The devils on the battleship Nagato all fell into a state of stupidity when they heard Admiral Zhu Tiansen's cloud-making strategy, they had only heard of the Great Chinese monks asking for rain and good luck, but they had not heard that the 'divine monks' could still make clouds. Zhu Tiansen couldn't explain this - Greater China has always had a tradition of superstition, and except for a very few people, the rest of the people have never known the truth of certain things. Therefore, when the Taoist priest in the gossip robe took the stage on the bridge of the Nagato, brandished the peachwood sword, and shouted that Taishang Laojun was as anxious as the law, the clouds in the air really 'changed' out of nowhere.

"Ahh The gods have appeared......" A group of Japanese sailors looked at the clouds that gradually increased and widened overhead, and after being surprised, they respectfully bowed to the east, believing that this was the emperor's apparition.

Unlike the Japanese, who had seen the clouds for the first time, the Chinese navy, which had already seen the Taoist monks making clouds, was very calm, and they bowed in unison in the direction of China. Although many officers knew that the clouds were related to the plane that had just taken off, and related to the things sprayed on the plane, who didn't dare to say that this was not the manifestation of Taishang Laojun, maybe the thing sprayed was Daomen holy water or relics? Besides, if the soldier is in awe, then obey, and at the same time fight without fear of death or wounding—anyway, after eighteen years, he will be a good man, and he will be able to enter the Western Heaven Elysium after death......

"Pavilion... Down, then... So...... What to do next? Fifteen minutes later, looking at the dense clouds two or three hundred meters overhead, General Nobusho was a little incoherent. This is not only because of the clouds, but also because of the warning again, and another huge group of aircraft also flew out of the mainland and entered the sea to search for their own fleet.

Zhu Tiansen was still praying to the east with his palms folded. This time there was some luck – there were two restrictions on artificial cloud formation, one of which was that the humidity of the air must exceed 60 percent. Otherwise, even if the clouds are sprayed with aerosols, it will not be durable; The second is that the wind speed should not be too high, and the wind direction should be appropriate. Otherwise, the clouds will wander away, and they will not be able to cover the entire fleet. At this time, Mogadishu is in the rainy season. The humidity was more than 70 percent, and the wind speed and direction were just right, so he ordered the clouds to be built as cover. After reading a scripture without distraction, Zhu Tiansen replied, "Next, I will notify the fighter." ”

"But they ...... If you stay in the air for too long, it is likely that you will run out of fuel. The speaker was Chief of Staff Nobutake Kondo, who admired the Chinese for being able to create clouds out of thin air, and that they could control the height of the clouds. It is important to know that the minimum altitude of the reconnaissance plane is about 500 meters, and the limit will not be lower than 300 meters. Now it is difficult for Italy to find the fleet, so it does not know how to recover the aircraft.

"It just depends on the situation." Zhu Tiansen also had a headache about recovering carrier-based aircraft that went deep inland. "If they happen to be close by the Italian fleet when they return home, then we can only order them to find a safe place on the mainland to make a forced landing."

"What?!" The Japanese exclaimed. They thought that Zhu Tiansen was resourceful, but they didn't want to find a way......

"That's all there is to it." Zhu Tiansen emphasized. "We can't recover the planes while resisting the attack of the Italian aircraft with anti-aircraft guns, which is a disaster for both the pilots and the carriers. The fighters first find a place to make a forced landing, and after the aircraft carrier has evaded the attacking aircraft group, they will return to the aircraft carrier. ”

He looked at the Japanese who were clenched with clenched teeth and an unwilling face, and finally said: "In this war, the changes between Britain and France made us have to change our plans. And there was a fatal mistake in intelligence, and Italy definitely had more than five hundred aircraft. Now that our fighters can outmaneuver the Italians, they will be able to find a suitable place for a forced landing after repelling the Italian planes. Also, given the mistakes in intelligence. Mogadishu is no longer suitable for landing, and we have to move to Kismayo. ”

"Yaga! The battle plan must not be changed, this is a sign of cowardice! "The last letter of the commander has not yet spoken. Nagano Shushen beside him shouted.

