The first to arrive over Clark Field was the 2nd Bomber Group of the 5th Bomber Wing of the Chinese Air Force, which, escorted by fighters from two squadrons sent by the Austro-Hun task force, arrived over Clark Field without hindrance. The targets of the two Sino-Austrian SMB39 heavy bomber groups were located at Delmont airfield on Mindanao and Catamane airfield on Leyte, where they would be escorted by a German task force.

Lieutenant Colonel Sun Tonggang, deputy captain of the 2nd Group, took the lead and personally flew an SMB35 twin-engine bomber to the front of the entire group, and the entire bomber unit did not encounter any resistance at all. B17 and B24 bombers lined up neatly on the tarmac of Clark Airport, as if waiting for their bombing.

At the airport, some people were hurrying to the planes parked at the airport, and it seemed that the Americans had only now discovered the invasion of enemy planes.

"Attack begins!" Sun Tonggang broke the radio silence and gave the order to attack. Two squadrons of 75 medium bombers and 54 dive bombers of the Navy's first strike wave began to bombard Clark airfield indiscriminately. Three B17s and one B24 were taxiing to the runway, but they were destroyed on the runway before they could take off in a hurry.

The wreckage of the four heavy bombers was blocked on the runway of the airport, blazing, and the planes behind were unable to take off, and the pilots were forced to jump out of the cabin and flee beyond the runway.

At 12:45 p.m., raid sirens sounded at more than a dozen airports across the Philippines, and by this time, most of them had already begun to take a hit. Two squadrons of fighters stationed at the Nichols airfield, the closest to Manila, reacted quickly, having already urgently taken off 27 fighters before the airfield was attacked, and bravely pounced on the enemy bomber group that was attacking the Clark airfield. But to no avail, these American fighters were quickly drowned in a flood of Axis fighters densely packed in the sky, several times their own.

The Americans were completely unprepared for war, and all the US military planes patrolling the skies returned to the airport near noon to "eat after work." As a result, they were caught off guard and suffered the heaviest blow. The Axis air forces, which had postponed their planned plan of action due to heavy fog, instead had the effect of a surprise attack. Just in time for the Americans' "lunch break," a large number of planes arrived in the skies above their respective targets.

All the airfields on Luzon were now in flames, and most of the more than 500 combat planes of the US Far East Air Force were destroyed on the ground before they could take off. The expected fierce resistance from the US Air Force did not materialize, and in just one hour, the main force of the US Far East Air Force had been wiped out, and now Britton had only about forty combat planes left in his hands.

The results of the entire air raid operation far exceeded pre-war expectations, and the Axis air forces lost only one bomber and two fighters to destroy the vast majority of the fighters and all the bombers of the US Far East Air Force stationed in the Philippines, and achieved a brilliant result that far exceeded expectations.

Now the fate of the Philippines is sealed. Without air support, MacArthur was no longer able to stop the landing of Axis forces.

In the early hours of 4 November, 42 troop carriers carrying Chinese marines landed on the undefended beaches of Lingayan Bay, while the 2nd Austro-Hungarian Marine Division landed in Subic Bay and Batangas, and 15 troop carriers carried a German regiment to land in Davao, Mindanao.

MacArthur guessed all the landing sites correctly, but there was simply no time to organize any defenses. As a result, the Axis landing did not meet any resistance. The first landing force all went ashore.

Commander of the U.S. Asian Fleet Thomas? Admiral Hart stood on the roof of the Martian Hotel, looking at Komiji, who was being hit by an air raid, and was saddened that his naval base had been completely destroyed. His main weapon to defend against enemy landings, the submarine force, suffered heavy losses, 3 submarines were sunk and another 7 were wounded, especially the torpedo warehouses used by these submarines to resist the enemy's attack were destroyed, and all the supply torpedoes of the submarine force were reimbursed.

