Empire Conquest
Chapter 78 - 74: Initiating and Following Up

Chapter 78: Chapter 74: Initiating and Following Up

When Lan Yun rushed out of the command bridge, several fighters that were patrolling nearby had pounced and battered the enemy aircraft that suddenly emerged from the clouds into utter disarray.

From afar, the downed enemy aircraft resembled a meteor plummeting from the sky.

Unfortunately, it was too late!

After watching the reconnaissance aircraft plunge into the ocean, Lan Yun turned around and looked toward Tanimoto, who stood by the cabin door.

Tanimoto didn’t say much, first shaking his head, then sighing deeply.

However, Lan Yun was clearly very dissatisfied with Tanimoto’s "response."

"Just asked the communications staff advisor, about three minutes ago the aircraft sent out a telegram, revealing its location, and we found it," Tanimoto paused briefly, then continued, "It used the Liangxia Navy’s frequency, and the code matched too, definitely a Liangxia Navy’s shipborne reconnaissance aircraft."

Lan Yun’s facial muscles twitched a few times before he asked, "From which direction did it come?"

"Not confirmed yet, can only assume it’s from the west for now."

"Temporarily?"

"The cloud that it came through drifted in from the west, and has been on the west side. If our fighter jets didn’t detect the enemy aircraft, then it must have come from the west." Another thing Tanimoto didn’t mention was, to shorten the return flight distance for the plane group, the Mobile Fleet had been sailing northwest.

Lan Yun glanced at the clouds in the west, then turned back to the command bridge.

In reality, those were cumulonimbus clouds from the north, but the wind had shifted overnight, changing from a north to a west wind, placing the clouds on the fleet’s western side.

"Start preparing now. How long will it take for the reconnaissance aircraft to take off?"

"At least fifteen minutes."

"Go and prepare!"

"Yes!"

"Wait!" Lan Yun called Tanimoto back and said, "Go find Colonel Genda, tell him to make adjustments immediately. After the reconnaissance aircraft departs, dispatch additional fighters. Other shipborne aircraft must also be ready. If the Special Mixed Fleet is located, initiate the attack before the You Yong plane group returns."

"With less than an hour left, we..."

"Go arrange it, stop dawdling!"

Tanimoto clenched his teeth and said no more.

Actually, he could tell that Lan Yun was already panicking, nearly to the point of incoherence.

Over the past decade, although the Saiyi Navy hadn’t conducted several months of confrontation exercises by bringing out the fleet each year like the wealthy Liangxia Navy and Newland Navy, they had consistently persisted in training, conducting wargames based on actual scenarios annually.

These "actual scenarios" primarily referred to stolen intelligence.

Put simply, it involved conducting wargames based on the opponent’s developments, and then deriving new tactics or modifying existing tactics.

In regard to air combat, the Saiyi Navy had long concluded a crucial point.

Strike first to control later!

Of course, this wasn’t considered far-sighted, given that both Liangxia and Newland Navies had reached similar conclusions through their confrontation exercises.

Now, having been spotted by the enemy’s reconnaissance aircraft, the Mobile Fleet was disadvantaged by reacting later.

As expected, the Special Mixed Fleet’s carriers had already turned into the wind to launch their shipborne aircraft, perhaps they were already starting to take off.

Perhaps in one hour, at most an hour and a half, the Special Mixed Fleet’s Attack Aircraft Group would arrive.

This timeframe was extremely critical.

The You Yong plane group would definitely return within an hour and then take half an hour to retrieve operations, landing those shipborne aircraft that were nearly out of fuel.

Not retrieve their shipborne aircraft?

Without these aircraft, what would they use to fight?

With Lan Yun’s character, he would never dare abandon hundreds of ship-borne aircraft. If there wasn’t an attack and he abandoned hundreds of ship-borne aircraft worth billions for no reason, even as the commander of the Mobile Fleet, he would only be able to apologize with death. And clearly, Lan Yun didn’t have the courage to commit seppuku with a short knife.

