Ho Weigui Naval Air Force Base in the Inner Island.

This island is between the Howai Islands, about 1,000 kilometers east to Hono Island, and about 1,000 kilometers west to the transit island. As for this naval aviation base, it is named after the heroic pilot of the Second World War and later became the commander-in-chief of the Navy. This is also one of the most important aviation bases of the Imperial Navy on the Howai Islands.

Unlike those air bases in the east, He Weigui's base mainly serves patrol aircraft.

During peacetime, an anti-submarine patrol aircraft squad was stationed at the base, with a total of more than 60 aircraft, two-thirds of which were in deployment.

However, the base must have more than a few dozen anti-submarine patrol aircraft.

Before the Newland Republic joined the war, the Imperial Navy enhanced the deployment capacity of the Ho Weigui base and transported a large amount of logistics support equipment to the base.

The key is that the inner island is located right between Honu Island and the Transit Island.

In addition, the inner island is much larger than the transit island and is also larger than other islands in the west. It can build large military bases and deploy more combat aircraft.

According to the deployment, the inner island played a role in connecting the transit island and the Honu Island.

At any time, the anti-submarine patrol aircraft deployed on the inner island are the main force to cover the maritime routes to Zhenbao Port, and they also assumed the important task of covering Honu Island during wartime.

But now, the mission of the Navy Air Force is to cover the transit island in the west.

After checking the dozens of instruments in front of him again, Zhu Tingxuan gave a thumbs up to the officer standing outside the cabin, saying that he was ready to take off.

The steward made a sign language on standby, indicating that the fighter jets behind were not ready yet.

There are a total of 4 "War-9", and only Zhu Tingxuan is "War-9A", and the other 3 are "War-9B".

This is Zhu Tingxuan's second fighter jet.

On the morning of the 4th, after escaping from the air battle, Zhu Tingxuan failed to fly the fighter plane back to Wallace Air Force Base and made a forcibly landing more than 200 kilometers east of Honu Island. The main reason was that he consumed too much fuel while avoiding the attack and failed to get the help of the tanker.

Fortunately, the forced landing went smoothly, and neither Zhu Tingxuan nor his partner Hu Haitao were injured.

In addition, after about 4 hours of floating on the sea, the two were caught by a seaplane and returned to Wallace Air Force Base that afternoon.

Subsequently, several pilots from the crew were rescued.

They were forced to land on the sea due to burning fuel during the return journey.

As for the fighter jets shot down during the battle and the personnel on the early warning aircraft, they have not been found yet and are temporarily included in the list of missing persons.

According to the argument given by the Air Force, enemy planes were approaching the Hovayi Islands and could be bombed at any time, so they did not dare to risk dispatching tankers. When Zhu Tingxuan and the others returned, the Air Force was doing its best to evacuate combat aircraft deployed at the front base. A few tankers were sent to the west to provide services to those tactical aircraft retreating to the rear, and they could not care about the navy.

I spent one day at Wallace Air Force Base, mainly undergoing a physical examination to determine whether I had suffered internal injuries during a forced landing.

On the night of the 5th, Zhu Tingxuan and Hu Haitao boarded an Air Force transport plane and returned to Li Mingbo Naval Air Station on Guandao from Wallace Air Base.

There are several "War-9A" waiting for Zhu Tingxuan and Hu Haitao.

Unfortunately, Hu Haitao has received the transfer order, and Zhu Tingxuan also met his new partner Liu Chengfan, a novice who has just graduated from the Naval Aviation School.

In fact, they only stayed on Guandao for more than 10 hours.

During this period, the two of them only flew into the sky once, which was a basic mutual understanding.

Afterwards, on the afternoon of the 6th, Zhu Tingxuan received an order from Zhenbao Port and immediately flew to He Weigui base on the inner island by flying a fighter plane.

Because the transfer island was attacked and the 41st special mixed fleet was not near the transfer island, Zhu Tingxuan and the others had to dodge south. Not only did they bring two large sub-fuel tanks, but they also refueled in the air in the southeast of Wei Island. They flew for 6 hours before they arrived at the inner island.

During this trip, several transport planes heading to Honu Island were provided with escort services.

After arriving at He Weigui's base, Zhu Tingxuan learned from the commander of the aviation force that he would lead a team to carry out a special mission.

Flying fighter planes to the ebony air base in the Aliu Islands.

Of course, it is not a transfer flight, but a reconnaissance mission, focusing on searching for the sea area 1,500 kilometers north of the transit island.

But that's not difficult.

The straight-line distance from the Transfer Island to Ebony Island is only more than 3,000 kilometers, and the "War-9A" has a transition flight of 3,500 kilometers after hanging two large sub-fuel tanks. Even if you encounter some trouble in the middle, you can still refuel in the air after flying to the Aliu Islands.

Obviously, this action is not that simple.

Because of fear of being intercepted, the flight altitude must be lowered before reaching the reconnaissance waters.

According to the plan, a range of at least 1,500 kilometers must be flying at low altitudes.

This means that the fuel consumes about half the amount of fuel than flying at high altitudes!

Obviously, even with two large secondary fuel tanks, the "Battle-9A" cannot fly so far, and there is not even enough fuel to complete the search range.

For this reason, we can only make necessary changes to the fighter jets.

First, the non-essential equipment must be removed to reduce weight. In addition, the main hanging point under the wings can be used to mount the secondary fuel tank.

