Chapter 196: The Great Air Battle

In the East China Sea in October, the sunrise time is two hours later than in June.

At six o'clock in the morning, the eastern sky was white, and the sun reluctantly showed a little corner on the sea level, while the western sky was gray.

The runway of the main island of Zhoushan Island and its surrounding islands is now full of fighter planes, and dozens of planes are carrying out air defense patrols over it to guard against a surprise attack by the Red Army in the direction of the mainland. Due to the curve of the earth, when the island is still gray, the sky is already bright.

Having learned the lesson of being swept away by the Red Army before take-off by Akagi and Kaga, and suffering heavy losses, the British Royal Air Force sent more than 30 patrol planes to patrol the air before launching a large-scale flight -- this is also a bloody lesson gained from more than a month of air battles. The number of patrol planes on Zhoushan Island must not be less than 20, and once it falls below this number, there will be loopholes in their cruising routes, and then the Red Army planes will only accurately seize the loopholes and infiltrate to capture the patrol planes in the air from behind. Only by maintaining a high patrol density can the Red Army's air infiltration operations be suppressed, the probability of being bitten by the opponent's sneak attack on patrol can be reduced, and at the same time, it is also necessary to avoid the recurrence of the tragedy of a large number of gasoline planes being destroyed on the runway by the opponent before takeoff.

"In the sky above Hangzhou Bay, there is a pair of invisible eyes monitoring the entire air combat battlefield!"

This was advice left to the British by the Japanese, an ally of the British, before withdrawing from Zhoushan, and the RAF was not taken seriously at first. But in the past month, dozens of skirmishes have erupted between the two sides, and the bloody lessons have repeatedly confirmed the Japanese speculation.

"The best way to destroy an adversary's air force is to wreck it on an airfield runway."

The British, who knew the greatest weakness of the Red Army's ability to produce its own aircraft, understood this very well. In the past month, they have repeatedly devised various sneak attack tactics in a vain attempt to blow up the opponent's plane directly on the airfield.

However, just as the Japanese guessed, there was really a pair of invisible eyes watching the entire battlefield in the sky over Hangzhou Bay.

The Royal Air Force, every time it sorts out planes that want to sneak attack the airports of Shanghai and Hangzhou. Each time, they will be ambushed by a large number of opponents' fighters near the target. Every time, I fall into the trap that the other party has prepared. In several airfield raids in September, the Royal Air Force not only gained nothing, but lost more than 30 aircraft.

In the course of these raids on airfields, the UAF's biggest takeaway was the destruction of a number of camouflage fighters made of wood and hemp paper on the ground. And then these "wreck records" made the ugly "crash ratio" on the royal merit book a little more pretty.

Go to the other party's airport and be ambushed. Let's just say that the other side has done a good job of "air defense alert". But what is the matter with the patrol planes on strategic duty over their own airfields that are always attacked by the opponent's fighter jets flying from the opposite side?

Furthermore. In the past month, the Red Air Force on the other side of the strait has from time to time dispatched bombers to airdrop supplies over Zhoushan Island, and most of the materials they have airdropped are "gadgets" such as medicines, candy, and condolences. In order to deal with these arrogant opponents, the Royal Air Force repeatedly set up fighter planes and ambushes over Zhoushan Island, but the result of each ambush was that its own ambush planes encountered counter-ambushes from their opponents again and again, and were attacked by people from behind each other. Not to mention setting up ambushes, even when conducting air defense patrols over the Zhoushan Islands, the fighters of the air defense patrols have always encountered infiltration and sneak attacks by opponents, and they have repeatedly succeeded.

"It's as if they know where we are at all times."

So said a pilot who narrowly escaped an ambush in the air by an adversary.

This kind of combat form, which is always taken by the opponent again and again in air combat, has dealt a great blow to the morale of front-line pilots. In order to counter the "first move" tactics of the adversary air force, the Royal Air Force responded by equipping each fighter with a radio station and strengthening the connection with the command center. In addition, the task of "air defense wingmanship" for warships at sea has been added, and the situation has improved slightly, but it is only a slight improvement in the form of a battlefield. The increase in the weight of the aircraft was accompanied by an increase in the weight of the aircraft, which in turn led to a decrease in the performance of the aircraft, which was even worse for the Royal Air Force, which was already inferior to its rivals. In 1935, the thrust-to-weight ratio of aircraft all over the world was not high, and the horsepower of the engines was not large enough, and the weight gain of the radio station had a great impact on the performance of the fighter.

