The pale-faced Dongfang Bai stood in the middle of the battlefield, looking at the wreckage and corpses of the tanks all over the field, and somehow, a relieved expression appeared on his face.

Dongfang Bai walked to a destroyed Soviet "KV-2" tank, squatted down, stroked the barrel that had been twisted and deformed, and gradually fell into deep thought.

"The Soviet army has become a turtle in an urn, and our mission is accomplished." Hu Lian came to Dongfang Bai and sat down, although his face was full of haggardness, his eyebrows were full of irrepressible excitement.

Dongfang Bai shook his head and did not speak.

"I estimate that this time, you still have more merit than demerit, and it is estimated that there will not be any heavy punishment, at most you will get less medals and funds." Hu Lian saw Dongfang Bai's troubled appearance and comforted him.

Dongfang Bai still shook his head and didn't speak, at this time there was a roar in the sky, Dongfang Bai and Hu Lian looked up at the sky, in the blue sky, there was a huge group of planes flying forward in a dense and neat formation.

"Look! Below! Lots of tanks! ”

Hearing the voice of her good friend Song Huiyan from the microphone, Yang Jingyi, a female pilot of the "Red Maple" fighter squadron of the Chinese Air Force sitting in the cockpit of the "Golden Swiftlet" fighter, looked down and saw smoke and dust rising on the ground.

On the ground, the tanks of the brigade were lined up in a neat and uniform row, and they were advancing rapidly with the momentum of overwhelming mountains.

This is the tank unit of the Chinese Army, which is launching a general offensive on the positions of the Soviet troops.

After completing the encirclement of the Soviet forces around Sverdlovsk, the largest war of annihilation in human history has begun.

Yang Jingyi roughly estimated that there were at least hundreds of tanks below.

"Driving a tank seems to be quite interesting. Isn't it, Xiaojing? Song Huiyan said.

"I don't think so." Yang Jingyi smiled, "Several people are squeezed into a big iron box, what's the fun." ”

As the daughter of Yang Shuoming, the current president of the Chinese Federation, when she was young, she once accompanied her father to visit the tank assembly workshop, and entered the tank with her father. Since then, she's been shying away from this steel monster.

And for the light and agile aircraft, she has an indescribable liking.

I remember that when I applied for the Air Force Aviation Academy, my mother Fu Zhuoyao was resolutely opposed, but my father supported her choice, and I remember that my parents had a big quarrel because of this.

In her impression, her father was more able to understand her own thoughts. Although as a daughter, she is closer to her mother.

Thinking that he had now killed seven in and seven out of the sky over the Soviet Union, if his mother knew, he would have a heart attack.

"Xiaojing, don't lower the height." The captain's slightly stern voice came from the microphone, "Here are our tanks, make no mistake about it." ”

"Understood, sir." Yang Jingyi stuck out her tongue and adjusted the height.

Attacking the transport lines of the Soviet rear was already a familiar thing for the female fighter pilots, and the road from Sverdlovsk to Moscow was the target of their repeated attacks; These roads were once crowded with Russian supplies. Tanks and trucks were spaced close to each other, often in parallel columns of three. Chinese pilots know what happens if these huge supplies are poured on their own army, so they don't show any mercy when they attack these obvious targets. It didn't take much effort to attack these convoys, and the supplies were instantly reduced to wreckage under their attack. Therefore, the advance of the Chinese Army is unstoppable.

At this time, the tank units of the Chinese army were launching a new offensive at a distance of two kilometers from here.

In this operation, the "Red Maple" squadron received an order to transfer them to another area. Their new base is called Yeftany, about 90 kilometers from Lake Churk. From dawn to dusk, they supported the army in both south and east directions.

In Yeftanyburg, they are sometimes caught in violent storms. The vast area of Russia has a continental climate, and only after a storm there is cool weather. Often at noon, the sky suddenly became black, and the clouds almost fell to the ground; Then the rain poured down. Surface visibility plummeted to a few yards. When in the air, their response is to hide in the eye of the wind. From morning to night, it is inevitable that the close encounter with the storm has become the daily routine of the girls.

The "Red Maple" squadron provides offensive or defensive support to the army forces on the front line here. Occasionally, they are also sent on missions in the interior. Among the targets are a number of railway stations, which are important hubs on the railway line to Moscow. Through reconnaissance, they have mastered the enemy's air defense in the area. The Soviet anti-aircraft artillery firepower was very strong, but they never had an accident, unless the enemy put in a new formation of fighters. Because just before they took off, a Russian fighter squadron attacked their airfield, and the intrusion was called "Iron Joseph" (i.e., "Il-2" strike aircraft).

The girls rolled over and into the trench behind the plane. Several male officers also jumped in, and a second lieutenant accidentally smashed Yang Jingyi's lower back. This made her feel more uncomfortable and uncomfortable than the bombing of "Iron Joseph". The anti-aircraft guns at the airfield opened fire, and the Josephs dropped bombs and fled from low altitudes. They took off.

