While the tank battles on the ground were unprecedentedly fierce, the air battles were also darkened.

After the bombing of a large-scale aircraft group, the air supremacy was once in the hands of the Yue army, but the Northeast Army quickly reversed the situation. The Northeast Army grouped together the "Skylark" fighters, which were faster than the planes of the Chinese army and had a slightly worse maneuverability, and the "Swift" fighters, which were faster than the planes of the Japanese army and had a stronger maneuverability, and put into the skies the battlefield the new "Woolly Rhinoceros" fighters and the new "Quick Knife" medium bombers, which were faster and more powerful than the planes.

On 7 September, as the ground war between the two sides drew to a close, the air battle was entering the air.

The Army Aviation Unit stationed in Eastern Siberia is the 2nd Flying Corps, which is composed of more than two flying regiments, and the flying regiments are subordinate to the flying corps. Since the regiment is dedicated to air supremacy or ground attack missions, its composition often changes depending on the combat situation, but the flying regiment generally has 10 flying teams, and each flying team is later divided into 3 flying squadrons. Due to the extremely chaotic establishment of the army aviation force, the establishment of the flying corps, for example, was only reorganized from the flying brigade and company in 1938. The establishment of the Flying Regiment only appeared in 1939, and the 2nd Flying Regiment was formed in March 1939 together with the 1st Flying Regiment of the homeland, and in April 1942, it was reorganized into the 2nd Flying Division. Before the Battle of Sangye River, the 2nd Flying Regiment had two flying regiments, and the 12th Flying Regiment in charge of air supremacy had four flying teams that used fighters, and the 1st Flying Squadron, the 64th Flying Squadron, and the 11th Flying Regiment were equipped with a total of 88 advanced "Gale", while the relatively backward "Zero" 24th Flying Regiment, although it also had dozens of fighters on paper, was very self-aware and did not give these planes to the Chinese for snacks.

When the squadron is equipped with 10 fighters as standard, it is actually 8 to 12 fighters, and when it uses bombers or observation planes, it is only equipped with 6 aircraft, and in reality it is generally not more than 8 aircraft, nor less than 4 aircraft.

In addition to fighters, the 2nd Flying Regiment was armed with 24 light bombers (light explosives) and 13 heavy bombers (heavy explosives), all of which belonged to the 9th Flying Regiment. Compared with the fighter unit, the source of the bomber squadron is more complex, for example, 13 heavy bombs, including two flying squadrons of the 12th Flying Squadron.

In 1940, the army aviation was no longer a "young vulture" waiting to be fed, and began to set its greedy eyes on the air force of China's Northeast Army to the west, which was extremely active in all previous armed conflicts with the Soviet Union, causing great trouble to the army. Although the aviation level of both countries is world-class, China's industrialization and large-scale production are relatively good, and its human resources are also more abundant, and the army aviation headquarters believes that it is unwise to fight with the Northeast Army, so it has decided to strengthen the mobility of the aviation units by separating the aviation units from the bases, relying on the rapid front-line airfields to deploy them, and attacking the Northeast Army is not prepared. In order to make the aviation units no longer tied to their respective airfields, starting in 1937, that is, in the 12th year of the Showa era, the army aviation began to form flight teams with reading support ground support and even airfield anti-aircraft artillery units in East Siberia and the mainland of the Sino-Chinese confrontation, which could break away from the airfield reading maneuver operations. Field factories and airfield ground defense units with regular ground maintenance and overhaul capabilities in the hands of various flying units have been unified into "airfield brigades."

In the Pacific theater, the army aviation has developed a more exciting and flexible flying division, and a "reading flight squadron" that can closely coordinate with the ground and form a slightly larger than an ordinary flight squadron, and two reading flight squadrons can form a "reading flight team." Of course, this kind of flexible organization did not appear out of thin air, and its indiscriminate use was the "Reading Power Flying Brigade" that appeared many times in the battlefields of East Siberia and China.