Originally, according to the plan, the British Royal Air Force wanted to delay until November or even December, when a large number of more advanced gladiator fighters arrived, and then start a large-scale aerial strangulation battle. Due to the crushing defeat of the Japanese Air Force in the skies over Shanghai, the Royal Air Force on the front line realized the backwardness of its aircraft capabilities, and at the request of the front-line troops, the rear also accelerated the production and equipment of new gladiator fighters.

In the past nine months, the Red Army Air Force and the Royal Air Force have conducted a number of skirmishes in the area of Hangzhou Bay, and the fighters in the hands of the Royal Air Force, whether it is the newly equipped Hawker II or P26, or the British own Bulldog fighter, are all at a disadvantage in the air battle, and they have played an extremely embarrassing exchange ratio: 10:1.

The most embarrassing thing about the record was the Hawk fighter, a fighter that had long been equipped in the Red Army, and the Red Army itself was extremely aware of its flight performance and targeted combat technology. In peacetime, in simulated air combat, it has long been the opponent who has been the most targeted training. The loss rate of the Bulldog fighter and the P26 is relatively low, but the biggest problem of the P26 is that the monoplane, which is "similar" in appearance to the opponent, and in the air battle over Zhoushan Island, it has repeatedly encountered incidents of accidental attack by its own air defense forces, and half of the losses of the few P26 fighters are actually caused by the air defense forces of this side.

Over the past nine months, the Royal Air Force has lost more than 90 fighter jets piecemeal for a variety of reasons, while the adversary's aircraft losses have been mostly due to mechanical failures, landing reasons and ground anti-aircraft fire. The Zhoushan front royal has asked the rear for better fighters countless times.

In order to obtain a fighter that could compete with the HE51 and FW90, the production rate of the new gladiator fighter was increased. Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force on the Zhoushan Front. Almost in a crying tone, he begged the "old men" of Downing Street: "Send the gladiator fighter over, even if it's one!" ”

In this process, Churchill, who had visited the local garrison on the Zhoushan front, played a great role, and with his full appeal and collusion, the sluggish British government would reluctantly agree to send the newly equipped gladiator fighters to the front. They transported 40 fighters in active service in the country to the Far East by means of air transfer.

The specific route is from the United Kingdom, flying through France, Spain, crossing the Mediterranean, crossing North Africa, passing through Libya, Egypt, Iran, and then entering Pakistan and India. It is then shipped to China by sea in the Indian Ocean.

Fighters of various countries in 1935. The service life of the engine is between 300 and 500 hours, a little less or even just over 200 hours. This kind of spanning half of the world, more than 10,000 miles, can be called the craziest way of plane transfer in this era. The loss of service life of the aircraft is enormous. But the British, at the strong demands of the front. Still crazy to show off.

By October 1, 1935, this batch of advanced gladiator fighters had been transported to the Zhoushan Islands. Long transitions. Yan zhòng depleted the service life of the engines of these fighters. However, for the pilots who used it, the lack of engine life was not a problem, because God knows how many hours the aircraft would survive in the fierce air battles that followed.

In terms of the difference in aircraft performance, the British Air Force on the Zhoushan Islands should actually wait for another two or three months, and wait for more fighters to be shipped over and have enough planes to participate in the war.

The problem is that the British Royal Air Force on the Zhoushan Islands has had enough of the small-scale air battles in the past month, and in the air battles, the opponents have always been exposed to the "all-bright map" plug-in, and they have been caught up in the attack again and again.

Although it was still difficult to understand what this "invisible eye" was (at this time some experts suspected that it might be a new radar technology), the Royal Air Force top brass believed that in such a large air battle of nearly 1,000 fighters, everyone was crowded together, and it was difficult for the opponent to take advantage of the first hand in a small air battle.

As a result, under the dual pressure of increasing pressure to start a war at home and the declining morale of the front-line air force, the Royal Air Force was forced to open the prelude to the major air battle ahead of schedule.

++

In an air battle, when the quality of the aircraft is equal, the air force of the attacking side must have more than three times the numerical superiority of the defending side's air force, and three times the auxiliary advantage of the opponent's pilots, so that it is possible to destroy the opponent's air force by means of away air combat.

For the Red Air Force in October 1935, there were about 600 Chinese pilots who could fight at any time, as well as reserve pilots close to this number.

