Chapter 466: Hunting
The Chinese Navy has been bombing Tanegashima for more than ten days, and the island is in shambles, almost all of the ground defenses have been destroyed, and the Chinese side has also dropped a lot of ground-penetrating bombs to bomb Tanegashima.
Of course, China's scrapped gun barrels have not been found so much, so they can only be replaced by ordinary steel pipes, but the effect is also good, Japan's underground fortifications have also been seriously destroyed, more than 2,000 Japanese soldiers were killed in the air raids, morale is getting lower and lower, rumors are spreading, China will attack Tanegashima at any time, and even start to conquer Japan from here.
In fact, Japan has not completely gotten rid of China's huge shadow, even when Japan is the strongest, after all, China's thousand-year-old prestige cannot be changed in one day, and even Japan is trying to play itself as the best inheritor of Chinese culture, and then go to the Central Plains.
Now that the Central Dynasty is attacking Japan again, it has immediately aroused a sense of fear in the hearts of the Japanese, and this deep-seated fear is like a virus, rapidly expanding, permeating the hearts of every Japanese, Japan is actually not monolithic, and the democrats have also expressed great dissatisfaction with Japan's blind expansion and aggression, especially the monopoly of the warlords and chaebols on the political power.
They also took the opportunity to spread all kinds of remarks attacking the Japanese government, and these people did not dare to touch the sensitive topic of the emperor, but the accusations of the government and the military department have reached a very serious level, saying that they are a group of national thieves, sinners who dragged Japan into the abyss, and if Japan wants to have a normal future, it must overthrow the brutal and unkind government, and even use the power of the Central Plains when necessary.
This set of rhetoric, whether good or bad, is undoubtedly a lifesaver for the Japanese people who are already about to be overwhelmed by the pressure, and it is worth grasping to the death, and the hatred and dissatisfaction with the government continue to ferment, and the crisis is also brewing further, waiting for the final outbreak.
In the southern waters of Kyushu Island, five Chinese reconnaissance planes were conducting a guard patrol for the aircraft carrier, and at this moment, a huge group of more than 50 planes rushed rapidly towards the south. The wings of the aircraft are painted with the Japanese sun logo.
For many days, Japan's air power tried to avoid the Chinese fleet. After all, the gap between the combat experience of the two sides was too great, and this time such a large-scale sortie was really a bit abnormal, and the reconnaissance plane immediately reported the news to Chen Shaokuan.
As soon as Chen Shaokuan heard that a large number of Japanese planes had appeared, he immediately guessed that Japan was likely to have launched a final offensive, and Tang Qianming and others also agreed with this judgment, and Shen Honglie put forward his own proposal.
"Commander-in-Chief. The Japanese army aviation is in a big move, and the battleships of the Combined Fleet will probably appear soon, and we have only one large, two small and three aircraft carriers, so it is still a little difficult to deal with them, so I suggest that we find the Japanese battleship formation as soon as possible and choose the right opportunity to sink them. In addition, we are sending enough planes to shoot down all the planes that are coming from Japan! ”
Chen Shaokuan immediately agreed to this suggestion, and China's three aircraft carriers immediately adopted an elliptical battle formation and began to maneuver in the direction of northeast France, and at the same time took off more than 30 fighters to intercept the Japanese group.
Soon the Japanese air formation crashed into the Chinese interception net, and the pilots who took off from the aircraft carriers were the most elite force in any country. Land-based aircraft are simply not an opponent. Moreover, the Chinese pilots have been trained in actual combat, and the planes they fly are far more advanced than those of the Japanese.
The two groups collided. Soon a large number of Japanese planes fell into the icy sea like dumplings, and even many Japanese planes were blown up in the air and turned into clusters of flames.
However, China soon discovered the abnormality of these Japanese planes, that is, the Japanese planes did not seem to be interested in the Chinese interception, they just blindly rushed forward frantically, and most of the destroyed planes would explode violently, and soon the Chinese pilots understood.
Thinking of this, the Chinese pilots fought one after another and violently attacked the Japanese planes in front of them, and if they broke through the prevention and control network, the harm to the Chinese warships would be too great.
Soon one Japanese plane after another was shot down, but after all, there were more than 50 planes, and there were always fish that slipped through the net, and about eight planes broke through the Chinese planes and rushed frantically towards the sky above the fleet, and the madness of these Japanese was even stronger than that of the Koreans.
However, some things can be solved without madness, and China's aircraft carrier task force has adopted the model of elliptical formation, which was pioneered by US Admiral Nimitz, and the aircraft carrier is in the middle of the formation, and the perimeter is the layers of fire protection provided by battleships, cruisers and destroyers.
In this way, the formation can protect the most important and relatively fragile aircraft carrier to the greatest extent, and can also make the firepower of the entire fleet reach the best state, and the aircraft of the aircraft carrier can provide long-range warning and protection for other warships, and other warships can act as the personal bodyguards of the aircraft carrier, which can give full play to its combat effectiveness.
Japan's suicide planes broke through China's air fire interception, and soon encountered fierce anti-aircraft fire from warships on the periphery, and the dense rain of bullets covered the sky without any gap.
