LITMIR.BIZ

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nearly three hundred bombs on the Japanese airfield and destroyed forty naval aircraft, so I hoped that the enemy would focus on preventing a repeat of that scenario.

      “Satellites detected that the rebel drone's short-range communications system in orbit started transmitting,” Letra reported. “The signal is directed to the center of Tokyo. I'm afraid the enemy will know about your group's departure. I can't intercept or jam the signal.”

      All I had to do was wait for the reaction of the Japanese. I did not know which of Japan's top military leaders the rebels had chosen to contact, but he did not seem to be able to believe the information obtained in such an unusual way.

      Twenty minutes passed in anticipation. Nothing changed in the darkness around us, and only on the virtual map the marks of the group's planes were moving farther and farther southeast, approaching the island of Taiwan.

      “Fixing the radio exchange between the General Headquarters of the Japanese Navy in Tokyo and the fleet base in Taiwan,” Letra reported, and after a pause of about a minute, she continued, “The island's military facilities are on alert.”

      “When will we be in range of the Japanese radars?”

      “In ten minutes. Their radars are bad – they're way behind the leading countries in the world.”

      I turned on the radio to transmit the order to change course. Our appearance over Taiwan would be a direct confirmation of the information, obtained by one of the Japanese staff officers from the rebels. And I wanted the Japanese to believe their new allies as late as possible. However, instead of the usual rustle of the air, a squeal of interference burst into my headphones.

      “Letra, get in touch!”

      “I'm in touch,” the artificial intelligence immediately responded, “that’s an attempt to suppress radio signals.”

      “It is quite a successful attempt, by the way. I can't radio the other planes in the group.”

      “I turn on rebroadcasting via satellites.”

      The howls in the headphones subsided.

      “Thirty degrees to the right. Do not change the height.”

      The group skirted the island in a great arc. As tempting as it was to drop a couple of fuel-air bombs on the Japanese airbase, we shouldn't have done it. My target was the heavy aircraft carrier, and anything that could prevent its destruction was to be put aside until better times.

      We went around Taiwan from the north. The Zuikaku and her escort destroyers had already gone almost two hundred miles off the island. I had no doubt that our goal was now crystal clear to the rebels, but whether the Japanese would believe them after the information about the coming attack on Taiwan had not been confirmed, was a very interesting question.

      “Fifteen minutes to target,” Kudryavtsev reported, and almost immediately there was a message from Letra.

      “Captain First Rank Yokogawa received a radiogram from Tokyo… The Zuikaku turns her nose against the wind… The aircraft carrier raises her fighters.”

      The Japanese believed the rebels, and now our task was dramatically complicated. It is one thing to destroy enemy ships on a steady course by a surprise night attack from a high altitude, and quite another to bomb targets that are actively maneuvering, and with the opposition of fighters.

      I had originally intended to drop bombs on the Japanese ships without descending, that is, from an altitude of about eleven kilometers, where the on-deck Zero fighters and anti-aircraft artillery posed no danger to us, but this plan could only work if our attack was totally unexpected. Even with perfect aiming, an unguided bomb from this height can only hit a ship going at a constant speed and not trying to evade. Naturally, we had a backup plan, though I hoped we wouldn't have to resort to it. I hoped, as it turned out, in vain.

      “Group, initiate descent. "Seventh" and "Twelfth," illuminate the targets!”

      We were already practically over the Japanese ships. Naturally, nothing was visible below, and without the illumination no one but me could attack the targets. Letra's help here wasn't very effective either. Pointing aircraft at maneuvering targets by radio is extremely difficult because of the too rapid change of their coordinates and the quite natural lag in the reaction of pilots to commands.

      A scattering of bright lights flashed below – the "chandeliers" of flare bombs hung over the enemy's ships. Realizing they were detected, the Japanese turned on their searchlights, trying to help their pilots and anti-aircraft gunners see the targets.

      “Fighters, clear the sky!”

      The Japanese planes that took off from the deck of the Zuikaku did not go far from their ships, patrolling the sky at an altitude of about a thousand meters. They didn't see us, but they hoped to intercept the bombers as they came in to attack the aircraft carrier. But the first to appear over the Japanese ships were the IL fighters. A brief skirmish in which both sides feverishly tried to see each other in the wrong and too contrasting light of the "chandeliers," created chaos in the sky. Eighteen Zero planes were chasing eight twin-engine IL planes, guided by the bright cones of the exhausts of their turbojet engines, but the Japanese found it unexpectedly difficult to catch up with these rather large planes.

      Traces of fire crisscrossed the sky. One of the Japanese planes erupted and crashed into the dark waves, disintegrating into pieces. The searchlight beam mounted on the bow of the destroyer hit one IL, and chains of shells stretched from the ships to the plane. However, this target was too fast for the Japanese anti-aircraft gunners, and it almost immediately left the firing zone.

      “The fighters are taking the Japanese with them,” Kudryavtsev reported, “Permission to begin the attack on the main target?”

      In fact, not all the Zeros rushed after our fighter cover. Seven Japanese remained to cover the aircraft carrier, but it was unlikely that they could have seriously interfered with us.

      “Beginning approach to targets. "Nineteenth" and "Twentieth", you attack the destroyers. "Seventh" and "Twelfth," you will provide illumination and photo-fixation of the impact results. For the rest of the planes, the target is the aircraft carrier.”

      Even though they had been warned in advance of our attack, the Japanese could only make it difficult for us to complete our mission, but with their countermeasures the aircraft carrier had no chance of fighting back. But the commander of the Zuikaku didn't know that, and in any case it wouldn't have occurred to him to surrender.

* * *

      Captain First Rank Yokogawa realized almost immediately that his ship was being attacked by an unusual enemy. This was evidenced, in particular, by the fact that he had been warned of the danger by a radiogram from Tokyo. How could they have known about the impending attack on the Zuikaku? Information supplied by agents? But it doesn't come that quickly. And that warning came just in time – he barely had time to raise his fighters from the deck.

      The radiogram did not say whose planes were approaching Yokogawa's ships from the northwest. Clearly, it was probably the Americans or the British, but the pilots from Zuikaku had never seen such planes before. At the beginning of the attack, radio communication was lost. For about a minute the air was thick with interference, but then it suddenly disappeared and the Zero pilots were able to report back to the ship that they were dealing with very fast twin-engine fighters, armed with powerful cannons and leaving short but brightly glowing trails behind them while flying.

      The searchlight beam caught the silhouette of an enemy plane out of the darkness for a few seconds, and Yokogawa was convinced that he had really never seen anything like it before. And yet they were only fighters. They didn't try to attack the ships and didn't seem to have any bombs. Yokogawa did not believe that the enemy had found them in the night sea solely to play catch-up with the Zero planes of his air group, which meant that it was only a diversion and that somewhere in the darkness enemy bombers were preparing to attack. They were not visible and, by all appearances, the anti-aircraft crews would only notice the enemy planes when they are already over the ship.

      The aircraft carrier commander was unpleasantly surprised how easily

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