Liu Nan Miscellaneous 4 Air Combat Hero - Gao Zhihang

If you like it, pay attention to it

In middle school, I watched Michael Bay's Hollywood blockbuster "Pearl Harbor" and was shocked by the visual impact of air combat for the first time. Although the film has some exaggerated and fictional elements, with further study of history, it is true that the Americans in the film retaliated against Pearl Harbor for tit-for-tat, and general Doolittle led the death squad to take off long-range on the aircraft carrier to bomb Tokyo.

However, when it comes to the heroes who guarded China's skies during the War of Resistance Against Japan, many people may think of Chennault and his Flying Tigers, and some people will say that the Hump route and the American pilots who died here to aid China, and even some people will relish the contributions made by Ms. Song Meiling, the "mother of the Chinese Air Force", in pioneering the cause of flight, but if you want to talk about who fired the first shot of China's air resistance against Japan, there is a name that must be mentioned, that is, Gao Zhihang, who was the commander of the destroyer unit of the Chinese Air Force and the captain of the 4th Air Brigade. A heroic martyr of air combat heroes.

Gao Zhihang

Aspire Aviation

Gao Zhihang's parents raised a total of 8 children, as the eldest son in the family, Gao Zhihang has long understood the hardships of running a family, at the age of 13, with extraordinary talent and perseverance, Gao Zhihang was admitted to the famous Fengtian Sino-French School, which is a church school opened by China and France, where Gao Zhihang laid a solid Foundation in French.

At the end of his studies after 4 years, also for the sake of reducing the burden on his family, Gao Zhihang did not apply for the university, but transferred to the artillery department of the Northeast Army Officer School free of charge and officially joined the army. When he was studying in the artillery department, Gao Zhihang heard that the young marshal Zhang Xueliang intended to select a group of outstanding military cadets to study flying in France, and he could not help but be thrilled with his French learning background, but the cruel fact was that his height of 1 meter 67 did not enter the eyes of the instructor, and he was eliminated in the first round.

The 17-year-old Gao Zhihang was aggrieved and cried, but there was no one to comfort him. Later, he was not willing to give up in such a confused way, thought of an idea, wrote a petition letter to the young marshal Zhang Xueliang in French, and changed his name from the original "Gao Mingjiu" to "Gao Zhihang" to show his determination to join the Air Force. Zhang Xueliang was impressed by this persistence, coupled with Gao Zhihang's military school achievements, French and other aspects of the quality are very good, so he broke the admission, sent him to France Mulanne Higher Aviation School to learn to fly.

The plane piloted by Gao Zhihang

After undergoing a rigorous physical examination at the French Moulana Aviation School, Gao Zhihang underwent primary flight training. After completing his primary education, he transferred to the Army Aviation School in Marcester to study destroyers, and after graduation, he was awarded the rank of non-commissioned officer and went to the 23rd Destroyer Wing of the French Army Air Corps in Nancy for apprenticeship. During his study abroad, Gao Zhihang's hard work was obvious to all, and he practiced superb flying skills in just over a year, which made the French instructors who participated in the First World War also feel admired. At the same time, the romantic French culture also makes the lively Gao Zhihang like a fish, he especially loves to dance, exquisite skills, even after returning to China, this foreign style does not change the past, deeply affecting his love and family life.

Iron bone tenderness

In January 1927, Gao Zhihang returned to China and was incorporated into the Flying Eagle Air Corps of the Northeast Air Command, where he was awarded the rank of major. For a moment, the mediawoman who came to the Gao family to say that the media almost stepped on the threshold, including many scholars and eunuchs, but Gao Zhihang unexpectedly married a White Russian woman in exile in China.

It's a very romantic story: When Gao Zhihang's troops were on a mission in Inner Mongolia, they went shopping one day and met this beautiful White Russian girl, Gloria, a Russian nobleman who had fled to China after the October Revolution. When shopping, because she only speaks Russian and French, she can't communicate with the clerk, and when she was in trouble, Gao Zhihang went up to her to break the siege, and the two people met like this.

The two acquaintances soon fell in love, and soon Gao Zhihang was married to Gelia in Manchuria without his family. This kind of behavior, which is not yet very acceptable in today's society, was simply earth-shattering news in that era. So when Gao Zhihang came back with his newlywed wife to see his father, the angry second elder resolutely did not let the two enter the door, and Gao Zhihang, who was also stubborn, was not moved, stunned that he could not kneel with his wife at the door of the house, and finally his parents were soft, and the father said with a cold face, "No need to kneel!" "It is a tacit admission to the entry of this foreign daughter-in-law."

