At 10 p.m. on May 26, 1942, the Combined Axis Fleet had sailed to the sea about 180 kilometers south of the Sakishima Islands, and the Okinawa Islands and Taiwan were effectively within range of the aircraft carriers. Since it was an attack on the island, the main task of the air fleet was to deal with the land-based combat planes deployed by the Japanese in Okinawa and Taiwan, so the aircraft carriers reduced the number of torpedo planes and dive bombers they carried, and increased the number of fighter squadrons.

On the pitch-black sea, a huge fleet of 18 aircraft carriers, mainly composed of four circular air defense formations, began to slow down and cruise on the sea. The sea was very windy and rough, the battleship swayed violently, and from time to time the waves could hit the flight deck. The aircrew, who are in charge of deck maintenance, are struggling to immobilize the warplanes waiting to take off on the deck so that they are not affected by the rocking of the warship.

On the bridge of the "Fujian" aircraft carrier, Admiral Chen Shiying was full of excitement and watched the two long white tracks unfolding behind the aircraft carrier. Nearly 50 years have passed since the First Sino-Japanese War, and now the Chinese navy has finally begun to attack the Japanese mainland for the first time.

In fact, prior to this operation, the newly formed Chinese Strategic Air Force, with the help of Germany and Austria, had already carried out several bombing campaigns against Japan.

The Chinese Air Force is equipped with a limited number of SMB40 heavy bombers, and their performance on the battlefield is not very impressive, and can even be described as bad. The Austro-Hungarian military developed a heavy bomber with a maximum bomb load of 10 tons, an altitude of 11,000 meters and a range of more than 6,000 kilometers, which was originally intended to be used in the European theater to bomb Britain. However, due to the inability to seize air supremacy over the British Isles, the SMB40 could only conduct high-altitude bombing at night. Apart from creating some fear for the British, no noticeable results were achieved.

The SMB40 heavy bomber first appeared in the Far East during the Philippine Campaign, because the U.S. Asian Air Force was wiped out at the beginning of the war, except for some success in the bombing of Mindanao, there was no eye-catching performance. On November 5, 1941, 118 SMB-40s of the Austrian-Chinese combined air force took off from Lancun Airport in Shandong Province to bomb the shipyard in Nagasaki. Of the 102 aircraft that took part in the bombing, only 36 bombs landed in the intended target area, causing minimal damage, and three were lost on the return journey due to miscarriage.

The second long-range bombing of Japan was still from Lanlao Island in Shandong, and the target of the bombing was the Yawata Iron Works on Kyushu Island. Of the 98 planes that flew this time, 67 took part in the bomb dropping, one was shot down, six planes went missing because they got lost, and only 12 bombs landed in the target area. A substation and several unimportant buildings were destroyed.

As the Chinese Air Force was equipped with more and more heavy bombers, the effectiveness of the bombing against Japan improved slightly, but the poor performance of a large number of "air force rookies" did not attract much attention.

At present, under the training of flight instructors sent by the Navy, the "Caidao" of the Air Force are stepping up their practice of using the gyro compass and looking at the star map to discern the direction.

Since the Axis coalition captured the Philippines last November, it has begun a massive expansion of its air base on Luzon. and planned an attack on the Japanese mainland. Because fighter jets taking off from the Chinese mainland could not escort bomber forces all the way, the coalition was equipped with heavy bombers that could only bomb at altitudes of 8,000 to 9,000 meters. The results are far from ideal.

Since the Japanese army judged that the coalition forces might land in Taiwan, they transferred nine divisions from the mainland to strengthen Taiwan's defense, and the total strength of the Japanese army in Taiwan is about 450,000 at present, and the defense is relatively strong. Although the Japanese army in Taiwan lost the vast majority of its combat aircraft due to the bombing of the coalition forces, from the naval side. Taiwan is still a tough nut to crack.

