The weather in southern Jiangsu in November is gradually getting cooler, but at the same time the weather is cooler, southern Jiangsu does maintain a cool and dry autumn and winter unique weather, the sky is clear and there is no cloud covering, such good weather has also brought great convenience to the operation of the national army aviation unit, the fighter plane can take off and land smoothly, and the reconnaissance mission is also because the sky is clear and get excellent results, the reconnaissance of the fighter plane has brought a large amount of battlefield intelligence to the national army, it can be said that the national army's aviation unit has been stationed in Lishui, The battlefield in southern Jiangsu has become one-way transparent for the Nationalist Army, and during the day, the planes of the Nationalist Army fly over the Beiyang Army almost every period of time, paying attention to every movement of the Beiyang Army.

The reconnaissance squadron in the aviation unit has achieved such great results that many high-ranking generals of the national army are full of praise for the aviation unit, and even without Chen Jingyun taking the initiative to order, the headquarters has put forward a request for the equipment department to equip more aircraft, and the equipment department has placed a new round of orders with the Fuzhou aircraft factory to purchase more new aircraft, and has put forward higher requirements for the surname of the aircraft, requiring the aircraft factory to develop more advanced aircraft.

War is the best catalyst for the development of weapons, not only in airplanes, but also in warships and the guns and artillery of the army.

At the Lishui Temporary Aviation Base, there are rows of neat planes on the huge flat ground, although the appearance of these planes is similar, but there are subtle differences, such as those single-seat unarmed reconnaissance planes, its speed, range and even air time are better. And those two-seater, with a specially modified Madsen light machine gun in the back seat, are fighters. The remaining one is a single-seater, reinforced aircraft structure that can carry aerial bombs. These three types of aircraft are basically modified from the same prototype, originally designed as reconnaissance aircraft, and later converted into fighters and bombers in order to meet the needs of the aviation unit and Chen Jingyun's instructions.

In the small half-month operation, the air force carried out extremely successful reconnaissance operations, but the remaining fighters and bombers did not carry out large-scale operations and give full play to their due combat effectiveness. Since the Beiyang Army had no air units, the fighters of the Nationalist Army had nothing to do after they shot down the observation balloon of the Beiyang Army a few days ago, and occasionally some bold fighter pilots would use their recoiler machine guns to strafe the ground at the risk of being fired by the Beiyang Army's rifles on the ground.

However, because there is no experience, and the aircraft at this time is too simple, the light machine gun ammunition carried is limited, so it has not achieved much success, and the bomber unit has not been dispatched on a large scale because of various problems, when it was just stationed in the Lishui base, Wu Shizhong was ready to send bombers to bomb the Beiyang Army, but when the plane was sent for the first time, one of the bombers crashed during the take-off stage and caused a continuous explosion of the 25-kilogram aerial bomb on board, which not only blew the plane to smash on the spot. Even the pilot's bones remained. After the accident, Wu Shizhong stopped the bombing campaign and conducted a comprehensive inspection of the existing bombers, and later found that the bomb pylons were not reasonably designed, which made the bombers easy to lose control and crash when they took off with full bombs.

Subsequently, the Fuzhou Aircraft Factory rushed to Shanghai with redesigned parts, and immediately urgently modified the existing bombers, and after the modification, relevant tests were carried out, and after the problem was solved, more than half a month had passed, during which the bombers in the aviation units of the Nationalist Army were all grounded.

Today, more than a dozen modified bombers outside the airfield are neatly arranged, the pilots are ready, and the planes have been hung with 20 kilograms. This 25-kilogram aerial bomb is an aerial bomb specially developed by the ammunition unit of the Fuzhou Arsenal for air-dropped aircraft, because there is no caliber and other restrictions, the charge on the aerial bomb is very high, and the shell is very thin, which is far superior to the army artillery in terms of explosive shock wave and fragmentation damage, but in terms of penetrating power, it is not as good as the shells fired by large-caliber artillery.

At present, the bombers of the Nationalist Army can carry about ten of these 25-kilogram bombs, which is not a problem of insufficient power and lift of the aircraft, but a lack of strong airframe architecture to carry too many bombs.

Wu Shizhong looked at this group of planes, and felt a lot in his heart, Chen Jingyun had already asked the aviation unit to carry out ground bombing, but the aviation unit had not been able to make the trip, which made Wu Shizhong bear a lot of pressure, and he didn't have time to feel anything, he picked up the pocket watch and looked at it, the pointer on the pocket watch had reached seven o'clock in the morning, at this time Wu Shizhong turned to the adjutant and said: "Let them attack!" ”

As Wu Shizhong's order was issued, the personnel on the airport quickly prepared, and Li Tunyang, who was in charge of commanding the bombing mission, quickly explained the combat mission to his pilots.

