At dawn, two C2 reconnaissance planes belonging to Guam's land-based air force set off to carry out a patrol search in the northeast and southeast directions respectively; Lin Yongsheng, commander-in-chief of the base garrison, has already issued an order for first-class alert, changing the original frequency of two sorties in two hours to two sorties every one hour, and the shortage of reconnaissance planes will be temporarily supplemented by the army aviation fighter group to ensure the completion of a comprehensive search within 120 kilometers around the base.

You must know that the final news obtained from the Second Squadron is that the submarines and destroyers on the outskirts of the first class have all received crucial news, even if the Americans sailed at economic speed, even if they had maneuvered the route in order to avoid Chinese reconnaissance (this maneuver was completely unnecessary in a tactical sense), the US Grand Fleet should have appeared around Guam a long time ago.

However, the problem is that after two days of reconnaissance, the Guam side has never found any trace of the appearance of the US Grand Fleet, and Xue Rui, the ace pilot of the base air force, even ran to the 170 km limit of the reconnaissance plane, but still did not find any clues, and from the telegram sent back by Wu Hongyuan, commander of the base garrison fleet operating on the periphery, no trace of the American invasion was found near Ropa Reef, north of the Guam base.

At 7:40 a.m., a C2 reconnaissance plane was the first to spot a seaplane of unknown nationality in a sea area 40 degrees north-east of Guam and 110 kilometers away.

The pilot of the C2 reconnaissance plane was also cautious, making full use of the flight altitude of the reconnaissance plane to quietly keep up with the other party, and when confirming that the other party was indeed flying towards Guam, he used his speed and altitude to shake off the other party.

At 8:13 a.m., three Chinese planes discovered a US reconnaissance plane in a sea area less than 70 kilometers away from Guam, and the two Harrier fighters immediately raised their altitude to prepare for a surprise attack.

The C2 reconnaissance plane, which had completed the guidance mission, happily returned home, ignoring the fierce air chase between the two sides, and had already obtained crucial information from the direction from which the US reconnaissance plane had escaped, and he hurried back to guide more reconnaissance planes to set off in this direction!

At 8:20 a.m. on July 25, 1912, the Battle of Guam broke out......

Surprisingly, the process of this air battle dragged on for a full 40 minutes, and the US water reconnaissance plane that came to conduct reconnaissance was imported from the British Blackburn T2 reconnaissance plane, although the engine was only a 12-cylinder water-cooled engine, with a maximum of 420 horsepower, and its performance was average.

As a result, although the two Harrier fighters had an advantage in maximum speed, they were entangled and fought with each other for a full 30 minutes, and during the battle, although they hit each other many times, they obviously had no luck, and finally the two Harrier fighters saw the opportunity to give each other a two-wing assault, and finally the wingman finally succeeded in exploding in the air by the wingman through a series of strafing shots.

As the wreckage of the fallen plane swayed all the way down, the Chinese pilots of the two fighters suddenly spotted a continuous group of warships appearing under the white clouds and on the vast sea, and the fierce battle between the two sides was obviously an excellent opening show in front of the American fleet, and the two pilots almost invariably dived down and carried out an extremely provocative dive strafing against the American warships sailing in a double column.

Vice Admiral Abel had just learned of this sudden situation, and his own reconnaissance plane had been hunted down by the Chinese Air Force, and he was very incompetent in exposing the fleet under the noses of the other side; after cursing some incompetent subordinates, he immediately made a decision; after all, although one of the two reconnaissance planes that set off before dawn was knocked down by the other side, it did not actually affect the reconnaissance capability of the US Grand Fleet.

According to the information fed back by another reconnaissance plane, the Grand Fleet is now less than 120 kilometers away from the Chinese Navy's base on Guam, and, more importantly, the Grand Fleet's successful maneuver at sea has very successfully achieved the operational objective of the surprise attack, and even if the Chinese plane returns immediately, the other side will only have a few hours to react.

If nothing else, within four hours, his large fleet will appear off Guam and completely blockade this Chinese vital military port in the middle of the Pacific Ocean......

