Chapter 281: Father Beats Son
Above the azure sky, an F-4 reconnaissance aircraft painted with the blue sky white sun emblem flew steadily over Shanxi at a cruising altitude of six thousand meters, like a lone eagle.
In the cockpit, pilot Zhu Jin’s movements seemed somewhat languid.
He piloted the plane while blowing a bubble from bubble gum squeezed between his teeth; with a light “pop,” the bubble burst, and the sweet fruity scent filled the narrow cockpit.
Through the radio, he asked in a bored tone, “Old Bing, have you captured anything valuable yet? I’m sick of looking at those villages and field ridges below.”
Behind him, in the narrow rear cabin, photographer and radioman Xie Bingshun was fully focused, lying prone at the viewfinder of the K-22 aerial camera.
He rubbed his eyes, sore from prolonged focusing, and irritably replied, “Nothing so far. Same as always, no major changes on the ground… wait…”
His voice suddenly stopped, then the pitch sharply rose, full of astonishment and tension!
“Old Zhu… lower the altitude.
Quick… drop to three thousand meters. I think I saw something incredible!”
“Got it!”
Zhu Jin’s voice instantly shifted from languid to excited; this was exactly what he had been waiting for!
He shoved the control stick forward sharply, and the high-performance reconnaissance aircraft responded almost instantly, nose dipping, plunging toward the ground at a terrifying near-sixty-degree angle like an arrow loosed from a bow.
The powerful negative G-force made Zhu Jin feel like his butt was about to lift off the seat.
At the same time, Xie Bingshun in the rear cabin was thrown into disarray by the sudden violent maneuver, pinned tightly to his seat by the safety belt.
But he had no time for cursing; his hands quickly operated, and with a crisp “click,” he switched the camera lens from the 6-inch wide-angle to the 24-inch telephoto.
Instantly, the ground scenes in his viewfinder zoomed in sharply, with crystal-clear images flashing by rapidly.
“Old Zhu… steady the damn plane! Steady it!”
Xie Bingshun stared fixedly at the viewfinder while cursing through the throat microphone, his right thumb madly pressing the shutter button.
“Click… whir…”
“Click… whir…”
The crisp shutter sounds and film advance mechanisms intertwined with the roaring engine.
If not for the gyroscopic stabilization device on this prized camera—cutting-edge black tech that minimized the impact of high-speed flight and shaking on imaging—Zhu Jin’s earlier dive, comparable to a bomber’s bomb drop, would have produced nothing but unusable blurry messes.
“I see it… I see it…”
Xie Bingshun shouted while greedily capturing the scene below into the camera.
The aircraft’s altitude continued dropping, soon breaking below one thousand meters.
At this height, the once-blurry ground had become crystal clear.
Zhu Jin didn’t even need binoculars; with the naked eye, he could clearly see the ground scenes, let alone Xie Bingshun in the rear cabin viewing through the 24-inch telephoto lens.
The scene on the ground made both men gasp simultaneously.
Toward Taiyuan city, what should have been golden wheat fields on the plains and rolling mountains on both sides had been completely transformed into a massive war fortress.
Bunkers of various sizes and shapes, like poisonous mushrooms sprouting from the earth, dotted key high points and traffic routes.
These bunkers were connected by deep, sinuous trenches and anti-tank ditches like centipedes, forming an airtight, multi-layered three-dimensional defense network.
Countless Japanese soldiers in khaki uniforms scurried like ants among the fortifications, building more defenses. The glint of bayonets and dust from engineer shovels wove a killing scene under the sun.
“Damn! When did the Japs build all these bunkers and trenches?”
Zhu Jin couldn’t help exclaiming. He clearly remembered flying this route just over half a month ago, when it was still peaceful farmland.
In less than half a month, the Japanese had made such massive changes! They had turned the entire Taiyuan outskirts into a giant turtle shell!
As he marveled, clusters of inconspicuous orange flashes suddenly erupted from the Japanese positions on the ground that had looked like ants moments before.
Before Zhu Jin could react, clusters of black smoke clouds exploded violently around their plane!
“Boom! Boom! Boom!”
Several death flowers of shrapnel and smoke even bloomed less than a hundred meters from the plane; the massive explosions pierced the engine roar, clearly audible to Zhu Jin in the cockpit, making his eardrums buzz.
The fuselage shook violently from the shockwaves, like a small boat tossed in stormy seas.
“Get out of here! Old Zhu! The Japs have heavy anti-aircraft guns!” Xie Bingshun in the rear cabin shouted at the top of his lungs, voice full of urgency.
“No need to tell me, I know!”
Zhu Jin gritted his teeth, squeezing out the words. His eyes sharpened instantly, his face losing all its usual playful smirk.
He yanked the control stick fully back toward his lap, while his left hand shoved the throttle to the max.
The reconnaissance plane’s massive nose snapped up sharply, climbing almost vertically into the sky.
The plane traced a thrilling, graceful huge arc in the sky, the engine roaring at overload as it escaped the ground anti-aircraft guns’ effective range at top speed, returning to safe high altitude…
Four hours later, night had fallen.
Inside the Wuta County militia’s underground headquarters, lights blazed, and the staff were even busier than during the day.
A huge long table was covered with aerial reconnaissance photos freshly rushed from the darkroom.
These photos, taken by Zhu Jin and Xie Bingshun at risk of their lives, were stunningly clear.