"Two fighter teams are responsible for covering, after arriving at the destination, the fighters shoot down all enemy flying objects, including observation balloons and possible enemy aircraft, and then they can freely strafe the ground, and the bomber team follows me forward, responsible for bombing enemy positions!"

The detailed tactical arrangements have actually been made before, and now it is just a matter of aging and re-mentioning, after simply arranging the task, Li Tunyang said: "Let's attack!" ”

Subsequently, the pilots boarded the plane, Li Tunyang himself also boarded his own bomber, as the ground crew stepped forward to guide, the plane that started the engine slowly arrived at the take-off point, and then increased the horsepower and sprinted towards another section of the runway, as the speed of the plane became faster and faster, the plane also flew lightly.

Wu Shizhong watched the planes rise one after another rapidly, and a sense of pride arose, looking at the whole world, only the Nationalist Army was able to successfully organize such a large-scale group of planes to bomb, let alone the Beiyang Army, and even the armies of other foreign powers had never been in such a precedent.

Three days ago, Wu Shizhong had already received an order from the headquarters to bomb the north bank of Nanjing and to provide support to the troops of the guard division; last night he received a telegram from the headquarters saying that the troops of the guard division had already engaged in a fierce battle with the Beiyang Army in Nanjing, and the situation urgently required the aviation units to immediately bomb and support the guard division. Under such circumstances, Wu Shizhong organized all his bombers and fighters to join the mission, including 19 bombers and 5 fighters.

At present, in the aviation unit of the Nationalist Army, there are two reconnaissance squadrons and 32 reconnaissance planes in southern Jiangsu, and two fighter-bomber squadrons have a total of 24 bombers and eight fighters, and most of these planes are in the Lishui base, and there are only two squadrons of eight reconnaissance planes and two fighters in the Zhenjiang base, and the rest of the planes are all in the Lishui base. In addition, there are more than 10 planes in the Fuzhou base that are being used for teaching. However, in the operation some time ago, due to frequent sorties and battles, although not a single plane has been shot down by the Beiyang Army for the time being, many planes have crashed due to mechanical failures or technical reasons of the pilots, among which two reconnaissance planes have crashed the most sorties, and one bomber that was blown up during takeoff due to technical failure, and the pilots of these three planes have all died heroically without exception.

In addition to crashes, some planes are more or less faulty and cannot be dispatched, so this time Wu Shizhong basically concentrated all the bombers and fighters that could be dispatched.

More than 20 planes took to the air one after another, and then, under the leadership of the lead plane, they formed a large formation in the air and flew north through the communication method of shaking the wings.

The flight altitude of the group was not high at the beginning, and when it flew over the Lishui frontline position, the soldiers of the National Army and the Beiyang Army were greatly opened. It has been more than half a month since the outbreak of the war, and the planes of the Nationalist Army are no longer unfamiliar to both sides, especially the soldiers on both sides of the Lishui front line can often see the reconnaissance planes of the Nationalist Army circling in the sky, but in normal times, they only see one plane, and occasionally they can see two planes flying together, but this is the first time that these large groups of more than 20 planes have been seen.

The clusters in the sky kept climbing, constantly increasing their speed, and soon disappeared from everyone's sight, looking at such a large group of planes in the distance, Jin Yunpeng's face was gloomy: "Where did the National Army get so many planes?" And where are these planes going? ”

At this time, Jin Yunpeng did not think of what the Nationalist Army's planes were going to do when so many planes were gathered together, let alone guessing that the Nationalist planes were going to bomb Nanjing's troops. It is no secret that the national army planes conduct reconnaissance, and over time the Beiyang Army has slowly become accustomed to it, and the number of fighters of the National Army, and the occasional one or two strafing shots on the ground have not had much impact, so they have not caused much impact, and the artillery of the Beiyang Army has also slowly learned to be obedient, not firing artillery during the day, not raising artillery to observe balloons, and avoiding being shot down by the planes of the National Army.

But so far, they have not experienced a real large-scale aerial bombardment, so although Jin Yunpeng has a bad premonition, he still has not been able to figure out what the national army is going to do with so many planes.

The group of planes climbed slowly, and soon rose to an altitude of nearly 2,000 meters, and then maintained an altitude and flew in the direction of Nanjing, from Lishui to Nanjing is only a straight-line distance of more than 60 kilometers, and the fleet only needs 35 minutes at most to reach the sky over Nanjing.