In the past hour or so, Yuan Feng led his reconnaissance unit to closely follow Liang Shuming's mobile troops, always ready to start an artillery battle with the approaching enemy surface troops, but Yuan Feng, who was already eager to try this, was poured cold water on his head: the mobile troops in front were turning to the east to "evade", and Liang Shuming asked him to follow up to "protect".

"Protect your sister."

Yuan Feng scolded angrily in his heart, but he couldn't ignore Liang Shuming's request, in broad daylight, the mobile force could not do without the cover of the six battlecruisers with powerful firepower in the reconnaissance unit, but the reconnaissance force could not do without the support of the more than 200 carrier-based aircraft of the mobile force.

"Commander, do you want to report the situation to Commander Sa......

The adjutant cautiously advised.

Yuan Feng waved his hand indifferently: "No need, Liang Shuming is not so bold, he should have already greeted Commander Sa, let's follow the past - the enemy's avant-garde is advancing at full speed to this side, and the mobile force cannot be allowed to risk alone." ”

A few minutes later, when the pocket watch pointer in Yuan Feng's hand pointed to around 3 o'clock, the six battle cruisers headed by the "Thunderbolt" and sailing in a 1 column made a big bend to the left in turn and turned due east. 8 destroyers of the Yangzi) and the 7th Sentai (Light Patrol Leopard.8 destroyers of the Yangzi) on the right, with their backs to the sun slowly setting westward, closely pursued the mobile troops ten nautical miles ahead. Smoke and waves, speeding away......

At 15:40, the white track and gray shadow of the ship covered with sea antennas appeared in the field of vision of Colonel Cai Yong, commander of the first air attack wave of the Chinese army, and after leading a formation of 114 combat planes to fly for 1 hour and 20 minutes, he successfully found his target -- the advance guard of the Entente Combined Fleet, and quickly identified the primary target from the three wheel-shaped ship formations distributed in an inverted triangle -- four British fleet aircraft carriers with a long all-access flight deck.

After the target was confirmed, Cai Yong immediately pulled out the flare gun on the side of the seat and fired several red and green flares into the sky. All the fighters quickly divided into two groups, and were guided by the planes of Cai Yong and Deputy Commander Colonel Liang Mubin, and flew around to both sides of the British aircraft carrier formation to launch an attack.

Cai Yong actually saw very clearly that the Entente army was very clever in placing two wheeled formations with battleships and battlecruisers as the core side by side in front of the aircraft carrier formation, so that the Chinese planes that came to attack the air would either have to force their way through the intertwined anti-aircraft fire network of the two formations, or bypass them from far away from both sides - and at the same time give the escort fighters time to react.

Cai Yong chose to attack in a detour, on the one hand, he did not want to be disrupted by anti-aircraft fire before entering the attack, and on the other hand, more importantly, he hoped to attack the British aircraft carrier formation from at least two directions at the same time, and at the end of the day, he had great expectations for the escort fighter pilots in the first attack wave. "They're all hand-picked, time-tested veterans."

Sure enough, at the same time as the attack wave was flying around, at least 24 British "SEAL Cub" carrier-based fighters hovering at high altitude swooped down at full speed and intercepted them separately, and 24 escort fighters from four squadrons of the Chinese army immediately met them, and a dog-eat-dog biplane melee was smashed into sawdust rags flying in the blue sky and blue sea......

Under the cover of the fighters, the 53 "Golden Eagle" attack planes of the First Air Force under the guidance of Cai Yong far bypassed the enemy's left flank formation with five battle cruisers as the core and smoothly entered the attack position on the left side of the enemy aircraft carrier formation. Braving the medium-caliber anti-aircraft guns of the enemy's right flank formation with five battleships as the core, they quickly circled around the right rear of the enemy's aircraft carrier formation.

Seeing that the two-sided attack had been completed, Cai Yong immediately turned the radio to voice mode and ordered all the air attack planes: "The attack begins!" ”

Just as the two-way attack aircraft group rapidly descended to a low altitude. When a group of three to five planes was about to project torpedoes according to the area fan method, the 12 "SEAL Cub" fighters that had been parked at the front of the flight decks of the four aircraft carriers and were on standby at all times had already taken off one after another, and they immediately launched an attack on the Chinese attack planes with great vigour, and shuttled back and forth with tracer bullet marks. By the time the British fighters turned around, the various attack groups of the Chinese army had already formed a dense formation of their own. The twin machine guns at the tail of each aircraft form a network of fire. When a British plane was about to close in flames, it spun into a volley and disintegrated, but the British fighter pilots were not so timid. Still rushing in a rage regardless of life and death, before the Chinese attack aircraft group entered the anti-aircraft gun fire network of the British aircraft carrier formation, it really broke up several attack groups, shot down no less than ten Chinese planes, and one bullet even grazed Cai Yong's flight cap and embedded it in the radio operation panel in front of him......

As soon as they escaped from the pursuit of the British fighters, the surviving attack planes crashed head-on into layers of blazing fire: first, timed space-burst grenades fired from dozens of 4-inch (102 mm) flat-altitude dual-purpose guns and 3-inch (76 mm) anti-aircraft guns on four aircraft carriers and eight cruisers, and then more than 100 one-pound (37 mm) and 2-pound (40 mm) anti-aircraft guns fired by the two ships of the entire aircraft carrier formation. At the end of the list were more than 100 Vickers-Maxim water-cooled machine guns, firing 7.7 mm tracer incendiary bullets.

The attack aircraft group was caught in a cloud of smoke from 3-inch and 4-inch air-burst grenades when they were six or seven kilometers away from the target, and although none of the attack planes were directly hit by this inaccurate artillery fire, almost one-third of the planes ate some shrapnel to a greater or lesser extent when they crossed this layer of fire net, and two of them were obviously hit in key parts, struggling, rolling, burning, and after continuing to fly for hundreds of meters, they plunged headlong into the sea, stirring up a wall of snow-white waves.

As for the 1-pounder and 2-pounder machine guns, which have a rate of fire comparable to that of machine guns, the blazing and lethal grenades they fire, a direct hit or two rounds are enough to destroy a "Golden Eagle" attack aircraft with a crew of 3 on board, and when 100 of these cannons are fired at the same time, a maximum of 10,000 to 11,000 shells can be fired in a minute to cover targets up to 4,000 meters away, and when the Chinese attack aircraft group formed in various dense formations entered this layer of fire network, they were immediately hit hard: at least five "Golden Eagles" Before the mines could be dropped, they were smashed into the air and, to make matters worse, the teams were forced to evacuate and the planes were left to attack independently......