June 9, 400 (110 AG)

As far as I can recall, following the second sortie, things continued as usual, with the pilots escorting the bombers or dive bombers and assisting the ground forces. Nevertheless, I did not gain any new victories during one of the sorties because no coalition forces were visible in the sky. Some of the squadron mates thought the situation was much different than it had been before. He suspected there may be a plan or preparation afoot on the coalition side, adding that they may be producing more advanced equipment than ours. While the ongoing Operation Black Blade was underway, the imperial army pushed near Qianlin. Some reported that they were facing heavy resistance, as their equipment was on a par with ours in terms of quality and firepower. Before the flight, my commander briefed us on the reports of the frontline. He noted that the imperial force had been able to capture abandoned equipment and was transported to a place for "examination". One piece of equipment at the examination station surprised the engineers. It was a mechanized infantry suit designed with a powered exoskeleton and able to carry more weight than a human body would be able to. In addition, the metal was designed to absorb more damage before it would be disabled, but it does not have any effect on metal bending. As we heard it, we were shocked and impressed. Someone asked the commander "Could the engineers at the examination station reverse engineer the suit? " It was explained to us by the commander that here we do not know how the engineers are doing until the next day as to their progress. In addition, he stated the airborne carriers would resume operations on Seskoevanian factories in the south, and he explained that the Imperial Navy had occupied the islands in the territory of the Air Nomads previously, and they had established an outpost for refueling and rearmament. And He forgot to mention that we would have a possibility of temporarily locating a refueling station near Huyangdu. New airbases have been constructed since the High Command ordered them. Lastly, he informed me that if I achieved ace status, I would have the option to choose between the Ki-84 or the new variant of the Bf-109 that we had developed ourselves. This was the information he briefed us from the high command, and we began talking about the mission which consisted of escorting bombers in the air. After the briefing, we took off for the sky doing the usual bomber escort. No enemy aircraft were seen in the air. The bombers did their job, bombing some targets in Qianlin, which was full of anti-aircraft weapons. Even so, they sustained some damage when we observed them, but they were fine, and we didn't lose any planes in the escorting planes. As soon as we completed our escorting duties on the bomber planes, we proceeded to land at our airbase. It was repeated after a period of time, and the eastern frontline of the coalition forces was crushed and the efforts were relocated to the south. While in that period, I was able to achieve my fourth victory, which was the shooting down of a novice pilot flying a biplane near Qianlin, but I did see him bail out shortly afterward.

I would include a portion of my old journal from that year that took me some time to locate.

July 15, 385 (95 AG)

Today at six o'clock, It is raining and the clouds have gathered. In organized chaos, I can see squadrons of planes arriving and departing as the planes move from left to right. An announcement from the tower summoned us to the briefing room. There is no doubt that today is yet another day, and yet another mystery to unravel. In my opinion, this is true, but isn't it possible that death could await us at any moment? Could it be possible that we will be blessed with another day to fight? Do we have another mission to assist ground forces or go with a bomber plane in this briefing room? In recent months, it has been quiet in the skies, and we have not seen or shot down any plane. Our commander may have assigned us another routine mission. We may be assigned to escort bombers or provide close air support. As soon as we have completed our mission for today, I will continue to write this if we can return to our airbase.

