Chapter 524: The Battle of the Buka Shore
Japanese Pilots flew their Ki-27s towards the Bismarck Sea. They were hyper focused, most likely stimulated on some form of pharmaceutical substance. Their eyes dilated and locked in.
These men were confident, almost super humanly so. The Emperor had guaranteed them that the Japanese Army was the greatest and most advanced in the world. And his word was divine truth.
It didn’t hurt that this was partially true. Outside of Germany and Russia, Japan did have weaponry that was a decade ahead of the competition.
Meanwhile, their training was elite. Lessons learned from the Great War showed the importance of aviation on the modern battlefield.
And as the wing of Ki-27s approached their target, they saw explosions erupting from below. But these explosions were not an uncontested domination of their naval landing forces.
Rather, the opposite. The wing ahead of them was torn to shreds by flak. The airburst ammunition exploding once achieving critical proximity, tearing the fighters to shreds like paper planes. And felling the pilots with them.
Meanwhile, coastal artillery batteries fired upon Japanese Naval vessels such as landing craft, and their destroyer escorts. The heavy, 17cm and 21cm artillery ravaged the ships in a way that had been entirely unexpected.
Despite Bruno making a similar move at Port Arthur on behalf of the Imperial Japanese nearly 25 years prior. And yet, the Japanese pilots did not waver nor falter in their charge. Shouting over the wire in unison as they ran straight through the kill zone over the island.
"Tennoheika Banzai!"
And then they came, not from above, but from below... Blending into the tropical brush which littered the hillsides, a squadron of Bf-109s sprinted into a climb at a rate that Japanese were not expecting.