It was a Ozawa-style attack, consisting of dive bombers and a chaotic wave of airframes, with fighter jets providing cover. Before Onishi appeared with his magical weapon, Ozawa had been racking his brains to find a new tactic that would work with the weapons he already had. His main idea was to give full play to the advantage of Japan's carrier-based aircraft with a longer range and strike at the opponent first. In his thinking, submarine reconnaissance and night course adjustments would enable the Japanese task force to maintain an effective distance from the American fleet, launch an attack at dawn, disrupt the enemy's deck scheduling, and then attack one after another, without giving the opponent a chance to fight back, so that the enemy gradually lost strength in the exhaustion of the battle.

Of course, in his vision, the decisive time for a naval battle is not now, but half a year later, and it is necessary to wait for the arrival of new aircraft carriers, as well as the novices of the mobile forces, gradually tempered through training and low-intensity combat, otherwise his complex plan will be difficult to implement. For now, some of his pilots, often finding the wrong direction of return at sea, throwing * are not calm enough, and are obviously not ready.

As Ozawa had expected, the air offensive was quickly disrupted by enemy interceptors. In Ozawa's offensive model, the *, as the core of the attack, has two functions, one is to break through and attack, and the other is to attract enemy fighters to low altitudes. In the naval battles that led to the sinking of 4 aircraft carriers a few months ago, it has been proven that the ineffectiveness of * aircraft in attacking the mobile fleet is about a third of that of dive bombers. Therefore, the * machine is bound to be reduced to a secondary diversion force, and its role is to survive and divert the enemy's attention.

But the novices were unable to live up to Ozawa's expectations, and they scrambled to deal with the Wildcat fighter that had swooped down from a high altitude, and in order to get rid of the fighter, the pilots made an embarrassing serpentine evasion, and after this trick did not work, some pilots desperately tried to avoid the attack by flying close to the sea.

Flying low at a low altitude does not help the pilot avoid killing, the lightweight fighter can still control the throttle in a dive, get a few seconds of shooting window, and the bullet on the water surface of the water column can help the pilot to visually measure the distance and estimate the amount of advance.

* The planes were quickly shot down, and some of them, in evasion, crashed into the sea on their own. The Zero fighter aimlessly pursued the Wildcat at sea and, unconsciously, lost its altitude.

* aircraft did not win the gap for the dive bombers to enter from high altitudes, Halsey's task force had a tight air defense idea, at least 2 squadrons of fighters stayed at an altitude of 3000 meters at any time, and did not swarm down to attack * aircraft (this was not uncommon in early battles). This, of course, was aided by the early warning provided by the radar, and the commander could see through Ozawa's rough combination boxing routine.

The 99 shipburst has a good maneuverability and can even do some hovering, but only if it is thrown *. The pilots were hesitating, and the enemy group was already in front of them. At this time, the escorting Zero fighters had lost their altitude and could not be rescued for a while.

In the melee, the bombers were shot down one by one, only about half of them remained, and by diving, they temporarily got rid of the Wildcats, but even with 250 kg*, their dive speed was still not enough to completely get rid of the Wildcats.

Ignoring the danger of having entered their own anti-aircraft fire (especially the dangerous close-in shells), the Wildcat began to pursue these bombers, at this time the 5-inch guns on the American ships began to fire, making the attempt of the enemy bombers to approach unrealistic, and in order to get rid of the Wildcat, they lost too much altitude, so that the bombers who finally rushed close to the American fleet decided to drop the bombs at a smaller angle, and the hit rate was naturally greatly reduced.

The attack was costly, and caused little confusion in the dispatch of the American deck, and just as the Japanese bombers launched their last desperate suicide attack, two Independence-class American bombers were taking off, and they were going to catch up with the first fighters to attack the Japanese fleet. Ozawa struck first, and the rhythm of his dominance was disrupted, and now he will face his opponent's move.

By listening to the radio, Ozawa estimated that the attack had failed, and that the losses were large. It is estimated that most of the 19* aircraft of the attack were lost, and the 15 dive bombers were probably all hit. The result of the attack was to hit several small ships of the outer fleet, not a single aircraft carrier was destroyed, only the fighters seemed to be intact.

The pilots on the Zero observed that enemy fighters were taking off to make room for the bombers that were about to take off.

Ozawa tried to prioritize fighter jets in order to intercept enemy attack groups on the way, but Onishi stepped in and commanded that he had to empty most of the decks and take off the new weapons first, and Ozawa was forced to compromise. Now he can only talk about cherry blossoms* as a lifesaver.