"Fart!" Zhu Tiansen understands the Japanese style, and if he can't resolutely refute it in the face of provocateurs. It will be seen as cowardice, and sometimes even strip naked and get into a fight. Only then can the differences be finally resolved. "Water is controlled by the ground, soldiers are won by the ground, soldiers are impermanent, water is impermanent, since the enemy has changed, why can't I change?! Now that the number of Italian planes is far greater than estimated, why did our troops have to land in Mogadishu? ”

After he finished speaking, he looked at the Japanese and said: "A detour does not mean that you are not brave, and retreat does not mean that you are not aggressive, and war needs not only science, but also art, if the landing in Mogadishu fails, who will bear this responsibility?" Who can afford that? Is it enough to just have a caesarean section?! The Prime Minister has said that the commander who delegates the guilt is the real coward! ”

Regardless of whether it is the army or the navy, the Japanese practice is that everything goes according to plan, even if the enemy situation changes, the implementation will not make any changes, and if they lose, they will cut their own stomachs, and Zhu Tiansen loves and hates this point. If it was a trivial matter, he naturally would not ask for a change in the battle plan, but at this time, which affected the entire fleet and the subsequent more than 50,000 landing soldiers, he had to forcefully ask for a change in the battle plan.

"Your Excellency, how can the fighter plane that landed in force ensure its safety?" Fortunately, the last Nobumasa and Kondo Nobutake are not pedantic people, they just can't go against the deep tradition of the Japanese army, and now there is Zhu Tiansen in everything, and they are naturally going downhill.

"Take off all torpedo bombers at once, take off without torpedoes. After the fighters repelled the forced landing of the Italian troops, they provided air cover, and then returned after the search group ran out of fuel. Zhu Tiansen said. The dive bombers also took off at the same time to escort us, and in case we were spotted by the Italians, they would fight immediately. ”

"But ammunition is mounted on both the ship's attack and the ship's explosion." Kondo Nobutake knew the aircraft carrier combat procedures, and he thought that it would take a lot of time to remove the ammunition, and the Italian planes were getting closer and closer, and maybe the ships would run into the Italian planes when they flew together.

"Then take off directly without removing the ammunition insurance, but abandon the ammunition immediately after takeoff!" Zhu Tiansen said without thinking.

"But... But ......" Kondo Nobutake didn't say a word about "may", what he wanted to say was that if the ship's aerial bombs were thrown away for several thousand yen, the Type 91 aviation torpedoes were worth 20,000 yen each, and if these dozens were thrown out, nearly one million yen would be gone.

"That's all there is to it." The commander on one side, Nobumasa Sueji, nodded lastly. He glanced at Nobutake Kondo, and goodbye Okamura Ninji from the Army Staff Headquarters was not there. Immediately confessed: "At this time, we must not let the army know!" ”

As the strategy was revised, the Nagato, which had gone into radio silence, used lights and flags to inform the carriers that all aircraft would take off immediately. The torpedo bombers, led directly by the Grey Goose radar planes, went to Mogadishu, where they were to send a report to the returning fighters after a certain distance from the fleet; Dive bombers, as well as fighters, took off to escort the fleet in case the fleet was discovered by the Italians. For a moment, the empty deck immediately became busy, and the planes were released one after another, and all the ammunition they carried was thrown into the sea.

Under the low clouds, the Italians did not know what the Chinese and Japanese fleets were doing. At this time, Mussolini's son-in-law, Lieutenant Galeazzo Ziano, who piloted the Sparrowhawk SM.79 three-engine torpedo bomber, was patiently waiting for a bloody battle with his squadron and everyone in the huge attack aircraft group.

Before. He was also the Consul of the Kingdom of Italy in Greater China, but with the outbreak of war, he volunteered to become a lieutenant captain in the bomber squadron of the Italian Air Force. Although his experience in China made him like the vibrant country, he, like other Italians, wondered why China would interfere in Italy's operations in East Africa. If they want to get a piece of land on the African continent, the prime minister is willing to give them an East African port to form an alliance, but the Chinese say they want to uphold justice!

Well, the Chinese and the Japanese who preside over justice! They may have thought that Italy's navy was too weak, but in fact it was the result of the efforts of Marshal Itano Balbo, the former commander of the Air Force. The Italian Air Force is one of the most powerful in all of Europe; This time, the elaborate attack plan was also personally supervised and formulated by Marshal Balbo, and it was for this purpose that the Sparrowhawk torpedo bomber, which had a range of more than 1,400 nautical miles, was urgently mass-produced......