A few days after the Reading Force Flying Group was stationed in Baihua City, on 20 July (recorded by the Chinese side) or 21 July (recorded by the Chinese side), the first air battle broke out over the Sangye River, and a "Qingfeng" reconnaissance fighter of the Northeast Army carrying out a battlefield reconnaissance patrol mission was shot down by a "Gale" fighter of the Yue Army. On July 22, the first head-to-head confrontation broke out between the fighters of the two sides, and in the records of the said side, a "Gale" encountered a group of six "Qingfeng" fighters during the patrol, and shot down three of them, and the Chinese record admitted defeat, but there were some discrepancies with the Yue army in details: 3 "Qingfeng" and 2 "Skylark" were attacked by 5 "Gale" of the Yue army, one "Qingfeng" was unfortunately shot down, and the other was seriously injured, but landed safely. At the same time, both the Northeast Army and the headquarters of the Yue Army were looking for reinforcements to replenish their air forces, and the Northeast Army appeared to be careless in its preparations before 20 July. Painfully, the Chinese, with astonishing efficiency, crammed warplanes into airfields capable of covering the Sangye River.

On July 23, the 22nd Fighter Regiment of the Northeast Army arrived at the front-line airfield, and the most striking thing in its equipment was 28 new "swiftlet" fighters, which were based on the experience of the Spanish Civil War, doubling the firepower, with a total of 4 machine guns installed on the hood and wings, and the speed acceleration was good, and the vertical and horizontal maneuvers were very good. In addition, the 22nd Fighter Regiment also has 36 old-fashioned "Qingfeng 123B", which served as ground missions for most of the subsequent operations, and their sturdy airframe, agile body and underwing rockets make them a nightmare for ground troops. A few days later, 59 "Quick Knife" medium bombers belonging to the 38th High-Speed Bomber Regiment also arrived at the front.

In the face of China's large-scale troop increase, the Chinese side has never stopped increasing its troops. On July 24, two squadrons of the 11th Flying Squadron flew to Birch City with 200 "Gale". Three days later, he said that he was already able to photograph a huge group of planes over the Sangye River. While the air forces of the two sides were sharpening their knives, the herringbone flags on the ground had already crossed the Sangye River, and a solid bridgehead position had been established on the east bank, waiting for the beasts under the banner of Xu Yue to come over and hit their heads and break the bloodstream, and the Yuben Army, which deeply felt that the face of the "imperial army" had been slapped by the Chinese, was gathering forces to prepare to teach the Chinese a great lesson.

Although the ground battle was fought vigorously, the sky was obscured by the wings of the plane. On this day of 28 July, three "Qingfeng" planes collided with a group of Yueben fighters over the Sangye River. Later that day, another 10 "Qingfeng" planes were attacked by military planes, and 18 "Gale Winds" hid in the air and roared down after spotting their targets. Although the Chinese fighters fought back, the altitude and speed advantages were not on their side, and in the end 6 were shot down, and another "Qingfeng" was forced to land, thinking that it had escaped, but I did not expect that I would not be relenting, and dived down and strafed in turns, and finally beat this "Qingfeng" into a pile of flames. Two of the "Qingfeng" that survived were seriously damaged and could only make a forced landing at the nearest front-line airfield, and were scrapped after landing. And after the battle, only one of the Northeast Army was left and retreated, but he himself was unscathed.

Seeing the gradual increase in losses in the air, the senior generals of the Northeast Army were also anxious. Guo Songling, commander of the 37th Armored Corps of the Northeast Army at that time, personally wrote to Yanjing to report that the aviation unit had the advantage and was unscrupulous in the skies over the Sangye River. As a result, on August 2, he was dismissed on the grounds of "losing the will to fight", and his successor, Zhong Liwei, began to reorganize the demoralized troops into the First Army as soon as he took office.

In fact, Yanjing had long heard about the poor performance of the Northeast Army Air Force in the Sangye River, and had already planned how to reverse the decline. The new commander arrived with a large number of veteran pilots of the Army Air Corps who had fought in the Spanish Civil War. In view of the bloated structure and chaotic command structure of the Chinese air force units stationed in Central Siberia and the three eastern provinces, Yanjing transferred Bao Yunsheng, the "flying general" on the Spanish battlefield, to Central Siberia and placed the entire air force under his full command.