Now they are heading northeast, at an altitude of 2,700 meters. Cloudless. Yang Jingyi flew in the No. 1 position, and her good friend Song Huiyan followed her. During the flight, everyone leveled the wings with the long plane, and Yang Jingyi looked into the cockpit of her comrade-in-arms and saw that her face maintained a unique calm and confidence.

In a few moments, the deep blue Lake Churk shone brightly ahead. How many times have they flown along this route! Always turn south at the northern end of the lake. Many of the places here are strategic points, and the memories of past visits are passing through my mind. As they approached their target, they found a black storm wall obscuring the horizon. Is it in front of or behind the target? Yang Jingyi saw that Captain Yu Xiaofeng was consulting the map, and now they were already crossing the thick clouds, which were the front of the storm. She couldn't find a target, and Yang Jingyi felt that it must be below the storm. By the time it takes, they should be pretty close to it. Against this monotonous background, tumbling and drifting clouds add to the difficulty of maintaining a course with visual sight.

For a few seconds they fell into darkness, then saw the light again. In order to see the squadron leader's wings in the clouds, Yang Jingyi narrowed the distance with the team leader. In fact, she did so at the risk of a collision. Why didn't Yu Xiaofeng turn around? They certainly can't attack in the middle of a storm. The planes behind them had already taken up positions, and it seemed that they thought the same way. Perhaps the squadron leader tried to find the enemy's forward position on the map and turn to attack the targets there. She lowered some altitude, but there were clouds on various levels. Yu Xiaofeng raised his head from the map and suddenly flipped down at an angle of 180 degrees. She should have taken into account the bad weather, but she didn't expect Yang Jingyi's wing to be next to her. Yang Jingyi's response was quick; She flipped sharply, and flipped again even faster, avoiding the collision. She's now flipped over and flying almost headfirst upside down. Because she had a 700-kilogram bomb under her plane, the weight of which caused the plane to disappear headfirst into the sea of black clouds at a terrible speed.

It was pitch black all around her, and all she could hear was the howling of the wind. Rain poured into the cockpit, and lightning made the surroundings as bright as daylight from time to time. Violent gusts of wind swayed the plane, and the entire structure of the airframe was seized by violent tremors. There was no ground in sight, and there was no horizon for her to judge where the camera was. The pointer of the vertical speedometer has stopped swinging, and the spheroids and arrows that indicate the level and altitude of the aircraft, which should have been located exactly one on top of the other, are now all parked in one corner. The vertical speedometer points to zero. The airspeed meter shows acceleration every second. She had to do something as quickly as possible to get the gauges back to normal, and the altimeter showed that they were rushing down like crazy.

The airspeed counter showed that Yang Jingyi was almost diving vertically. She read the glow-in-the-dark number on the altimeter, and at such a speed, it would crash in a few seconds, and it would be over. She was sweating profusely for a while, and water droplets slipped down her body, was it rain or sweat? The altimeter shows that the altitude is constantly decreasing. She gradually restored the other instruments to normal operation, except for the longitudinal rod and the alarm was still being called. She was still rushing towards the ground, and the vertical speedometer still showed the maximum. She had been groping in the dark all this time. Spooky lightning pierced the darkness from time to time, making it more difficult to fly on instruments. She pulled the longitudinal bar with both hands, trying to get the plane back to level. Her temples throbbed, and she inhaled heavily. Something inside her violently urged her to give up the fight. Why do you want to do it? All her efforts didn't work. Now she was shocked to find that the altimeter had stopped at 200 meters, and it was still swinging limply like a deflated barometer. The altimeter stops in this position means that it will crash at any time. No, stick to it, be calm and give it your all. An uncomfortable impact. It's over, she thought...... I'm dead. He's dead?

She can also hear the noise of the engine. It's still as dark as ever. Now Yu Xiaofeng's calm voice came, and she said calmly: "Sir, it seems that we bumped into something." ”

Her calm composure made Yang Jingyi speechless. Now she can be sure of one thing: she's still in the air.

Figuring out the current situation made her focus again. Even with the throttle turned up to the maximum, she wasn't much faster, but the various gauges showed that she was climbing, and that was enough. The compass points due west; It's not unlucky. Hopefully it works. She thought, staring at the various gauges, intending to cast magic on them with her will. She pointed to them if she wanted to be saved.

She used all her strength to pull the longitudinal rod, otherwise the "ball" on the level would roll to a corner again. She carefully steered the plane as if it were a living creature that needed to be coaxed softly, and she couldn't help but think of the fairy tale of the old coachman and the horse that her father had told her.

The surroundings lit up, and she looked out to see that she had flown out of the near-Earth clouds and was now flying over it. She's seeing the sky again!

An hour later, over the Ruka area, they targeted the bridge that spanned both sides of the river, one of which had been blown down. Both the Worthen and Roval rivers flow south into Lake Churk. The Soviets had to rush as many people and supplies as possible across these two rivers. Therefore, they must keep attacking the bridge. The ruins of the bridge delayed the enemy, but not for long; They soon discovered that pontoon bridges had been erected between the abandoned bridges, and in this way the Soviets stubbornly repaired the damage they had caused.

