When he received the news that the enemy plane group was approaching, Jiang Wenhan was the first to rush forward, and then all the 11 "Falcon" fighters that followed him followed.

The squad personally led by Jiang Wenhan was the first "ace squad" of the fleet aviation of the Imperial Navy, and the 12 fighter pilots were all aces in air combat, and Jiang Wenhan was the number one "ace in air combat" in the Imperial Navy, and its record had reached 74, and the pilots with the least records in the squad also had 11 crash records. The other 11 pilots were all brought out by Jiang Wenhan, and what made him even more proud was that since the war had been fought, the squad under his direct command had only replaced 21 pilots, and it was the fighter squadron with the smallest number of battle losses among the fighter squadrons of the entire naval fleet.

In June, when the Second Task Force was resting collectively, Jiang Wenhan refused the promotion order to become a full-fledged wing commander (Deng Zichao and Zhang Naiding also refused), and as a result, Yang Shihong was appointed as the commander of the Second Air Wing, promoted to brigadier general of the naval aviation, and left the fleet and went to the rear. The reason for Jiang Wenhan's refusal to be promoted is very simple, if he becomes the official wing commander, he will have to leave the front-line combat unit like Luo Jinming, and go to the rear to take charge of the administrative work and logistics affairs of the wing, and he can no longer fight on the front line. And Jiang Wenhan's biggest goal is that at the end of the war, he will still be the number one ace of the navy, and even become the number one ace of the imperial navy and army aviation (at this time, the number one ace of the army aviation has reached 108), if he chooses to be promoted, then he will definitely not be able to keep the number one ace of the navy (An Shile is the second ace of the navy at this time, with a record of 67). Therefore. He chose to stay on the demotion, and continued to fight on the front line as a colonel captain.

As the so-called artist is bold, Jiang Wenhan's landline not only has dozens of achievements under the left side of the cockpit. Moreover, his fighter was modified by aviation service personnel, and the biggest improvement was the automatic machine of the aerial gun. The defect of the "Hayabusa" fighter's small number of ammunition in reserve has been criticized by many people. Equipped with only enough ground shells to fire more than a dozen short bursts, the fighters often ran out of ammunition quickly in brutal battles, and finally had to withdraw from the battle. The Naval Aviation Corps once made a statistic on air combat in the first half of 25 years, and in air defense operations, an average pilot fired a short shot every minute and a half. The duration of the air defense operation is between 15 and 30 minutes, and many times, the pilots shoot long bursts instead of short bursts. As a result, there is often a run out of ammunition at the last moment of the battle. The problem is even more acute if the enemy's bombers arrive continuously.

There are two ways to solve the problem, one is to expand the bomb bay and increase the number of spare bombs, but this requires a lot of adjustment to the structure of the fighter plane, and it must be sent back to the factory. Or it can be carried out by a large air station, and this will definitely increase the weight of the fighter and affect the maneuverability of the fighter. Or it is to reduce the amount of fuel carried, which affects the air time and combat radius of the fighter. The other thing is to reduce the number of shells fired at each short burst, which can be done by a skilled aeronautical technician. The number of shells fired by an aerial gun at a burst is controlled by an automaton, and the number of shells fired by the "Falcon" fighter at the factory is set at 15 rounds at a short burst. Four guns can fire 60 shells at a time. Each gun only has 250 rounds of ammunition in reserve, so it can only be fired at a maximum of about 16 short shots.

Pilots like Jiang Wenhan have made improvements to their planes, reducing the number of shots per cannon per short-point shot. However, Jiang Wenhan's own plane could only fire eight shells per aircraft every time it fired a short shot, consuming 32 shells at a time. This is the number of shells that Jiang Wenhan himself summed up and consumed. Jiang Wenhan made a unified calculation of the hundreds of air battles in which he had participated, and in more than ninety percent of the battles, he only needed to consume less than 40 shells to shoot down an enemy plane. Combined with the photos taken by the aerial camera gun, he finally determined that in his later dozens of achievements, almost only the first five shells fired by each gun had a large proportion of misses, and the next few shells could hit the target, and it was no longer meaningful to continue to consume the shells. And to ensure that an American fighter is killed, two or three 20-mm shells are enough, so he has his aviation technician adjust the automata.

