Devil's Army

The first shot fired in the encirclement and suppression of the Tangshan Devil Forces was fired by the Kunizaki Noboru Battalion of the 9th Brigade of the 5th Division of the Japanese Army on the Zunhua Line, which had been damaged in the previous battle.

Major General Kunisaki Noboru of the 9th Brigade of the Japanese Army had been brooding over the failure to capture Dangyu Town last time. As soon as he received the order to attack this time, he immediately sent out his most elite Kunisaki Noboru Battalion as the vanguard.

The Japanese Kunizaki Toshiba Battalion encountered a blocking force of the First Army ten miles outside Dangyu Town and began to attack.

The elite troops of the Japanese army are more powerful than the second-rate troops. Once they encounter the blocking of the devil troops, they will immediately open up the way with artillery.

Mortar shells kept hitting the positions of the first company of the 11th Brigade.

The officers and soldiers of the first company were so overwhelmed by the bombing that they could not even raise their heads. They wished their planes would come over and blow up all the Japanese artillery.

After a while, the company commander heard a series of roars of planes.

The company commander looked up and saw a large number of planes flying towards him from the northwest of Xiaoguanzhuang Airport.

Although the distance was too far to see what kind of plane it was, from the number of planes, it was clear that they were definitely not from the First Army.

The company commander's guess was correct. In order to encircle and wipe out the devilish troops in Tangshan, Commander-in-Chief Terauchi Hisaichi mobilized more than one-third of the entire North China Provisional Air Force, six fighter squadrons, and four bomber squadrons, totaling 120 aircraft to participate in the battle.

At that time, the First Army at Xiaoguanzhuang Airport had only one Huaxia I fighter, seven Huaxia II fighters, five Hawk III fighters, seven Japanese Type 95 fighters, eight Japanese Type 98 heavy bombers, seven Voltaire bombers and ten Hong I bombers. The total number of aircraft was only 45.

This meant that each of their planes had to deal with nearly three Japanese planes, not to mention that they only had eighteen supersonic planes.

Xiaoguanzhuang Airport is facing an unprecedented crisis.

Captain Yin ordered all aircraft to take off immediately to fight, and the anti-aircraft artillery unit at the airport was also ready to fight at any time. Unrelated ground crew members immediately hid in the air-raid shelter.

The first to take off was the Huaxia II fighter plane of the First Army, but as soon as it took off, it was besieged by four Type 95 fighter planes of the Japanese Army.

Tokugawa Commander of the Japanese Army's North China Provisional Air Corps specially developed a new tactic to target the fast-flying and powerful firepower of the Devil Forces' planes:

His fighter squadron has twelve fighters, with one main aircraft and three wingmen forming a combat group. Each fighter squadron has three combat groups, and each combat group is responsible for attacking a pointed fighter of the Devil's Force.

Captain Yin and Squadron Leader Ren had just taken off in their Hua Xia One and Two fighter planes and were about to rush into the Japanese fighter group when they suddenly realized something was wrong.

For every Hua Xia II fighter they had, there were four Japanese Type 95 fighters surrounding it.

Captain Yin gestured to the wingman next to him, and decisively asked them to lead the Japanese planes to the airspace away from Xiaoguanzhuang Airport.

The eight Chinese Type 32 fighters under Captain Yin and Squadron Leader Ren attracted Japanese Type fighters and flew them to the airspace far away from Xiaoguanzhuang Airport.

With their excellent flying speed, they managed to evade more than 30 Japanese fighter planes intact.

Captain Yin seized the opportunity and flew close to the Japanese fighter group from the left at a small angle. He fired fiercely and shot down the Japanese wingman on the left. Then, with his excellent climbing speed, he quickly climbed and flew away from the Japanese fighter group.

Captain Ren also succeeded in a surprise attack and shot down a wingman on the right side of the Japanese army.

In this way, the eight supersonic fighters of the First Army kept interweaving, attacking, and escaping among the Japanese fighters. They shot down seven Japanese fighters one after another. Four of their own fighters were also damaged by Japanese planes, but they were able to continue fighting.

The ten H-1 bombers at Xiaoguanzhuang Airport were subsonic aircraft. Although they were besieged by the Japanese Type 95 fighters soon after they took off, they quickly got rid of the pursuit of the Japanese fighters by virtue of their speed more than twice that of the Japanese fighters. They also returned to the area around Xiaoguanzhuang Airport from time to time to bomb the Japanese ground forces and provide air support to the First Army.

The remaining Hawk III fighters, Voltaire bombers, Japanese Type 95 fighters and Type 98 heavy bombers at Xiaoguanzhuang Airport were of the same generation as the Japanese fighters. In order to protect the pilots, Captain Yin had not planned to let them take off before the war.

Captain Yin specifically asked Wu Lang for instructions on this matter.

Wu Lang was also caught in a dilemma: if he fought, precious pilots would be sacrificed; if he did not fight, the only airport in Tangshan Base, Xiaoguanzhuang Airport, might be lost.

Wu Lang asked Gray Wolf for his opinion. Gray Wolf told Wu Lang:

"Whether other types of aircraft are used or not, facing the attack of more than 100 Japanese aircraft, Xiaoguanzhuang Airport may be lost. If we use them, our aircraft may be shot down. But before they are shot down, they can support our base to crush the enemy's attack. If we don't use them, those precious aircraft will be blown into scrap metal by Japanese aircraft at the airport."

Wu Lang told Captain Yin to let the pilot make his own decision.