Part of its ingredients was paid for by Lin Han in the early stage, and it was cultivated abroad by Germany and the Soviet Union. Some of them were the pilots of the "uprising" who received the artillery, and the rest of the pilots on active duty were trained in China after the campaign last September.

In addition, more than 600 foreign pilots served in the Chinese Air Force, mainly in the Soviet Air Force and the Luftwaffe, plus a small number of volunteers from the Comintern.

After the Battle of Pudong, the British press sourly said in the newspapers: "Overnight, poor and weak China suddenly has a powerful air force." ”

The meaning of the words is not to really recognize the strength of the Red Army Air Force, but to push this qiē onto the Soviet Union and Germany who supported them behind them.

But that doesn't mean they're all wrong.

The Red Army's aircraft consisted mainly of more than 700 German fighters, followed by the Hawker II and I16 for bombers, and more than 300 for trainers and front-line bombers.

With more than 1,000 planes, Europe can already be called an air power -- but without the Soviet Union and Germany supporting their backs to provide pilots and ground crew, their combat effectiveness would have shrunk by at least two-thirds.

The technical branches of the Air Force do not have aircraft and pilots to form combat effectiveness, excellent ground crews are equally important, and qualified ground crews are more difficult to train than pilots. The Soviets and Germans supported the Red Army with a large number of pilots, but more precious than the pilots. But it's a large number of ground crews.

The aircraft is very squeamish, and a large number of excellent ground crews from the Soviet Union and Germany are an important guarantee for the good attendance rate of the aircraft. The training of ground crews is more troublesome than the training of pilots, and if it were not for the covert blood transfusion of the Soviet Union and Germany in this regard, which provided thousands of excellent ground crews, the combat effectiveness of the Red Air Force, which had been in the skies of South China for more than two months, would have been greatly reduced.

"This is an unfair war, because from the very beginning, the British Empire was fighting against an unholy alliance of China, the Soviet Union and Germany."

The British government watched with horror, from Berlin to Moscow to Nanjing. A "wicked" socialist alliance is forming.

Britain now. In fact, all sides are not optimistic about interfering in China, but the British Empire, which is "unable to step down", is dragged by the general trend and is forced to carry out this extremely reluctant war.

When 400 Bulldogs, Hawker IIs and a small number of P26 fighters took off from Zhoushan Airport in batches. Fly to Ningbo and Hangzhou. When the prelude to the Great Air War in October was opened. The whole of Britain, and the people who were a little sane, had already thought of losing the war in advance.

After the intelligence of the British fighter taking off from the Zhoushan plane, almost at the same time. The Chinese Air Force in the direction of Shanghai and Hangzhou also reacted at the first time.

The two airports responded almost simultaneously, with a large number of fighter jets taking off to each other. For a time, in the sky of Zhejiang Province, nearly 1,000 planes were tearing apart in the air.

It was the largest air battle in the world since World War I.

+++ Since the withdrawal of the Japanese intervention forces from Pudong, Lin Han has transferred the main body to a shallow-water 500-ton freighter located on the Beijing-Hangzhou-Hangzhou Canal in Shaoxing.

The freighter was a new parasite that he had prepared for himself a long time ago, and it was shipped to China in May. Compared with Shanghai, Shaoxing is closer to the Zhoushan Islands, and the loss is smaller when conducting air defense sensing. At this time, the center of gravity of the Red Army's defense had been shifted to the newly built airfield on the Zhoushan Islands.

For the past month, the air defense command center on a freighter, based in the Shaoxing River, has been directing the front-line air force through the guò radio and the Linhan radar. The situation was no exception when the Great Air War broke out on 1 October.

The air battle that took place over Zhejiang on 1 October was only an enlarged version of the air battle over Shanghai on 13 August. The only difference is that the performance of the British aircraft is better than that of the Japanese Type 92 fighters, all of which are aircraft with a speed of more than 300 kilometers per hour, and the best performance is the small number of P26 fighters, with a maximum speed of more than 360 kilometers per hour. In order to narrow the performance gap between the current Bulldog fighter and the HE51 and FW90, the British replaced this outdated biplane with a higher-horsepower engine, increasing the speed to 350 kilometers per hour, narrowing the gap with the opponent and reaching the qualification of barely fighting. As for the forty newest Gladiator fighters, they were treated as treasures by the British, flown by the best pilots.

