Chapter 1088: Exercise 1010 |
Dragon Island now conducts air combat exercises every day, where the engagements take place within a designated area, primarily to assess the combat readiness of various Air Force fighter jet troops.
Moreover, this is also where pilots are mainly trained to handle emergencies and adapt to confrontations with formidable opponents, as well as to enhance their aerial dogfighting skills.
Of course, so far no external troops have achieved victory in exercises against the Blue Force’s fictitious enemy troops on Dragon Island due to the vast equipment disparity between the two sides.
Dragon Island’s fictitious enemy troops are mainly equipped with J-6 fighters, while other Datang Empire Air Force pilots are generally equipped with Butcher Fighters—indeed, the two belong to entirely different eras, making defeat virtually no surprise.
Conducting such exercises is not about letting these external Air Force troops win but to prevent them from becoming arrogant or complacent, to keep them limber, and to avoid overreliance on equipment performance.
It’s just that the process of being trounced in the exercises is not very pleasant. Many pilots even treat the entire exercise as if it were a grand-scale horror story upon returning to their own units.
An ace pilot from the Chang’an garrison Air Force was flying his own Butcher Fighter near the seas around Dragon Island.
Thirty-plus victory markings were daubed on the tail of his fighter jet, signifying his strength. As a veteran pilot, his record was very impressive, which is why he could serve as the squadron leader in the Air Force troops stationed in Chang’an.
At this moment, he was leading the six planes under his command, forming three formations, flying above the clouds.
In the radio of the six Butcher Fighters, the voice of the control tower also sounded: “This is Dragon Scale 1 ground control station, your position is very clear on the radar, the exercise officially begins, good luck.”
The squadron leader controlled his aircraft and searched the nearby airspace anxiously through the cockpit’s canopy glass: “Thank you! Continue searching! Stay alert!”
"Sir, no target spotted, I’m following behind you.” Not far behind him, another Butcher Fighter closely followed, as the wingman pilot searched the other side habitually and reported in.
Inside the cockpit of the lead aircraft, the squadron leader glanced at the dashboard and reminded everyone: “Maintain combat formation! Watch out for those damn Blue Force adversaries, these bastards have plenty of tricks. Stick to plan one; Group two, stand by in the clouds!”
Pilots of group two immediately carried out their leader’s orders: “Understood! Maintaining altitude… 7000 meters! The clouds are below us! Good visibility.”
Two Butcher Fighters broke off from the formation and began to lower their altitude. Meanwhile, two other Butcher Fighters formed a formation, flying some distance from the squadron leader’s plane.
"Watch below! I suspect they will use the lower area to approach!” After a while, given the poor visibility below, the squadron leader warned again.
The wingman pilot, with eyes sore from searching for targets, couldn’t help but complain: “Group two is ambushed in the clouds; if they come over, group two will launch an attack from below.”
"Group three reports, no trace of ‘enemy aircraft’ discovered,” reported the pilot of the lead plane in Group three, which was instructed to maintain about a two-thousand-meter distance.
The wingman pilot complained a bit irritably: “Damn it, this exercise has no reference value at all; our real enemies would never have such advanced planes.”
"Silence! This is an exercise, a test for us! Watch your speed, keep your distance!” snapped the squadron leader piloting the lead aircraft, noting the time when the opponents were supposed to have arrived.
Although they did not know how powerful the Blue Force’s fictitious enemy aircraft were, they had heard some legends about these planes before coming here.
Fellow troops mentioned that these planes were incredibly fast, and some said that the adversaries were like damned ghosts. Due to confidentiality reasons, they were reluctant to talk much about their experiences on Dragon Island, so those who came here for the exercises didn’t know how terrifying the situation truly was.
Suddenly, the wingman pilot’s cry of alarm jerked the squadron leader out of his thoughts—his voice full of panic as if he had seen some sort of monster: “One o’clock direction! One o’clock direction! Suspicious target spotted! Damn, they’re so fast!”
In the blink of an eye, the two black dots were already close at hand; they had seen their opponents, but barely had time to see how they had approached.
The damned enemy aircraft had swept-back wings and were incredibly fast, like shooting stars, streaking right past everyone. As the two planes appeared, the entire sky echoed with a deafening roar as if the firmament itself had split open.
