Since early 1941, Li Runshi, one of the five core members, had been responsible for work in the Guangdong, Fujian, Yunnan, and Guizhou regions. After the outbreak of the war, these provinces naturally became logistics supply areas for the war.

Li Runshi had served as the president of the Party School. In the past six months or so, Li Runshi had made major adjustments to the personnel in the areas he was responsible for. Before the outbreak of the war, the shock caused by this tossing and turning finally subsided. Once the war broke out, Li Runshi had time to fulfill his duties as Vice Chairman of the Military Commission and participate in the war.

The scale of China's advance this time far exceeded that of the British army on the Indochina Peninsula. Li Runshi chose a plan dominated by the Air Force. After eliminating the enemy air force on the Indochina Peninsula with hard power, continue to use air superiority to destroy the British Army and Navy on the Indochina Peninsula, and then seize Singapore and control the Strait of Malacca.

On the afternoon of October 28, after finishing the call with Li Runshi, Yamamoto Isoroku said angrily to Chao Meng, the Deputy Commander of the Coalition Navy beside him, "Commander Chao, does China also have Shoguns?"

Chao Meng didn't expect Li Runshi's status to rise suddenly either, but Shogun might not represent a negative meaning in Japan, whereas it was vastly different in China. If He Rui was compared to the Son of Heaven, producing a Shogun meant producing a powerful minister who made the Son of Heaven a figurehead, which everyone would have the right to punish. Chao Meng immediately expressed a different opinion. "Commander Yamamoto, Chairman Li is the Vice Chairman of the Military Commission. What do you mean by this?"

The reason Yamamoto was unhappy was that his plan was for the Navy to be the main force, using aircraft carriers to escort the Marine Corps to land directly near Kuala Lumpur. The Army Aviation would play a supporting role. Li Runshi's plan was the opposite: Army Aviation played the leading role, and Naval Aviation played the supporting role. Of course, Yamamoto was unhappy.

Chao Meng's words stunned Yamamoto immediately. After all, having taught in China for many years, Yamamoto quickly understood and apologized hurriedly, "Sorry, I spoke without thinking just now. I will admit my mistake to Chairman He."

Chao Meng didn't mean to pursue it particularly. Yamamoto's ability was outstanding, and the Navy indeed hoped to play the leading role. Li Runshi's choice was not unconventional, but it made the Navy feel very uncomfortable. Chao Meng asked, "What is Chairman Li's arrangement for the Navy?"

Yamamoto shook his head. "Land in northern Malaya and establish temporary airfields. Our Navy changes from active attack to waiting for the enemy. Once the attack of the British fleet is discovered, we choose to retreat, hang onto the British fleet, and use the Air Force to solve the British army."

Chao Meng felt there was no problem with this line of thought. There was a Thailand in the middle of the Indochina Peninsula, separating the four northern countries from Malaya in the south. Since China did not invade Thailand or force Thailand to participate in the war, it could only cross the sea to enter Malaya.

Yamamoto's previous plan was to kill with one blow, engaging in a decisive battle with the British army directly in the narrow southern region of Malaya. The plan chosen by Li Runshi was to land in northern Malaya, backed by Thailand. In terms of military formation, this opened a scissor mouth. Once the British army actively moved north to attack, the blades of the Chinese Army and Navy would close, cutting off the British army delivered to the door.

"Commander Yamamoto, wait a bit longer. We have plenty of opportunities," Chao Meng said.

At this time, Li Runshi put down the phone and stood up to look at the map. The markers on the map showed that 1,200 Army Aviation fighters and 600 Navy fighters on 6 aircraft carriers, totaling 1,800, were assembled in Champa and Cambodia. Britain had lost 200 aircraft in the past few days, leaving only 400. With 1 against 4, Britain couldn't hold on for long.

Li Runshi did not think it was necessary to engage in a fast attack now. "Keep the land and lose the people, both land and people are lost. Keep the people and lose the land, both land and people are kept." The Air Force was by no means about giving an ordinary person a plane to become a pilot. Instead, it required more than ten years of education to cultivate students with sufficient knowledge and skills, and then undergo pilot training before it was possible to become a fighter pilot.

