The telegram sent by the submarine not only reminded Tong Shaoyun, but also reminded Sima Wenzheng.

At that time, Sima Wen was in the front line command on Wangwunu Island, unified command of all participating troops, and the tactical aviation corps of the Air Force was also under his jurisdiction.

At about 5:40, Sima Wenzheng received a message from the Marines on Ende Island that the Second Fleet had entered the Coral Sea.[..com]

Interestingly, when Tong Shaoyun reported the situation to Gong Jifei, he did not contact Sima Wenzheng.

Of course, according to Mu Haoyang's arrangement, Gong Jifei is the fleet commander, so Gong Jifei should inform Sima Wenzheng of the combat situation of the fleet.

The problem was that at that time, Gong Jifei did not believe that the US fleet had entered the Coral Sea directly, so he did not inform him immediately.

Later, when explaining this matter, Gong Jifei mentioned that he did not inform Sima Wenzheng, which was mainly related to the fleet's combat arrangements. That is, after the whereabouts of the US fleet were determined, the fleet needed to contact the ground forces. Sima Wenzheng would immediately make adjustments to the combat operations of the aviation force and assist in the search of the US fleet. In other words, if Gong Jifei informed Sima Wenzheng in the early morning of the 16th, then the shore-based aviation troops deployed in the Solomon Islands would be dispatched after dawn and search for the Coral Sea according to the intelligence provided by the submarine.

Obviously, this is completely contrary to Gong Jifei's judgment.

If the aviation forces were concentrated to search the Coral Sea, it would be impossible to invest enough reconnaissance planes in the north of the New Hebrides Islands.

Of course, Sima Wenzheng did not receive any news from the fleet, so he did not arrange reconnaissance missions.

However, he also intercepted the telegram sent by the submarine.

Although Sima Wenzheng was not sure about Gong Jifei and Tong Shaoyun's thoughts, this telegram attracted his attention and made a very important arrangement: to allow fighter jets that returned at 2 a.m. to take off after dawn and strengthen air defense deployment to Australia.

This means that half of the shore-based fighter jets will be launched after 7:30.

There are two very important basic conditions for Sima Wenzheng to do this. First, the Air Force arranges flight crews for fighters in a three-to-two ratio, that is, fighter pilots are 50% more than fighter jets. Therefore, when the fighter jets are divided into two batches, it is possible to ensure that three batches of pilots take turns to rest, ensuring that each pilot has a rest time of more than twelve hours per day. Second, the Air Force deploys the battlefield in the southwest Pacific. This fighter is actually the shore-based type of the Navy's j-33b, but it does not have the ability to take off and land on the aircraft carrier. In other aspects, it is the same as the J-33b. When designing the Navy's carrier-based fighter jets, it fully takes into account the needs of combat in tropical areas, and the daily maintenance volume is much lower than that of the Air Force's same type of fighter jets.

At that time, the combat usage rate of shore-based fighter jets deployed in the Solomon Islands was as high as 50%.

That is to say, these fighters can fly for twelve hours a day, while the fighters deployed by the Air Force on the mainland battlefield operate in tropical areas and fly up to eight hours a day.

It is precisely this that the Chinese Air Force can maintain a high dispatch intensity while the number of fighter jets is relatively limited.

Since it is to strengthen air defense deployment, it is naturally necessary to increase the number of early warning aircraft to take off.

At that time, the Air Force deployed twelve strategic early warning aircraft in the Solomon Islands and divided them into four formations to ensure that two formations can be taken off to patrol at any time. Generally speaking, two early warning aircraft formations would patrol over Woodrake Island in the southern part of the Solomon Sea and over Rennell Island in the eastern part of the Solomon Islands. The average patrol time is twelve hours, ensuring that there are eight to ten hours of ground service maintenance time for return flights.

With these strategic early warning aircraft, the early warning time can be extended for fifteen minutes to twenty-five minutes.

You should know that even a pilot who is sleeping can board his own plane within five minutes and fly a fighter in the air within ten minutes. If the pilot is on standby at the combat center, he can fly a fighter in the air within three minutes after the alarm sounds.

Obviously, it is basically impossible for French to use carrier-based fighter jets to attack air bases on the Solomon Islands.

The main reason is that the main ground strike weapon of carrier-based fighters is tactical cruise missiles with a range of about 500 kilometers, while the Chinese Air Force's strategic early warning aircraft formation has a passive detection range of US fighters exceeding 500 kilometers. Therefore, US fighters will be exposed before launching cruise missiles, and tactical cruise missiles will take at least half an hour to fly 500 kilometers. During this period, the fighters at the airport have already taken off.

Only by using strategic bombers to launch heavy cruise missiles within a thousand kilometers can a sneak attack be successful.

