander of the engineering forces of the Vladivostok fortress, Major General A-P. Shosin. In the following years, fortresses No. 1-7 and fortresses A, E, ZH and Z were built on the southern shore of the Suifen River basin from Ussuriysk (Twin Cities) to the Amursky Bay, and fortresses Nos. 9-12 were built on the southern and eastern shores of Russky Island, as well as a series of infrastructure facilities such as coastal batteries and anti-landing covered passages. The new fortress drew on all the military engineering and technology of the time, including many well-set bunkers and underground passages. In the thirties of the 20th century, the Russian army established a new coastal defense system in and around Vladivostok, including a fortified Coastal Battery No. 981 on Russky Island, armed with 180 mm and 305 mm coastal guns, which also included a number of 203, 305 and 356 mm railway guns. This impregnable coastal defense system shattered the possibility of the enemy capturing Vladivostok from the sea.

In the early morning of July 29, 1942, the long-lost air raid sirens sounded in Vladivostok. Under the early warning of the radar station, the Soviet and Russian air forces stationed in the surrounding areas quickly dispatched more than 400 fighters to the air to meet the attack, and the Japanese aircraft group that appeared in the sight of the Soviet and Russian pilots was quite large. In fact, not only the Soviet and Russian pilots were surprised by this, but even the Japanese pilots themselves were surprised, and before this they had never formed a large fleet of more than 800 fighters. Whether it was two wars of aggression against China or combat operations that swept through Southeast Asia and Australia, the bombing of 100 planes was enough to destroy the opponent's defense line, shock the opponent's spirit, and weaken the opponent's morale.

Bombers accounted for 60 percent of the more than 800 Japanese fighters that flew from the direction of Hokkaido Island and Honshu Island, and all of them were twin-engine or four-engine bombers -- it was not until 1939 that the Japanese Army and Navy's medium- and long-range bombers combined to reach this number, and in the following three years, hundreds of new fighters entered service with the Japanese army, and the appearance of the Zero land attack and Zero fighters raised the technical and tactical capabilities of the Japanese air force to a whole new height.

The fighters that escorted the Japanese bomber group consisted of three types: Type 97, Type Zero, and Type 1. According to the technical standards of the European and American armies, the first two models belong to light fighters, and the type one fighter officially put into service in 1941 is a heavy fighter, and its design ideas are similar to those of the main fighter of the German army during World War II, Fokker G-51, that is, the pursuit of speed, range, firepower and survivability, and can be competent for reconnaissance, patrol, interception, front-line bombing and other roles. Although these heavy fighters are dazzling on paper and their silhouettes are powerful enough to be a bully, with the development of aviation technology, it has become increasingly difficult for them to adapt to large-scale, high-intensity air combat. The Luftwaffe, with a deep understanding of this, began to eliminate the once dominant Fokker G-51 in the late World War II and turned to mass equipment with an improved version of the Me-50 - the Me-55 light multirole fighter, and by 1942, the Germans, who had always been at the forefront of military aviation, had begun to install jet fighters.

Of course, the technical and tactical equipment of the Soviet and Russian armies is not comparable to Germany, which dominates the world, and the fighters they are equipped with are mainly I-15 and I-16, the former is equivalent to the level of the air force of the Western Allies in the early 30s, and the latter barely reached the level of the mid-30s, which is difficult to compete with the strongest Zero fighters of the Japanese army. Therefore, in the skies over Vladivostok, the Japanese bomber pilots, who were strongly covered by their own fighters, quickly pounced on the land-based radar stations deployed by the Soviet and Russian troops along the coastline and the military airfields around the port. During the bombing, which lasted nearly an hour, the Japanese planes dropped more than 500 tons of bombs, two of the five radar stations of the Soviet and Russian troops in Vladivostok were completely destroyed, one was destroyed, only two were barely able to maintain operations, three military airfields and six field airfields were all attacked, and more than 150 warplanes were lost on the ground......

Just over three hours after the first round of fierce air raids, the Japanese aircraft group once again attacked with overwhelming momentum. In the bright sunshine, the puffy clouds glowed with a blinding white light, and above these clouds, which looked like islands in the sky, a large group of twin-engine bombers with wings and fuselage painted with the sunburst logo were flying north in an unprecedented dense queue. Above them, single-engine fighters with relatively small size formed several battle formations. Through the sliding portholes, you can clearly see that the pilots wearing leather flight caps are wearing oxygen masks, although they can't see their expressions, but their eyes are full of coldness and fierceness.

The roar of the engine was so loud in my ears that the black dots in the distance appeared almost silently and flew quickly. After the first round of air raids, the Joint Operations Command of the Japanese Army and Navy Aviation Force judged that the Soviet and Russian air forces in the Vladivostok area had been seriously weakened, so they correspondingly reduced the escort force for the second round of air raids......