On 1 October, starting at 6 a.m., various airfields on the Zhoushan Islands began to release fighter planes in batches one after another, one at half-hour intervals from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m., for a total of 420 fighter planes in five batches.

The Red Army, on the other hand, also dispatched all monoplane fighters FW90 and HE51 and part of the I16 in Zhejiang and Shanghai to confront them. At the same time, in order to support Hangzhou, the north of the Yangtze River and northern Jiangsu also sent 30 fighter planes to Shanghai Hongqiao Airport to stand by. In the Chinese battlefield, in the struggle for air supremacy, German-made fighters are the first main force. Even the Soviet pilots who participated in the war flew a considerable number of German fighters, and as for the I16, which went to war in small quantities, the Red Army replaced Soviet engines with German engines in stock, which was an improved version of the performance.

On 1 October, fighter planes manufactured by Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and Germany fought in the air along the line from Zhoushan to Hangzhou. Journalists from various countries who watched the battle here were even more feasting their eyes, and when they reported on the war afterwards, they said: "The planes in the sky are as dense as locusts......

From Ningbo to Hangzhou, you can listen to the piercing hum of planes from both sides as they cut through the sky all morning. The British learned some lessons from the Japanese Army Airlines, which was "sent to death" first. But there are some lessons that you will not understand without personal experience, or you may understand them, because the rear is too far away, and it is too late to change them.

Compared with German fighters, the biggest disadvantage of British fighters is that they are not strong enough, they also lack bulletproof seats, and their firepower density is also insufficient. The British Air Force, which is thousands of miles away, wants to add bulletproof seats is quite troublesome.

When large aircraft formations hedge against each other in a dogfight. The importance of protection and firepower will be elevated to a position comparable to speed, but the three most important elements of air combat are not possessed by British fighters who are a generation behind their opponents. In contrast, the military team, due to the guidance of Lin Han, a traverser, made the most correct choice in terms of fighters and tactics.

The performance of the aircraft was at a disadvantage, fighting away, and tactically it was completely suppressed by the opponent's "map hanging", and the Royal Air Force of Zhoushan Island made a desperate gamble to attack, and finally ended up with a big defeat.

On 1 October, the Royal Air Force flew 420 fighter jets. Fought hard in the sky over Hangzhou for half a day. In the afternoon, another sortie was struck, and another big battle was fought.

In the evening, when the two sides "Mingjin withdraws their troops", the commander of the British Air Force was very depressed when he counted the losses. In the air battle of the day. The Royal Air Force lost a full seventy-eight fighters in the skies over Zhejiang. Dozens of planes were declared scrapped by the ground crew because of their injuries after returning home, and hundreds of fighters had to be repaired overnight with various injuries.

In contrast, the opposite "UN Air Force" (due to the diversity of pilots. The Soviet-German and even a small number of international communist volunteer pilots from Britain, France, and the United States, so Lin Han jokingly called the United Nations Air Force), lost only a dozen fighters in the air battle, and several were seriously damaged and destroyed or scrapped after forced landings.

Even with the gladiator fighters pressing the formation, and the large group of fighters reducing the efficiency of air combat under the command of the "humanoid radar" by the bonus of the melee battle, the exchange ratio of air combat losses between the two sides on that day was still more than five to one.

On 2 October, the two sides fought again. On this day, the Royal Air Force lost more than 30 fighters in the skies over Zhejiang, while the opponent lost only 11 fighters in total, counting the damage and scrapping after landing in the air battle.

On October 3, there was another battle, and the RAF suffered permanent losses of more than 40 aircraft, and at this time his opponent's losses fell to less than single digits.

Due to the huge losses, the RAF was forced to stop its sorties on 4 October and move to a period of recuperation. On the front page of The Times, the British reporter who received the report of the losses of the front-line air force used the phrase "second Fokker disaster" to describe the tragic losses suffered by the Royal Air Force in the past few days.

During World War I, in 1915, the German Fochs fighter was the first to install a synchronous fire tuner on the aircraft, which solved the problem of forward firing in air combat in one fell swoop. In the following months, German aircraft developed a slaughtering absolute advantage over British and French fighters on the Western Front, which is the origin of the Fokker catastrophe. At this time, the main battle of the Red Army Air Force, the FW90, happened to be a product of the Fox company, so it was called the second Fokker disaster by the British.

