Sato's Zero found its opponent in the clouds, and the U.S. Naval Air Force took off to meet 40 P-40 fighters. As usual with American planes, he dispersed and prepared to fight the oncoming group of American fighter planes, but just by looking at him, Sato felt that these American planes were different from the past.

In the early days of the Pacific Theater, American pilots were all novices, and these novices were inevitably a little nervous when facing enemy pilots, but the American pilot base was too large, and they had a complete training and learning system, so they could quickly replenish the number of losses.

In another time and space, once the American fighter pilots appeared as trump cards, they were immediately transferred back to China to train novice pilots. This system ensures that American pilots, despite their heavy losses, can always be replaced with better pilots. To put it simply, the American pilots have all gone back to the rear to teach novices, so that there are always only novice pilots fighting on the American front. However, the "novices" added by the United States have higher flying skills from generation to generation, and this is a strategic supplementary means based on a large base.

And the Japanese pilots could not do this, and the number of people in Japan who had access to flying was far less than in the United States, and for most Japanese people, flying was definitely a distant and mysterious thing. Therefore, the Japanese ace pilots could only fight on the front line all day long, and when Japan lost a pilot, it was very difficult to replenish.

Therefore, this has to be brought back to the level of competition in comprehensive national strength for analysis. Don't underestimate how many cars a country has in peacetime, because it is not difficult to teach a car driver to drive a tank, and in the same way, American farms use airplanes to spray pesticides, and the number of people who fly airplanes and those who have come into contact with airplanes is in the tens of thousands, which is actually a huge war potential that Japan cannot match.

Accardo has made great efforts to increase the penetration of automobiles in Germany itself, so that Germany's mechanized army can be recruited enough to supplement and expand. Thanks to his efforts, compulsory education in Germany has been extended to high school, which has given the German army a large number of capable reservists. Once these people become soldiers, those who have studied subjects such as mathematics and geometry will be trained more quickly in things like artillery aiming.

When Germany secretly established its own flying club, the Treaty of Versailles still existed. However, dozens of flying clubs, large and small, reserved at least 50,000 pilots for the Luftwaffe, and these air pilots became the elite of the Luftwaffe that swept across Europe with a little tempering in the early days of the war. Combined with world-leading weaponry, they are still the most formidable air force in the world.

After research, the German Air Force top brass determined a more suitable way for the Luftwaffe to circulate blood. They regularly send ace pilots from all fronts back to Germany to train novices who are about to become fighter pilots. This not only ensures the elite combat effectiveness of the front-line pilots, but also ensures that the training of German pilots is more advanced and avant-garde.

However, Japan still can't learn this trick, because Germany's perfect education system and the general "mechanical elements" of the people are much higher than those of Japan, so the speed of the two sides to supplement the pilots is not at the same level at all. Thanks to Accardo's efforts, Germany is now replenishing pilots almost as fast as the United States, and with a higher quality.

Sato didn't have so many twists and turns in his mind, he only knew that he had to shoot down these American planes in front of him, so as to win a safe environment for the Japanese torpedo attack planes that followed closely behind to attack the American ships. He piloted his own plane, relying on the light flight of the Zero fighter, and quickly bit an American fighter.

"Strange!" he muttered, because as soon as he bit his opponent, he sensed that his opponent's plane was clearly not the same as the P-40 fighter he had seen before. After he adjusted the angle of attack, he found that the distance between the two sides had not been reduced at all, and they were still relatively far away.

Only then did he suddenly realize that his feelings were not wrong, and that the US planes were indeed different from the previous ones -- these P-40s were faster! He had no way to open fire, so he could only bite the US planes, hoping to find a suitable opportunity to attack.

It's not that he doesn't have enough accuracy, because Sato is one of the best fighting masters in the Japanese naval aviation, but the cannon of the Zero fighter he pilots is too powerful, and the trajectory is so bent when attacking distant targets. What made him feel even more helpless was that he only had 60 rounds of machine gun shells, and after all of them missed, he could only say goodbye to the battlefield and return to replenish ammunition.

Why not switch to a more powerful cannon? Sato also wanted to ask the design department of the Zero fighter, but the various reasons for this were not something that a small pilot like him could understand. In fact, Japan has entered a devil's circle in aircraft design, which is also a typical tragic ending of "adding the wrong technology points".

