An air raid is powerful because it is a raid.
In the Second World War, the J-faction captain Fuchida said after the fact that his side lost Midway in "five minutes of fate."
Four carriers had their decks crammed with a second wave—tanks topped off, ordnance loaded—just five minutes from launch, when the US faction carrier planes howled in and smashed any hope of victory.
"Five minutes of fate" is an exaggeration, of course. Given the gap in national power, even ten Midways wouldn't have saved the J-faction; unless they could conquer the US-faction homeland, they were always going to end up bloodied.
But the phrase does capture how decisive the time window is in carrier warfare.
In the air war, you win by spotting first, striking first.
Tonight was no different.
Because it was night—a blind spot in everyone's thinking—the Nation shipgirls had no real AA posture. Across the line, what they carried most were mines and guns; many would rather fit sonar to hunt subs than waste slots on AA guns and air-search radar.
Everyone "knows" night is bad for carrier planes: formations, scouting, coordination—all a mess. Combat power drops by seventy percent or more compared to daylight.
But thirty percent of five million is still a daylight strike of a million and a half. And their overall commanders were elite Abyssal carrier flagships; the night might not blunt them much at all.
Heizou was shouting for air defense with no hope in his heart.
This trap didn't spring now; it was set much earlier—back when the Abyssal Akagi, Kaga, Taiho, and Zuikaku in the East Sea learned that Hikaru's Tirpitz had beaten Barbarossa single-handedly.
At the time, the Abyssal mass in the East was at its most terrifying in carrier aviation alone; over four million mustered, making commanders jump at shadows all day for fear of an imminent bombing.
Yet not long after Barbarossa's defeat by Hikaru's girls, that mighty mass melted away, retreating into the eastern ocean, leaving barely a million to assist Ryuujou in holding the First Island Chain.
A million Abyssals isn't much; a single named flagship—Ryuujou—looked downright shabby. Hardly enough to defend, let alone attack.
And Ryuujou, arrogant by nature, lit the whole theater ablaze.
Gorou saw the opening and chose to finish it in one stroke: lure and behead Ryuujou to retake the First Island Chain.
Exactly what the Abyssal flagships wanted.
They'd detoured to Yingzhou and painstakingly hid an even larger force there, waiting for one perfect ambush.
And sure enough—what a flawless surprise. Trust the likes of Abyssal Akagi and Kaga.
At this point the operation was doomed; what mattered was losing as little as possible.
Radio silence was broken on the Marshals' orders, transmitters blazing shoreward: the situation was dire—coastal cities to immediate maximum alert.
The entire country jolted awake.
Takeyama craned on tiptoe toward the far sea. It was obvious now: Gorou, the pillar of the realm, was the Abyssals' true target.
Streaks of fire fell in dense sheets from the "ink cloud," a rain of flame.
Abyssal light carriers were prosecuting subs; fleet and armored carriers were harvesting the torpedo special-attack groups on the surface.
The destroyer and submarine formations were caught flat-footed; even trying to dodge, they were at a disadvantage in fit.
Tens of thousands of fully trained destroyer shipgirls, under the carpet-bombing of five million Abyssal aircraft, screamed through their tears and shattered—bodies turning to emerald water and folding back into the sea.
In a single wave, not one in ten of fifty thousand destroyers survived.
Below, the thousand-odd submarines girls didn't even leave bubbles—most were entombed on the seabed.
On the surface, Gorou hunched his back, forcing his neck to crane as he watched.
"Swift as the wind, quiet as the forest; fierce as fire, steadfast as the mountain. Move like thunder; be as inscrutable as the shade. Worthy indeed… of the flagships that inherit Akagi and Kaga's ship-souls."
As shipgirls struggled and sank, their commanders, hearts being pierced, charged into the bombing zone without regard for their lives. Gorou's shoulders curled further.
"This… is war."
[End of Chapter]
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