At the same time that elite soldiers and strong generals gathered at the Sangye River, a large number of new fighters also gathered from all over China. On August 21, 1942, the balance of air power over the Sangye River was undoubtedly tilted in favor of China: more than 900 fighters painted with the military emblem of the word "human" and their high-morale pilots arrived one after another, always ready to beat the lack of stamina on the other side of the river, and the latter had only more than 400 fighters in his hands, less than half of the Northeast Army.

At this point in the battle, both sides understood that whoever had air superiority was more likely to achieve a final and comprehensive victory.

When it was said that both sides could no longer squeeze out even one reinforcement, it was clear to everyone that the desperate fight that began on August 22 would determine who would eventually shine over the Sangye River between the herringbone flag and the Xu Yue flag. On this day, the Chinese sent a huge group of 256 "larks" and 149 "woolly rhinos", and the Yuben side claimed that more than 400 Yuben fighters participated in the air battle that day, but the final word that everyone imagined did not appear, and as a result, in the next few days, a large-scale melee of hundreds of fighters became a common occurrence in the skies over the Sangye River.

In view of the gap in manpower and material resources, the last thing that the Japanese side wants to see is being dragged into a war of attrition by the stubborn Chinese, and seeing that simply sending a large group of aircraft is useless, the commanders of the army aviation unit have thought of a trick to draw wages from the bottom of the kettle, that is, to dispatch smashing planes to destroy the Chinese's airfields. On 27 August, 237 bombers, under the cover of 180 fighters, pounced on three Chinese airfields. The Chinese did not expect that Yu himself would dare to penetrate into the airspace of the hinterland of Central Siberia on a large scale, and the airport was not fully prepared, but even so, Yu himself's sneak attack was only successful in one of them. Before the sneak attack, the army sent a large number of special teams, and one of them successfully cut off the telephone line between the radar station, the air defense lookout, and the airport headquarters at the airport, and as a result, the airport was lined up with Chinese fighters who had no idea of the surprise attack of the Japanese army, and they did not try to take off to resist until the bomb hit their heads, but it was too late, and many planes were blown into scrap metal, and the successful planes of the Northeast Army flew away before the planes of the Northeast Army arrived at other airports to reinforce them.

Not every group of planes that attacked by the surprise attack had such good luck; at the other two airfields, it was difficult to make a long-distance attack over the Chinese airfield, and the sleepy planes were "welcomed" by the fierce ground fire and the Chinese fighters who were waiting in the air, and they were beaten to the ground and fled, and the bombs were all dropped into the Siberian steppes to dig pits. Although the actual victory is better than nothing, the propaganda organs in the country have gone all out to create public opinion, advocating that this is a "great victory blessed by God."

At this time, the propaganda organs had already reached a very high level in terms of counterfeiting, and all the newspapers of the newspaper published in black and white the "unprecedented results" of "destroying 244 Chinese fighters on the ground and shooting down 102 in the air." This number is far greater than the combined number of warplanes parked at the three Chinese airfields attacked. The actual losses of the Northeast Army were much smaller, and some of the fighters were eventually repaired.

If it is said that it is a common practice for the armies of various countries and periods to falsely report the results of the war, but I am afraid that this kind of cowhide will be blown too big, and even my own people will be fooled. It's a pity that this army belongs to the stupid people who can be sold by their own people and are still happy. Hearing that the Chinese army air force had won an unprecedented victory, the generals on the ground calculated that the Chinese air force had been eaten up by nearly half of its strength and that it had lost nearly 300 fighters, and that it would inevitably be a matter of breaking bones and bones, and that it was estimated that they would have to retreat back to the hinterland of Siberia to heal their wounds for a few days. At the thought of dropping death on the top of no Chinese bombers, the army immediately came back to strength.