Lieutenant Ziano fantasized that the Chinese and Japanese fleets would be wiped out by two waves of more than 300 torpedo bombers and ground attack planes, but he did not know that the Chinese and Japanese fleets equipped with radars were hiding from these two waves of attack planes under low clouds. On several occasions, Italian reconnaissance planes passed by the edge of the fleet, but the vast sea of clouds allowed them to find nothing.

Perhaps, the Chinese have fled. But what about their carrier-based fighters? At the headquarters of the southern front of the city of Baidoa, two hundred and sixty kilometres north-west of Mogadishu, from Field Marshal Balbo to Admiral Gracinia. Everyone looked at each other, can the Chinese do magic. Did it just disappear into thin air?

"Where will they hide?" Marshal Balbo was eager to search for it himself, but Mussolini forbade him to do so.

"Maybe they picked up the fighters before the attack group arrived." Brigadier General Guido Massielo guessed. The fighter unit responsible for fighting with the aircraft carrier and the carrier-based aircraft is his unit, and he thought that he could eliminate the Chinese and Japanese carrier-based aircraft units by virtue of his numerical superiority, but who would have expected that he would be beaten by the other side, fortunately, this was a planned thing, otherwise he would have to go to court-martial.

"It's impossible, it's too late." Three years earlier, Marshal Balbo had personally led twenty-four seaplanes on a transatlantic flight from Italy to Chicago, and President Roosevelt had invited him to lunch. As a veteran pilot, he instinctively felt that things were not so simple. "It is likely that they detected our intentions and let the fighters land somewhere on the mainland, and then the fleet sailed into the depths of the sea......"

"Is this possible? Marshal. "Admiral Gracinia is, after all, an army general, and the battle between the planes is not something he can imagine.

"Of course it is. I've heard that a lot of countries are working on a radio detector that they think will be able to detect aircraft hundreds of kilometers away. If Chinese had such a detector, then they would have known in advance the location of the attack aircraft group...... "Speculation became more and more real in Marshal Balbo's words, and everyone was watching him.

"Yes, it's entirely possible!" Marshal Balbo was convinced that his judgment was correct. "The group of attack aircraft should search into the depths of the sea, they can't run far. And ......," he looked at Brigadier General Massiello, pinched his beard and smiled, "you should immediately send a plane to the beach to search, Chinese should be forced to land nearby." Their planes are out of fuel, and we can not only destroy them, but even capture them! ”

Like Marshal Balbo, 91 carrier-based fighters are now making a forced landing in an open field 60 kilometers northeast of Mogadishu. Most of the fighters had less than 200 kilometers of fuel left on their return journey, and their ammunition was basically gone. Although the converging torpedo bombers cleverly carried two barrels of canned gasoline, for more than ninety fighters with empty fuel tanks. This is just a drop in the bucket and doesn't make much difference.

"Are you done with it?" Major Deng Yueming asked. He was the head of all the pilots. Coordinate everything in the fleet. After the oil tanks brought were refilled, the torpedo bombers themselves also pumped out a lot of fuel. The aim is to make all aircraft miles nearly identical.

"The report is all added." Xu Huansheng of the Yongning, Shohei Yamada of the Akagi, Shoichi Ogawa of the Amagi, and Tomanagajo of the Ryuchamp all saluted him and the commander of the torpedo bomber fleet, Major Wang Lixu.

"How far can you fly?" It was almost noon, and Deng Yueming, who had already taken off his electric heating suit, still felt that the weather was too hot. Most of the planes landed safely, but his heart was not at home on the aircraft carrier.

"About three hundred kilometers." Xu Huansheng replied. Sixty torpedo bombers stuffed two barrels of gasoline into the position of the backseat machine gunner, and each plane had only a little more than one barrel, and more than 40 liters of gasoline flew more than 100 kilometers.

"It's still too little!" Major Wang Lixu patted his head in annoyance, feeling that his matter had not been done well.

"It's better than nothing, and it's a hundred kilometers more!" Deng Yueming said with a smile. "Who would have thought that the Italians would come out like this, or are we people too underestimated."