Of course, this has to be a premise, that is, the Chinese Air Force has not expanded its air defense area, allowing US bombers to launch cruise missiles one thousand kilometers away from the Solomon Islands.

Unfortunately, Sima Wenzheng did not allow the Air Force to expand the scope of air defense patrol at that time.

The main reason is that before this, the US military did not use heavy cruise missiles to attack the Solomon Islands, making Sima Wenzheng feel that there is no need to expand the air defense range.

In fact, many people believed that the US military had used up all the heavy cruise missiles reserved in Australia and did not transport such ammunition to Australia. You should know that at the end of 2053, when the Chinese Marine Corps attacked Wangunu Island in the Solomon Islands, the US military used up all the heavy cruise missiles reserved in Australia. After that, the Military Intelligence Agency did not find that the US military transport such ammunition to Australia.

This is not the case in reality.

In the past few months, the US military has been secretly transporting heavy cruise missiles to Australia, and the one who asked to do so was France. By early June, the US military had transported about 7,000 heavy cruise missiles to Australia through various means. The actual transport volume should be about 10,000, but some missiles were lost during transportation, and only 7,000 arrived in Australia.

The US military is not in a hurry to use heavy cruise missiles, which is also French's request.

In France's view, this kind of significant ammunition cannot be used without the absolute certainty of destroying the air bases on the Solomon Islands.

It can be said that French was very careful and even took into account the details of the tactical links.

At that time, French also made special arrangements for the specific tactics of bombing the Solomon Islands.

According to his deployment, the US Air Force will dispatch 400 strategic bombers and several strategic early warning aircraft in advance. After confirming that the Chinese Air Force has not expanded the air defense area, the strategic bombers will first launch heavy cruise missiles 7,000 kilometers away from the Solomon Islands, then climb to an altitude of 18,000 meters, and continue to fly to the Solomon Islands under the cover of carrier-based fighters.

The result is that when the heavy cruise missile approaches the target, the Chinese Air Force's strategic early warning aircraft has detected the approaching bomber group, and it will determine that the US bomber carried tactical cruise missiles, so it will organize fighter jets to intercept. If most of the Chinese Air Force fighters remain on the ground, the on-demand air defense fighters will be lifted off urgently and other fighters will also be lifted off one after another. In other words, when the heavy cruise missiles launched by the US bomber fell, the Chinese fighters at the airport were either taxiing on the runway or heading to the runway, and most of the fighters had left the solid bunker and were very easily hit.

In terms of scale, this is definitely the largest air strike operation launched by the US military since the Battle of the Solomon Islands.

Although the situation is not exactly consistent with what French expected, the situation is still extremely beneficial to the US military.

In fact, the entire combat process was not very different from what French expected. The only difference was that half of the fighter jets had already taken off.

At around 8:40, the Air Force's strategic early warning aircraft discovered the invading U.S. bomber group.

At that time, the ground command center did not only allow the on-call fighter jets to be launched, nor did it use air defense fighter jets to be dragged into the bunker at night. The main reason is that about 400 fighter jets have been patrolling the air, and the six early warning aircraft deployed by the Air Force can only command up to 400 fighter jets to fight. Without the command of early warning aircraft, no matter how many fighter jets are dispatched to take off, it will not have much effect.

Obviously, doing so has a positive effect.

You should know that just two minutes after the early warning aircraft issued an air strike alarm, the first batch of heavy cruise missiles landed on the New Georgia Islands. In the four air bases that were first hit, more than a dozen fighter jets that were taking off or were preparing to take off were all destroyed.

Immediately afterwards, other airports were bombed.

At that time, almost no fighter jets ordered to take off the air were able to escape. Among the nearly 100 fighter jets, less than ten were launched before the bombing arrived.

On the contrary, hundreds of fighter jets left in the bunker escaped the disaster.

If the ground command center ordered all fighter jets to take off to meet the enemy at that time, then when the heavy cruise missiles fell, many fighters must have been dragged out of the bunker, or the explosion-proof and impact-proof gate of the bunker had been opened, and the fighters parked in the bunker would definitely not be able to escape.

Interestingly, the air battle ahead did not start.

After learning that the rear airport was attacked, the ground commander immediately ordered the frontline fighter jets to retreat and shrink the defense line by more than 200 kilometers.

Because there was no joint attack on air defense positions on the archipelago, US carrier-based fighter jets did not pursue them.

Of course, there is no need to pursue, because all US carrier-based fighters perform escort missions and do not have the ability to strike ground air defense systems. More importantly, the battlefield range is very large, resulting in almost all US fighter pilots who believe that the Chinese fighters they encounter are just fish that escape the net, and most of the Chinese fighters have been destroyed, so there is no need to venture into the interception area of ​​the air defense system for this purpose.

In fact, French received very gratifying reports at that time.
Chapter completed!