Episode 110 Going Forward and Successing

After the Ming Army's West Route Aircraft Group had just flown close to the Yokosuka port area, and before it had completely flown to the top, a large black cloud began to explode in the air ahead, and a muffled sound of "bang bang" entered the cockpit. At the same time, continuous lines of fire rose up from below, and tracer bullets pulled clear tongues of fire, fluttering in the air like whips, trying to draw onto the Ming plane. It was anti-aircraft machine guns.

It is clear that the anti-aircraft guns of the military port below were even more powerful than the Atsugi airfield. The captain of the left flank must make a choice between attacking the warship directly or sacrificing a batch of bombs and focusing on bombing the anti-aircraft gun positions first. Just now the bombing of Atsugi airfield, most of the bombs have been consumed. Now if the focus is on destroying the anti-aircraft artillery positions, then I am afraid that there will be no more bombs left in the local group. Either wait for the right-flank group to arrive from Yachiyo Airfield and bombard the warship with their bombs - to be honest they don't necessarily have many bombs left - or let the torpedo bombers attack the warship alone. The torpedo planes flew low and slowly, and compared to the dive bombers, they were like targets, which would inevitably lead to a large number of casualties among the torpedo planes.

He glanced down and saw in the distant harbor a long, narrow behemoth moored beside the slipway, with the flag of the commander of the Combined Fleet on it, and its guns were spewing flames in unison, and all the lines of fire were rushing towards the group. In front of and around the group, large black clouds exploded, shockwaves jolting planes, and the occasional shrapnel clanged at the planes.

It is clear that that is the main target today: the battleship Nagato. This behemoth has not been in battle since it was built, and the first time it went into battle today was actually in front of his own house, or on top of his head. It seems that it is really going to be powerful.

There can be no delay. At this time, Nagoya Airport and Niigata Airport must have been alerted. Maybe they've already gotten up and flown here. We have to do it quickly.

The captain was ruthless and ordered:

"There are no enemy planes, fighter formations dive and strafe with me, suppressing enemy anti-aircraft guns! The bomber formation directly attacked the Nagato! ”

At the sound of an order, more than 30 fighters scattered and rolled down from the sky, scattered, each aimed at an artillery group on the ground, and swooped and strafed over. At the same time, the dive bombers continued to climb high altitudes, and then lined up and swooped down in volleys in turn.

The assault on the Yokosuka military port began.

……

This is destined to be an unprecedented battle for both sides. In the previous naval and air battles at the airport, the Ming army had never attacked a target with such strong anti-aircraft artillery fire with such a thin force. For the Japanese troops in the port of Yokosuka, they had never seen such an air raid. This generation of young Japanese soldiers had never experienced a war before, and had no actual combat experience at all. The older high-ranking officers experienced the Russo-Japanese War, and some even experienced the Sino-Japanese War. But they were all senior officers in their fifties and sixties, sitting in their offices. At this time, the young soldiers who operated the anti-aircraft guns were the first to taste war. Even those veteran officers who had experienced the Nisshin and Russo-Japanese Wars were the first time they encountered such a new thing as "air raids".

Although the Ming army now has only one bomber group and one fighter group, which is much thinner than the previous attack on warships, there are no enemy planes now, only our planes against local anti-aircraft guns. This is already on a very unequal scale. If an anti-aircraft gun wants to hit a high-speed moving aircraft, it can be said that it is normal to miss, but it is a coincidence. That is, when the Ming planes dived towards the Japanese artillery position, the horizontal movement was relatively small, and the hit rate of the Japanese anti-aircraft guns was only slightly higher, and it was limited to rapid-fire guns.

But without bombs, the damage to the members of the Japanese anti-aircraft artillery group was much smaller by strafing alone. In addition, there were baffles in front of the Japanese machine guns, which often dived down in one round, and the machine gun baffles clanged and sparks flew everywhere, and no one was killed. Some also killed at most one person. After several rounds of dive strafing, the casualties of the anti-aircraft guns were not so large, and the anti-aircraft fire did not lose much.

