Clever as the Japanese were, they were altogether outwitted, Timing the departure of the advance guard so as to synchronize with that of the actual raiding party, they sent nine machines to Kwangsi from Amoy, These came into the East River area, paralleling ihe Fukien and Kiangsi borderlines till they were far north in the province, then, veering to the left, ihe group made for Weichi in Kwangsi.
Needless to state news of the presence of the raiders at Waitsap was flashed to the airfield at Liuchow, but the home squadron did not budge from their centre, They went aloft and then deployed to cover air roads leading to the city and the highway back of it, Goon after the raiding at Weichi was over, and the nine machines had taken their departure, the main group of 22 planes came up. In an endeavour to further confound the Chinese, the big carrier had moved from its usual station off Tangchiawan not far from Macao, to the southeast off the county of Hopu. Eight of all this air flotilla were bombers They could do damage enough if they could only get over that public road, and fourteen were too few fighting craft to cover the less-easily manipulated bombing planes, The next ingenious trick of the Japanese was the detaching of two bombers from the main body, swinging to get round the flank of whatever force might come out to fight the bigger group. But even these tactics were anticipated and well met, The Chinese planes attacked and these two bombers were the first to drop, both on fire, The battle raged over three counties but as the Chinese were said to have had 50 fighting craft, the enemy did not have the remotest chance of slipping by. Soon they were on the run, the bombing planes letting loose all of their torpedoes.
Where the other two Japanese ships that were fired By incendiary bullets fell is uncertain, for they were shot down over a wild, rugged country, but fall they certainly did, A fifth Japanese plane is believed either to have fallen or else to have had to make a forced landing, for one was missing when the check-up was made as the raiders went out to sea, me U.S. Naval Birds Eighteen butte like pianes from the aircraft carrier Yorktown early this month gave massed demonstration flights at the Cleveland (Ohio) National Air Races.
and are regarded as the most formidable fighting planes of their size in the world.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.