At about 2 o'clock in the morning, the night was dark and the stars were dim, and the vast majority of the more than 10 million people on Luzon Island were in a deep sleep, but the tens of thousands of Japanese officers and soldiers stationed there had been awakened by the alarm of the coming war. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 The United States announced that it would send troops to the Philippines to help 27 million Filipinos, including hundreds of thousands of American immigrants and the families of U.S. military survivors, regain their freedom on the grounds that the Japanese government does not accept foreign traffic and has not stopped its massacre of Filipino civilians. Although the U.S. side emphasized in its diplomatic documents that U.S. military operations would be limited to the Philippines and surrounding waters, and that it would not take the initiative to attack Japanese ships and personnel withdrawing from the area, the Japanese cabinet made it clear in subsequent announcements that the Japanese military would carry out an all-out counterattack against the Americans' war-provoking behavior in their own way until the U.S. government admits defeat.

The Second U.S.-Japan Pacific War broke out!

In the Philippines, the Japanese radar stations on the periphery lost contact and the Navy reconnaissance ship was attacked and damaged, which was obviously a precursor to an imminent attack by the US military. The Japanese Garrison Command then issued an operational order as quickly as possible, requiring the Japanese troops around Manila to be put on the highest alert and ready to respond to the enemy's attack.

The ships of the 2nd Squadron of the Southern Front of the Japanese Navy and the garrison units anchored in the port of Manila raised their fire and anchored, took off their gun jackets, and were all on standby.

According to the traditional concept of warfare, since the Japanese forces in Manila have done a good job of coping with the situation, the US forces have lost the advantage of surprise attacks, but the US carrier-based aircraft group that took off from the aircraft carrier formation is still flying over the waters east of the Philippines in an orderly manner, relying on the sea surface and ground radio beacons to correct their routes, and then skimming the eastern coastline of Luzon at a low altitude -- this is the night low-altitude penetration tactic that the US Navy Air Force has painstakingly practiced before the war!

Flying at low altitudes at night depends not only on the courage of the masters, but also on advanced military science and technology. The miniaturization of airborne radar has enabled Germany, the United States, Ireland and other aviation powers to manufacture carrier-based fighters and bombers after 1944 equipped with a pair of scientific and technological "discernment", and pilots no longer rely on technical experience alone to complete flight maneuvers. Under the guidance of the airborne radar, they can identify the current flight environment in the pitch black outside, predict various dangerous situations in advance, and complete difficult attack actions with a high success rate.

The U.S. carrier-based aircraft group flying to Manila is spearheaded by cutting-edge Hellcat fighters. The performance of this kind of naval carrier-based aircraft is superior to any previous fighter plane of the US military; they are fast, have fierce firepower, are very tactical maneuverable, and are equipped with an SCR-9 3000MHz airborne radar that has the functions of reconnaissance and vigilance, search and navigation, and close-range guidance and sighting, and the fuselage is extremely strong -- before they are put into actual combat, people cannot intuitively understand this, and when they have undergone the baptism of war and show this excellence, the US officers and men will inevitably have a good understanding of the "Grumman Aircraft Company's aluminum tanks" Sit up and take notice.

Compared with the U.S. Hellcat, the IR-39T carrier-based aircraft equipped with the Irish and Luftwaffe are slightly better in terms of maneuverability, and the firepower and radar equipment are basically equal, but the defense capability is slightly inferior. Fortunately, the two are not opponents on the battlefield - based on the close military cooperation between the United States and Ireland in the 40s, the two first-class carrier-based aircraft, Hellcat and IR-39T, have achieved a high degree of generalization in terms of fuel, ammunition and communications, and the Irish-made self-guided air-to-air rockets are especially popular with American pilots, who call them "FAW munitions", that is, weapons that are left alone after launching, and have developed such fierce air combat tactics as "three-plank axes......

"Oh no, General, the No. 4 and No. 9 electric reconnaissance stations have been bombed by enemy aircraft, and the 334, 409, 561, and 564 anti-aircraft artillery squadrons have been put into battle, of which the 409 Squadron reported shooting down 3 enemy aircraft, the 561 Squadron reported shooting down 1, and the rest have not yet achieved results."

At the Philippine garrison headquarters of the Japanese army, a staff officer hurriedly reported to the acting commander, Major General Masahiro Baba, on the latest situation of the battle -- the Philippine military governor and commander of the garrison was originally Lieutenant General Otaka Kamezo, and this unfortunate man was invited to attend the National Day celebrations in Tokyo.