The military intelligence collected from the Pacific Fleet headquarters on Guam was very limited, and he also got some information from the British, coupled with the previous confrontation with China's Pacific Second Fleet, which made him feel that the opponent was not easy to deal with, and finally got the exact bad news from the Nebraska, which also made him a little more angry, and the Second Squadron in charge of sweeping the tail was suddenly attacked, leaving only the damaged Nebraska and 2 destroyers to escape back to Marshall.

But that's not the only bad news, even earlier last night! Contacting the Royal Navy's Lord Dieters, who had originally agreed on a plan for the two armies to jointly blockade Guam, was rejected by the other party, Lord Dieters called back that his fast fleet was being tracked by an unknown submarine force 300 kilometers southeast of Guam, and the veteran Royal Navy admiral had abandoned his plan to sail directly to Guam.

Instead, they first moved west to get rid of the so-called tracking, and then looked for an opportunity to turn south towards Guam...... This means that Lord Dieters' fast fleet would rather run at least 200 kilometers more than the distance of Guam than accelerate the attack on Guam as soon as possible! Damn John Bull, is it just a dead brain...... Lieutenant General Abel naturally understood his situation, and the British clearly let themselves go to Guam to take the lead......

The panicked alarm instantly brought Vice Admiral Abel back to the actual battlefield, and after circling several times above the fleet's heads, the two Chinese fighters had already judged the distribution of the US ship's anti-air firepower; in fact, the US Navy only began to deploy anti-aircraft firepower after the Mississippi-class battleships, but due to the lack of understanding of air combat at sea, there were serious problems such as too small elevation angles and insufficient firing heights in anti-aircraft firepower.

Next, in the face of the demonstrative dive fire of the two Chinese fighters, the battleship Connecticut that was attacked was unable to organize effective anti-air protection, and the battleship's cage lookout was heavily strafed by dense 7.7 mm, although the heavy machine guns could not penetrate the battleship's steel plate at all, but a moment later a large flame was ignited on the lookout, fortunately, the destroyers cruising around hurriedly came, using the Gaoping dual-purpose guns to assist on the flank, which forced the two provocative Chinese fighters to pull off and leave.

"General, we are expected to arrive in the target area in 3 hours to carry out operations, do you think we want to continue to send reconnaissance planes on other warships?" The staff officer on the side came over with a lot of thought and asked Vice Admiral Abel for instructions, so that the white-bearded American professional soldier retracted his hatred for the Chinese fighter plane in the distance, and shot down the American reconnaissance plane that fled all the way over the fleet, and then Chi Guoguo slapped him in the face.

Abel thought about it for less than half a minute, stared at the Chinese fighters that had disappeared into the sky, and finally made a decision, "The whole fleet enters the first level of alert, moves at full speed, in addition, order the Rhode Island and the Minnesota to prepare for the deployment of reconnaissance aircraft, and when the large fleet blocks the Chinese in the port, immediately set off to reconnoiter the intelligence!" ”

There is no doubt that intelligence is the lifeblood of military warfare, but along the way, the US Grand Fleet, which was not accompanied by aircraft carriers, even if it had a few water reconnaissance planes that were hoisted into the sea by battleships, but it was attacked no less than 4 times, and the losses were not small, and there was still a big war to be fought afterwards, and Abel didn't want to use up his hole cards so early.

Something that Abel had not expected happened again......

At 10:40 a.m., the U.S. Grand Fleet, which was cautiously heading southwest in three columns, had just arrived at the right flank formation of the U.S. No. 2 destroyer near the island of Northern Maria, when it was suddenly attacked by four Chinese warships from the left side of the island.

This 4V2 destroyer confrontation directly sank 1 Wicks-class destroyer and seriously damaged 1 Caldwell destroyer, while only one of the Chinese warships that raided was hit by a bullet and did not have much battle damage.

What surprised several American destroyers even more was that when they had just pursued into the Strait of Tinian, they were greeted not by victory, but by a volley of fierce fire...... (To be continued.) )