Japan itself does not have excellent engine technology reserves, so when Japan needs a new type of fighter, it can only make a fuss about the world's second-rate engines to create a "deformed" fighter that can meet the needs of the army. This made the Japanese aircraft an outlier in the history of the world's fighter development, and became one of the few major participating countries in World War II to embark on the "point of no return" in fighter design.

The engine of the Zero fighter is not powerful enough, so it is fuel-efficient. However, in order to pursue flight performance, the weight of the fighter could only be reduced frantically, and finally Japanese aircraft began to use a large number of aluminum-magnesium alloys, reducing the weight of the aircraft to the extreme. This gave the Japanese aircraft a very low wing load, excellent flight performance and a terrible range.

However, this allowed Japanese aircraft to experience a brief period of "invincibility" in early 1938, and at the same time brought Japanese aircraft design into a dead end. The engine power of the aircraft is low, so the aircraft is lightweight, the weight is light, the structural strength of the guide is insufficient, and the structural strength is insufficient, and the guide is not able to equip more powerful weapon systems. Speaking of which, in fact, the biggest drawback of the Zero fighter is stated - this kind of aircraft cannot be improved!

If the high-power engine is replaced and the flight speed of the Zero is increased, then the aircraft will disintegrate in the air due to insufficient strength, so the structural design of the Zero aircraft will be changed by changing the engine design, and the change of structural design will lead to a change in weight, and the increased engine power will be wasted, and the increase in fuel consumption will also lead to a decrease in the range of the aircraft. On the other hand: the engine has been replaced, the structure has been changed, and the performance curve has been deformed...... What's the difference between this and redesigning an aircraft?

Therefore, it is very difficult for the Zero fighter to be equipped with a more powerful weapon system, and the greater the recoil will make the structural strength of the Zero aircraft problematic, so the Japanese Air Force pilots can only endure the curved trajectory from beginning to end, and can only reluctantly accept from beginning to end that the range of their own 20 mm caliber cannon is not as good as that of the opponent12. The fact of a machine gun of 7 mm caliber.

Sato piloted the plane and bit the tail of the American fighter, his opponent seemed to know the shortcomings of the Zero fighter's lack of rolling ability, and was using this action to get rid of Sato's entanglement, but Sato's flying skills were very strong, and he carefully piloted his plane, always biting his opponent at the extreme distance.

Suddenly, he sensed danger, an instinct that had been tempered on the front line for a long time. So he quickly changed his flight state and quickly began the climbing maneuver that the Zero fighter was good at. As he jerked up the plane, a volley of bullets swept straight in front of him, so frightened that he almost pulled open the hatch and parachuted.

"Yaga!" Sato cursed loudly, piloting the plane to climb at a high speed to get rid of the entanglement of the flanking American planes, only to realize that the two American planes used a strange circling pattern, which was able to find an opportunity to fire in the sideways rolling action that the Zero fighter was not good at, and shoot down the pursuing Zero.

Sato was lucky, because he changed his flying posture at the most dangerous time, but the other Japanese pilots in the fighter formation were not so lucky, and after he finally escaped the pursuit of the American planes, he found that three of his planes had been shot down by the American army.

"Yaga!yah! The whole army will attack! Fight to the death!" Furious, Sato raised his eyebrows, pushed the control stick of the plane fiercely, piloted the plane back into the battle circle, and looked around for American fighters to fire, wanting to avenge his familiar subordinates. However, the speed of the American aircraft increased, which made him very unaccustomed to it, and for a while he could not find a suitable way to attack.

......

At the same moment, a US combat staff officer excitedly walked up behind the commander of the aircraft carrier fleet, General Spruance, and stood up and saluted: "General! Major Hawke's fighter unit has sent back news that they are engaged in a battle with the Japanese and have already achieved the result of shooting down five fighters!"

Spruance's eyes lit up, then he turned around and took the report, looked through it carefully, and then he smiled and handed the information back to the officer who sent the report: "There is nothing to worry about now! We have regained the initiative! Send a telegram to General Nimitz! In a word: 'You can fight'!"

On the morning of August 30, the U.S. Pacific Fleet began to turn to the left, and all warships joined the Second Battle of Pearl Harbor without hesitation. Every American captain received a brief message from Nimitz with only one sentence: "You can fight!"