Chapter 71 Air Combat
Lu Mingfei adjusted the joystick slightly and felt the plane gradually accelerating. The roar of the engine echoed in his ears. Under his control, the Spade VII fighter quickly climbed upwards and broke through the clouds, and soon climbed to the same altitude as other planes.
The black silhouettes of the enemy planes gradually became clearer in his sight. They circled in the sky like a group of predatory birds, waiting for an opportunity to hunt.
Lu Mingfei took a deep breath, moved the joystick in his hand slightly, and aimed the machine gun's sight at one of the Newport 11 fighters.
His eyes were fixed on the sight, his breathing gradually became steady, and there was not a single distracting thought in his mind. The moment the crosshairs locked onto the target, he pressed the shooting button without hesitation.
The machine gun spewed out a series of tongues of fire, and the bullets quickly cut through the air and accurately hit the fuselage of the Newport 11 in front. Several of the bullets penetrated the fuselage and hit the engine directly.
The Newport 11 fighter shook violently, then billowed black smoke and lost balance, drawing a rapidly falling arc in the air.
Its propellers gradually stopped, and finally it dived down at an irreversible speed, hitting the ground heavily, bursting into a dazzling burst of fire, and sparks flew like a hot firework blooming on the desolate battlefield.
In the distant sky, a British BE2 two-seat reconnaissance aircraft was cruising. The pilot on board witnessed this scene with shock and disbelief in his eyes.
He suddenly turned his head and shouted to the scout behind him: "Boll! Isn't that Wilson's plane? Why is he shooting at his own people?" His tone was full of astonishment.
Investigator Boll was also stunned by the scene before him and he couldn't believe what he saw.
"Impossible! Why would Wilson attack our own people?" he muttered to himself, his eyes fixed on the distant sky. Other British pilots around him also noticed this abnormal situation, and everyone was full of doubts.
But before they could react, the Spade VII fighter piloted by Lu Mingfei launched another attack. He calmly controlled the plane and aimed at another British Avro fighter that was cruising.
With a burst of fierce strafing sounds, bullets poured out like a storm, tearing the fuselage of the Avro fighter apart. The plane lost control, swayed in the air, and finally exploded into a fireball, with the wreckage falling like a meteor.
This scene made the surrounding pilots instantly realize that the person sitting on that Spade fighter was definitely not their comrade but an enemy!
"Everyone, pay attention! There are Prussians on that Spade!" Christ's voice suddenly rang in the minds of all the pilots, his tone full of anxiety and fear.
He quickly passed this information to every British plane in the sky through the snake's words. At the same time, cold sweat had already seeped out of Christ's forehead, and his heart was shrouded in an inexplicable fear.
"It's him..." Christ's voice trembled slightly and was almost inaudible. He was so scared that he was almost out of his wits.
The pilot of the Farmang reconnaissance plane noticed that Christ was abnormal and asked anxiously: "Christ, who is that guy?"
As an experienced pilot, he seldom felt fear in air combat, but at this moment an uneasy premonition was already welling up in his heart.
"It's that hybrid..." Christ gritted his teeth, his voice revealing an undisguised fear. He didn't know how Lu Mingfei got on the British plane.
"I originally wanted to save him for the end, but I didn't expect that he would run up here without knowing the consequences! Christ, notify everyone to attack together and defeat him. I admit that he is really powerful, but the sky is our home court! Christ, now pass on all my words to everyone!" The driver said angrily after hearing Christ's words, and his pupils began to emit golden light.
The Word Spirit·Kamaitachi Domain unfolded, and the bat-shaped fairy began to transmit all the sounds in the sky to his ears, as if he had the most advanced radar. With the transmission of the snake, he could share everything he sensed with other pilots.
As he said, the sky is his home ground. With the help of the kamaitachi and the snake, although it is still very simple, it is undoubtedly a modern-level air battle.
……
After Lu Mingfei shot down the second plane, he found that the surrounding enemy planes were coming towards him. He took a deep breath and pushed the sickle-itachi's words to the limit, capturing every tiny sound in the air. The entire battlefield was under his control.
He closed his eyes and relied on the perception of the sickle-weasel to determine the position and movement of the enemy plane. The moment he flipped the joystick, the plane deftly avoided a series of bullets in the air. Then he pressed the shooting button again, and the machine gun's flames tore through the sky, and the third British plane crashed.
But at this time, the other enemy planes had coordinated perfectly and surrounded him. More than fifty planes were like an invisible giant net, trapping him in this small piece of sky.
The wings of the enemy planes flickered in the sun, and they approached mercilessly like hunters, but Lu Mingfei was unmoved, and a calm light flashed in his eyes.
He quickly adjusted the plane, aimed the sight at an oncoming enemy plane, pressed the shooting button without hesitation, and bullets rained down, destroying the plane and immediately creating a gap in the encirclement.