If a fast attack was launched, the risk of accidents was high, and it might also allow the British troops to flee. Fighting step by step, if the British army was not mobilized and still stuck to the area centered on Singapore, China had considerable experience in building rapid airfields and could build temporary airfields capable of taking off and landing current fighters in at most three days.

Army Aviation could then use airfields closer to the front line to launch attacks continuously throughout the day, consuming British elite pilots while covering the Army's continued southward advance along the Indochina Peninsula. With the progress of the Army, the narrow Indochina Peninsula became one side of the scissors, and it was getting longer and longer. Even if the British army stuck to its defense and did not come out, this big pair of scissors could also bring the British army into the attack range and cut down eventually.

Calculated according to the time of plan execution, the decisive battle period would inevitably be entered in at most 7-10 days. What's the hurry! At this stage, there was still the possibility of the United States entering the field. If the United States attacked from the Philippines, Yamamoto, who was waiting at ease, could just deal a heavy blow to the US military.

Li Runshi could understand the thoughts of guys like Yamamoto; he just felt that Yamamoto and his group were not serious enough about war.

On the evening of the 28th, the Chinese landing troops finished loading and began to leave Cam Ranh Bay under the escort of submarines and warships to advance towards the northern region of Malaya. At dawn on the 29th, the Air Force arrived over the landing site. The first batch dispatched was the helicopter formation on the landing ships.

There were already people meeting them on the coast, led by Chen Malay, a captain of the Malayan Communist Party guerrillas. This year, he and other comrades of the Malayan Communist Party went to China to study and receive training. Seeing the state-building process of the four southern countries with his own eyes, he was deeply moved. Being ordered to return to Malaysia to prepare for the reception these days, it really felt like years.

Chen Malay originally thought he would see a large number of small boats landing, but he didn't expect several strange aircraft flying over from the looming ships. The aircraft had wings; the fuselages of these aircraft were very much like dragonflies without wings, with a bamboo-copter-like rotor on top and one at the tail. After landing, the rotors were still rotating, blowing up a strong wind.

Chen Malay hurried forward to welcome them, his somewhat greasy hair blown into a mess. At this time, the cabin door opened, and several soldiers carrying various weapons jumped out. Two of them talked to Chen Malay, and the others didn't make a sound, just made a few gestures to each other and scattered towards the interior of the land. The sound of the engines of the strange aircraft became deeper and more powerful; they rose straight into the air and went towards the sea.

Chen Malay wanted to say more, but watched everything that just happened almost unblinkingly. It wasn't until the aircraft flew far away that he turned his head back and sighed to his former training camp instructor Li Meng, "You finally came!"

With the help of local MCP guerrillas, the landing was very efficient. Helicopters transported personnel and preliminary supplies ashore quickly. Officers and soldiers quickly established a beachhead position. Combat personnel advanced inland under the guidance of MCP guerrillas to expand the position. Engineering personnel set up preliminary landing equipment.

The entire process was like a large engineering team. Everyone looked busy with work that didn't seem necessarily urgent. As helicopters and small boats transported people and equipment to the shore, they were immediately and naturally incorporated into the work.

An hour and a half later, Chen Malay still didn't understand what these people were doing. Two and a half hours later, Chen Malay found that the frameworks of three 300-meter-long temporary pontoon bridges had somehow appeared before his eyes. Four hours later, although the three pontoon bridges were still being built, distant ships docked beside one pontoon bridge, and a steady stream of soldiers got off the ships and climbed onto the coast along the pontoon bridge.

On the other two pontoon bridges, strange vehicles with wheels in front and tracks in back drove slowly and non-stop along the pontoon bridges towards the shore.

By noon on the 29th, the Chinese landing troops had built a 5-kilometer-long landing point centered on the small fishing village at the landing site. And they began to build a temporary airfield on the inland open space that had been reconnoitered before.

At the same time, the British fleet, led by the flagship *Prince of Wales* carrying Commander Vice Admiral Phillips, sailed out of Singapore and sailed all the way east.

Although many young Turks in the British Navy considered Vice Admiral Phillips an old fogy who was proficient in gunnery and superstitious about big ships and heavy cannons, Vice Admiral Phillips himself did not think so. Having experienced the Dunkirk evacuation in the Western European campaign, Vice Admiral Phillips did not despise the application of aircraft at all.

