Chapter 247: White-hot Intensity
In the morning, the sky over Hubei was clear and azure, with bright sunshine.
For the soldiers who had endured so much in the mud and rain, this was a rare and good day.
But for the Thirty-third Group Army in the Pumpkin Shop area, this clear sky portended the arrival of death.
Buzzing… buzzing…
Like the wings of an endless swarm of locusts, that unique, heart-pounding roar of engines came from the eastern horizon.
The Japanese Sang-nan Third Air Group, along with the attached Forty-fourth and Seventy-seventh Light Bomber squadrons, a massive aerial strike cluster of over a hundred bombers and fighters, flew in like vultures circling over a corpse, obscuring the sky as they descended upon Pumpkin Shop.
No warning, no probing.
The next second, countless black dots fell from beneath the aircraft bellies, whistling sharply, like hail from the god of death, smashing down onto the Nationalist army’s positions.
“Boom… rumble…”
The earth shook violently, moaned, and was torn apart.
Large mushroom clouds, mixed with black smoke and flames, rose from the positions one after another.
Soil, rubble, broken firearms, and fragments of human bodies were hurled high into the sky, only to fall back like bloody rain.
Sturdy fortifications collapsed like paper in the explosions, trenches were leveled, and countless Chinese soldiers holding their ground were vaporized by the intense explosions or buried alive before they could even utter a scream.
In an instant, the entire Pumpkin Shop area was enveloped in thick smoke and raging flames, transforming into a hell on earth.
And this was only the beginning.
Accompanied by the rumbling of aircraft in the sky, on the horizon, tens of thousands of Japanese troops from their Third and Thirteenth Divisions surged forward like a tide.
They stepped on the scorched earth created by their own bombing, brandished gleaming Arisaka rifles, and with beast-like roars, launched a desperate charge towards the still burning and trembling Nationalist positions.
“Kill…”
“Hold the line! Hold it for me!”
Before the smoke of gunpowder had even dissipated, surviving Nationalist soldiers crawled out from shattered shelters.
They were covered in dust, their faces smeared with blood, many still hearing a buzzing in their ears, unable to hear anything, yet they still roared and fired madly at the advancing enemy with their Hanyang 88s and Type 24 rifles.
The distance between the two sides rapidly closed.
Five hundred meters, three hundred meters, one hundred meters…
When bullets could no longer stop the Japanese charge, the most primitive and bloody close-quarters combat erupted across this area of several tens of square kilometers.
The “thwack” of bayonets piercing flesh, the dull crunch of an engineer’s shovel crushing skulls, the bloody separation of neck from body as a saber struck, the roar of grenades exploding in crowds, the savage roars and dying moans of soldiers locked in hand-to-hand combat… all sounds mingled to form a frenzied and brutal symphony of death.
Within this small area, over one hundred thousand troops from both the Chinese and Japanese sides, like two behemoths locked in a coliseum, engaged in the most brutal slaughter. Every second, hundreds or thousands of lives withered away.
Blood soaked the scorched earth, forming small streams that flowed slowly through shell craters and gullies.
In the afternoon, Zhang Zizhong knew a breakthrough was hopeless. He couldn’t understand why the Japanese planes seemed to have eyes, bombing so accurately.
Time moved to the afternoon, and the bloody battle had already lasted for several hours.
The land of Pumpkin Shop was completely stained red with the blood of both sides, and the air was filled with the nauseating smell of blood, gunpowder, and burnt corpses.
General Zhang Zizhong knew that a breakthrough was utterly hopeless.
The Japanese offensive was like a pack of mad dogs, waves upon waves, regardless of casualties.
And the planes in the sky were like persistent parasites, tenaciously clinging to his command post and troop assembly areas, dropping bombs with terrifying precision, as if they had eyes.
He did not know that this was because the Japanese had deployed the latest radio direction-finding teams specifically to lock onto his radio signals for guided bombing.
By now, his last remaining force – the guard battalion – had all been thrown into the meat grinder of the front line.
He climbed out of the trench, half of which had been leveled by artillery fire, and stood on a small hillside. Beneath his feet lay layers upon layers of enemy and friendly soldiers’ corpses.
He narrowed his eyes, gazing at the sky shrouded in smoke and the dark shadows of aircraft, his expression devoid of fear, only an endless fatigue and a trace of serenity.
Suddenly, a violent explosion sounded nearby, and the shockwave, carrying shrapnel and rubble, swept over him. Zhang Zizhong felt his body go numb, and in a dizzying spin, he fell backward onto the hillside.
“General!”
His nearby guard was greatly alarmed. Scrambling over, he helped him up.
Zhang Zizhong’s face and body were covered in mud and someone else’s blood. A piece of shrapnel had cut his forehead, and warm blood flowed down his cheek, blurring his vision. He shook his head and asked urgently in a hoarse voice:
“The guard battalion… how is the guard battalion?”