Sixteen* planes took off from Kaga and the Shoho, and this attack did not require escorts, but were completely covert. After Onishi's last conversation with Makino, he was inspired to adjust his tactics. On the contrary, the escort formation that stays at high altitude will become a target that can be easily seen by the enemy's radar, so that the escort can only be counterproductive in the end.

His 16 fighters did not need escort, but they had to know the approximate course of the enemy's counterattack, so as to avoid the enemy group. Of course, there is no doubt that the enemy will come in the closest straight line between the exposed fleets of both sides, so his sneak attack fleet will inevitably go around in a semicircle.

The fact that the enemy's fleet is known to be very large, and that the main assets (aircraft carriers and battleships) are located in the core area, this caused some problems for Onishi's attack, and even though * had a very long range, it could be difficult to attack the core of the enemy's fleet.

The pilots of the 16* attack planes, who are the few remaining veterans of the First Air Battle, will secretly search for the enemy fleet without fighter escort, relying entirely on sophisticated navigation to find and attack. The 10 self-guided* and 6 self-guided* they carried all the expectations of the Onishi.

The Japanese fleet was still on its way when it was attacked by the first American forces.

The ultra-high speed of the new Avenger* aircraft of the US military made Ozawa deviate in his calculation of the arrival time of the enemy plane. The enemy fighters, together with the bombers, almost followed the group of planes returning to their own home, which was Halsey's brute tactic. He was not in a hurry to fire the first shot, but pursued the enemy's returning aircraft to launch an attack, and the enemy aircraft carrier faced a dilemma of whether to take off or land. As a veteran commander, the root of his and Ozawa's speculative tactics was to create chaos on the enemy deck.

The Zero fighter was still able to find an advantage in the backward Wildcat, which made Ozawa's fleet hold on to it in this round of attack and defense. But losses are bound to occur.

Halsey's second wave of fighters is taking off, his seven fleet aircraft carriers carry 450 aircraft, while Ozawa's eight miscellaneous aircraft carriers can take off only 290 fighters.

The US radar has always been vigilant against the surrounding air situation, but the sneak attack fleet commanded by Di Yuan Shaozuo relied on low-altitude flight to avoid radar surveillance. In this era, abandoning the escort fleet and relying on low-altitude flights to avoid enemy radars is still a fairly advanced tactic, and of course Onishi's new tactics are entirely thanks to Makino's information beyond the times.

At the same time that the special aircraft carrier of the Ozawa fleet, the Okika, was hit by the U.S. military*. Di Yuan's sneak attack team finally saw the smoke of the enemy's task force, and it was expected that the enemy fleet was about to come out. The pilot turned on the radar power, of course, over-the-horizon search is still unrealistic, just to warm up the radar and make it into a better working condition.

The enemy is in high-speed pursuit, and it is expected that within an hour or two, Ozawa's fleet will be subdued by brute force and lose the ability to fight back. And today, it is bound to be a turning point in the Pacific War.

Within the line of sight, the pilot observed the hull of the ship at sea level, and with the help of a telescope, the pilot observed that one of the aircraft was taking off and landing. It was the centerpiece of the entire Halsey formation: an Essex-class aircraft carrier.

It has as many as six destroyers and cruisers on its flanks, but such a defense can only deal with sneak attacks by sneaking submarines and ordinary * aircraft, but it is still insufficient to deal with the attacks of new weapons.

The pilot began to climb to reach the standard launch altitude, and the radar locked on exceptionally quickly with visual aiming. It was only at about the same time that the American fleet discovered the Japanese aircraft group.

After quickly firing all the guided weapons, the Japanese group dispersed into two groups and fled. The U.S. fighters in the air did not attack, because it was not clear whether there were still Japanese fighters approaching, so they did not sacrifice their altitude to chase after the enemy who turned around and fled.

The gunners on the destroyer USS Conwy, watching several high-speed "planes" without pistons fly a kilometer behind themselves towards the Valiant.

Up to now, Sakura*'s wave of attacks is still limited to 6, too many* are launched at the same time, which may lead to mutual interference between radars, and Onishi also feels that 6 is enough to paralyze an aircraft carrier.

U.S. anti-aircraft fire immediately launched an interception, while using radio interference.

But in the face of the upgraded multi-band guidance system of the Japanese army, these early adaptive jamming did not play much role, but made the proximity fuse of the anti-aircraft gun unreliable.

6 * flew to the target through the barrage, and as in the attack 2 days ago, the US fleet delayed the launch of chaff, which is almost the only effective way to counter this kind of *, but it is difficult to grasp the best time to launch with manually operated chaff launches.

The clumsy early days*, which swooped down one after another, hit the Valian, their warheads could barely penetrate the heavy armor, but were just enough against the carriers.