At 3 o'clock in the morning of 20 April, fighter planes took off from nearly 100 runways at 10 airports around Milan, Italy, and every 15 seconds, fighter planes flew into the night sky, and in less than three minutes, a huge flight group of 900 fighters and bombers was all lifted into the air.

At the same time, 100 fighters took off from Porto, Portugal, and these 100 fighters flew not in the direction of Britain, but in the northeast of Spain.

Cai Guodong, Luo Zelin, and Trenchard's plan to bomb the German air force airfield in France at night was a great risk, with the technology of this era, the danger factor of fighters fighting at night was several times higher than that during the day, and now there is no navigation system, and it is impossible to distinguish the direction at night, and the only way to distinguish the direction is to use the naked eye, and it is necessary to be familiar with the terrain.

In order to reduce the probability of the group losing its direction, during the past 10 days, Luo Zelin constantly sent reconnaissance planes at night to conduct high-altitude reconnaissance of the terrain in France at risk, and the reconnaissance planes used their cameras to take a large number of photos on the way to the reconnaissance for analysis and reference of the terrain, so that the pilots of the group preparing to bomb would have a reference.

After the German army occupied France, some airports have been built in France in recent years, especially in the cities on the west coast, and the small airports originally owned by the French were expanded by Germany, and now Germany has more than a dozen large and small airports in France.

There is an airport in Toulouse and Bordeaux in the south of France, an airport in Lyon in the east of France, and an airport in Limoges and Clermont-Ferrand in the center. There are also airports in Nantes and Rennes in southwest France, as well as airports in Paris and Versailles. In addition, there is an airport in more than a dozen towns on the west coast of France, and in Belgium. The Germans also had three airfields, all of which were located in close proximity to the English Channel.

The target of this bombing, Cai Guodong and Luo Zelin's plan was to destroy all German airfields in France and Belgium, and to destroy most of the German warplanes deployed in France and Belgium. After all, at night, with the current fighter technology and flight technology, no country's pilots other than China dare to fly and fight at night, and the German side is afraid and will not expect that the Chinese fighters will take off at night to carry out large-scale fixed-point bombing of their air force airfields in France.

This bombing plan was defined by Cai Guodong as strategic bombing. If this bombing can successfully destroy all German air force airfields in France and Belgium and blow up most of the German fighters, then the situation will be completely changed, and air supremacy will be firmly controlled by the Allied powers, and this is the role of strategic bombing.

In the history of another time and space, the first time to put forward the concept of strategic bombing was Trenchard, this time Cai Guodong was the first to put forward it, in fact, China had already carried out strategic bombing in the war against Japan. For example, the bombing of the Japanese Combined Fleet, the bombing of Tokyo, and the bombing of Japan's three major military ports completely destroyed the Japanese Navy and Japan's command system, causing Japan to be completely chaotic and crippled Japan in one fell swoop. We can only wait for death, and this is the role and power of strategic bombing.

Strategic bombing is not just about attacking military targets. That is, the army, military bases, military facilities, etc., but also to the rear production facilities, transportation organs. Even ordinary residential areas were thoroughly attacked. The aim is to completely destroy the ability of the other country to wage war and to deprive the government and citizens of the enemy country of the will to continue the war. Therefore, strategic bombing is inevitably "indiscriminate bombardment", and under normal circumstances, non-combatants are bound to suffer extremely serious injuries.

During World War II, strategic bombing took place in July and August 1943, when the U.S. and British air forces indiscriminately bombed Hamburg, Germany. Hamburg, a city of 1.76 million people, was hit by three massive air raids in July, dropping a large number of high-performance bombs and incendiary bombs, destroying 55 to 60 percent of the city, killing 350,000 people and killing about 100,000 citizens.

After March 1945, the U.S. military also carried out a planned strategic bombing of Japan, the first of which was the bombing of Tokyo, which caused great destruction. In this time and space, the Chinese army also carried out a large-scale bombing of Tokyo, dropping countless incendiary bombs, burning almost the entire Tokyo to ruins.

Relatively speaking, tactical bombing is the bombing of enemy troops and a certain military facility, for example, Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor in the United States is tactical bombing. The joint operation of the Chinese Air Force and the British Air Force to carry out a large-scale bombing of all the German airfields and warplanes in France and Belgium would undoubtedly be a strategic bombing if successful, and it would change the situation of the war on the entire Western Front.