As the center of gravity of the war shifted more and more westward, they flew into the area every day. It is geographically advantageous for defenders, but there are very few avenues available to attackers. For some time, their progress has been so slow that some think they are merely killing time.

At this time, the cloud density is very thick, and the cloud height is 730 meters. This means that they have to fly through the clouds, which are 1,800 meters thick. The whole wing took off, and today their strength is 30, according to the establishment they should have 80, but the number is not the deciding factor. Unfortunately, because the single-engine swiftlets did not have the ability to fly blindly, their team leader had to take on this responsibility, relying on a small number of instruments to help guide the course: level, steering indicator, and vertical speedometer. The rest of the planes flew next to each other, and each pilot could see the wings of their neighbors at a glance as a way to maintain formation. To fly in dense dark clouds, it is necessary to keep the wingtip distance between aircraft within 2 to 3 meters. If it is larger than that, it is possible to knock an adjacent aircraft down or even crash into the next aircraft. It's horrible, just think about it! Therefore, flying under such bad meteorological conditions, the safety of the whole squadron depends to a great extent on the instrument navigation of the leader aircraft. 1,800 meters below is still shrouded in thick clouds; Due to the departure of individual aircraft, the formation formation was slightly affected.

Now they are moving closer to the formation again. Still can't see the ground. Based on the flight time, they should be flying to their destination in no time. Now the clouds are a little thinner. A blue sky flashed below them, and then they saw the water. They should be getting closer, but where are they? There is no way to know, because the fissures in the clouds are minimal, and the cloud density is still very thick; Occasionally, here or there, the soup-like clouds have diluted a little, revealing isolated crevices. Suddenly, through such a gap, Yang Jingyi saw something and immediately called Captain Yu Xiaofeng.

"Red Maple No. 3 calls Yomaple No. 1...... Please answer. ”

"Red Maple No. 1 calls Red Maple No. 3, please speak."

"Are you there? I found a big ship underneath us...... I guess it's the enemy's transport. ”

As they were talking, Yu Xiaofeng had already lowered his altitude, and then disappeared into the gap in the clouds. Without saying a word, Yang Jingyi also swooped down. Second Lieutenant Song Huiyan followed me. Now they could see that it was an armed transport ship of the enemy. Yang Jingyi suppressed her excitement, concentrated her energy, and seized the fleeting opportunity: she only had a few seconds. Several of them had to hit the enemy ships, because it was impossible for the entire formation to pass through the gaps in the clouds, and both the enemy ships and the cracks in the clouds were moving. Before they swooped to the bottom of the clouds, at an altitude of 730 meters, they were difficult for enemy anti-aircraft guns to detect. When they were above the continuous low clouds, the enemy's anti-aircraft guns could only fire with the help of their listening devices, and it was difficult for them to exert their firepower. That's it: dive, drop bombs, return to the clouds! The bomb dropped by Yu Xiaofeng is falling...... Near-missed. Yang Jingyi pressed the bomb button and sent death to the enemy.

The bomb dropped by Yang Jingyi hit the rear deck of the enemy ship. Almost at the same time, she saw flames erupt. She couldn't have looked any longer, the enemy anti-aircraft guns were roaring wildly. On the other side, other planes continued to swoop down through the cracks in the clouds. By this time, the Soviet anti-aircraft guns had realized where the "despicable Chinese migratory birds" were coming from and concentrated their fire in this direction. They took advantage of the clouds in their favor and climbed inside.

However, Yang Jingyi didn't know that she couldn't get out of the way.

Deadly anti-aircraft fire accompanied them. She had never encountered such heavy fire in any other location or war zone. She estimated that there were about a hundred anti-aircraft guns concentrated in this target area. Soviet anti-aircraft guns ejected a cloud of fire. If the shell explodes at a distance of 3-4 meters, it will not be heard on the plane. They could not hear the explosion of a single shell; What they heard was a constant storm of noise, like the knocking of the last day.

The open waters of the river are littered with pontoons, barges, dinghies and rafts, all protected by anti-aircraft guns. The Russians deployed anti-aircraft weapons wherever they could, and their leading planes always flew at an altitude of 2,700 to 3,000 meters; It's too low, but at this point they're only thinking about hitting the target. When diving towards a boat, they lower the speed brake to reduce the speed of the dive, giving them more time to observe the target and correct the aiming angle. The more accurate you aim, the greater the gain, which is decisive. However, the reduced speed made it easy for them to be knocked down by enemy fire, especially when they dived over the enemy's position, and it was difficult for them to climb up quickly, which was the most dangerous for them. They generally don't pull up after diving, unlike the bombers that fly behind them. They used a different tactic, that is, to close to the water at full speed and break away at an ultra-low altitude. They then employ a wide range of dodging maneuvers over enemy-controlled territory. After leaving the airspace, they were able to catch their breath. Every breath of air they breathe into their lungs at this time is something they have won desperately. As good pilots, they don't talk about any difficulties, arguing only wastes energy, they just do what they are told, and they repeatedly rush into hell to fight.

(To be continued)