Because it uses variable sweep wings and is steplessly regulated, the "War-9" only has a heavy-load external plug-in point on the lower surface of the inner fixed section, and is a composite hook-in point, which is usually hung with 1 long-range air-to-air missile and 2 fighting missiles, and can also be mounted if necessary.

However, there is no oil transport interface installed at this hanging point.

The main thing is that there is a dedicated secondary fuel tank hanging point below the air inlet channel of the connection, and it can carry a large secondary fuel tank of 2,200 liters.

Fortunately, the "War-9" adopts an integral wing box fuel tank, and the pipeline connecting the wing fuel tank passes through the top of the lower wing hanging point.

In other words, you only need to add an oil transmission interface to mount the secondary fuel tank at the wing mount point.

In fact, during the test flight stage, the "War-9" conducted a similar test. After hanging four large secondary fuel tanks, the transition range reached an astonishing 5,000 kilometers. Because there was no need for this, and the "War-9" was already overweight, in the mass production stage, in order to achieve the weight reduction indicators proposed by the Air Force, the oil transport interface with a mass of 25 kilograms was simply cancelled.

Fortunately, the base has been prepared long ago.

After working for several hours, I finally got all four "War-9s".

In addition to making changes to the lower wing hanging points, the weight of at least 2 tons was also reduced by dismantling unnecessary equipment, especially Zhu Tingxuan's "War-9A".

This is the first batch of "War-9A" that has been in service with the Imperial Navy for 14 years.

After retreating from the front line, the fighter served in the shore-based aviation for several years, and was then handed over to the Imperial Naval Aviation Academy.

It is not used as a trainer, but in the "Golden Eagle" unit for elite pilots.

Simply put, it acts as an imaginary enemy and plays the main opponent of the "War-9", the F-14 fighter of the Newland Navy.

The result is that this fighter has not undergone any modernization improvements in more than 10 years of service.

On the contrary, due to high-intensity use, the life of the fighter's fuselage is almost used up, and many structural parts have been strengthened by the "Golden Eagle" troops.

This is also impossible. The Golden Eagle troops have not found a replacement fighter jet, and the Navy Command will not spend money to purchase new fighter jets for it. As long as it can be used, even if it is a stitching, it is much better than not having a fighter jet available.

In other words, compared with other "War-9A", the empty weight of this "War-9A" is nearly 1 ton!

Because during confrontation training, the takeoff weight can be reduced by reducing the amount of oil or hanging less missiles, even if the air is more significant, it will have no impact.

As a result, after the renovation was completed, the air weight of this "War-9A" was reduced by nearly 3 tons.

If there are not some structural parts that cannot be replaced, you can reduce more than a few hundred kilograms.

However, after such transformation, all the four "War-9s" lost their air combat capabilities. Zhu Tingxuan's one had no basic air detection capabilities because he removed the radar. If he encountered enemy planes on the way, let alone fight back, he would probably notice it after being attacked by missiles.

In Zhu Tingxuan's opinion, this is not a big deal.

He is performing a reconnaissance mission alone. Even if the base commander does not say it clearly, the pilot can think that this trip will definitely be in danger.

Since I have the idea of ​​not being able to come back or cannot say that I can’t speak of the ebony air force base, what else can I worry about?

As for the mission purpose, it is to find the Newland fleet that is active in the Northeastern Ocean, but it is not a special fleet, but an amphibious landing fleet.

When arranging the mission, the commander of the aviation force made it clear.

As long as you find the amphibious landing fleet of the Newland Navy, you can conclude that the Newland Navy will attack the transit island in the near future, so the Newland Navy's special-mix fleet will definitely be in the Northeast. Only after making this judgment will the Navy Command send the 41st special-mix fleet here.

To be said, the primary purpose of this mission is still to find the Newrant mixed fleet with five aircraft carriers.

Otherwise, even if the Newland army boarded the transit island, the Navy Command would not let the 41st Special Mixed Fleet take the risk of joining the war.

Zhu Tingxuan knew how important this task was.

In just a few minutes, the three fighter jets behind were ready to take off.

The other three crews are also from the shore-based aviation team. All three pilots have thousands of hours of flight experience, but they have not participated in actual combat.

It is precisely this that Zhu Tingwei was appointed as the captain.

In fact, this "long-distance" identity has no meaning.

According to the arrangement, after taking off, the four fighter jets must be separated before reaching the key search waters to expand the search range as much as possible.

That is, before this, the team leader led the team, and then they all flew.

In addition, in order to avoid premature exposure of whereabouts, unless the Newland fleet is discovered, the four fighters must remain radio silent throughout the entire journey.

In this way, it makes it even more meaningless to run a flight.

In fact, the greatest significance is to burn hundreds of kilograms of fuel. This is, when flying in formation, the pilot aircraft cannot use the increased vortex generated by other aircraft, and the follower aircraft can use the increased vortex, so the fuel consumption of the aircraft is greater than that of other fighters.

Of course, whether or not you use hundreds of kilograms of fuel is not a big impact.

When the service chief raised the yellow flag and began to wave it, Zhu Tingxuan started two engines in turn and checked the main instrument for the last time.

To be honest, the control system of "War-9A" is much more complicated than "War-9B", with more than a dozen instruments alone.

Fortunately, Zhu Tingwei flew past the "Battle-9A" before and was very familiar with this fighter, so he didn't feel like he couldn't touch the north when he sat in the cockpit.

As the engine reached its maximum thrust for takeoff, the service chief also raised the green flag.

After raising his hand to the service chief, Zhu Tingxuan pulled down the night vision device installed on his helmet and then released the brakes.
To be continued...