At the same time, Lu Mingfei quickly activated the Eye of the Wind King to control the flow of air around him. Under the influence of the Word Spirit, the speed of the plane suddenly increased, and the roar of the engine became sharper, beginning to approach the limit of the plane.
As the speed continued to increase, Lu Mingfei could almost feel the aircraft fuselage groaning under the intense airflow, and some parts had begun to make ominous "cracking" sounds. He knew that this was the limit of what Spade could endure.
Under his control, the plane climbed rapidly, drew a graceful arc, and then dived suddenly, successfully breaking through the encirclement.
In this short moment, Lu Mingfei had left the siege of enemy planes behind him, and his Spade flew through the air like a flash of lightning.
He nimbly maneuvered the plane up and down, dodging the enemy's fire. His movements were smooth and each maneuver was extremely precise, and the plane itself seemed to be an extension of his body.
However, such a high-speed flight also put a huge load on the aircraft's body. As the speed continued to increase, Lu Mingfei could clearly hear the heavy sound of the wings, and the body of the aircraft was shaking more and more violently at high speed.
He held the joystick tightly with both hands, feeling the strong vibration caused by the propeller spinning wildly. Every turn was accompanied by violent shaking of the fuselage. He knew that if this continued, the wing might break at any time.
But the enemy pilots were still chasing Lu Mingfei closely. Their fighter planes were lined up in a line, like a black snake, biting Lu Mingfei tightly.
They pushed their engines to the limit, and every pilot held his breath, trying to aim the sights at the Spade that was almost turning into a black shadow, but no matter how they adjusted, the Spade always dodged at the last moment, making all their bullets miss.
Gradually, an anxious mood spread among the enemy planes. They felt powerless. Spade on the opposite side was like a slippery loach that could never be caught or hit.
Just when they were gritting their teeth and were about to give up the pursuit, an unexpected scene happened. The Spade suddenly turned its nose and flew towards them at an unreasonably high speed.
The British pilots were all staring in amazement, unable to react for a moment. When they realized that the Spade was heading towards them head-on, it was too late to react.
They could only press the shooting button in fear, hoping to shoot down the crazy enemy plane with intensive firepower, but no matter how they fired, the bullets always seemed to miss the target. The Spard was like a ghost, shuttling through the rain of bullets, avoiding all attacks in an incredible way, or the bullets seemed to suddenly turn before hitting him.
The speed of the Spade was getting faster and faster, and it was getting closer and closer. Just as their pupils were rapidly dilated, they finally realized that the Spade was not going to collide with them head-on, but to break through them. They frantically adjusted the shooting angle, but it was too late. The Spade passed directly through their team with a whistling sound. At the moment when the Spade passed through, the pilot of a Sopwith "Baby", the British plane at the front of the team, finally breathed a sigh of relief. He almost collided with the Spade.
However, just when he relaxed a little, a strong storm suddenly broke out from behind him. His plane shook violently under the force of the storm, spinning in the air like a leaf.
Sopwith's pilot pulled the joystick in panic, trying to stabilize the plane, but the storm became stronger and stronger, and finally completely upset the balance of the plane.
The fuselage began to stall violently, and he felt the world spinning before his eyes. In the intense dizziness, his plane fell irretrievably from the sky like a kite with a broken string.
As he fell out of control, the planes in the entire formation stalled one after another like dominoes. A total of more than forty fighter jets lost control in the storm, fell from the sky like dumplings, and crashed into the ground, erupting in flames.
Only a few fighter planes and reconnaissance planes that were farther away managed to escape. They flipped in the air, trying to avoid the aftermath of the storm, but were still in great panic, and no one dared to approach the crazy Spade again.
.........
"Surround him! Don't let him escape!" The pilot of the Farmand HF20 reconnaissance plane almost roared at Christ, his voice revealing an uncontrollable anxiety and anger.
He gripped the joystick tightly, his eyes fixed on the speeding Spade fighter in the distance. In his opinion, they had an absolute advantage at the moment. As long as they surrounded the plane, the opponent would have no chance of escape.
After receiving the order, Christ immediately passed the instructions to each pilot through the snake's words.
"No matter how strong you are on the ground, this is the sky, our territory! Prepare to die!" said the pilot coldly. He believed that they had already grasped the victory of this battle in their hands.
When he saw the other planes forming a perfect encirclement in the air, trapping the Spade fighter piloted by Lu Mingfei in the center, he couldn't help but smile with pride.
This smile was full of confidence of victory. In his opinion, this was a foregone conclusion and the opponent would be reduced to ashes under their firepower. However, at the moment when he was proud, the Spade fighter suddenly opened fire and shot down one of their planes and then accelerated like lightning. Before he and other pilots could react, it actually broke through the encirclement!