The Kameidi Naval Base has been blown to pieces, and smoke is billowing from the gunpowder. The flames are blazing. All military targets were destroyed. The gray shadows of the Axis planes loomed over the palm-fringed green hills, and the whistling anti-aircraft shells exploded in mid-air in clouds of black smoke like fireworks, which could not hit the bombers hovering high in the sky, but caused the enemy to bomb them.

MacArthur's plan of coastal defense, which attempted to strike heavily at enemy troops before they landed, burst like a soap bubble. The army commander, who had just been reinstated to the rank of four-star general, was ready to concentrate his forces on the Bataan Peninsula. Be prepared to hold on for a long time.

Admiral Hart scoffed at this, and the enemy must have wanted the U.S. Pacific Fleet to send reinforcements to the Philippines without a single effort, and then wipe out the U.S. fleet off the coast of the Philippines. However, in fact, the Philippines had already been abandoned in the Navy's battle plan, so Admiral Hart, despite MacArthur's strong opposition, except for leaving the submarine force here to persist in the raid and harassment operation, took his fleet and retreated to the Dutch East Indies in a panic.

Follow-up Axis forces landed in Luzon, Binduro, Palawan, Mindanao, and Borneo, and the German fleet entered the Sulu Sea, gaining complete air superiority, and what little American and British air power left in the area was exhausted in a few days of fighting. The sky and the sea were under the control of the Axis powers, and the battered Japanese Combined Fleet was now split in two, partly under the command of Jizaburo Ozawa, struggling to maintain the fragile maritime link between the Malay Peninsula and Java, and partly under the command of Admiral Yamamoto, defending the Japanese mainland from attack.

After the heavy losses of the Japanese air fleet, the Tsingtao-based Chinese and German fleets also became active, and the combined German-Chinese fleet with seven battleships became active, and Yamamoto had to concentrate the main forces in the Yellow Sea to secure the maritime links between Japan and Korea and Shanghai.

Now the Allies were simply powerless to stop the German-Austrian and Chinese Triple Coalition from attacking the Philippines and Borneo.

On both sides of the road from Manila to Lingayen, artillery roared. The U.S.-Filipino forces in Northern Luzon, commanded by General Wainwright, are making every effort to stop the Chinese Army's advance on Manila. But the poorly equipped Philippine army collapsed at the first touch, and the defensive lines of the two Philippine infantry divisions quickly collapsed. Wainwright had no choice but to push the only US 16th Infantry Division to the front line, but the Americans were not opponents of the Chinese Army, which had already experienced four years of war and were no less equipped than Germany and Austria and had rich combat experience.

Wainwright had no choice but to retreat on his own initiative, withdrawing the main forces behind the Agno River and redeploying the defensive line.

MacArthur was dismayed to find that his plan to stop the invading enemy at the beachhead had completely failed, so he ordered the implementation of the pre-formulated "Orange Plan" and retreated all his troops to the Bataan Peninsula, intending to hold on and wait for reinforcements from home. Impatient, he sent a series of rescue telegrams to Washington, warning that "unless reinforcements arrive in time, the whole of the Western Pacific will fall under the control of the Axis powers." However, none of these requests received a clear answer.

What he did not know was that at the strategic coordination meeting codenamed "Arcadia" being held in Washington by the heads of state of the United States and Britain, the top military leaders of the two countries had already determined the strategic guiding principle of "Europe first, then Asia, and Europe first," and were determined to first concentrate their efforts on ensuring Britain's security and to step up assistance to Soviet Russia. Prior to this, the Pacific Theater relied mainly on the strength of the Japanese to contain the Axis offensive, and as a last resort, it did not hesitate to abandon important bases such as the Philippines and Malaya, and retreated the defensive line to the Australian line.

Actually Secretary of the Navy Ernest? Admiral King had already ordered the Pacific Fleet to cancel its operations to assist the Philippines, and the U.S. reinforcement fleet of three aircraft carriers had begun to return after sailing to Wake Island.

In fact, MacArthur had been completely abandoned. (To be continued......)