"Commander, the first wave of reconnaissance planes has been dispatched."

The 48-year-old was admitted to the Dalian Naval Academy in 1893 and interned on the light cruiser "Hurricane" during the Sino-Japanese War.

After the First Sino-Japanese War, faced with a great opportunity to enter the Navy's General Staff, Dongfang Gao, who graduated with the third place in the current class, took the initiative to apply for a grassroots unit, and successively served as the captain of a torpedo boat, the second officer of a destroyer to the captain, and the first mate of a light cruiser.

A year before the Asian-Russian War, Dongfang Gao was selected by the General Staff to study flight, study and verify the original naval aviation tactics in the special tactical class of the Naval University shrouded in a thick and mysterious atmosphere at that time, and graduated after Bi Lingbo, the commander of the First Air Force in the class, but he has always been haunted by this - Bi Lingbo, who was admitted to the Dalian Naval Academy in the same year as him, was three years younger than him, and their chief tutor was Liang Shuming, who was later crowned as the "father of imperial naval navigation" - was only one year older than him.

After the outbreak of the Asian-Russian War, Dongfang Gao was ordered to command the newly commissioned seaplane carrier "Skyhawk", which was immediately incorporated into the first carrier-based aviation unit of the Imperial Navy with Liang Shuming as its commander - the 1st Air Force, and Liang Shuming's flagship was located on the "Flying Eagle" of which Bi Lingbo was the captain.

In the naval battle of the South China Sea, which annihilated the Second Pacific Fleet of the Russian army, the infant carrier-based aviation of the Imperial Navy played the role of the fleet's "eye in the sky." Far beyond the field of vision at the top of the mast of the warship, the enemy was discovered and reported in a timely manner, so that our main forces could enter a favorable position before engaging the enemy, and they could wait for work and win the first hand.

Compared to the daring Bi Lingbo, the Go enthusiast Dongfang Gao is much more sedate and will never argue with his superiors in person like Bi Lingbo - in fact, he rarely has the opportunity to face Liang Shuming alone, and his meticulousness in carrying out orders is enough to make even the most demanding officers have no thorns to find. However, in the unprecedented naval battle in the Bay of Bengal nine months ago, this merit was inevitably overshadowed by the more dramatic performances of Liang Shuming and Bi Lingbo.

Dongfang Gao knew very well that this time, his opportunity had come, and he finally had the opportunity to use a mixed mobile force alone - not like before and after the Battle of the Bay of Bengal, but under the unified command of Liang Shuming's mobile fleet, he was only responsible for commanding the 2nd Air Force, which was composed of two "Golden Falcon" class fleet aircraft carriers with a strong test ship nature and the two carrier-based aviation wings carried on it; Or, as in the past few months, although Liu Guanxiong's 2nd Fleet still retains the title of commander of the 2nd Air Fleet, he has only one aircraft carrier, the "Saker", which has only returned from the "Four Birds' Nest of the Mobile Fleet" after the Battle of the Bay of Bengal, plus two consolation destroyers.

Now, in addition to the lucky and tenacious old subordinate "Saker", the most precious thing in Dongfang Gao's heart is the flagship under his feet that is still brightly painted, the 3rd Carrier-based Wing of the "Dapeng" class fleet aircraft carrier with a standard displacement of 19,400 tons, inheriting the number of the Air Wing carried by the original Second Air Combat Flagship "Golden Falcon", which was sunk in the Bay of Bengal.

The "Jinpeng" learned the lessons of the naval battle in the Bay of Bengal when it was still outfitting: in view of the failure of the underwater defense capability to meet the design expectations, the watertight compartment was further subdivided, and at the same time, the emergency response was added, the protection of the damage line was strengthened, and the self-rescue ability of the warship after being hit by a torpedo was ensured; In view of the lack of anti-aircraft firepower, the combined anti-aircraft machine gun in the original design was replaced with a combined or single 20 mm machine gun; In response to the expansion of the carrier-based air wing, the hangar and flight deck have been significantly remodeled, and the corresponding carrier aircraft capacity has been increased from 76 to 108 aircraft - including 36 ship-based fighters in 3 squadrons, 45 ship-based attack aircraft in 5 squadrons, and a total of 27 spare aircraft.

After the Battle of the Bay of Bengal, the "Saker" was originally planned to be upgraded with reference to the "Jinpeng" renovation project, but before the "Yunpeng", which was not lightly damaged in the 1st naval battle, was repaired, as the only fleet carrier available to the combined fleet, the "Saker" had to rush non-stop to the front line in the Indian Ocean, and the guard, escort, ground support, and even transport aircraft hardly did not perform their tasks for a day. It was only after the successful completion of the first phase of the first phase of the first operation, the Indian East Coast Raid, that the "Saker" had time to return to China for half a month, during which it only had time to make a slight transformation of the aviation facilities, and increased the number of aircraft from 54 to 70 -- including 24 ship battles in 2 squadrons, 36 ship attacks in 4 squadrons, and a total of 2nd fleet, and the second fleet in total, and the restored "Yunpeng" was put into the second phase of the I operation, that is, the west coast of Ceylon and India, until the end of the Persian Gulf Raid in early May, and then returned to the Kaohsiung base all the way. Rendezvous with the "Jinpeng", which has just completed its acclimatization training, and other ships scheduled to be incorporated into the Solomon Mobile Force.

The bodyguards for these two baby bumps in the East are the best elites from the East Asian Combined Fleet: two Thunder-class battlecruisers - the Chinese Navy's "Thunder" and the Japanese Navy's "Haruna"; 4 Leopard light cruisers "Bonghwa", "Yanghua", "Rehwa" and "Chenghua" belonging to the 1st Light Patrol Brigade of the DPRK Navy; The eight Yangzi destroyers belonging to the 22nd Chinese Destroyer Squadron, "Wenyang", "Shunyang", "Zhenyang", "Liangyang", "Chuyang", "Fanyang", and "Chiefyang" -- they are no less brand-new than the "Jinpeng", but most of the crews are veterans of the 13 destroyers that survived the sinking of the Battle of the Bay of Bengal.

Although compared with the "old mobile force" or "large mobile fleet" in the Hawaii and Bangladesh battles, which was highly successful and controversial at the same time, the "Solomonic mobile force" of the Eastern master has shrunk by half in terms of the number of aircraft carriers and the size of the formation, but the total number of aircraft on board the ship has exceeded two-thirds of the former, reaching a total of 188 aircraft with 141 common aircraft and 37 spare aircraft (the four aircraft carriers of the mobile fleet in the Battle of the Bay of Bengal carried a total of 246 common aircraft, 14 spare aircraft, a total of 260 aircraft).

The mission of such a capable and powerful aircraft carrier task force is naturally not only to cover a landing operation with a slightly "invasion" nature within the combat radius of his own land-based air forces, Dongfang Gao has a faint premonition—or rather, he is looking forward to it—that a group of vicious enemies with fangs and fangs are waiting for him in front of his route.

"Confirm the ship's location."

Dongfang Gao's hand ordered, his eyes inadvertently jumped down, and in the corner of the flight deck that was washed by the morning light, two slender figures looking up at Solomon's morning sun caught his attention...... V