The British Navy was the first navy in the world to suffer suicide air attacks. In 1924, outside Wusongkou, a British fleet centered on a battlecruiser and heavy cruisers shelled Shanghai when the Chinese National Defense Force crossed the Yangtze River. The fleet was subsequently sunk entirely by Chinese suicide attack aircraft.

Since then, ship air defense had become a key research object of the British Navy. Fighter performance improved rapidly in the past 20 years, and Britain's stress-response-like air defense research actually walked in the forefront of the world. Among the fleet centered on 6 British battleships dispatched this time, every ship had a very fierce air defense system.

The so-called superstition was just reality proving to Vice Admiral Phillips that the British Navy had strong air defense capabilities and could rely entirely on the fleet air defense system to counter enemy air forces attacking the British fleet. Vice Admiral Phillips himself did not refuse British Air Force support during navigation or naval battles at all, nor did he oppose close cooperation between the Navy and Aviation.

Taking the fleet flagship *Prince of Wales* as an example, this newest battleship launched in 1941 was installed with 175 new-style anti-aircraft guns, capable of firing 60,000 shells per minute. In addition to a speed of over 30 knots, the *Prince of Wales* battleship was also installed with the latest air defense and surface search radar, capable of searching for enemy aircraft and warships from afar at any time.

In domestic confrontation exercises in Britain, the *Prince of Wales* battleship performed excellently and was considered the benchmark for 35,000-ton battleships in the world. Other British ships also possessed excellent air defense capabilities. As long as the ship could install radar, the British Navy installed it. Through radio exchanges within the fleet, monitoring of all angles without blind spots was carried out, focusing on being watertight.

At 19:00 on October 29, they sailed all the way along the Dutch East Indies to the southwest of Borneo before starting to head north. The British army had also built airfields in Borneo, and the fleet was always within the cover of Borneo airfields during the northward journey.

By nightfall, the British Air Force and fleet radar had never found the movements of the Chinese Navy and Air Force. Intelligence received during the day showed that the Chinese Air Force continued to carry out saturation attacks on British air bases in Malaya, and the Chinese Air Force destroyed two more British airfields relying on huge numbers.

This time the range of the Chinese Air Force was 300 kilometers farther than yesterday. Everyone in the British Air Force was forced to take off three times, and they gave up the airfield only after being exhausted and unable to fight anymore. Lieutenant General Arthur Percival, Commander of the Singapore Theater, informed Vice Admiral Phillips to be careful of the Chinese Air Force. The number of Chinese Air Force planes exceeded imagination; perhaps 1,200 fighters participated in the daytime air battle.

Vice Admiral Phillips couldn't help but want to back out after hearing this news. 1,200 fighters couldn't swarm up all at once; they had to launch attacks in batches. But many ants can bite an elephant to death. If there was a loophole in air defense, his own death would be a small matter, but the British Far East Fleet would likely be completely lost.

At night, a Chinese Air Force reconnaissance plane group approached the waters near Borneo to search. Although called a reconnaissance plane, it was actually a J-9 fighter loaded with altitude-measuring radar. The two pilots turned on the autopilot, watching the monitoring instruments during the flight while chatting about the plane itself.

The pilot in the front seat said, "I heard that the J-9 was originally called an advanced trainer."

"If the J-9 is just a trainer, how excellent must the official planes be? The J-10 and H-5... are indeed very good," the operator in the back seat replied in a flat tone. The J-9 model was designed very comfortably and could be loaded with various electronic equipment, considered a fairly balanced multi-role fighter.

Now the single-seat versions of the J-10 and H-5 were used on naval aircraft carriers. When classmates serving in the Navy talked about these two planes, they said they were specialized versions of the J-9. The J-10 was lighter and smaller, with enhanced maneuverability, and excellent circling, climbing, and diving performance. The H-5 enhanced the bomber's bomb-dropping capability and survivability.

The pilot in the front seat replied, "Not that kind. I heard a test pilot classmate say that it is a plane adopting a new type of engine, completely different from current planes. I also heard from him that the J-9 was originally an advanced trainer."

