Since the first time he stepped into the cockpit of the Junkers-Heinkel D, Edward Henkel. Feng. Schleich knew he had found the best partner for life. With comfortable seats, a snug fit, a wide field of view, and a convenient rear-pull canopy, everything about this aircraft looks so good, except for the fact that it makes pilots accustomed to the open cockpit feel a little uncomfortable when flying with the canopy closed.

Still far away, von Schleich saw those behemoths floating in the air, they looked like giants holding big sticks, which made people feel oppressive when they looked at it from a distance, but Schleich knew that those were just bluffing things, tens of thousands of cubic meters of hydrogen would become an incomparably huge fireball as long as a little spark was a little bit of it. So, he opened the cockpit canopy and stretched his right hand out of the cabin, and his fist clenched in two circles in the air and swung forward, and the surrounding war eagles began to accelerate, and then he himself increased the throttle, and in the blink of an eye, twenty-five fighters had broken away from the group and rushed towards those aerial giants at high speed.

At the same time, eight small and delicate fighters also completed their formation south of the US airship formation, and rushed towards the German aircraft group in two four-plane V-shaped battle formations. Fierce combat in the air was not the most neutral goal for both sides, and Major von Schleich and his squadron planned to take out the airships first, so as to cover the group behind them to attack the American airship base; The U.S. fighter squad also does not have the luxury of shooting down all the opponents, and their main goal is to delay as much time as possible.

When the battle was about to begin, 25 German fighters were at an altitude of 2,200 meters, and the 8 American P-4 fighters took off from the "Beechcraft" at an altitude of 3,000 meters, so the Americans were in an advantageous position in altitude, but the Americans ignored from the beginning that the Junkers-Heinkel D-type fighters, which had a top speed of 420 kilometers per hour, had equally excellent climbing and maneuverability. At a distance of 1,000 meters, the condescending American pilots opened fire unhurriedly, and 16 7.92 mm Lewis Aviation machine guns sprayed tongues of fire like vipers, and their facial expressions were particularly cold against this faint fire. It seems that they are all cold-blooded killers who kill people without blinking.

Is this like shooting us down?

Major von Schleich sneered in his heart, not to mention his identity as an ace of the Luftwaffe, the pilots in his squadron are also some good players who have participated in the European War and the South American War, and the total flight time of more than 2000 hours is a very common thing in this unit, and the commanders who have shot down more than 2 enemy planes are only excellent, and the commanders of each squad are all trump cards with a record of more than 5 aircraft, of course, such a trump card cannot be regarded as a real trump card. Because in the current Luftwaffe, the highest record is Max, who has shot down 13 French fighters, 21 British planes, and 11 Argentine planes, and Lieutenant Colonel Imelman, and there are hundreds of pilots who have shot down more than 10 enemy planes.

After a slight swing of the wings, Schreich easily dodged two barrages of bullets from the front, and most German pilots did not even need to dodge it because the firepower of the American planes was so dispersed. As the distance between the two groups of fighters became closer and closer, the pilots of both sides realized more and more clearly that the fighters of both sides were not at the same level at all, and compared with the 2.6-ton German fighters, the P-4, which was forced to "lose weight" to 700 kilograms in order to adapt to the airship as much as possible, was simply an eye-catching little toy, almost as heavy as the Hummingbird fighter with its weapons removed. A gust of wind can even blow the P-4 away. The "Beechcraft", which was responsible for carrying the P-4 in bad weather, could not sail, so the pilots of the P-4 had less to worry about.

The two groups of fighters traveling in the opposite direction at high speed have closed to a distance of 500 meters in just a few seconds. The German fighters who happened to face the 8 P-4s scrambled to open fire, and the firepower of the six machine guns on each plane was three times that of the opponent, plus the numerical superiority, the American pilots faced an unprecedented rain of terrifying bullets, only to see their planes desperately swaying to avoid the incoming bullets, but there were still two unlucky P-4s whose noses were shot in all directions, and then pulled the black smoke and stalled and fell to the ground.

