On the eve of the fall of Liaodong, he led his troops in a remonstrance against the young marshal.

The sky is on fire.

After Zhu Wudi's Mustang Squadron's first volley of dive-bombing and strafing destroyed more than a dozen Japanese attack aircraft, a brief silence fell over the battlefield.

The engines were still roaring, the bullets were still whistling, and the burning wreckage of the plane was still falling down, trailing black smoke, but all the surviving Japanese pilots felt a bone-chilling cold at the same moment.

Many of them were veterans, having flown for at least hundreds of hours and never encountered a true adversary in the skies over East Asia.

The Northeast Army's Bragg 27 and Junkers K-47 were nothing more than flying targets to them, and firing them was no different from training exercises.

But today, everything is upside down.

The batch of silver fighter jets that appeared before them were completely beyond their comprehension.

Their speed was so fast that the scope couldn't keep up, and their climb rate was ridiculously high, making the Japanese soldiers feel like they were standing still.

Their firepower is so fierce that a single salvo can tear your plane to shreds.

This is not an aerial battle; it is a one-sided hunt.

Onizuka Ichiro gripped the control stick tightly, his knuckles bulging from the force, his fingernails digging into the flesh of his palms, drawing blood.

He watched helplessly as his squadron of attack aircraft was shot down into fireballs, one after another.

Captain Moriyama, the captain of the third squadron, screamed over the radio and then fell silent.

When Captain Shimada of the 4th Squadron was parachuting, his parachute was severed by the tail of his own aircraft, and he plummeted straight to the ground from an altitude of 3,000 meters like a stone.

But what chilled Onizuka the most was not the loss of attack aircraft, but the predicament of the bomber squadron.

The Type 93 heavy bombers and Type 87 light bombers, fully loaded with bombs, were originally positioned in the safest position in the formation.

In the upper atmosphere, there were attack aircraft escorting them from all sides.

But now Zhu Wudi's fourth squadron of twenty Mustangs has circled around to the flank of the bomber formation and is diving in from above.

Those cumbersome bombers, fully loaded with bombs, had extremely poor maneuverability and ridiculously large turning radii. Faced with the high-speed attacks of the Mustangs, they were like a flock of fat sheep surrounded by hungry wolves.

Their self-defense machine gunners lay prone in the open cockpit, holding Type 78 rotary machine guns, and fired desperately towards the Mustangs, bullets streaking through the air, leaving trails of red light.

But the Mustang was too fast. Just as you aimed at its nose, it had already flown to your tail. Just as you turned your machine gun toward its tail, it had already pulled up above your head.

The bomber's gunners were yelling in panic, but all their bullets hit the air without even scratching the Mustang's paint.

Zhou Tielin, the squadron leader of the fourth squadron, led his twenty Mustangs and cut in from the right rear of the bomber formation.

The three-man squads provided alternating cover, with six M2 heavy machine guns aimed at the bomber's engine compartment and fuel tanks, and concentrated their fire.

"Da da da da!"

"Da da da da!"

The left engine of a Type 93 heavy bomber was pierced by an armor-piercing incendiary bomb. Orange-red flames shot out from the gaps in the engine cowling, and the fire spread to the entire wing within three seconds.

The pilot tried to extinguish the flames with a fire extinguisher, but the aluminum skin was already glowing red-hot, and the internal structural components of the wing began to soften and deform.

The entire wing shuddered violently twice in the airflow before snapping off at the base.

The bomber, having lost its left wing, tumbled and crashed to the ground like a withered leaf swept away by the autumn wind; none of the seven crew members survived.

It wasn't that I didn't want to parachute, but the cabin had been engulfed in flames, and the doors were so badly burned that they couldn't be opened.

In less than five minutes, the Fourth Squadron shot down twelve Japanese bombers.

The remaining bomber formation was scattered and broken up. The originally neat box formation was turned into scattered soldiers, fighting their own battles in the sky in twos and threes.

Onizuka Ichiro saw all of this.

His teeth were clenched so hard they were grinding, and blood seeped from his gums, dripping down the corners of his mouth and onto the collar of his flight jacket.

He knew that if the fighting continued like this, the entire air force would be wiped out over Fengtian today.

These bomber pilots were the culmination of many years of work by the Imperial Naval Air Force. Each of them had accumulated thousands of hours of bombing missions, making them the most valuable asset of the entire Empire in the skies over East Asia.

If all these people and the plane perish here, he will surely commit seppuku when he gets back.

"Pass on the order!"

Onizuka Ichiro pressed the radio transmitter button, his voice hoarse, "All escort attack aircraft are not allowed to disengage from the battle without authorization!"

"Provide cover for the bombers' retreat! All of you, push forward and engage the Chinese fighters in close combat! Even if you have to ram them, bring them down!"

"Bomber formation..."

He paused, his jaw muscles bulging like two stones, then squeezed out the rest of the sentence through clenched teeth, "Jailout all bombs immediately and return at full speed!"

"Hai!"

"Hai!"

"Kamikaze! Kamikaze!"