The operator in the back seat did not answer immediately. There were always many rumors related to equipment in the Air Force; some became reality, some were just talk. For example, people had been saying that enemy search radar would be installed on planes for several years, but even a prototype hadn't been seen. However, the altitude-measuring radar was installed quietly, and its effect was much more precise than equipment measuring altitude based on air pressure.

This conversation was just chatting to avoid sleepiness while idle. Most of their attention was focused on watching the equipment. Now there were more and more devices on the plane, and every one was very useful, but wanting to cover everything almost required compound eyes like insects to see them all.

After flying for a while, a huge window suddenly appeared in the thick clouds below the plane. The pilot spoke again, "I'm lowering altitude."

After speaking, he cancelled the autopilot and maneuvered the plane to lower altitude. Even with altitude-measuring radar, there wouldn't be a problem of not being able to identify direction in the dark night, but flying into clouds or flying under thick clouds still made people feel very uncomfortable. Under the clouds at night, it was really so dark outside the cabin that one couldn't see one's hand in front of one's face. The most suitable description for the feeling at this time was "a blind man riding a blind horse, approaching a deep pool at midnight."

Not long after the plane flew in the window of thick clouds, the two pilots, front and back, said almost simultaneously, "Situation."

Under the shadow of a large cloud mass to the right front, something darker than the surrounding darkness was moving. Ordinary people looked for where it was brighter at night, but reconnaissance plane pilots had to learn to look for where it was darker. The plane slowed down and flew over these black shadows.

Looking at everything below from the air, it seemed as if the things below were moving at different speeds. What looked like the black shadow of an enemy warship might also be just a few reefs exposed on the sea surface.

The reconnaissance plane patiently flew around these shadows. After a good while, with the slow movement of the clouds, the shadows below finally revealed their true figures. Even though the figures of these fleets were soon obscured by the shadows of clouds again, the two pilots immediately determined that it was indeed a fleet of warships underway.

Without the pilot saying anything, the operator in the rear had already begun calculating based on flight direction and speed, and soon obtained a rough bearing. The plane flew forward, and the operator sent out the news of discovering the enemy fleet. Before long, the night duty of the staff department immediately ordered more reconnaissance planes to take off, and nearby reconnaissance planes moved closer to the direction where the British warships were discovered.

The air defense radar of the British fleet also discovered the aircraft signals in the air and reported the news immediately. Vice Admiral Phillips was woken up and held a meeting with fleet staff officers. The fleet staff officers were a bit nervous about this annoying fly. The fleet had maintained radio silence throughout, yet its traces were still discovered. It could be seen how many Chinese reconnaissance planes were searching for the traces of the British fleet in the sky at this time. This search would not stop. When dawn broke, more Chinese reconnaissance planes would come to search for the British fleet.

Just as they were discussing whether to continue advancing, the phone next to the Vice Admiral's seat rang. The adjutant picked it up and listened for a moment, then said into the phone, "I'll give the phone to the Commander now."

Vice Admiral Phillips took the phone and heard the person on the other end say very nervously, "Commander, we have discovered two more aircraft signals now... Damn it, now it's three. One plane came from the 10 o'clock direction, and two planes came from the 8 o'clock direction."

Although Vice Admiral Phillips was very confident in the fleet's air defense, a wise man does not fight when the odds are against him. More importantly, at dusk, Singapore Theater Commander Lieutenant General Arthur Percival implicitly proposed whether the fleet should return to the vicinity of Singapore to participate in defense. And the staff officers all believed that they should not continue north.

Judging roughly from the battles of the past few days, the number of Chinese fighters with a range exceeding 2,500 kilometers was probably over a thousand. Since they had been discovered by the Chinese Air Force, the fleet would likely encounter frantic attacks from thousands of "Chinese Madmen" after dawn tomorrow.

"Order to return," Vice Admiral Phillips made the decision.

The surrounding staff officers all secretly breathed a sigh of relief. Since the British Navy had a fleet with a battlecruiser as flagship annihilated by Chinese Air Force suicide attack aircraft in 1924, Britain liked to call the Chinese Air Force "Chinese Madmen." And the "Chinese Madmen" in the Chinese Volunteer Army aiding France could sortie three times a day during the Battle of Britain. This craziness further strengthened the British people's awe of the "Chinese Madmen."