It must be admitted that the nickname "Manniu" is indeed worthy of its name.

At 8 o'clock, more than half of the escort fighters discovered by the seaplanes of the 41.2nd Team had not yet flew away. The key is that these fighters took off with full fuel, so if they stayed, they could be stranded over the fleet for at least several hours.

If it were Frye, these fighters would definitely be left behind.

When the seaplane was shot down, it was about ten kilometers away from the Lek. In addition, the weather was clear, so the pilot must have seen the Lek.

More importantly, the seaplane has sent a telegram.

In addition, the seaplane flew from the south, not from the northwest!

All of these indicate that there is a special mixed fleet of the Liangxia Empire nearby, and it is not too far away. Maybe it is the 41st special mixed fleet that has not been exposed before.

After discovering the "Lek", the 41st Special Mixed Fleet will immediately launch an attack.

Within two hours, the carrier-based aircraft of the 41st Special Mixed Fleet will be killed. So what if you can't stand Bai Zhizhan's thunder attack, kill Liu Xiangzhen?

But Hal obviously didn't think so much.

By 8:15, the last Wildcat, which was carrying out an escort mission, flew away from the Lek, and the York sent out the last fighter jet almost at the same time.

At this time, the service staff of the two aircraft carriers were still busy.

According to Hal's order, it was not the fighter jet who was first sent to the flight deck, but the SBD "Fearless".

Instead of launching an attack, it is sent out to perform reconnaissance missions.

Perhaps learning from the lessons of the Navy, the Newland Navy no longer uses the slow TBD to perform reconnaissance tasks, but allows the fast SBD to take on this burden.

To be honest, the Newland Navy was the first to eat crabs.

Because the dive bomber only has two pilots, the pilot's burden is very heavy and it is easy to be exhausted when performing reconnaissance and search missions.

However, at 8:25, the Yorker sent a report, and his whereabouts were exposed. A Liang Xia's seaplane was shot down before it flew to a sea area less than 15,000 meters away.

Even at this time, Hal did not change the order.

At 8:35, the SBD, which was carrying out the reconnaissance mission, began to take off from the two aircraft carriers.

Just fly south.

At this time, Hal had not received a report from the rear and did not know that a heavy cruiser from Liang Xia sent a telegram to the south.

If he knew, he would immediately send all the remaining carrier-based aircraft out.

At 8:50, the service staff of the Lek and York began to send the fighter planes to the flight deck to prepare for them to take off.

According to the arrangement, the two aircraft carriers each sent 8 F4Fs.

Although before this, 8 F4Fs had been dispatched to perform air defense missions and 12 F4Fs were dispatched to perform escort missions, after eliminating the additional air defense fighters, there were still 8 F4Fs on the Lek and 6 F4Fs on the York.

At that time, Hal did not let these fighters take off.

The worst thing is that these fighters are also placed behind bombers and torpedoes.

Hal seems to feel that there are already 32 F4Fs, and the problem of air defense is not big, so there is no need to continue to add air defense fighters.

In addition, if the SBD sent out previously found the 41st Special Mixed Fleet, it would need to launch an attack immediately.

At that time, fighter jets will have to be arranged to escort.

There is no doubt that Hal is a bit too confident about the performance of the F4F.

Perhaps in his eyes, the F4F "wildcat" is the best carrier-based fighter.

This understanding is also related to the zero war between the Nai Navy.

The Newland Navy has already won a batch of zero battles and has also compared them with the F4F. The conclusion is that the correct tactics are adopted and the F4F has the ability to fight zero battles.

Then, it is naturally no problem to deal with Liang Xia's carrier-based fighter jet that cannot even be defeated by zero battles.

According to the Newland Navy's understanding before the war, even if the F4F cannot crush "Xiaotian" in the air, it can still tie with such fighter jets that replaced the "Typhoon".

The first shot of the air combat fired over the 43rd Special Mix Fleet, and the ones that were against both sides were the carrier-based fighters.

16 F4Fs sent by Fry against the eight "Xiaotian" dispatched by Liu Xiangzhen.

"Wild Cat" vs. "Xiaotian".

Although the number is twice that of "Xiaotian", and the performance of "Wild Cat" is not bad, and is generally slightly better than the "Typhoon", the advantage in quantity has not been transformed into an advantage on the battlefield. In the face of "Xiaotian", the performance of "Wild Cat" is not a little worse.

Speed, climb rate, dive stability, stable steering angular velocity, instantaneous hovering angular velocity, etc., "wildcats" are no better than "Xiaotian".

Even the firepower, these F4Fs are not as good as "Xiaotian".

The F4Fs of the 18th Special Mixed Fleet in Newland are all from the Xiluoyang Fleet, all of which are early models, and are only equipped with 4 aviation machine guns.

The F4F-4 model equipped with 6 aviation machine guns was only put into production shortly after it was put into production, and all the production was in the Eastern Force.

The battle started at 8:50.

In just ten minutes, 9 F4Fs were shot down in just two rounds, and "Xiaotian" suffered no losses.

Strictly speaking, two F4Fs actually collided while avoiding them, and only 7 were shot down by "Xiaotian".

By around 9:10, the battle over the 43rd Special Mix fleet officially ended.

All 16 "wildcats" were shot down, and three "Xiaotian" were injured. One of them crashed on their way back, and the other two forced landing after returning to the fleet.

However, another battle is about to begin.

The 21st Special Mix Fleet dispatched an attack aircraft group at 7:45. After an hour and a half, it had reached the periphery of the 18th Special Mix Fleet.

Although it was divided into two squadrons, a total of 16 "Xiaotian" that performed escort missions took off in the end, with faster cruise flight speeds, these fighters surpassed all torpedoes and bombers in the middle, and one of the squadrons even left tens of kilometers ahead.

This is the standard "attack escort" tactic.

Simply put, it is to escort fighters to take the initiative to go forward to find the enemy's air defense fighter, and to kill the enemy's air defense fighter before the bomber and torpedo aircraft arrive.

If arranged properly, it can also pose a significant threat to the enemy's air defense warships and disrupt the enemy's air defense queue.

This set of tactics is only suitable for use when you have performance advantages.

Which kind of escort tactic is adopted depends on the actual situation.

Usually, a commander at the level of a squadron will lead a squadron of escort fighters in front, find out the enemy's situation, and then make arrangements.

Now, the person who led this squadron is Wei Chengwen, who is the first air combat ace in the Imperial Navy and became famous in the "Flame of the Flame Sea".

However, his mission is not only to deal with the cover attack aircraft group.

According to the arrangement, he had to find two fleet aircraft carriers to point out the direction for the bombers and torpedoes behind him.

Don’t forget that the bombers and torpedoes dispatched by the 21st Special Mixed Fleet have no fuel to waste.

In contrast, fighter jets are much better.

If fighters can find the enemy's aircraft carrier, bombers and torpedoes can directly launch attacks, they can save a lot of fuel.

It is precisely this that Wei Chengwen, who was the captain, participated in the first wave of attacks, rather than staying in the fleet to perform more important air defense missions.
Chapter completed!