However, these were all concerns for later.

The urgent matter was to immediately deploy the reconnaissance aircraft and then send out all the fighter jets.

Fortunately, the Zero Fighter that had just been delivered this year and had just completed re-equipping training, was now mastered by the pilots and possessed extraordinary endurance capabilities.

After attaching a large auxiliary fuel tank, this nimble and agile fighter could hover in the air for six hours!

That meant if there were no air strikes, then when You Yong’s plane group returned, they could still have the preemptively launched fighter jets execute escort missions.

At any rate, it was crucial to first stabilize the attack!

At this moment, over three hundred kilometers southwest, aboard the "Heng River" carrier.

After receiving the telegraph, the Combat Staff Advisor took some time to clarify the situation.

The reason was straightforward: the reconnaissance aircraft was shot down before it could complete its telegram, so the received message was incomplete and lacked crucial information—the position of the Enemy Fleet.

The reconnaissance aircraft took off from the "Mo River". Previously, under the thunderclouds, fearing lightning strikes, they had turned off the long-wave radio and retracted the antennae. It wasn’t until the accompanying "Longjiang" ship left the thunderstorm area and reactivated the radio that it had already been more than ten minutes.

Fortunately, there were two key pieces of information in the telegram. One was that the reconnaissance aircraft was flying along its scheduled route, and the second was that it had spotted the Enemy Fleet fifteen minutes before sending the report.

Because visual identification was necessary, specifically to find the carrier among the Enemy Fleet, they needed to fly closer, which resulted in a delay of several minutes.

From these two pieces of information, Major Zhu Huasheng, squadron leader of the Second Ship-borne Aviation Battalion of the First Aviation Mixed Fleet, made a rough estimate of the Enemy Fleet’s location.

When the report came in, Liu Xiangzhen was also surprised.

The Mobile Fleet was about four hundred kilometers from Chengjiang Port, almost at the maximum operating radius of the loaded 97 Ship Attack and 99 Bombers.

Was Lan Yun too bold?

So far away, wasn’t he afraid that the ship-borne aircraft wouldn’t make it back?

Of course, it could also be said that he was too cautious.

Getting closer, did he want to die?

If he had gotten any closer, he might have been exposed already.

As far as Liu Xiangzhen knew, before dawn, a destroyer from the Southern Fleet was operating northwest of the Mobile Fleet, less than one hundred kilometers away.

It was clear that if the Mobile Fleet had gotten closer, it would have been detected before dawn.

The problem was now in Liu Xiangzhen’s hands.

The distance was still too far!

From the Mobile Fleet to the Special Mixed Group, the estimated distance was three hundred kilometers.

The three main ship-borne aircraft of the Imperial Navy, excluding the "Typhoon" ship-borne fighter, had an operating radius of only four hundred kilometers for the "Wasp" Dive Bomber and the "Flying Fish" torpedo attack aircraft, and that was under ideal conditions. Against a headwind, they definitely couldn’t travel that far.

The problem was that the position of the Mobile Fleet was merely an estimate.

That meant, after reaching the estimated sea area, the Attack Aircraft Group would still need to spend time searching. Since the Mobile Fleet would definitely be maneuvering and would have changed course to evade detection after shooting down the reconnaissance aircraft, the actual operating radius surely exceeded three hundred kilometers, usually up to one and a half times the estimated distance.

Four hundred and fifty kilometers?

Clearly, this also meant that the dive bombers and torpedo attack aircraft might not have enough fuel to return to the fleet after completing their attack mission.

Of course, there was no need to worry about running out of fuel before completing the attack.

As for the estimation made by Zhu Huasheng, Liu Xiangzhen had no doubts.

Besides, Liu Xiangzhen did not hesitate.

After receiving the combat plan sent by the Aviation Combat Staff Advisor, he promptly issued the combat order and then proceeded to the Aviation Combat Center.