However, in this year, Gao Zhihang, who was proud of the love field, the workplace, and the battlefield, encountered a setback. It was a test flight of a new aircraft, because of a mechanical failure, the aircraft's joystick was out of control when it landed, directly breaking Gao Zhihang's right leg, and had to be sent to the hospital for treatment. The first time he gave him a bone graft was a Japanese doctor, and I don't know whether this person was a simple quack doctor or had sinister intentions, but he did not clean up the wound, and directly connected to the broken bones to give Gao Zhihang a finished thing. As a result, although the legs were reduced, they became looped legs, and the thigh muscles began to atrophy, and they saw that they were about to be destroyed and could not go to heaven. Gelia saw that something was wrong, rushed to Harbin to find a well-known Jewish doctor for follow-up consultation, and traveled in many directions to determine that he had to re-operate to recover, and Gao Zhihang agreed without saying a word. At that time, the anesthetic technology was not good, many soldiers were worried that it would affect the nerves and refused to play anesthesia, gao Zhihang was the same, so when the bone was picked up, his leg was hard to be broken again, which was more tenacious than Guan Yu scraping bone to cure poison.

After the operation, Gao Zhihang was able to fly again, but because of the delay in treatment, leaving behind the sequelae of one leg long and one leg short, some people jokingly called him "Gao Lame", but when it came to the skills of this lame pilot, all the pilots of the Northeast Air Force had to give a thumbs up.

Rise against the wind

In 1931, the "918" incident broke out, he was not willing to live under the iron hooves of the Japanese, so he bid farewell to his wife and daughter and went into exile, and went to the nanjing central government aviation corps at that time, where he wanted to take off again and make the Japanese pay their due price!

From the Northeast Army to the Central Army, everything has to be torn down and restarted, the previous honorary status and even academic qualifications have disappeared, and Gao Zhihang has been repeatedly excluded because of the problem of origin. What is even more stifling is that because the Chinese Air Force had a ban at that time, pilots were not allowed to have foreign spouses, and Gao Zhihang, who was bent on flying the plane and serving the country in blood, had to make a decision that made him extremely difficult and divorced his wife, Georgia.

It is said that Gelia later returned to Gao Zhihang's Tonghua hometown, bid farewell to her in-laws, and embarked on the road of displacement alone, and has not been heard from since. Gao Zhihang's eldest daughter, Gao Liliang, later asked people in northeast China and Moscow, the Soviet Union, to inquire about her birth mother, but to no avail, and Gelia's whereabouts and fate became an eternal mystery.

There is a way that "there is always a reward for paying", Gao Zhihang can be suppressed, can be excluded, can be divorced, but his superb flying skills can not be taken away by anyone, as long as he is given a chance, the light of the eagle cannot be hidden.

In 1936, on the day of Chiang Kai-shek's 50th birthday, the Aviation Commission held a special air combat technology and flight aerobatic performance in Nanjing with the participation of the air forces of Britain, Germany, and Italy. After Gao Zhihang, who was staying in Hangzhou at the time, heard the news, he took the initiative to fly to participate. In the meantime, he showed his best tricks in the air, winning the applause of various guests on the field, and dwarfing several foreign military stunt teams that wanted to compete. After the performance, Chiang Kai-shek praised his superb skills, and soon the news spread through various media at home and abroad. Since then, Gao Zhihang's name has been known to almost everyone in the military.

Eagle strike long air in

In 1937, the Lugou Bridge Incident broke out, followed by the fall of North China, Chiang Kai-shek decided to fight a Songhu Conference Battle with Shanghai as the center, intending to use space to win time, and the Shanghai Concession had many foreigners, who also wanted to involve foreigners in the war, so that the League of Nations at that time came forward to mediate the Sino-Japanese situation. Warlords from all over the country went to the country in distress, and the elites of the whole country were transferred to Shanghai one after another, and for a while the three armies were gathered, the troops were strong and strong, and Gao Zhihang, who was at the Jianqiao Air Base in Hangzhou, finally waited for the day when he would take revenge on the Japanese Kou.

On August 13, the Battle of Songhu began. The next day, the Japanese Naval Aviation sent eighteen Type 96 land attack aircraft from Taipei to indiscriminately bomb the Chinese airfield, and it happened that 9 of them rushed to Hangzhou Jianqiao and hit Gao Zhihang's gun.

At that time, the weather conditions were very poor, the visibility was extremely low, the Japanese army had to fly at a low altitude in order to complete the bombing task, Gao Zhihang led the pilots of the 4th Air Force to fly the US-made Hawker III fighter to take off to meet the battle, in more than ten minutes of air combat, the 4th Group shot down a total of 3 Japanese aircraft, injured 1, and only 1 fighter was slightly injured, creating a glorious record of 3:0 in an air battle in the Chinese Air Force War of Resistance, which greatly boosted the morale of the military and civilian resistance throughout the country.

In the following month, the Nationalist government officially decreed that August 14 of each year was celebrated as Air Force Day to commemorate the air warriors who dedicated their blood.

