41st Special Mixed Fleet, "Imperial Capital."
Tanimoto had guessed only halfway correctly; Bai Zhizhan indeed hadn't dispatched Fighters to escort the Attack Aircraft Group but had instead kept all the other 16 Fighters.
To be precise, it was not possible to send these Fighters on an escort mission.
At 11:15 am, after receiving a message from the Wei Jun on the "Wuzhou," informing him that an enemy Plane Group was approaching from the east, Bai Zhizhan immediately issued an order for the Fighters parked on the flight deck to take off urgently and reinforce what was a rather porous air defense network.
The focus was to expand the air defense perimeter to 100 kilometers.
Previously, to avoid revealing their position, the air patrol radius of the air defense Fighters had been reduced to 30 kilometers, nearly hovering around the carrier itself.
However, each carrier had only four Fighters on standby.
That was why the number of air defense Fighters increased by eight, totaling 24.