After a short two-second shot, the German fighters stopped firing, and after passing by the other side, two squads of 10 fighters began to turn and pursue the remaining Kuchimaru - Major von Schleich took the rest with him, and the fighters continued to fly towards the twin airship flying at an altitude of 3,000 meters.

After escaping the opponent's frontal attack, a group of more than 70 German planes suddenly appeared in front of the remaining six American pilots, and if they could drive their planes into the opponent's group, they would not only be able to shoot down a few bombers, but also disrupt the formation of the opponent and provide more time for the airships at their bases, at least that's what these American guys thought. However, they seem to have underestimated the steering performance and dive speed of the German fighters, and when they flew their small P-4s to the German group less than 5 kilometers away, the German fighters of the two squads just now completed a 360-degree turn in the air with astonishing agility and accelerated their dive with the help of high potential energy.

Intoxicated by the six American P-4s that were about to rush into the opposing group, they did not wake up until the sound of machine guns sounded behind them. Two of the pilots turned their heads and looked at the speeding bullets with incredulous expressions, and the sound of bullets tearing apart the aluminum skeleton and skin appearance of the P-4 fighters was heard, and the lives and fighters became extremely vulnerable in the rain of bullets, three P-4s were hit in the airspace on the spot, and two more tragic ones were hit by fuel tanks, because the take-off took off in just two minutes, 120 liters of gasoline were only consumed, when the iron fuel tanks where the gasoline was stored were continuously hit by the special bullets of the German fighters, The tiny plane burst into flames in an instant, and the fuselage made of flammable materials had been burned in half before it fell to the ground, leaving only a pile of black wreckage.

Seeing his companions fall one after another in a short period of time, the pilot of the last P-4 fighter suddenly forgot about his mission, and he immediately pulled up the nose of the plane and wanted to escape back to his airship with the flexibility of the P-4, after all, those airships were also equipped with five or six machine guns, and four of them were "Jones" airships with two 37-mm guns, and their firepower was naturally much stronger than that of ordinary aircraft.

However, the next scene stunned the American pilot, who was both lucky and miserable, only to see a dozen silver-gray German fighters speeding between the airships, the machine guns on the airships desperately firing around, the sound of the "Jones" 30mm guns firing was particularly unique in the air machine guns, but the efforts of the airships were like wooden sticks beating mosquitoes. However, several German fighters finally saw an opportunity to shoot a shuttle bullet at the American airship. When the small bullet just sank into the huge hull of the airship, people would naturally think that it was just an attack like scratching their boots, but after two or three seconds, the place where the bullet hit quickly showed an extremely terrifying dark red, this dark red spread to all sides at an extremely fast speed, and in the blink of an eye, it swallowed up a huge surface of the airship, and in an instant, a pillar of fire like a solar flare erupted from the dark red place. And the dark red just now also appeared in many places of the airship in an instant, and in the blink of an eye, the dazzling flames had turned the airship into an incomparably huge torch, and the entire airship fell to the ground while burning violently, and the people in the pod didn't even have time to escape......

When the first airship caught fire and burned, both the German pilots and the Americans on the ground were stunned, and they were undoubtedly shocked by the sight of a tengu eclipse, but when the scene was repeated on other airships in the air, the shock finally turned to panic, and grief and despair filled everyone's mind. When the huge ball of fire that burned and fell finally fell to the ground. The American soldiers began to scramble to dodge. The crew had to cut the cables that held the airships in order to allow the airships that were still at base to take off quickly, while being ignited by the fireball.

But it's south of the base. A airship that is taking off is still extremely unfortunate to be hit by a large fireball, in this case, the airship is drawn into a fireball faster, the burning scene can even be said to be a huge deflagration, a large amount of hydrogen gas spewed out from the airship breach, and then formed a huge pillar of fire up to tens of meters, the chain effect caused by the fire made the airships less than 100 meters away from each other continue to be ignited, and in just a few minutes, several airships became dazzling fireballs.