The driver's smile froze on his face instantly, and his eyes widened in extreme shock.
"Impossible, Spade can't be that fast!" His voice trembled with astonishment. He had flown Spade before and knew the performance limits of the aircraft very well. It was impossible for it to reach such an incredible speed. However, the facts before him undoubtedly made him feel unbelievable, as if he had seen a ghost.
When he later saw the Spade fighter cut through the entire squadron of aircraft at an unimaginable speed, rushing directly out from among them like a sharp blade cutting through the sky, there was only deep fear on his face.
The fear was from the heart, as if he was facing a force beyond the comprehension of mortals. An irresistible sense of fear gradually spread in his heart.
"Retreat! Retreat! Let others retreat!" He finally couldn't suppress the panic in his heart, and shouted frantically to Christ behind him, his voice full of despair.
He had never seen such a strange scene. More than forty planes crashed at the same time, which was simply unheard of in his flying career.
What was even more terrifying was that when he detected Spade's driver through the Kamaitachi, he actually felt an indescribable fear, a feeling that even the half-bloods who had walked the path to deification had never given him.
Christ was also frightened by the scene before him, and he hurriedly passed the message of retreat to other pilots still in the air.
At this moment, he had only one thought in his mind: leave here, the sooner the better! Under Christ's command, the surviving British pilots turned their planes around and hastily retreated to the British base. Their retreat was so hasty that no plane dared to stay for a moment.
Due to the withdrawal of aircraft, the British artillery support quickly lost its accuracy, and some shells even fell on the positions of their own soldiers, causing chaos and panic.
Without the guidance of air power and artillery support, the British troops on the ground gradually fell into a passive position. Facing the reorganized Prussian machine gunners, batches of soldiers fell under the intensive firepower.
Prussian machine gunners were reaping British lives like the Grim Reaper. The battlefield was littered with fallen British soldiers, their blood dyeing the earth red. As casualties continued to increase, the British commanders finally realized that they could no longer continue this attack, and finally had no choice but to order a retreat.
When the British army began to retreat, Lu Mingfei also drove the already dilapidated Spade fighter and slowly prepared to land.
The fuselage of the plane had sustained severe damage in the fierce air battle. The wings were rattling and the engine was making a harsh noise. It could disintegrate at any time. When the plane finally trembled and landed on the ground, the Prussian soldiers on the ground quickly surrounded it.
The soldiers had different expressions. Some of them held their rifles tightly and stared nervously at the crumbling plane, not knowing whether the person walking out of it was an enemy or a friendly force. Their knuckles turned white from excessive force, their bodies trembled slightly, and they were ready to pull the trigger at any time.
Other soldiers looked at the plane with anticipation, their eyes full of awe and gratitude towards the pilot. After all, no matter who the other party was, it was this plane that stopped the British attack and saved their lives.
When Lu Mingfei climbed out of the cockpit, the soldiers around him instantly burst into cheers. When Lu Mingfei saw that he was surrounded by excited soldiers, he was slightly stunned. The feeling of being suddenly surrounded made him a little overwhelmed.
"It's Lieutenant! See? That's our company commander!" Hill and Paul were the first to recognize Lu Mingfei in the crowd. Their eyes were filled with excitement and admiration.
The lieutenant, whom they had always trusted and admired, once again saved them in an incredible way. This time, he was like a god descending from heaven. He fought against fifty enemy planes alone in the air and shot down forty enemy planes. This feat was enough to make anyone feel awe.
Lu Mingfei stood next to the plane and felt the warm cheers from the soldiers around him. The cheers surged towards him like a tide, making him feel warm in his heart.
As the news of this thrilling air battle spread back to Prussia, the whole country was shocked. On the Somme battlefield, the feat of a Prussian pilot fighting against fifty enemy planes alone and shooting down forty of them instantly became the focus of national attention.
The name William Hans spread throughout Prussia like lightning and became a hero in people's minds.
The First World War was the most glorious era for pilots. No other era worshipped the profession of pilots like this one.
Against the gloomy backdrop of war, countless unknown men perished on the battlefield, while those few pilots who were able to soar into the sky were given almost mythical worship.
In daily news reports, the media packaged these air combat heroes into superheroes in comics. Each of their battles and adventures was described as great and legendary like a myth. In this era strictly restricted by censorship, the press could not freely report the cruelty and reality of war, but they could use heroic stories to boost morale and inspire patriotism among the people. The pilots became idols of this era, their names were widely praised, and their deeds became the faith of countless people.
After all, there are very few people in this profession, and the weapons are so dreamy that they can fly in the sky. You have to know that in their concept, apart from birds, only gods can fly.
It will either end the day after tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. Don’t ask anymore.
(End of this chapter)