Now the pilots of the Ming army generally have an understanding that the Japanese army and the Qing army are really different. In the past, when the air raided the Qing army's airfield, as long as it dived and strafed a few times, the Qing army's anti-aircraft guns were basically no longer operated, and the artillery was holding their heads and looking for a place to hide. And the Qing pilots will not make any effort to fly the plane. As long as the Ming army plane group flew over the airport, the Qing army pilots below were all fleeing for their lives, and a large number of planes were neatly placed on the lawn, allowing them to be bombed, and no one cared about them.

But the current Japanese army is completely different. Even if all the pilots in front of them tried to take off were killed in the flames, the pilots behind still drilled into the plane as if they didn't see it, trying to fly the plane. Even if the artillerymen around him died in the shock wave and strafing, the only remaining artilleryman would still be covered in blood, trying to manipulate the steering elevation angle alone, loading the magazine alone, and then firing into the air alone. Although it is no longer useful.

This kind of "as long as I don't die, I will fight you to the end" made the Ming army pilots feel a lot of emotion afterwards. But now on this battlefield full of artillery, no one cares about emotion. The pilots of the Ming Army were nervous, but they only secretly complained to themselves: It is really bitter to have such a group of opponents. - How easy it was to fight the Qing army before, and you won with a little fight.

……

At this time, the Nagato was facing a series of bombardments from more than a dozen dive bombers, and the surrounding water columns rose one after another. By this time, a bomb had been hit on the rear deck of the Nagato, and smoke was billowing out. The other warships in the surrounding harbors—light cruisers, heavy cruisers, destroyers, etc.—all fired at the Ming bombers in the sky above. The balance of strength between the two sides at this time was somewhat unfavorable to the Ming army. Now, in addition to the Nagato, there are also ten large and small warships in the port, and at this time, they are all super Nagato, forming a circular air defense formation. In addition, there were anti-aircraft guns on the surrounding coast.

At this time, there were not many bombs left of the Ming bombers, and only four bombers still had one bomb each. At this time, he did not dare to throw it casually, but repeatedly circled and dived and strafed over the Nagato, on the one hand, he did not dare to drop bombs with complete certainty, and on the other hand, he had to use these bombs to cooperate with the actions of the torpedo bombers.

At this time, two squadrons of torpedo bombers - in fact, after a few battles, there was only one squadron left - began to enter the battlefield from a distance, lowered the flight altitude, got as close to the sea as possible, flew at a slow speed, and prepared to drop torpedoes at a distance of several hundred meters.

But the port of Yokosuka is very different from the port of Naha. There are not many warships left in Naha Port, except for the Hiei. Because the Japanese army wanted to establish a "blockade island chain" in the Ryukyu Islands, it always spread the forces of the Okinawa base extensively, patrolling, surveilling, and guarding, and there were very few warships that actually remained in the harbor. Therefore, the port of Naha is not large, but the sea is very wide.

And this is Yokosuka, which is one of Japan's largest naval ports, and in addition to battleships, light and heavy cruisers and destroyers are usually gathered. Just now, the Japanese ships in the harbor had already surrounded the Nagato, forming a ring formation suitable for air defense, and the effectiveness of the anti-aircraft guns was greatly enhanced. Now that they saw that the Ming torpedo planes were approaching and were about to release the torpedoes, the warships on the periphery immediately shrank further, concentrating their firepower on the one hand to fire at the group of torpedo planes that were flying far away, and on the other hand, forming a "firewall" in front of the Nagato.

The intention of the Japanese army was obvious, once the Ming torpedo machine broke through the fire net and the torpedo was difficult to dodge, they would use the bodies of other warships to block the torpedo for the Nagato. Sacrifice one or two minor warships, but also keep the Nagato. The Nagato is not only the strongest warship of the Japanese Navy, but also the flagship of the Japanese Combined Fleet, the symbol of the Great Japanese Navy, and the totem admired by the Japanese people.

Now, there were already two destroyers and a cruiser in front of the Nagato, and several torpedoes of the Ming army were still in the water and were heading straight for them.