On other American airships that were gradually taking off, the crew did not have time to congratulate themselves on the imminent escape from the sea of suffering, when they found that the German aircraft group had flown over the base. Fighter and attack planes painted with striking Iron Crosses quickly rushed towards these American airships that had hurriedly lifted into the air. The crew on them desperately used machine guns to drive away the German fighters, but the effect was not better than those previous companions, and the bullets were constantly fired from the German fighters by a mixture of high-explosive bullets and white phosphorus bullets, as long as the fire formed by this bullet touched the appearance of the hydrogen airship, as many as tens of thousands of cubic meters of hydrogen in the airship would be ignited in an instant.

At an altitude of more than 2,000 meters, 40 Dornier 101 bombers opened their belly cabins one after another, and then 600 75-kilogram high-explosive bombs and 200 50-kilogram incendiary bombs smashed to the ground with the characteristic sharp sound of aerial bombs. Facilities were also dealt a fatal blow, with high-explosive and incendiary bombs and flames and smoke quickly turning the San Antonio airship base into a living hell.

In such a chaotic situation, less than half of the ground anti-aircraft guns fired, and the thick smoke seriously interfered with the gunners' vision, but it became the best target for German medium bombers. After the high-explosive and incendiary bombs raged, there were few anti-aircraft guns still firing at the San Antonio airship base, so much so that the resistance of the German attack aircraft when they began to carry out precision dive bombing was almost zero!

In just one hour, the German aircraft group achieved a great victory, the San Antonio airship base built at a cost of millions of dollars was completely in ruins, the 52 airships built at a cost of more than 30 million dollars, especially the seven most expensive "Beechcraft", were wiped out, ninety percent of the crew of the 52 airships could not escape the clutches of death, and the ground crew and anti-aircraft gunners also lost more than 600 people.

At about the same time, four other airship bases in the southern United States were also attacked by a large number of German warplanes, and the airship bases in Phoenix and Kaudesa were destroyed in the air raids. In Socorro, New Mexico, 29 airships were destroyed on the ground before they could take off, and 7 others put up stubborn resistance but the outcome did not change in the slightest; In Los Angeles, California, the fierce air battle even spread to the harbor, with the assistance of the naval aviation unit, the three airships fortunately escaped, but the Los Angeles airship base still could not escape the bad luck of being razed to the ground, in the fierce air battle, the US Navy shot down a German Junkers Neil 4 fighter, which was one of the few records of the US ** team on the first day of the war.

Before dark, more than 800 fighters continued to attack the intended targets in the US border area in three batches, and the Americans were completely stunned under such fierce air raids, and neither the army nor the navy was able to organize an effective counterattack, and the warships of the US Navy were forced to withdraw from Los Angeles, San Diego, and other southern ports. The shipbuilding and ship repair facilities in these ports were intensively attacked by medium and dive bombers during the last German raid of the day, and some German bombers also dropped mines in the harbors, rendering them unusable for some time.

On the day of the war, the German and Mexican coalition forces successfully destroyed 14 US airfields and five airship bases in the south through large-scale air strikes and successfully seized air supremacy in the border area; in addition, the German aircraft group also bombed seven railway junctions, 15 bridges, 22 barracks and five industrial areas near the border, making the more than 800,000 troops and National Guard troops deployed by the US Government in the south fall into an extremely passive situation.

Beginning at 2 p.m., German and Mexican ground forces began shelling U.S. lines and military targets on the other side of the border, and U.S. artillery then returned fire, and the artillery battle continued into the evening, and after dark, both sides of the border fell silent for a while.

For Washington's leaders, the devastating blows to the southern airfields and airship bases were just one piece of bad news. In the afternoon, reports of high-altitude aircraft groups from St. Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama came one after another, which greatly surprised Warren Harding and the army and navy generals, and the president personally ordered: no matter what, the German bomber group must be stopped from continuing northward!