In fact, all the pilots in the squad at that time had made adjustments to their landline gun automaton (after becoming an ace pilot, they all had a fixed landline, and these pilots could make adjustments to their landlines without damaging the fighter's structure, which was a special treatment), and they all set the number of shells fired at a time to about ten (ten rounds at most, which is a reasonable number). That is to say, these fighters led by Jiang Wenhan can fire at least 25 short shots at the enemy, which is enough for them to hold out on the battlefield for more than half an hour.

Jiang Wenhan was the first to go into battle, and unlike other air defense fighters, Jiang Wenhan and the others chose the US escort fighters, and before that, Jiang Wenhan had already issued an order to let all the other fighters deal with the US bombers, and his squad was responsible for entangling the US escort fighters and carrying out the most dangerous mission.

The air battle was extremely difficult, and Jiang Wenhan soon discovered that the quality of the US pilots had improved a lot. The performance of the F4U is very good, whether it is in terms of speed (315 knots in the early model), firepower (six 50-inch heavy machine guns), protection ability (the whole machine weighs more than 6 tons, thicker than the armor of the "Falcon"), maneuverability and other aspects are not worse than the "Falcon", and even surpass, the performance of the two fighters can be said to be equal. Before that, the reason why the "Falcon" was able to dominate the sky was that the Tang Imperial Navy had better pilots, but now, Jiang Wenhan first discovered that the pilot quality of the US fighter jets had improved a lot.

Jiang Wenhan had already shot down the second F4U when he hit the fourth short-point shot. No matter how strict the training of US pilots is, they still look very immature in front of Jiang Wenhan and these ace pilots. Can be both.

The dozens of crash marks on Jiang Wenhan's plane were also noticed by US pilots.

"Colonel, behind the ass, dive!"

Jiang Wenhan immediately lowered the operating lever. The fighter had just dived a few tens of meters when a volley of machine-gun bullets flew over his head.

"Pull it up. Kill the son of a bitch! ”

Just as the F4U rushed to the front, Jiang Wenhan's landline plane completed the fight, and then a row of shells shot out.

"Well played!"

Jiang Wenhan didn't say anything, and when he pulled up the fighter again. He quickly glanced around, and then he saw the "Hulun Lake" aircraft carrier with black smoke rising from the sea in the distance.

"The aircraft carrier was shot, damn it, let go of those US fighters, if you have the guts, follow me to intercept the US bombers!"

The air battle is still going on, and Jiang Wenhan can't manage so much, even if the gunners on the surface air defense warships can't quickly distinguish the difference between "falcons" and "pirates," he must now intercept the US bombers. Aircraft carriers can no longer be bombed.

All 12 "Falcons" began to dive in the direction of the fleet, and when the US escort fighters, which had been scattered before, reacted, Jiang Wenhan and the others had already rushed into the range of fire from the fleet's anti-aircraft guns. The American fighters did not keep up, and the American pilots were clearly told when they arrived at the unit not to easily enter the fleet's anti-aircraft fire network, they only needed to escort the bombers to the enemy fleet's anti-aircraft fire network. Instead of accompanying bombers to attack enemy ships.

"Pay attention to avoid anti-aircraft guns", Jiang Wenhan gritted his teeth, he was rushing towards the Ghost Gate, and in the end, it was very likely that he was reimbursed by the anti-aircraft guns on the battleship.

In order to avoid being hit by VT, the twelve fighters were divided into six twin formations, and the distance between the long plane and the wingman was about 300 meters. The main reason why the carrier-based fighter unit did not adopt a four-plane formation was that the number of carrier-based fighters was limited, and the four-plane formation would be too wasteful of combat effectiveness.

"Colonel, left front, that SBD is about to start diving."

"Then let's swoop down and see who moves fast!"