On the black-and-white photos, the Japanese defensive system around Taiyuan was laid bare before Su Yaoyang, Bai Chongxi, Chief of Staff Pi Ruoyu, and other senior officers.
The dense bunkers scattered like psoriasis over the hills and fields.
The deep, twisting anti-tank and communication trenches crisscrossing like a spiderweb.
And the camouflaged hidden gun positions and soldier caves, still exposed under high-altitude telephoto lenses… all clearly showed that Xiao Tsukasa Yoshio was determined to turn Taiyuan into a meat grinder.
“I admit, I underestimated this Xiao Tsukasa Yoshio.”
Bai Chongxi’s finger slowly traced a photo, his tone carrying a hint of surprise. He looked up at Su Yaoyang with meaningful eyes:
“Of course, I admit I underestimated you even more, Mingxi.”
A smile tugged at his lips. “This aerial reconnaissance work was done excellently.
Normally, to get even a scrap of this intel, we’d sacrifice countless elite scouts.
But now? Just send one plane over the Japanese lines, and it’s all laid out clear as day before us.”
Bai Chongxi’s praise was sincere.
As a battle-hardened soldier, he knew intel’s importance and the difficulty and cost of obtaining it.
Su Yaoyang’s near-“God’s eye view” intel capability had completely upended his worldview.
“Trifling matter, not worth mentioning.”
Su Yaoyang modestly waved it off, trying to appear nonchalant.
But his uncontrollably upward-curving lips betrayed his inner smugness.
After all, showing off in front of the “Little Zhuge” wasn’t an opportunity to come by often!
Bai Chongxi, worldly-wise after decades, saw through Su Yaoyang’s little scheme instantly.
Amused by Su Yaoyang’s failed attempt at coolness, he chuckled, waved, and said, “Alright, alright! I know you, Commander Su, are a famously rich landlord overflowing with wealth. No need to flaunt it in front of a poor wretch like me.”
After the joking, the headquarters atmosphere turned serious again.
Bai Chongxi pointed at the several-meter-deep trenches in the photos, frowning: “Hmm… these anti-tank ditches pose a real threat to our tank units. We have tanks, but not many; if they get stuck, they’ll be sitting ducks for Japanese anti-tank guns. We need a way to deal with them.”
Chief of Staff Pi Ruoyu immediately chimed in: “Easy. We can follow World War I tactics: send elite engineer teams with lots of explosives to directional-blast key ditch nodes, collapsing and filling them to clear paths for the tanks.”
Su Yaoyang nodded, his finger pointing to the scattered bunkers: “These bunkers threaten our attacking infantry too, especially the machine-gun positions. Without knocking them out, infantry charges will suffer huge casualties.”
“That’s where your babies come in.”
Bai Chongxi looked at Su Yaoyang. “Only precise aerial bombing or your heavy artillery for pinpoint elimination.”
Bai Chongxi shifted tone, eyes sharpening as he pointed to hidden markers in the photos, asking gravely: “And these—the well-hidden pillboxes and caves that hold masses of soldiers. Planes and heavy guns can’t easily destroy them directly. What’s your plan?”
Facing Bai Chongxi’s pressing question, Su Yaoyang just smiled confidently, as if it were no big deal.
He jabbed a finger at the pillbox and cave markers, saying casually: “These underground rat holes are easy too. Conventional way, as Commander Bai said: planes dropping heavy bombs. If planes can’t handle it, or to save bombs, even simpler—let our Independent Heavy Artillery Battalion deal with them.”
“Independent Heavy Artillery Battalion?”
A flicker of confusion crossed Bai Chongxi’s eyes; he’d never heard of this unit.
He thought he knew the Shanxi militia’s order of battle inside out—when did an “Independent Heavy Artillery Battalion” appear?
Before Su Yaoyang could speak, Chief of Staff Pi Ruoyu stood up understandingly to explain to the deputy commander: “Commander Bai, this is a heavy artillery unit we secretly formed per the commander’s orders. Its designation and strength haven’t been disclosed externally. It…”
Pi Ruoyu paused slightly, as if choosing words to soften the shock. “It is equipped with six 203mm M1 heavy howitzers, more than enough to handle any pillboxes or soldier caves in the gutters.”
“What… you even have… 203mm heavy guns?”
This time, Bai Chongxi was truly stunned.
He shot upright, eyes wide like bells, face full of disbelief. If the aerial recon had merely amazed him, this “203mm heavy gun” was earth-shattering!
As a veteran, he knew exactly what 203mm heavy artillery meant.
Forging large-caliber gun barrels required million-ton hydraulic presses, top-tier industrial gear that even impoverished China lacked—only a few global powers had them.
So China’s arsenals could barely make low-tech mortars, mountain guns, field guns; for complex peak army firepower like heavy howitzers, they could only import pitifully few, treating each like a national treasure.
Now Pi Ruoyu said the Shanxi militia—a local force—not only had them, but a whole “battalion”—six guns! It was absurd!
After brief shock, immense joy surged in Bai Chongxi’s heart!
He stared blankly at Su Yaoyang, then burst into loud laughter, full of exhilaration.
“Hahaha… good… excellent! Mingxi… you hid this well!”
He stepped forward, slapping Su Yaoyang’s shoulder hard, eyes blazing. “With siege weapons like these, let’s see how tough Xiao Tsukasa Yoshio’s turtle shells really are—whether they can withstand our army!”
With 203mm heavy guns, those seemingly indestructible reinforced concrete bunkers and pillboxes were like paper!
This wasn’t just tactical superiority—it was total domination.