The guard supporting him, a young man in his early twenties, his face streaked with tears and bloodstains, replied with a choked voice, “Commander Du… Commander Du has already died in battle… The devils have completely surrounded us, General… Here… here we only have the last few men from the guard platoon left…”
Hearing this news, a flicker of pain flashed in Zhang Zizhong’s tiger-like eyes. He sighed softly, and in that sigh…
Just as he was about to say something, a familiar, hateful engine roar sounded again, approaching from the distance.
Two Japanese Type 97 light bombers, like two eagles that had spotted prey, lowered their altitude and swooped directly towards their small hillside.
The machine guns under their wings began spitting fire, bullets whizzing past their heads and kicking up dust on the ground.
“Sir, be careful!”
The young guard, without hesitation, roared and lunged forward, shielding Zhang Zizhong with his own body.
Zhang Zizhong closed his eyes, preparing to face the final moment.
However, the expected explosion did not come.
At that critical moment, a completely different, more powerful, and swifter roar of engines suddenly sounded in the sky!
“Wooo… buzz…”
It was a roar that seemed to tear through the sky.
Zhang Zizhong and the guard looked up sharply. They saw two F4U “Corsair” fighters, painted in sky-blue maritime camouflage and with ferocious shark mouths painted on their noses, diving down from the clouds like two blue lightning bolts, instantly engaging the two Japanese bombers that were strafing them!
“Dada-da-da-da-da…”
The six 12.7mm heavy machine guns at the wing roots of the “Corsairs” opened fire simultaneously, emitting a terrifying roar like a chainsaw cutting metal!
Six streams of tracers arced through the air like brilliant and deadly whips, precisely striking the two clumsy Japanese bombers.
Almost instantly, the fuselages and wings of the two Japanese bombers were torn open with countless large holes. One of their engines exploded in mid-air, turning into a fireball.
The other, trailing a long plume of smoke, spiraled out of control and plunged towards the distant Japanese positions, causing a series of massive explosions.
The sky, at this moment, seemed to fall silent.
Looking at the two sky-blue fighter planes in the sky, like gods descending, and the Japanese bombers that had exploded and burned after crashing in the distance, Zhang Zizhong and his guard were stunned.
They tilted their heads back, mouths agape, their minds blank, even forgetting that they were still on a battlefield of mountains of corpses and seas of blood.
It wasn’t just them; at this instant, the frenzied sounds of combat on the entire Pumpkin Shop battlefield seemed to strangely halt for a moment. Countless Chinese and Japanese soldiers fighting for their lives looked up in unison at this sudden turn of events.
After a brief silence, a earth-shattering, post-apocalyptic cheer erupted from the Nationalist positions!
“Reinforcements! It’s our planes!”
“Our Air Force brothers are here to save us!”
“Brothers, attack! Our reinforcements have arrived!”
The morale, suppressed for too long, erupted like a volcano at this moment!
Amidst the deafening cheers, more miracles began to unfold. From higher in the clouds, one, two, ten, twenty… more and more “Corsair” fighters, painted in sky-blue maritime camouflage and adorned with ferocious shark mouths, appeared over Pumpkin Shop like divine soldiers pouring from the gates of heaven!
This massive air group was none other than the Shanxi Militia “Corsair” Flying Brigade, personally led by Cheng Rufeng!
The entire brigade consisted of two full “Corsair” fighter squadrons and one “Dauntless” dive bomber squadron, totaling over sixty aircraft!
“All fighter squadrons, engage freely! Shoot down all the Rising Sun flags in the sky!” Cheng Rufeng commanded concisely and coldly from his cockpit via radio.
At his command, the massive air group scattered instantly.
Dozens of F4U “Corsair” fighters, like hungry falcons spotting a flock of chickens, let out sharp whistles and, with unparalleled speed and ferocious posture, unhesitatingly pounced on the still-stunned, numerically superior Japanese air group in the sky!
The sky instantly became the most brutal grinder!
The Japanese pilots hadn’t even reacted to the surprise attack before they were overwhelmed by the oncoming storm.
The F4U’s powerful climb performance, terrifying dive speed, and the destructive firepower of its six 12.7mm heavy machine guns were fully displayed at this moment.
As soon as one Japanese pilot pushed the control stick, attempting to turn his aircraft to engage, a stream of tracers instantly pierced his cockpit, tearing him and his plane to shreds in mid-air.
On the other side, a team of six “Corsairs,” like a trident, ferociously plunged into a bomber formation composed of Type 97 light bombers.
They were like tigers among sheep; every short burst of fire could precisely detonate a Japanese bomber’s engine or fuel tank, turning it into a brilliant fireworks display.
The entire sky was filled with countless crisscrossing tracers, the flames of exploding aircraft, and long black smoke trails from falling planes. Fighter planes from both sides engaged in the most intense chases and battles within the clouds, at low altitudes, and above everyone’s heads.
The battle, from the very beginning, immediately entered a white-hot stage!