Immediately, a thought appeared in the minds of all Butcher Fighter pilots: What the hell was that thing?
"Spread out! Spread out! Maintain distance! Climb! Seize the advantageous position!” Almost instinctively, the squadron leader commanded his subordinates to counterattack according to their past habits.
"Group 3 received, spreading out! Spreading out!” The pilot of Group 3 also responded to the captain’s orders through the headset.
The pilots ambushed in the clouds of Group 2 immediately answered as well: “Group 2 is climbing! What is that sound? Damn it, what kind of speed is that?”
But just as they had begun to climb out of the clouds, they saw in the distant sky, two black dots traced a super exaggerated arc, circling back into the battlefield.
Realizing what was happening, the captain immediately changed his tactics: “Switch to Plan Two! Switch to Plan Two! They are faster than us, stop climbing, stop climbing, dive into the clouds! Lower your altitude!”
In their past engagements, they had always held the speed advantage, but this time it was clear that the enemy was faster. In such a situation, continuing to climb was no different from courting death.
He swore to the heavens that in all his years of flying, he had never seen anything move so fast. Those two enemy jets, their entire bodies glinting with cold light in the distance, didn’t seem cumbersome at all after circling back in a huge loop.
To be fair, according to the rules of the exercise, the opponent’s first attack was invalid. Therefore, after the enemy jets swept past the Butcher Fighter formation and circled around in the distance, they initiated a second attack.
This meant that the pilots participating in the exercise were essentially warned about the enemy’s approach first, then faced a blatant attack, which was the height of arrogance!
Yet in the eyes of the captain of the Butcher Fighter unit participating in the exercises, those two damned “enemy aircraft” really did have the capital to be so arrogant!
The wingman kept tilting his head up, ceaselessly searching, he felt for the first time that the Butcher Fighter he piloted didn’t offer sufficient visibility.
After his neck had become sore from the turning, he finally spotted the two jets glittering under the sunlight that had abruptly entered his field of vision: “Damn it, they’re coming, did you hear that sound? Repeat, did you hear that sound?”
Now, the absurd roar echoed across the entire sky, and at this moment, the Butcher pilots began to get a sense of what those enemies who had heard the siren of the Datang Empire Stuka Dive Bombers must have felt.
This oppressive force from all sensory directions was indeed enough to cause a collapse. Even with their headsets on, the deep roar was still crystal clear. For these pilots, the noise was like the whispers of a devil.
Piloting the Butcher Fighter and altering his flight path, the squadron leader reminded his comrades to meet the formidable enemy with tactics they were not familiar with: “Avoid! Avoid! Horizontal maneuver! Keep lowering altitude, draw them to a lower position for a dogfight, don’t let them use their speed advantage!”
Over the past few years, they had never faced such an adversary, and so actually had little experience in dogfighting the enemy. They would not let themselves fall into jeopardy; in most cases, they adhered to the principle of hit-and-run dive attacks.
Such tactics were starkly similar to those the opponents were using… The difference being that the two enemy jets were approaching at even higher relative speeds!
"My lead plane was judged to be shot down! It didn’t even respond! What do I do now? Commander! Repeat, what should I do now?” The anxious voice of Wingman from Group 3 came through the radio.
It seemed the enemy’s attack was well planned, following the principle of cutting off the wings before hitting the core, launching a first strike at the peripheral Group 3.
The ace captain from Chang’an, while piloting his aircraft to lower altitude, searched for those two enemies through the cockpit. He had never before fought such a frustrating aerial battle, so he had to rely on the clouds to stabilize the formation: “Decrease altitude! Decrease altitude! Enter the clouds! What kind of speed is that?”
Then, he suddenly saw those two enemy jets turning a big circle at an extremely fast speed; the enemies were using their terrifying speed advantage to circle more quickly than the Butcher Fighters making tighter turns!
Having witnessed all this, the captain then let out that exclamation: What kind of speed is this!
Even though the Butcher Fighter’s one-piece canopy provided a rather clear view above, the pilots sitting inside still felt as though their visibility was obstructed.
The wingman pilot followed his lead plane spiraling down while sidestepping, shaking his head back and forth, hoping to catch sight of those two adversary planes that appeared and disappeared like ghosts.