"No. 4, No. 9......" Masaro Baba pointed his finger on the map, "so it seems that the target of the enemy group is Manila!" Contact the command of the 20th Air Force and inform them to immediately send night fighters to intercept the enemy fleet and prepare for air raids on the airfield; Immediately send a notification to the Izumo that the enemy fleet will arrive at Manila Bay in about 10 minutes, and prepare them for battle. ”

The staff officer put his legs together, and his head was facing down a little in the standard posture of a chicken pecking rice: "Hai! ”

"It's finally here......" Masaro Baba rubbed his hands vigorously with a grinning expression, the acting commander was obviously in a mixed state of mind about the upcoming battle, but he didn't know that the direction of the battle would be completely unexpected.

Manila is located in the southwest of Luzon, with the harbor facing east and west, and its urban area is about 60 kilometers from the eastern coastline of Luzon, which means that when the U.S. carrier-based aircraft group flies over the eastern coastline of Luzon, the Japanese army in Manila has less than 10 minutes to react. After receiving the combat order from the garrison headquarters, the Japanese 20th Air Force dispatched 62 fighters from various airfields on Luzon Island to take to the air -- these so-called night fighters were not specially designed and manufactured for night battles, but were equipped with some special equipment on the basis of daytime fighters, so that they could search for and attack enemy planes at night when the visual environment was very bad, but due to the technological blockade of Germany and the United States and other countries, Japan was slow to obtain the key cavity magnetoelectric tube technology, and their airborne radar was like a land-based radar. Although the detection distance is very large, the accuracy and accuracy are not satisfactory, and it has never been able to solve the problem of excessive size and weight. By 1946, although the Japanese army had two types of night fighters and was equipped with more than 600 ground-based radars, its night air defense combat mode was still in its primitive stage.

In the face of the huge US carrier-based aircraft group, although the Japanese night fighter pilots were full of courage and all of them were so-called "night sky elites" who had received special night combat training, they were completely unable to compete with the escort fighters of the US attack aircraft group. For all these reasons, in the first air battle of the Second Pacific Theater, Japan and the United States actually set a record of 27 to 0 battle losses -- the Japanese lost 27 night fighters, but failed to shoot down even a single US carrier-based aircraft. In addition to 2 fighters that returned home due to a malfunction on the way and 4 fighters that were unfortunately shot down by Japanese ground artillery fire, 391 carrier-based planes of the US military successfully flew over Manila!

Accompanied by the terrible sound of air defense sirens, the Japanese troops deployed around Manila Bay and the Japanese ships in the harbor tried to interfere with the sight of the American pilots with searchlights, and hundreds of pillars of light and countless anti-aircraft artillery fire turned the night over Manila into a dazzling stage. Hellcat and IR-39T, who won 27 kills, soared alone at medium and high altitudes, Helldive bombers equipped with SCR-10 bombing radars and Avenger torpedo bombers took turns attacking Japanese ships in the waters of Manila Bay. Aerial bombs roared down, and one after another aerial torpedo fish jumped into the water, and the originally peaceful harbor soon boiled. In less than 30 minutes, as many as 67 Japanese ships were bombed, and the vibrant harbor was turned into a living purgatory, with blazing flames, acrid smoke, and hot oil on the sea, and combatants lying in pools of blood everywhere on the damaged ships...... Among them, the "Izumo," the flagship of the 2nd Sentai of the Japanese Southern Fleet, was hit by two aerial bombs, and the hull of the ship was ablaze with raging fires, and nearly a quarter of the officers and men of the ship were killed or seriously injured; the light aircraft carrier "Uji" was hit by a torpedo and a bomb, and ran aground in the dock area to avoid capsizing, and nearly half of the warplanes on board were damaged, while the other light aircraft carrier, the "Izumi," was much luckier, and it was quietly hiding next to the pier in the northern area and was not "patronized" by any US carrier-based aircraft.

At the end of the heavy bombardment, the vast Manila Bay was filled with fire and smoke, and countless sailors and sailors were open in the water. After a long journey of more than 600 kilometers, they broke into the port of Manila, which was heavily guarded by the Japanese army, launched a strong attack with Japanese officers and men in full array, and actually sank tens of thousands of tons of Japanese warships at a small cost of a few carrier-based aircraft, and sent a number of ocean-going freighters loaded with various supplies to sail back to the mainland.

This is the power of military technology!

Looking at the tragic situation in front of him, Vice Admiral Mitsumi Shimizu, who was slightly wounded in the battle, looked like ashes, and his naval team had already been crippled before it left the harbor.

When the preliminary battle damage report was sent to the Philippine garrison headquarters of the Japanese army, Masaro Baba and his staff officers fell into a deep shock, they could not figure out in any case, the elite night fighter unit was actually beaten to pieces, and the ground air defense unit with hundreds of anti-aircraft guns spent more than 100,000 rounds of artillery shells but still failed to prevent the tragedy from happening, and what is even more fatal is that once the news of the unfavorable war spreads, the situation in the Philippines will inevitably slide into the abyss of getting out of control. At that time, their futures, along with the honor of soldiers, who are more important than their lives, will be severely damaged......

(End of chapter)