A large number of Soviet and Russian fighters were found to come to intercept them, and the Type 97 and Type Zero, flying at a high place, made a decisive attack, and the fierce air battle was fought from an altitude of 8,000 meters to a medium and low altitude of about 1,000 meters.

"Attention! Note! A convoy of enemy planes came from the right! Squadrons stay in dense formation! Dense formation defense! ”

On a Japanese pilot bomber, a Japanese adjutant wearing a flight jacket was holding a plank on his head, he was not very old, but the corners of his eyes were quite wrinkled. When he radioed the battle orders to the crews, the technical non-commissioned officer in the nose of the plane, who was responsible for both bomb delivery and machine guns, was frowning and manipulating the 7.7mm machine gun, so that the sight's crosshair was always aimed at the black spots that were rapidly approaching, and at the rear of the cabin, the machine gunners responsible for the defense of the belly and the back of the plane had also opened their safety and were ready to fire at any time, and an extremely tense atmosphere quietly filled every corner of the cramped cabin.

"They're coming! It's coming! Hell yes! These are actually Fokker G-51s! Did the Germans enter the war? ”

The voice of the captain came from the communication channel, as bomber pilots, they are far less chic than the fighter pilots, in this era, the death rate of anti-aircraft artillery fire from the ground is still very limited, so the last thing the bomber crew members want to see is the enemy fighter that is quickly approaching, especially the Fokker G-51 fighter equipped with a 20 mm machine gun and a 13 mm large-caliber machine gun, when the bullets hit like raindrops, They can easily penetrate lightweight but sturdy aluminum skin, killing machine gunners and bombardiers, and pilots with steel plates around their seats are less likely to be killed, but they are still worried about the flammable and explosive engines.

In fact, the Germans were not directly involved in this distant war, they only sold the Fokker G-51, which had been backlogged in warehouses for several years, to the Soviet government at a discount, in exchange for their gold reserves and high-quality furs and wood, and for Soviet and Russian pilots, although it was not easy to master the operation of German fighters, once they were skillfully used, they could exert stronger combat effectiveness than Soviet and Russian fighters in service.

"They're on my right, separated...... One of them fired at me! Worst! Worst! Our plane was damaged, ask for help, ask for help! ”

Hearing a panicked shout from the headset, the Japanese adjutant in charge of commanding the air formation tightened his face, tore his throat and shouted into the microphone: "Don't panic, everyone stay in formation, keep in formation!" Remind your Heavy not to injure your own people! ”

The huge bomber formation has long been shrouded by the roar of hundreds of machine guns and machine guns, as far as the eye can see, almost every bomber on the guns are firing, a long series of bullets flying in the line of sight, but those Soviet and Russian fighters with the advantage of speed and maneuver are shot down very few, they often pounce from close range after a big turn, and after a short shot of two or three seconds, they quickly enter another big turn, so that the opponent's bullets are always in a state of pursuit from the rear. Those who are occasionally hit by those 7.7mm bullets can continue to fight as long as they do not hurt the vital point.

Despite repeated warnings from their superiors before departure, the Japanese pilots did not seem to be comfortable with the large and dense oversized formation. Under the onslaught of Soviet and Russian fighters in turn, some of the 97 heavy explosions gradually broke away from the large formation because they evaded firing. For the Russian fighter pilots, who played the role of hungry wolves, their weak defenses were easier to hunt than the targets in the formation, so much so that two or three fighters often pounced on the same bomber, and the ensuing scene was tantamount to a pack of hounds biting the antelope that had been knocked out......

The cabin began to be filled with gunsmoke ******from machine gun bullets, and the Japanese adjutant, who was in charge of the aviation command, looked in astonishment at his comrades outside the porthole who were dragging long black smoke to the ground, and opened his mouth to speak. Fortunately, several Japanese fighters who got rid of the entanglement of Soviet and Russian fighters came back in time, and after the Battle of the Halaha River, Soviet and Russian pilots usually adopted a tactical strategy of one hit and go when facing Japanese fighters with superior air combat performance, which made Japanese fighter pilots very mad.

Having managed to survive a wave of onslaught from the Russian fighter group, the Japanese bomber group continued to crush the Russians like a black cloud towards the largest military fortress in the Far East. Although many of them were bruised, a few had to worry about the stalling of one engine, a few had broken machine gun towers on their backs or bellies, and although it was difficult for many of them to return to their own airfields hundreds of kilometers away, the commanders who commanded the air raid did not care, and were ordered to weaken the Russians' defenses at Vladivostok at all costs, paving the way for the army and navy to join forces to capture the fortress, which had been coveted and feared by the Japanese top brass for a hundred years.

(End of chapter)