In the air battle on August 15, Gao Zhihang once again took the lead and rushed into the Japanese aircraft defense fire net to attack the enemy's captain, immediately shooting it down, completing his second downing record. Under his leadership, other pilots of the 4th Group also boldly approached the Japanese aircraft, taking full advantage of the speed advantage to carry out the tail attack, shooting down and injuring 18 Japanese aircraft in the First World War, forcing the two Japanese squadron leaders to commit suicide by cutting their stomachs.

Regrettably, Gao Zhihang was unfortunately wounded in the right arm during the battle, and he was unable to participate in the counterattack against the Japanese army, and by the time his wounds were healed, it was already late September.

On September 26, Captain Shichiro Yamashita, commander of the 13th Air Force of the Japanese Naval Air Force, led five Type 96 fighters to cover the bombing of 12 bombers from Shanghai to Nanjing, and met 12 Hawker III narrow roads under the 4th Group led by Gao Zhihang. In the panic, the Japanese army tried to entangle the Hawker III fleet of the Chinese Air Force with fighters, covering the bombers to drop the altitude and slip away, Gao Zhihang did not participate in the entanglement, but tightly stared at the enemy's long planes to track away.

Although Gao Zhihang did not know that the pilot was Shichiro Yamashita, one of the "Four Heavenly Kings" of the Japanese Naval Air Force, according to common sense, the Japanese pilot who could fly the Type 96 fighter was definitely the ace pilot in the Japanese army, and it was more meaningful to kill him.

Gao Zhihang concentrated on the aerial fighting under the mountain, from high altitude to a low altitude of less than 100 meters. The two men held each other's tail many times, and various difficult flight movements appeared frequently, and finally Gao Zhihang put the silver 96-type fighter piloted by Yamashita into the machine gun sight, and the two guns were fired concurrently, and the landplane under the mountain immediately smoked, began to flee in the direction of Shanghai, and finally forced to land in Taicang County, east of Suzhou.

Shichiro Yamashita himself and the Type 12696 fighter he flew were captured by the Chinese army, the highest-ranking Japanese pilot captured for China since the beginning of the War of Resistance Against Japan.

The eagle flew away

At the end of October 1937, the Chinese Air Force, which had almost run out of all aircraft, withdrew from the Songhu battlefield with hatred, and the Japanese army, which had lost its air threat, was even more arrogant, frequently dispatching aircraft to bomb the positions of the Chinese army, and civilians and wounded also became the targets of their fierceness.

Fortunately, in order to let the Chinese army contain Japan, Stalin decided to assist the Chinese war of resistance, and the Soviet Air Force generously sent a volunteer flying team, and also sent a number of I-15/16 fighters with performance no less than the Hawker III. As the top pilot, Gao Zhihang was assigned an important task, that is, to familiarize himself with the performance of this aircraft as soon as possible, form combat effectiveness as soon as possible, and let the Chinese Air Force re-enter the sky.

To this end, Gao Zhihang went to the northwest, and in Lanzhou, he flew the I-16 alone without getting the flight manual without being explained by soviet pilots and ground crews, and also made a series of high-level aerobatic maneuvers continuously, which calmed all the Soviet Aid China Aviation Corps personnel present on the spot. After becoming familiar with the performance of the aircraft, he served as the leader of the pilot plane, guiding the Soviet volunteer pilots from Lanzhou to Chinese mainland. At the same time, Gao Zhihang himself broke into the Liupanshan route for the first time, organized a direct shortcut to fly over Liupanshan, flew to Nanjing via Xi'an, Luoyang, and Zhoujiakou, and urgently threw himself into the increasingly tense air battle on the Nanjing front. By this time, he had put his personal safety aside, and his only thought was to hurry back to the front line and drive the Japanese out of the territory.

On November 20, Gao Zhihang once again led the team to fly across Liupan Mountain to Zhoujiakou, Henan, and was going to fly directly to Nanjing after refueling, but Nanjing expressed rapid electricity: "Nanjing is raining heavily, the climate is bad, do not take off." The next day, when Gao Zhihang was organizing his subordinates to start their planes to prepare for takeoff, the air defense siren suddenly sounded, and almost a moment later, 16 bombers of the Japanese Hongenjin Air Force, which took off from Beiping Nanyuan Airport, flew to Zhoujiakou. In order to save the hard-won aircraft, Gao Zhihang braved the dive bombing of Japanese aircraft to rush to the landline, but as soon as he entered the cabin, he was hit by bomb shrapnel dropped by Japanese fighters and was martyred on the spot, at the age of 30. At the same time, feng Ganqing, the mechanical commander of the 4th Aviation Brigade, and Guo Wantai, a brother-in-law who delivered food to the airport, were also martyred. Sadly, until the time of the sacrifice, Gao Zhihang's hands were still tightly gripping the joystick of the plane.

A generation of air battle heroes, the soul returned to the sky, the eagle over the Shanghai River, has since become a masterpiece.

With this article, I would like to commemorate the benevolent people who died in the War of Resistance Against Japan!