Empire Conquest
Chapter 350 - 346 - Each Fighting Their Own Battle

Chapter 350: Chapter 346 - Each Fighting Their Own Battle

"Squadron leader, twelve o’clock!"

Upon hearing the warning from the wingman pilot, Wei Chengwen quickly glanced at the rear-view mirrors on both sides.

To the left rear, an F4F was rapidly approaching.

Though still several hundred meters away, the fighter had already opened fire.

Crucially, it hadn’t aimed at all.

Clearly, a rookie!

Without much thought, Wei Chengwen quickly pulled back on the control stick and also pushed down the throttle.

By the time his "Xiaotian" completed the somersault maneuver, the F4F had already charged ahead.

Once "Xiaotian" had the Newland pilot in its grasp, the pilot immediately performed a rolling maneuver while diving towards the sea surface.

Still the performance of a rookie.

The diving capability of the "Wildcat" wasn’t bad, slightly better than the "Typhoon," but nowhere near the "Xiaotian," which could double as a dive bomber.

Moreover, "Xiaotian’s" rolling performance also surpassed that of the "Wildcat."

Once the distance shortened to within 300 meters, and the aiming circle enclosed the F4F, Wei Chengwen then pulled the trigger, executing a clean, short burst of fire.

The all-out effort of the "Wildcat" was still doomed.

Deadly was the fact, at the time it was swept by 13mm bullets, the "Wildcat" was less than 500 meters above the sea surface, and it was the tail fin that got hit.

Now, there was no chance to stabilize!

After pulling the fighter up, Wei Chengwen looked back.

The F4F had already crashed into the sea, creating a spray of water several meters high, with no parachutes nearby, the Newland pilot didn’t have the chance to eject.

With such a swift crash into the sea, the pilot wouldn’t survive without being disabled.

Most likely would die, if not from the crash, then from drowning in the cockpit.

"Squadron leader, this trip wasn’t in vain after all."

"Merely one victory, what does it count for?"

Wei Chengwen didn’t feel elated, not because he had been busy for most of the day just to shoot down one enemy plane, but because he had already circled the battlefield once.

He only found one carrier!

Moreover, details confirmed it was from the Sunset Ocean Fleet’s "Sara," and not the "Lek" that had long been part of the East Ocean Fleet.

Where was the second Newland carrier?

There wasn’t one!

While passing over the "Sara," Wei Chengwen also distinctly saw that there were no SBDs or TBDs on the carrier’s flight deck.

Had they already been sent out?

It didn’t seem likely, at least there were no sightings of Newland Navy’s attack aircraft group on the way here.

Before this, no one had encountered Newland Navy bombers or torpedo bombers; they had all been fighters.

Could it be that the "Sara" only carried fighters?

Though it seemed incredible, Wei Chengwen could only believe that this was probably the fact.

Of course, whether it was a fact didn’t matter much anymore, as the bombers and torpedo bombers had already arrived and launched their attack.

Put simply, it was a waste of precious offensive power.

Had they known earlier it was just one carrier and it only carried fighters, even if an attack was to be launched, only one squadron of bombers and one squadron of torpedo bombers would have been needed.

While several squadrons of bombers and torpedo bombers were launching their attack, Wei Chengwen contacted the lead torpedo bomber.

The long-range voice radio was too large and heavy, and only a torpedo bomber could carry it. Therefore, unless using conventional radios, it had to be the lead plane of the torpedo bombers that reported to the flagship.

It was now 9:30 AM.

In fact, there wasn’t much to report.

About 20 minutes prior, around 9:10 AM, the 21st Special Mixed Fleet’s air defense fighters had already defeated the first wave of enemy aircraft.

Guided by a fast battleship responsible for air defense, two squadrons of "Xiaotian" proactively engaged and effortlessly shot down the first to arrive: two squadrons of F4F fighters along with two squadrons of SBDs, and subsequently, they vigorously pressed on to send five TBDs, attempting a very low-altitude assault, into the sea.

However, six "Xiaotian" were shot down in the battle by F4Fs.

These six "Xiaotian" were ambushed by F4Fs while intercepting SBDs.

Additionally, these "Wildcats" had six aviation machine guns; they were the F4F-4 model, which had just been put into production ahead of schedule and given priority to the East Ocean Fleet.

Compared to the "Sara’s" F4F-3 models, the main change in the F4F-4 models was more ferocious firepower.

Obviously, the Newland Navy was learning from the Imperial Navy.

"Typhoon" initially had only four large-caliber aviation machine guns and performed unsatisfactorily in combat, so "Xiaotian" was directly upgraded to six.

Still, three TBDs reached the periphery of the fleet and even dropped torpedoes at the advancing light cruiser before being shot down, although all missed their targets.

Yet, the battle was not over.

When intercepting the TBD plane group, eight "Xiaotian" dived to low altitude, leaving only two in high-altitude alert.

At this time, the second wave of plane groups arrived.

In fact, it was still from Newland’s 16th Special Mixed Fleet, only this time launched from the "York" while the previous ones had come from the "Lek".

After takeoff, these Newland ship-borne aircraft had flown west for about half an hour due to a low-level navigation error by the lead plane’s navigator.

As a result, their arrival time was about 10 minutes later than normal.

It was within these 10 minutes that the "Lek’s" Attack Aircraft Group suffered a catastrophic defeat; 16 SBDs and 8 TBDs were all shot down, and even the 16 escorting F4Fs had 11 shot down with an additional 3 crashing post-battle due to severe damage.

Such heavy losses were not without value.

It was sheer desperation from the "Lek’s" Attack Aircraft Group that had cost six "Xiaotian" and forced another eight to low altitude.

Thus, the two "Xiaotian" high-altitude guards had to face 16 "Wildcats" from two squadrons.

In just one encounter, before the two "Xiaotian" could even react, they were overwhelmed and shot down by the swarming "Wildcats".

Following that, the F4Fs began diving down on the eight still climbing "Xiaotian".

Although the pilots of the Imperial Navy fighters were highly experienced and decided not to continue climbing, staying at low altitude upon noticing the proactive dive of the F4Fs, this left them unable to tackle the SBDs coming from a higher altitude or the TBDs striking from below.

Even as fierce as "Xiaotian" were, they couldn’t swiftly defeat a force twice their number.

Moreover, following behind the "Wildcat" group, "Dreadnought" and "Destroyer" only needed a few minutes to drop their deadly bombs and torpedoes.

In fact, no matter how good the performance of the fighters, it takes a few minutes to climb from sea level to an altitude of 5,000 meters.

Obviously, even if not pinned down by "Wildcats", the low-altitude "Xiaotian" could not intercept the high-altitude SBDs.

Taking advantage of the "Xiaotian" engaged by "Wildcats", the SBD group proceeded with their strike first.

Two squadrons of SBDs split up, one squadron directly targeted the "Mo River" in front, while the other continued to search forward after flying westward.

Thus, since they had flown westward, the attack group launched from "York" approached from a more southern direction.

In the 21st Special Mixed Fleet, "Longjiang" was northeast of "Mo River".

It wasn’t intentional for "Mo River" to take fire in the south. Before the attack, the 21st Special Mixed Fleet was heading northeast, in the direction of "Sara", to shorten the return flight distance of the attack group, with "Longiang" traditionally leading.

Little did they know the enemy aircraft would come from the southwest.

Due to the enemy’s southern approach, "Mo River" was the first to be attacked.

At that moment, the attack group from "York" had not yet discovered "Longjiang".

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