Before the war, in order to make political capital for himself, the new British Prime Minister Stanley. Baldwin arrogantly said to foreign reporters: "The Royal Air Force of the British Empire will use large-scale air battles to educate those yellow-skinned monkeys about what real air combat is!" In the same way, we will take this opportunity to warn some of the countries in the east that hide in the yellow monkey against the empire of the sun that the sun never sets is dangerous. ”

However, the reality is cruel, and the Royal Air Force, which has been peaceful for a long time, once again experienced the taste of "Fokker disaster" in Zhejiang after nearly 20 years.

Beginning in September, the Royal Air Force of the Zhoushan Islands had a headache because its planes were inferior to their opponents in terms of performance and tactics in air combat, and they were desperately looking forward to the early entry of new fighters into the war.

On 9 October, the British Royal Air Force, supplemented by the troops of the flying unit that was training in Taiwan, again dispatched a large number of planes to the skies over Shanghai to challenge, but the result was still a one-sided defeat. The Royal Air Force, which lacked time, did not have time to wait for the arrival of a large number of gladiator fighters to complete the change of equipment and then forcibly entered the battle, which once again turned into a huge loss, and in the air battle, the two sides once again played an outrageous exchange ratio of 47:8.

After the end of the air battle on October 9, the commander-in-chief of the British forces on Zhoushan Island wrote in his diary that night: "Our opponents are not only the yellow-skinned monkeys, but also the Germans and the Soviets. If you don't get rid of these two black boxers first, before the blood of the yellow-skinned monkey on the opposite side is drained, the Royal Air Force of the Sunset Empire will become history first. ”

After achieving an excellent exchange ratio in air combat. The leadership of the Red Army continued to follow the principle of the strong showing the enemy the weak, and when announcing the battle losses, they deliberately overreported their losses according to the number of the British, and shot down a large number of damaged fighters, so that the results of the battle on both sides became 2:1, which was acceptable to the opponent.

The British Air Force pilots on the Zhoushan front did not believe this kind of exaggerated number of water seepage losses, but the British Prime Minister in London, who was thousands of miles away, and the MPs who were the main fighters in the war against China, they believed it. The Red Army took the initiative to "falsely report" its own losses and took the initiative to "inject water" into the gains of the Royal Air Force. The consequence was that the British Air Force on Zhoushan Island was pitted for several more days.

The Prime Minister of the arrogant Great British Empire at that time. In an interview with reporters, Niu said coaxingly: "Don't say that this two-to-one exchange ratio has been injected with water, even if it is really a two-to-one loss ratio, our British Empire relies on its own huge industrial machine." The way of hard grinding and hard consumption can also consume all the planes of the yellow-skinned monkeys in the East. ”

His arrogant outrage. Let the front-line pilot of the Royal Air Force front-line unit hold his middle finger in his heart and greet his parents at the same time. I also had to bite the bullet again and continue to drive a generation fighter with a performance behind the opponent to play against the dominant opponent in the away game.

The great air battle that broke out on 1 October lasted until 14 October. The impact of the new typhoon stopped. During this period, more than 400 Royal Air Force fighters had been shot down over Zhejiang and Shanghai, and hundreds of pilots had entered the Red Army's prisoner camps.

After the war, the British Empire's air force in the Far East was almost completely exhausted, and Prime Minister Baldwin, who was still coaxing foreign bulls on October 2, finally realized the problem as if he had just woken up from a dream, and announced the suspension of this air war, which had suffered heavy losses, on the pretext of "typhoon," which the Japanese had used.

After finally receiving the "local atmosphere" and knowing the tragic experience of the front-line air force, the British upper echelons, and then the bad weather brought by the typhoon, the air forces of both sides were forced to truce the timing, and sent commissioners to urgently investigate the reasons for the heavy losses of the Royal Air Force in the front-line air battle, but they were very depressed to find that the results found out were not at all new: as early as half a month or even more than a month ago, there were a large number of front-line pilots who reacted to the telegram feedback of the difference in the generation of fighters on both sides, but due to bureaucratic reasons, these contents were not fully taken seriously at all. At that time, the Air Force's exaggerated halfway around the world flight in order to obtain fighter fighters was ridiculed by the official upper echelons and even the media at the time for the stupidity of wasting money and people. Churchill, who planned this action at that time, became the target of attack and ridicule by his political enemies and even various forces at that time.

