You were tasked with guarding the Sihang Warehouse, and you brought out a Tiger tank?

The intense fear caused Captain Noguchi's hand to tremble involuntarily, and the control stick shifted.

"Hold on, hold on, push it up!"

He yelled at the passenger seat.

late.

A 37mm high-explosive shell penetrated the right wing engine of his aircraft, followed by two more that exploded in the middle of the fuselage.

"No--!"

In Captain Noguchi's final moments of consciousness, all he saw were the cracks that instantly covered the cockpit window and the scorching flames rushing towards him.

boom!

The Type 93 twin light bomber disintegrated in mid-air, turning into a huge fireball mixed with metal fragments and human remains, blooming like fireworks over Zhabei before plummeting down into the building ruins below, trailing black smoke.

The pilots in the other Japanese bombers also screamed and cursed in terror.

"Baka! Hold on! Hold on!"

"Too many anti-aircraft guns."

"My wings! Ah—!"

"Get out of there! Get out of there quickly!"

Chaos erupted; the entire formation was in complete disarray.

To avoid the relentless anti-aircraft fire, the Japanese pilots instinctively jerked the control stick and haphazardly dropped bombs, desperate to escape this aerial hell as quickly as possible.

As a result, most of the bombs lost their aim.

Several 60-kilogram bombs whistled off their targets, many of them plunging into the Suzhou River.

Several jets of water shot into the sky from the river, and the spray even reached the embankment of the concession on the south bank.

Many fish that were stunned or killed by the shock floated to the surface with their white bellies turned up, creating a patch on the oily river.

The onlookers on the south bank of the Suzhou Creek were initially startled, but then someone pointed at the river and shouted, "Look, they're blasting fish! The Japanese planes are blasting our fish!"

Two more bombs, unfortunately, landed on a riverbank near the edge of the International Settlement and on a vacant lot where timber was piled up.

Boom! Boom!

Although no one was injured, the loud explosion and tremors startled the foreigners in the concession who were having afternoon tea or watching from inside sturdy buildings.

Inside the Municipal Council building in the International Settlement, Consul John, who was drinking coffee, suddenly dropped his expensive bone china coffee cup, which shattered on the floor, spilling coffee all over his trousers.

"God, are these damned Japanese pilots blind?!" he cursed angrily.

The White Eagle Consul beside him also looked grim: "We must lodge the strongest protest immediately; their actions seriously threaten the security of the concession."

The worst off were several Type 93 light bombers that had rushed too far forward and were unable to dodge in time.

Following Captain Noguchi's aircraft, another Type 93 twin light bomber was targeted by at least three 20mm quadruple anti-aircraft guns. The dense barrage tore it to pieces, disintegrating in mid-air even more completely than Noguchi's plane.

After all, although the Japanese Type 93 twin-light bomber was also a twin-engine bomber, its fuselage structure was thin and not as sturdy as the later White Eagle B-25. It simply could not withstand such dense barrage of fire.

Another aircraft desperately pulled up to escape, but the M2HB heavy machine gun found its lead and fired a burst of 12.7mm armor-piercing incendiary rounds that pierced the fuel tank on the left wing.

In an instant, the entire plane transformed into a giant torch, trailing thick smoke and emitting a mournful whistling sound, before crashing erratically to the ground, exploding into an even more dazzling fireball behind a ruin controlled by the Japanese in Zhabei.

The shockwave even overturned several makeshift tents.

The remaining planes were grazed by several 12.7mm bullets, leaving several horrifying holes in their wings, and their skins danced wildly in the wind like tattered rags.

One aircraft had a large chunk of its horizontal stabilizer torn off by a 20mm shell, essentially losing its pitch control. It could only rely on adjusting its engine power to desperately fly away from the battlefield, and whether it could even make it back to Hongqiao was a question.

As for the Type 95 fighter pilots who were originally part of the second wave of attack and were preparing to dive and drop bombs, they were completely terrified after witnessing the horrific scene of the bomber squadron ahead.

The twelve Type 95 fighter jets didn't even have the courage to attempt a dive. Instead, they made a sharp turn in the air, pushed the throttle to the maximum, and fled towards Hongqiao without looking back.

The first wave of airstrikes ended in a crushing defeat in less than five minutes.

Of the nine bombers, three were shot down and exploded in mid-air, two were severely damaged, and the remaining four were all damaged. Most of the bombs dropped either fed the fish in the Suzhou River or flew to some unknown corner.

The actual damage caused to the buildings controlled by Lin Feng's troops? Almost zero.

Many bombs flew over the rooftops of buildings and landed on the Japanese positions to the north, killing several unlucky Japanese soldiers and destroying their weapons, drawing curses from the ground infantry.

The fighter squadrons, which were intended as reserve attack forces, didn't even attempt an attack and instead staged a spectacular aerial maneuver.

-----

On the Huangpu River, the armored cruiser Izumo.

Vice Admiral Kiyoshi Hasegawa, commander of the Third Fleet of the Japanese Navy, was standing on the bridge with several staff officers, watching the scene unfold through binoculars.

When they saw the army planes being routed and bombs being dropped haphazardly, a suppressed chuckle rippled through the bridge.

"The army's peasant pilots..." Kiyoshi Hasegawa put down his binoculars, shook his head, and said with undisguised contempt, "Flying a plane is like a drunken duck, stumbling and staggering."

Without even basic air defense reconnaissance, they dare to brazenly dive at low altitude? It's truly... laughable.

The staff officer beside him chuckled, "Sir, it seems that Lin Feng is indeed a tough nut to crack. This time, the Army has truly lost face."

Hasegawa Kiyoshi gave a cold snort, his feelings complicated.

On the one hand, the army's humiliation gave him a sense of pleasure in watching the joke, which could be considered revenge for being amused by the army before.

On the other hand, the formidable fighting power displayed by the defenders of Sihang Warehouse also made him somewhat worried about the future battles.

"Let them try. Wait until they're bleeding from their heads, then... hmph..."

Then, Hasegawa Kiyoshi paused, turned his head and said, "However, Lin Feng's anti-aircraft firepower configuration and approximate location are quite well-organized. Remember to write it down..."

Thus, the miserable state of the 13th Air Squadron of the Army Air Force became the best topic of conversation and a source of amusement for the officers of the Third Fleet of the Navy during their afternoon tea time.

-----

At Hongqiao Airport.

The Type 93 bomber, having lost its horizontal stabilizer, ultimately failed to recover. It made an unsuccessful emergency landing a few kilometers from the airport, crashed into the ground, and caught fire. All those on board perished.

The remaining few damaged bombers landed shakily on the runway, where ground crew and medical personnel rushed to them.

The Japanese pilots who managed to escape were pale-faced as they climbed down from their damaged planes. Several of them had so weak legs that they needed their comrades to help them up, looking completely shaken.

One pilot was carried off the plane; he had been hit in the abdomen by shrapnel that had penetrated the cockpit, and his flight suit was stained with blood. He was on the verge of death.

Airport ground staff looked at the planes riddled with bullet holes and torn skin...

Everyone was secretly astonished.

How much firepower would it take to achieve this?