Allied planes during the night. Apparently, they were not expecting an attack, but obviously the commander of the Zuikaku thought that extra caution in war was never a bad thing.
The dark time of day was only to my advantage. I took my time getting out of the HQ dugout and, with the help of the liaison officer, who spoke a little Russian, I warned the Chinese airfield commander that we were getting ready to take off.
I didn't have to look for Kudryavtsev. The Major-General, seeing from afar how the Chinese officer rushed to carry out the order, immediately understood, what was going on and hurried over to me himself.
“As you may recall, this is not my first time in China,” grinned the regimental commander, “I remember that if the Chinese start making such a fuss, it means something serious is going on. Shall I prepare the regiment for a combat flight?”
“We shan't all go, there's no point. I need ten planes with outboard fuel tanks.”
“Is the target at sea?”
“Yes. The heavy aircraft carrier Zuikaku, escorted by two destroyers, is scheduled to leave port on Okinawa Island this evening in a southeasterly direction.”
“This is a serious ship,” Kudryavtsev nodded, “We hang two ABOV-1000 bombs each?”
“Only on a couple of ILs. Let the pilots of the other planes take armor-piercing bombs, the Zuikaku has an armor deck seventeen centimeters thick.”
“Why don't we take at least twenty planes? Ten with bombs, and the rest as fighters. It's not a battleship, it's an aircraft carrier. Her fighters could meet us before we even get there.”
“At night? I doubt it, and besides, it's unlikely they'll be able to intercept us, given their speed.”
I answered with full confidence in my voice, but something in my own words seemed wrong. It was not easy for me to give up the stereotypes I had formed, but I reminded myself that it was time to get used to the new realities, in which the opponent's capabilities would not always meet my expectations.
“Permission to perform?” Kudryavtsev interrupted the pause.
“Just a minute, General. I guess you're right. Get twenty ILs ready to take off. After all, this is our first operation in China, so we need to take some precautions, and I think we need to think about the types of bombs.”
We flew over the coastline at an altitude of eleven kilometers. Despite the very small reserve of fuel, I still led the group not straight to the target. I decided to take it as an axiom that the enemy knew about our operation, and I thought it right not to reveal our plans ahead of time. Now our course clearly indicated that we were going to Taiwan. There, too, were many attractive targets for an attack, and the Japanese must have remembered the relatively recent history of such a raid. In 1938 Soviet pilots attacked their airbase on this island. The SB bombers then dropped 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