In the early morning of September 3, the 26th and 28th Wings of the Siberian Garrison Army, under the leadership of Lieutenant General Komatsubara, smuggled across the Sangye River and touched Bayindagang. Seeing that he seemed to have come out of the ground, the 6th Cavalry Division of the Northeast Army was caught off guard, and was chased to the northwest of Bayindagang before dawn. Fortunately, an officer patrolled Bayinda at night on September 2, discovered his own night attack, and immediately ran back to the headquarters of the First Army to report this urgent military situation to Zhong Liwei. Zhong Liwei immediately smashed all the tanks, armored vehicles, and motorized cavalry of the Northeast Army and the Northeast Army at Baindagang, and as soon as the sky was bright, Zhong Liwei himself also came to the nearest position to Bayindagang, and also brought the 185th Artillery Regiment and other heavy artillery units. And the Chinese Air Force, which had been crippled in the imagination of the Japanese army, also flocked to it. At 7:30 a.m., as many as 73 "Kuaidao" bombers unfurled a cloud of death over Bayindagang, and several "Gale" fighters of the Yue Army, which had been frightened by the Northeast Army's overwhelming numerical superiority, scrupulously fulfilled their responsibilities as samurai and launched a suicidal counterattack against the Northeast Army's aircraft group, but they were instantly shot down by the "woolly rhinoceros" fighters roaring down from a high altitude. Taking advantage of the fact that the Chinese army was preoccupied with dealing with the bombers, more Chinese fighters rained down bullets on the positions that the Chinese army hastily constructed on the ground. After several hours of heavy artillery and rain of fire from the air, the 11th Tank Brigade of the Northeast Army attacked, and the shattered defense line was crushed by the Chinese iron cavalry. However, he himself carried another day with his beastly ferocity, although he was slapped a little bit towards the east slope of Bayindagang facing the Mulberry River in front of the rolling iron flow of the Northeast Army's air and ground, the soldiers who participated in the battle believed that they could finally get reinforcements or escape from Ascension through the pontoon bridge on the Mulberry River. At 3 o'clock in the morning on September 5, when the front line army could no longer support it and was ready to retreat using the pontoon bridge, the pontoon bridge was blown to pieces in front of them. However, this was not a blow from the heavy artillery or fighter planes of the Northeast Army, but the general Komatsubara, who led his headquarters to smuggle back on the night of July 3, was worried that the Northeast Army would rush across the Sangye River along the pontoon bridge, so he ordered the sappers to blow up the bridge in spite of his subordinates who were fighting desperately on the other side. There were pursuers in front and a big river behind, and the army that crossed the river was finally tragically annihilated on the river beach. It is worth mentioning that the Northeast Army also dispatched a "Hongyan" gunboat plane to use the river beach as a testing ground to use the defeated army, which is said to be ineffective every day, as a target to conduct actual combat tests. This gunboat is a test machine with machine guns and howitzers on the basis of the "Hongyan" strategic bomber. There are only 4 in total. The test of the "Hongyan" gunboat in the Sangye River battlefield left a very good impression on the top level of the Northeast Army and the aircraft designers.

By the time the sun rose lazily on September 5, the battle for Bayindagang had ended. The two wings of the Japanese army on the ground were all wiped out, hundreds of artillery pieces were completely destroyed, and the planes in the sky were no better, according to the records of the Chinese side, a total of 75 planes were shot down.

After the bloody battle of Bayindagang, there was an eerie silence on both sides of the Mulberry River. The three-day bloody battle exposed all kinds of weaknesses and problems of the armies of both sides. The Northeast Army found that the cavalry units (many of them militiamen) from the Mongols, although armed with modern weapons, were far from the level of the regular army in terms of organization and training. Even the Northeast Army itself lacked sufficient preparation for the cunning, insidious, and ferocious stubbornness of the army. And the Siberian garrison was also smashed by the bullets and fire rain of the Northeast Army - in addition to the fanatical spirit of "bushido", the equipment and firepower of the "Imperial Army" were too far behind those of the squadron. Especially in terms of armored operations, the difference is not half a star. Therefore, both sides of the Chinese side have begun to seize the time to rebuild and reorganize their troops, and although it is a race against time, many of the problems that have been exposed are actually freezing three feet and not a cold day. Therefore, during this period of time, except for the sound of China and the two countries sharpening their knives, the Sangye River was still calm.

(To be continued)