(Churchill had a mediocre strategic vision, but a sharp view of weapons performance, and his best position would have been that of director of weapons development rather than prime minister of Britain.) Historically, he took the lead in developing the tank under the banner of a land cruiser, embezzling the Navy's military funds. From World War I to World War II, as a century-old imperialist country, the British Empire's scientific and technological accumulation was extremely heavy, and it could be called the world's first. (For example, a strange tank design idea in World War II) and the Soviet equipment is average, but the combination is extremely good, just the opposite. ）

The tragedy of being beaten at the front, and the decision-makers in the rear, still living in their own imaginary "victory", thinking that the front line is in good shape, has always been repeated in history. Like the Japanese, the British government paid a heavy price for its arrogance and bureaucratic behavior.

When the Royal Air Force on Zhoushan Island was forced to stop this death-like away air battle again because of the tragic air battle losses, it suddenly dawned on Britain 0 Only then did it really begin to pay attention to the opponent's air force, and they began to review the reports of reporters from various countries watching the battle in China in the past half month, the air battle losses of the warring parties calculated by all sides, and the results of the battle on the front line.

How many HE51 and FW90 the Red Army has, it is not difficult to extrapolate this number. Just calculate a little bit of the production capacity of Heinkel and Fokker. Although there will be some errors in the number, the German military industry is recovering. At this time, the scale of aircraft production and manufacturing was not large, and the "Belt and Road Party" in Germany had been secretly providing information on the production status of the German military industry, and Germany itself did not strictly keep this secret, and a little calculation could be used to calculate the production of FW90 provided by Germany to China.

And because the Red Army's air combat exchange ratio with the British and Japanese air forces in the previous three months was too good, and the British and Japanese pilots who participated in the war were too good at bragging, the Red Army made up the numbers to match their bragging results, and compared them with the production capacity of the Fokker aircraft factory, the British soon discovered that the number of downs reported by the British and Japanese forces even exceeded the production of Fokker Company.

In addition, there were quite a few foreign journalists watching the battle on the battlefield in China. Their reports are also more objective and informative. Several aspects of the number jù in contrast. The British were very depressed to find that their early attempt to polish the opponent's air force by hard wear and tear would be impossible in the short term according to the current exchange ratio.

After the typhoon in October. As the weather improves. The large-scale air battle between China and Britain has calmed down silently. The British government has finally taken on board the advice from the front. Stopped this kind of active death-like attack and contracted its strength. They began to accumulate more gladiator fighters on the front line, in addition to another strategic option for them. But he took advantage of his country's advantages outside the battlefield and began to work hard.

After half a month of brutal strangulation warfare, the current Royal Air Force is unable to compete with its opponents in the short term due to the loss of a large number of pilots. Europe is the focus, and the British Empire cannot ignore Europe and transfer all its native air forces to the Far East.

At present, the upper echelons of the British government are already secretly thinking about trying to get out of the quagmire in China. By this time, the Baldwin administration had realized that any further consumption in China, a lost colony, would only cost Germany, which was rising strongly in Europe, and the Soviet Union, which was colluding with Germany.

It's just a big question of how to withdraw from China with dignity, how to make the people and even themselves accept the reality of abandoning China, and how to appease the capitalists at home who have suffered heavy losses in China. Britain in 1935 was also hit by the Great Depression and economic crisis. The crisis in China after June was even worse, with domestic investors in China suffering heavy losses, but arms dealers made a fortune, and the situation in the military industry improved. Now the country's arms dealers are lobbying Congress to continue the war against China. Compared with the United States, the British government is not too strict with the control of the military-industrial complex, but the people also cannot accept lightly that the British Empire will roll out of China after being so humiliated in China, which is unacceptable to ordinary people.

So even though the prospect of a return to China was getting bleaker, the Prime Minister and the government of the British Empire had to continue to invest troops and military spending in China until they found an opportunity to get out.

In order to deal with the threat of the Red Air Force, Britain and France intensified their political and diplomatic pressure on Germany, strongly demanding that the German government withdraw the Luftwaffe pilots in China, claiming that this was a hostile and hostile act of severe zhòng. In the eyes of the British, the Luftwaffe "played an important role" to the defeat of the Royal Air Force in the skies over China.

On October 15, Hannah in Berlin received a solemn protest letter from a British diplomat, and between the lines of the protest letter, Hannah smelled a strong smell of gunpowder. At the same time, the French government also cooperated with the British in acting accordingly.

At this time, Hannah was planning to abolish the Locarno Convention and send troops to the Rhine Demilitarized Zone.