There was a moment of silence on the radio, then the squadron leaders of the attack aircraft responded one after another.

There was no fear in their voices, only a kind of madness and desperate gamble after being driven to the brink.

The Japanese attack aircraft formation underwent a visible change.

The attack aircraft, which had been trying to maintain their formation and conduct orderly defense, suddenly scattered like a swarm of wasps whose nest had been disturbed.

They no longer tried to dodge the Mustang's dive-fire, no longer maintained their height and speed advantage, and no longer even conserved ammunition.

They pushed the throttle to the maximum, nose up, and charged head-on at the Mustangs in an almost vertical position.

Dozens of Type 89 attack aircraft simultaneously launched a counterattack towards the Mustang Squadron, with Type 78 rotary machine guns and fixed machine guns under the nose of the aircraft firing at the same time, bullets weaving a frenzied net of fire in the air.

This tactical approach is suicidal. If the Type 89 attack aircraft were to engage the Mustang in a head-on battle of firepower and speed, the outcome would be a foregone conclusion.

But the Japanese pilots didn't care anymore.

Their goal was to entangle the Mustangs, even at the cost of their lives, to give the bomber formation time to jettison their bombs, reduce their weight, and escape back to Lushun at full speed.

A Japanese attack plane had its fuel tank punctured, turning the entire aircraft into a fireball. However, instead of ejecting, the pilot piloted the still-burning plane and crashed it head-on into the nearest Mustang.

The pilot of that Mustang was Zhang Wei, Zhu Wudi's deputy squadron leader. At the last moment, he pulled the control stick sharply and made an extreme evasive maneuver.

The burning Japanese plane whizzed past less than half a meter below its belly, leaving a charred mark on the fuselage skin.

"court death!"

Zhang Wei cursed, then made a sharp turn and chased after it. All six machine guns opened fire simultaneously, turning the Japanese plane, which had been burned to a skeleton, into pieces.

But the Japanese soldiers' frenzied charge did have an effect.

The Mustang formation's attack rhythm was disrupted.

What was originally a clean and efficient cycle of dive-and-strike-and-escape has now been turned into a chaotic melee due to the Japanese soldiers' close-quarters combat.

Just as a Mustang finished its dive and strafing and was about to pull up, two Japanese attack planes came up from the side, forcing it to abandon the pull-up and instead perform evasive maneuvers.

Although the Mustang still outperforms Japanese attack aircraft in terms of single-unit performance.

In every dogfight, the Japanese attack aircraft could only last two rounds at most before being shaken off or destroyed.

But the Japanese army's numerical advantage began to emerge.

They had more than two hundred planes crammed into the airspace south of Fengtian, densely packed together, like a swarm of flies that couldn't be driven away.

The Mustang pilots had to divert their attention to deal with threats from multiple directions at the same time, while the Japanese pilots took advantage of this opportunity to start sniping.

They would pick off lone Mustangs and use two, three, or even four attack aircraft to simultaneously swarm one.

Although the Mustang's pilots were all ace-level, they were surrounded by enemies on all sides.

Bullets came from different directions; you dodged the one on the left, but the one on the right was already biting your tail.

After shooting down three Japanese attack planes in succession, a Mustang was attacked from directly below by a fourth one. The bullet pierced its oil cooler, and the engine began to emit black smoke.

The pilot gritted his teeth and pulled the plane out of the combat airspace, barely managing to make an emergency landing on the edge of the airport runway. The plane overran the end of the runway, crashed into the ridge of a field, and tumbled twice before coming to a stop.

When the pilot crawled out of the deformed cockpit, half of his face was covered in blood.

This was the first aircraft lost by the Mustang Squadron since the start of the war.

Zhu Wudi heard the news of the Mustang's forced landing over the radio.

He didn't look back because he was simultaneously engaged in dogfights with three Japanese attack planes.

His plane made a sharp S-shaped turn in the air, shaking off the two Japanese planes that were tailing him, and then pulled up at an almost impossible angle of attack, instantly taking over the position above the third Japanese plane.

"Da da da da!"

"Da da da!"

Six machine guns fired simultaneously, and bullets entered the cockpit from directly above the Japanese pilot's cockpit. The pilot's head was blown into a bloody mist by a .50 caliber bullet, and the plane went out of control and crashed to the ground.

But just as Zhu Wudi completed the kill, an alarm sounded in his earpiece.

Two more Japanese planes have already caught up again, and this time there are four of them, not just two.

They approached simultaneously from four different directions, sealing off all of Zhu Wudi's space to maneuver left and right.

Zhu Wudi remained calm and collected, pulling the plane up the altitude while calling for support.

Zhang Wei's voice immediately came through the radio:

"Hang in there, boss! I'm coming right away!"

However, Zhang Wei's plane was currently entangled by another group of Japanese soldiers a few hundred meters away and could not break free for the time being.

Zhu Wudi watched as the four black dots drew closer and closer, his fingers already resting on the parachute pull ring.

Just then, a burst of intense engine roar came from the southwest.