When the SBD entered the dive channel, the "Falcon" fighter also began to dive at an angle of about 05 degrees, and when the SBD was about 800 meters away from the sea, Jiang Wenhan pulled the trigger, and at least 20 shells hit the belly of the SBD, and the aerial bomb hanging on the bomber was detonated, and the entire bomber was blown to pieces, and the two "Falcon" also quickly pulled up and left the air over the aircraft carrier.

Seeing that air defense fighters were coming up, the group of SBDs that were originally near the "Hulun Lake" and were ready to enter the attack channel were all scattered. American bomber pilots with a little experience know that those fighter pilots of the Don Empire did not think about their own safety at all in battle.

The strength of the 12 "Falcons" was too weak, although within a few minutes they had shot down at least 8 American bombers, but now there were dozens of American bombers over the fleet, and many of them had begun to drop bombs and torpedoes. Two more "Falcons" were hit by the anti-aircraft guns of the battleship. When Jiang Wenhan pulled up the fighter and left the strike range of the small-caliber anti-aircraft guns, he saw the two pilots jump out.

Other fighter squads also rushed into the range of the fleet's anti-aircraft guns, and no one asked them to do so, and the pilots were all spontaneously thrown into the fight. Jiang Wenhan went in and out of the air over the fleet five times and five times, and each time he chose the loopholes in the fleet's air defense fire network to drill into, and then quickly withdrew. He is well aware of the situation with the air defense network of the fleet. By the time he withdrew from the skies over the fleet for the fifth time, he had already shot down seven enemy aircraft.

The first bombers of the U.S. Army dropped bombs and torpedoes and were retreating. Jiang Wenhan did not let the fighters go after him, who knows when the second batch of US bombers will arrive?

At this time, on the sea, the "Hulun Lake" aircraft carrier was already emitting dense black smoke, and red flames were flashing in the smoke. The small aircraft carrier "Songshan" has seriously tilted to the left, and the officers and men on the battleship are evacuating, and this aircraft carrier will certainly not be able to save it. The "Hengshan" aircraft carrier was also hit by a bomb, and many damage management team members on the deck were busy extinguishing the fire. Only the aircraft carrier "Lake Bell" is once again in great distress and is sailing rapidly to the southeast.

"Report on ammunition, fuel." Jiang Wenhan took a long breath and began to check the remaining ammunition and fuel on his landline. He fired fifteen short shots, had about half of his ammunition left, and had fuel to fly for an hour, all without any problems.

"There are also forty percent ammunition, which can fly for fifty minutes."

"Colonel, I still have thirty percent of ammunition and can fly for an hour."

The other pilots reported the situation one after another, and then Jiang Wenhan asked the other team to report the situation as well. At this time, there were less than 50 air defense fighters over the fleet, and more than a dozen of the fighters lost were shot down by the anti-aircraft guns on the battleships. The rest of the squad had less than 30% of the ammunition left, and some of the fighters had no shells left. And now these fighters can't land, at least Jiang Wenhan and they haven't received the order from the fleet to let them land.

"Colonel, would you like to ask about the losses of the fleet?"

"Don't you see that?" Jiang Wenhan asked the wingman pilot rhetorically, "Pay attention to the northwest direction, the enemy's second group of bombers should arrive soon." In the future, pay attention to the use of artillery shells, do not entangle with enemy fighters, and focus on attacking enemy bombers. ”

"Understood, damn, I fought three times this time, and I don't know how many fights the captain fought again."

"I shot down two, and it's like the captain took out five."

"No, it seems to be seven."

"What I saw was eight."

Hearing the chatting words of those pilots, Jiang Wenhan smiled and shook his head, probably only at this time he could laugh. But when he looked at the northwest sky again, he couldn't laugh at all.

The air defense commander judged that the size of the enemy aircraft group was about 100 planes, and there were about 30 escort fighters flying in the front.

"Get ready for battle, remember, aim and fight, don't waste shells!" Jiang Wenhan clenched his fists hard, and then spread his hands to relax as much as possible, it seemed that he had to prepare for a forced landing on the sea!