In this era when history was reversed and shattered, Hitler's image was no longer a fanatical anti-communist, and in the eyes of Britain and France, he increasingly looked like a "socialist". Whether Britain and France will be able to pursue a policy of appeasement towards Germany again, as they have done historically, is uncertain for either Ringham or Hannah. The unbearable situation of the British in China made Britain look to Germany, and now it happened to be her bargaining capital with the British government.

In Hannah's view, the last thing she wants is for Britain to abandon China in time and get out of the Chinese quagmire. The British government was deeply entrenched in China, and fighting a protracted Boer-like war in China was what Germany wanted to see most of all. At this time, the German military, under the joint pressure of Britain and France, was equally fearful to Adolf. Hitler, played by Hannah, put forward his own opinion: "Stop playing with fire, we have tossed the British badly enough on the issue of China, and we should learn to accept it when we see it." ”

"The Soviet Union is the Soviet Union, Germany is Germany, China is China, and any doctrine is more important than nationalism and nationalism."

The fact that Lin Han had been worried about the "Soviet-German" allies falling off the chain finally happened in October. The Germans paid for the British acquiescing in their repossession of the undefended zone west of the Rhine in exchange for Germany stopping the supply of fighter planes to China and recalling the pilots who came to China's aid.

On October 20, when the typhoon that ravaged Zhejiang Province had subsided, Lin Han received a telegram from Germany that he had been helping the Red Army in China to fight the Luftwaffe pilots, and that all of them would be evacuated from China in the coming month.

Fortunately, Hannah withdrew the pilots who participated in the front line of the war, and as for the ground crew, military observers, air force instructors in the rear, and artillery instructors remained in China for the time being.

Although it was only the evacuation of more than 200 front-line pilots, both Lin Han and the upper echelons of the Red Army smelled the smell of "foreign forces are unreliable."

Fortunately, in such a situation, Stalin pretended to be generous and "sent charcoal in the snow" to increase the support of the active pilots of the Soviet Air Force, and used Soviet pilots to fill the vacancy of the departure of German pilots.

Lin Han was very dissatisfied with Hannah's behavior of dropping the chain at a critical moment, but the leaders of the Red Army persuaded him in turn to persuade him that he should understand the hardships of "Hitler", after all, the current German military strength is weak, and in the face of pressure from Britain and France, it is not easy to do this step.

Germany's withdrawal of pilots is only a trivial matter, and another headache is that China's foreign communication lines for obtaining arms have also been blocked by the British, who are "concentrating". On 20 October, Japanese warships intercepted a US-flagged freighter in Bohai Bay and seized German goods sold on board to local China, including a large number of spare parts for fighter planes. At the same time, the President of Ghana also cooperated with the United Kingdom in issuing a statement announcing a series of embargo lists of Chinese goods. After seeing that the Red Army in the South was getting stronger and stronger, the two-faced Americans also changed their previous position.

Germany began to drop the chain, and Britain, the United States, Japan, and France joined forces to blockade China and impose a comprehensive embargo. At this critical time, Stalin also failed to fulfill his promises at the time of the Kiel agreement.

Originally, the agreement negotiated at the Kiel Agreement was that after the Red Army eliminated the Nationalist Government in Nanjing, the Soviet Union would stir up trouble on the northeastern border and increase military pressure on Japan. After Japan declared war on the Red Army, it was even more necessary to provoke a war in the northeast. But in the past three months, the Soviet Red Army has seen only thunder and no rain in the northeast, except for the continuous increase of troops.

Another thing that Lin Han feared was also happening: considering the future threat to the Soviet Union from China under the influence of the traversers, Stalin was likely to drop the chain at a critical time and deliberately sit back and watch the Red Army and the Japanese fight hard.

The top brass of the Red Army was mentally prepared for this, and Lin Han was extremely unhappy in his heart, but he was also a little happy. In this plane where history was shattered by him, although the Soviet faction in the party was greatly suppressed, with the warming of Sino-Soviet relations, a large number of officers and instructors of the Soviet Red Army came to China, and the pro-Soviet forces within the Red Army recovered rapidly. Stalin "shrunk" at a critical time, and the Red Army would fight harder in future wars, but it was not a bad thing to curb the influence of the Soviet Union on China. (To be continued......)

PS: The plot in China, I feel like I've written too much, but now I'm writing the end, and it will probably end in 20,000 words.