Because Japan did not have a suitable monoplane to carry out the task, it could only change the old biplane into a suicide plane, and the maximum speed of these planes was around 200 kilometers, which could not meet the requirements of rapid penetration, and in the face of intensive firepower, the Japanese planes that had finally rushed through the air interception were quickly shot down and turned into a big fireball, which did not cause any damage at all, but wasted the pilot's life in vain, which is why China did not send too many suicide attack troops. Japan's idea of winning by numbers is a complete assumption.
The Japanese pilots may have also seen the situation clearly, and there was no hope of attacking the Chinese aircraft carriers, so the remaining three planes crashed into the heavy cruiser Fuzhou, two of which were shot down, and the other one hit the bow of the Fuzhou, blowing up a huge hole, and in an instant, a large amount of seawater poured in, and the bow of the Fuzhou sank rapidly.
More than a dozen Chinese Navy soldiers were killed in the explosion, and Chen Shaokuan's face was also very unsightly when he heard that the Fuzhou had been seriously injured. The Fuzhou has been heavily flooded. The speed of the ship has been sharply reduced, and now is the critical moment of the battle between the two navies, and the fleet simply does not have the energy to take care of the wounded Fuzhou.
And this place is too far away from the Chinese mainland to rush back, after thinking about it, Chen Shaokuan ordered the ship to be abandoned, and all the personnel were withdrawn to other warships. Then the Fuzhou was blown up, which was also the first large warship to sink since the beginning of the war.
No matter how unwilling everyone is, there is no way, war is like this, you can't just think about beating others, and you can't just be beaten. However, China will definitely not rest on its laurels, and if Japan sinks a Chinese warship, they will have to pay a tenfold and hundredfold price.
At this moment, the reconnaissance plane on the starting point came back with the news that the Japanese fleet had been discovered, and a total of more than 20 warships were heading south along Kyushu Island, and the distance between the Chinese aircraft carrier group was only about 100 nautical miles.
In fact, with the current search methods, it is still more difficult to find a fleet on the surface of the sea. It was in World War II. It is normal for the United States and Japan to spend a day or two searching for each other's fleets. Even if you find it, there will be errors in judgment, after all, there will always be some mistakes in human observation.
However, this time the navy between China and Japan is not so troublesome, the sea area where the two sides are located is not wide, just on the east side of Japan's Kyushu Island, and because Japan does not have an aircraft carrier, the naval formation can only rely on shore-based aircraft to provide air cover, so the situation has become worse, the range of shore-based aircraft is limited, and the support of land-based airfields is also needed, so the combat capability is greatly reduced.
As a result, the Japanese naval formations could only get as close to the coastline as possible, making it too easy for Chinese planes to find them.
The commander of the Combined Fleet, Taniguchi Naoma, felt the serious problem of not having an aircraft carrier after the fleet went to sea to fight, and the matter was definitely not as simple as the bureaucrats in Tokyo thought, although the shore-based aircraft could also provide air cover, but because of the limitation of the range of the aircraft, the combat distance of the navy was also limited!
China's aircraft carriers will not wait quietly to be beaten there, and aircraft carriers can adopt more flexible combat methods, such as withdrawing from the attack radius of shore-based aircraft, so as to ensure their own absolute safety, and then send carrier-based aircraft to carry out wanton attacks on the Japanese fleet, so that the combined fleet can only be beaten up, and cannot fight back at all!
Perhaps in order to verify Taniguchi's real concern, just as the fleet was sailing rapidly, the Chinese reconnaissance planes had already appeared in the air, and several Japanese shore-based planes escorting the Chinese reconnaissance planes launched an attack, but unfortunately the Chinese planes shot down most of the Japanese planes with their superb flying skills, and then swaggered out of the sky over the Japanese fleet.
In fact, there was a serious problem of assumption in Japan's battle plan from the very beginning; according to Japan's concept, it first used suicide planes to severely damage China's aircraft carriers, and even if they could not sink them, they would have to be damaged, so that the speed of the Chinese navy would be slowed down, and at the same time, China's naval aviation force would be greatly depleted, and then the Japanese battleships would be able to completely sink the Chinese warships under the cover of land-based aircraft, but it backfired, and the Chinese aircraft carriers were safe and sound, and only one of the 50 suicide planes was replaced by the Fuzhou ship.
At this time, the Japanese battleship formation did not know the news that the suicide attack had failed, and rushed south, until it met the Chinese reconnaissance plane, Taniguchi Naoma felt that the situation was not good, but it was too late, at this time China's huge carrier-based aircraft group had already been overwhelmingly killed the Japanese combined fleet.
Pilot Wu Kaijie has become the captain of the flight squadron with superb flying skills and outstanding achievements, this time he piloted his beloved fighter to the first to rush to the sky above the Japanese fleet, at this time it happened that part of the army aviation to carry out the cover task withdrew to replenish fuel, the replacement troops have not yet arrived, there was a short gap, just caught by the Chinese side, Wu Kaijie's plane quickly rushed to the Japanese battleship Nagato, he has regarded the largest Japanese warship as the best prey! (To be continued.) )