After more than 10 days of night sky reconnaissance, the pilots of the Chinese reconnaissance planes who led the flight were already very familiar with the terrain of France, and the first bombing was Toulouse in southern France, and the bombing was carried out by 20 fighter bombers taking off from Portugal, and there were also five fighter escorts, which was the first bombing squadron.

The Germans deployed sixty warplanes at the Toulouse airfield, which flew over the defense zone to reconnoiter and bomb Portuguese and Italian and Allied forces in the Mediterranean, which were often bombed by the Germans because their air forces were too weak.

Although the secrecy of this bombing operation was excellent, the German intelligence officers were still informed in advance that it was possible for China and Britain to organize military operations against the German army, but no one thought that the Chinese army and the British army would carry out large-scale bombing at night, and in the eyes of the Germans, this was simply impossible, and no pilot dared to fly in the night sky to fight, after all, the possibility of disorientation was too great.

In order to confuse the Germans, during the day yesterday, the British Royal Flying Corps took off a large number of fighters to the west coast of France under the leadership of Commander Trenhard to prepare to provoke the German fighters, the Germans had already planted a large number of spies in Britain, and the British planes had just taken off not long after, the German army received the news, and then the Germans also took off a large number of fighters to meet the British Air Force group. Then the two planes fought for a long time over the English Channel, and the number of fighters in the two groups increased, and finally a large-scale air battle was formed.

The provocation of the British made the Germans quite puzzled, so the Germans ordered the spies in Britain to find out what the purpose of the British was, but Cai Guodong had warned Trenchard before, telling him to keep the bombing plan absolutely secret, the bombing plan was pitifully few, and in just one day, the German spies did not find any valuable information, after all, the time was too short.

That night, because the German pilots were extremely tired from the large number of flying battles during the day, almost all the German pilots fell asleep early, and no one thought that the Chinese army would fly from Italy at night to make a surprise attack.

When the 1st Squadron flew over Toulouse Airport, all the German pilots at the airport were asleep, including the ground crew, and only the airport escort patrolled. The bright lights on both sides of the runway pointed out the bombing location for the bomber group, one bomber after another began to dive, a large number of bombs fell from the sky, the German fighters on the runway and in the hangar were instantly exploded and caught fire, one after another fighters roared down, dive bombing can accurately bomb the target, and high-altitude bombing due to the flight inertia of the aircraft bomb, can not prepare for bombing after falling, but dive bombing can avoid this situation.

In less than two minutes, the entire airport was engulfed in flames, and all the German fighters in the hangar and runway in the airport were ignited by the fire, and some were directly blown to pieces.

The bombing lasted only five minutes before it was over, and before the Germans could even react, most of them were killed and burned in their sleep, and the entire airfield was in flames, and aircraft fuel was burning everywhere, and after the departure of the 1st Bombing Squadron, only the skyrocketing fire and billowing smoke were left.

Bordeaux and Lyon were bombed next, and the Germans at the airports were killed and burned before they could even report the news, and the Germans lost 200 warplanes to just three airfields.

The bombing of Limoges and Clermont-Ferrand followed, the German airfields in these two cities did not have many warplanes, and the airfields were not large, only thirty of them each, and the bomber formations easily solved them.

After bombing the German airfields in Toulouse, Bordeaux, Limoges, and Clermont-Ferrand, the Chinese bomber formations flew directly to Milan, Italy, after completing their missions, and their ammunition had run out, and they could not bomb the German airfields along the way to Britain on the way, and they could also be discovered by the Germans, so they flew to Milan after completing the bombing mission in the plan.

The other bombing formations flew all the way to the west, each flight formation had its own bombing mission, and once the bombing mission was completed, it flew directly to Britain without stopping, and the bombing time could not exceed ten minutes at most, and after ten minutes, regardless of whether all the fighters and runways of the German airfields had been destroyed, they had to leave.

For three hours, when there was a glimmer of light in the sky, a large number of aircraft began to fly across the Strait in batches towards the British mainland, and all the air force airfields of the German army in France and Belgium were bombed and destroyed by the Chinese army aircraft group, and from then on, the air supremacy on the Western Front completely fell into the hands of the Entente. (To be continued......)