Admiral Yankel naturally turned his attention to the Ryukyu Islands, where the Japanese army was the weakest defense, and if the allied forces occupied the entire Ryukyus, they would not only be able to penetrate the maritime links between Luzon and northern China, but would also be able to cut off the supply channels and retreat routes between the more than 1.3 million Japanese troops invading China in the south and the Japanese troops stationed in Taiwan and the mainland. On the other hand, even medium-range bombers were able to take off from airfields in the Ryukyus. Bombing the Japanese mainland, and land-based fighters taking off from this line were able to provide bombers with escort throughout the entire journey.

Therefore, the coalition forces are bound to win the Ryukyu Islands!

The 12th Air Wing of the Japanese Army stationed in Taiwan had been basically depleted by the German-Austrian Far East Air Force and the Chinese Air Force all winter, and could no longer pose much threat to the allied fleet. As a matter of fact, the main combat mission of the coalition fleet was to first destroy the Japanese army aviation and naval land-based aviation units stationed in Okinawa.

The Japanese army has a total of five airfields in Okinawa, of which Kadena Airport in Naha is a large dual-use airfield, where a total of more than 350 combat planes of the 11th Wing of the Army Air Force are deployed, and the rest have one military airfield each on Kerama Island, Okinawa, Kunigami and Amami Oshima, but the scale is not very large, and each airport has only about 30 to 50 combat aircraft. The Japanese army deployed less than 500 combat aircraft in the whole of Okinawa, but it is strange that the Japanese did not build airfields on the Sakishima Islands, nor did they deploy many defensive forces.

This is related to the contradiction between the Japanese army and navy, Okinawa and Taiwan are defended by the Japanese army, while the Sakishima Islands and the Northern Marianas, the German Marshall Islands, and the Micronesian islands seized by the Japanese from the Germans are defended by the navy. The Japanese Marine Corps itself was small in strength, and it needed to focus on defending the Northern Marianas-Ogasawara Islands, which the Japanese regarded as a lifeline, and there were almost no spare forces to defend the Sakishima Islands, which were sandwiched between the armies.

The Japanese Navy has deployed less than 2,000 troops on the Sakishima Islands alone, with an average of two or three hundred on each island.

The problem is that without naval support, coupled with the lack of air superiority, the army can only watch.

At 3:10 a.m., Admiral Yankel's flagship, the Grand Duke Friedrich, was lit up to prepare for an attack, and 16 seaplanes were first ejected and taken off from the battleships and heavy cruisers to conduct an aerial search of the surroundings, followed by 36 combat reconnaissance planes from various aircraft carriers to carry out search and air alert missions.

The battle will soon begin!

The aircraft carriers were ready for the attack, and the fighters carrying out the first wave of attack missions were neatly arranged on the take-off lines on the flight deck in the order of fighters first and then bombers. The pilots who were preparing to go to the expedition gathered in the standby room on the first floor of the bridge, waiting for the order to go out.

General Chen Shiying, accompanied by Colonel Huang Panyang, commander-in-chief of the Chinese flight, walked into the war room.

"All stand upright!" Huang Panyang shouted loudly, and then saluted Chen Shiying and reported: "Report to the commander, the pilots of the first attack wave have been assembled, please give the commander!" ”

"I won't say much, everyone is in the navy, and they all know the meaning of today's war. I just want everyone to understand that the glory of the Navy depends on this battle! Our naval officers and men must fight with all their might, and be ashamed of Xue Jiawu! ”

As soon as Chen Shiying's words fell, nearly 100 people immediately shouted in unison in the entire waiting room: "Serve the country with loyalty, and be ashamed of the first day of snow!" ”

"Shame on the first day!".

Jiawu! Since the Battle of the Yellow Sea, these two words have been pressed on the Chinese Navy like a mountain for nearly half a century, and the Chinese Navy has been breathless. As long as these two words are mentioned, every Chinese naval officer will bow his head and be speechless.

Today, the Chinese Navy will snow the shame of half a century ago by its own actions!

Subsequently, the "Fujian" signal mast raised the Z-shaped flag, and the triangular signal flag hunted and flew in the dawn of dawn, "The moment of shame has finally come!" "The whole crew was enthusiastic, the fleet was moving forward against the wind and waves, and at 4:45 a.m., the first fighter began to take off. (To be continued.) )