In the meeting after landing. Major Wang Lixu reported on the enemy situation and conveyed the orders of the command. Fuel is important, but even more important than fuel is time – about eight planes have had accidents during a forced landing, and according to the regulations, the wreckage of these planes can be buried on the spot, but it is better to transport one plane away, so the best time is at night.

"The command is ready to call for help from home." Wang Lixu said about the news in the fleet, "And we will abandon the plan to land in Mogadishu and turn to Skimayo tomorrow." ”

"Where to go?" What Wang Lixu said just now was only to avoid the attack aircraft group of the Italians, but he did not expect that the entire fleet would go southwest to Skimayo. "Didn't the docks there say that there was no way to support a large army to fight?"

"But at least it can support the air force operations." Wang Lixuan said. "The Italians have not only mobilized all the planes in the country that can fight. The number is much higher than our previous estimates. Carrier-based aircraft alone will not be able to consume them, only the air force will be stationed in Skimayo, they will destroy the aircraft, and we will blockade the coast. It takes both to get the Italians out of Mogadishu. ”

Although Wang Lixu is not a staff officer, he feels that this is the best strategy he can adopt for the Italian Air Force, which is isolated overseas. Even if the Italians were able to replenish the air force's fuel and ammunition by air, the difference in aircraft performance between the two countries would make it impossible for Italy to afford it. By the time they had developed a better fighter, the war would be over.

Wang Lixu, Deng Yueming and others speculated about the follow-up operations of the fleet. The pilots hid in the shadow under the plane and closed their eyes to recuperate, and they were able to rest so reassuringly thanks to the air alert, two gray goose radar planes and a squadron of refueled Type 96 fighters -- the Japanese planes were light in weight and had little fuel consumption, and they were indeed the best choice for patrol vigilance.

After more than four hours of hard work under the sun, when the sun set, the gray geese cruising in the air sent out the code to take off and return, and for a while, the planes took off one after another, making the whole wasteland dusty. When Deng Yueming and the others landed on the ship, the last pass in the sky had been swallowed up by darkness, and there was silence between heaven and earth.

"Report!" Deng Yueming, who came to the captain's room, shouted a report, and the captain and combat officer Zhang Zixuan were waiting for him.

"Sit down." Tan Gen greeted him gently and handed him a cigarette. "Let's talk about it." He said.

"Yes." Deng Yueming did not light a cigarette. He sat down upright and said: "Many pilots of the Italian Air Force are veteran pilots, but their fighters are weak, and their strength and speed are not enough, so it is difficult to engage our Haidongqing fighters......"

Deng Yueming said his feelings, and he didn't know what to say for a while, Tan Gen saw him like this, so he had to ask: "Do you estimate that there are stronger fighters in Italy?" ”

"A stronger fighter?" Deng Yueming didn't know why. "Report sir, if there is a stronger fighter, then it will definitely appear in today's battle, and its failure to appear means that there is no better fighter in the Italian Air Force for the time being."

"For the time being?" Tangen noticed his qualifier.

"Yes. Italy is located in Europe, and Europe has a well-developed industry, and if Italy does not have stronger fighter jets, other countries may have. Deng Yueming said, the words only made Tan Gen affectionate and serious.

"Hmm." Tan Gen nodded slightly, and said after a while: "You go down and rest." ”

"Report to the chief...... Deng Yueming thought of the downed comrades-in-arms and the wreckage of the plane that landed in the open field, and immediately said: "A few planes fell during the forced landing, if you ...... tonight."

"Someone has been sent to deal with it." Lieutenant Colonel Zhang Zixuan said, "You sent people before you came back, and they should be back in two hours." ”

"Then those downed brothers ......," Deng Yueming asked the second thing.

"Those on the sea have been rescued by submarines, and those on land have no choice." Zhang Zixuan said, "We lost five brothers in this battle, and the Japanese side lost thirteen people. ”

The pilots lost eighteen people, but the loss of planes was higher, reaching twenty-nine, and eleven people were rescued from the submarine after falling into the water. With such losses and at least seventy downed Italian fighters, the battle was one-sided.

"What should I do?" After Deng Yueming left, Lieutenant Colonel Zhang Zixuan looked at Tan Gen.

"What to do?" Tan Gen didn't care, "Let's let the boss bother with this matter." I don't think that inviting the Air Force to fight is a loss of face, and the air battle on land should be left to the Air Force, and it will be easier for them to fight. (To be continued.) )