Having done so, I placed my journal on my bed and we entered the briefing room with the rest of my squadron mates after I wrote that in my journal. There was a discussion between our commander and our squadron leader about the mission. In this case, it was a routine escort mission; on this occasion, but, we were to escort heavy bombers that were licensed-built by us on the continent of Asbaria and had been acquired from the Hachosteinians via license agreements. The bomber squadron is stationed near Xiankou. According to the commander, the bombers will strike somewhere along the coast of Zhuxi. Due to information provided by the intelligence corps, the commander was informed that there was an experimental weapon in that region. As part of our responsibilities, we will be responsible for protecting the heavy bombers if a coalition force intercepts and attempts to shoot them down. On our return to the base, we will refuel at the refueling airbase, which will take approximately one or two hours. The commander stated that it was part of the high command's plan. The commander answered any questions that we had. We were dismissed and headed to our planes. The squadron leader noticed that some of the planes were in poor condition. He went out to tell the mechanics about the issue. We started the aircraft, moved to the runway, and departed for the destination. As our commander had already instructed us, we joined the 24 Wenkeil-179 heavy bombers, which were heavily armed with.50 caliber machine guns. They had 5,400 kilos of bombs in their bomb bay. We were about 100 kilometers away from the target when the bomber squadron's commander radioed over us to thank us for joining them. Someone over the radio said it was just another day for being a bomber plane crew as we were fired upon by the ground near our target. When the bombers opened their bomb bays, they dropped their bombs on the target, and when I looked to my side there were explosions everywhere on the ground, which was around 5000 meters high. After we hit some of the targets over the radio, the ground was a smoking mess, according to one of the bomber crews. Following the bomb drop, we headed to our airbases, but everyone over the radio felt that something wasn't right. We just brushed it off and didn't care much, but there was a large balloon on the left side that looked like an airship and someone said: "Wait are they friendly or hostile?". A fire symbol was visible on the side of the airship when we got closer and closer, and the captain radioed our squadron leader to say hi. The squadron leader asked them what they were doing, and they replied that they were raiding the coalition forces holding some equipment that contained important assets. As we passed by and headed towards our airbases, we proceeded straight to the briefing room where the commander was waiting for us. According to him, the operation was successful, and the airships we saw earlier were raiding Ximei, a city with factories and garrison force stations. As he was talking, the airship was one of the airborne carriers escorted by a few smaller airships that would be relatively behind the main airship. This was one of the escort airships armed with cannons and machine guns. The thickness of the armor plating is comparable to that of ground-level tanks. Continuing our conversation, we discussed the situation on the frontlines, where we are gaining land every day, but the new technology he mentioned earlier has slowed the progress. He explained that some of the Earth Kingdom's P-51 planes had been examined and the results were surprising, to say the least; he explained that the plane has some good maneuverability and firepower, but our planes are slower in climbing. It would be a dogfight between two sides with good pilots on both sides. But our planes are more powerful in terms of firepower and maneuverability. Last but not least, he added a training option to prepare Ki-84 pilots for this threat if we come across one. After that, we were dismissed and given some free time, so I continued writing my journal. It was raining, but I thought I'd be gone in about an hour or so. After getting into bed and picking up the journal, I began writing about what happened today. At the time, I wrote in my journal that it was just a normal mission but with the airships, we had already seen, I added that in my opinion, this would drastically change the outcome of the war, but I realized after a few months later it would be just sending cannon fodder over no man's land. Another announcement called us in the briefing room, it is around 9 am. Another day, another sortie, so I thought today would be. The commander started talking about the reports from high command sent to him and that there were some unidentified aircraft going in and out somewhere near the frontlines. He added we would patrol some areas in the frontlines to intercept any of these planes since some ground reports said some loud noise can be heard above them and some people saw smoke trail above the skies on the frontlines. There were some intercepted messages from the intelligence corps they got some bit of info to be an "experimental" aircraft it was to be some kind of new fighter plane. But there wasn't any information besides the name of the aircraft he added it's called P-80 possibly made by BEL. We were confused this aircraft hadn't heard before, In which we have nothing to say since this wasn't heard before. But we were dismissed and went straight to the hangers and started our aircraft and went to the runway.

During the time we patrolled kilometers in enemy territory, the clouds were approximately 2500-3000 meters above the ground, and we had no visibility on the ground since we were 500 meters above the ground when we patrolled kilometers in enemy territory. Even though it was still raining on the ground as of 9 AM, it was still pouring down rain at 9 AM. I heard the radio shouting "BOGIES, 3 O'CLOCK!" as soon as the engines started. We then saw 12 unknown aircraft flying toward us from a distance of about three kilometers away as they approached us. Upon being ordered to break off the formation and fly directly into the enemy, we did so. Despite catching a glimpse of the plane, the plane's engines were placed at the rear of the fuselage, not in the wings, as ours were at the front. On the wings, however, Earth Kingdom roundels were visible. As I looked into the cockpit of the jet plane, I could see that the pilot was staring directly into my eyes. There was a lot of confusion on the radio after the merge. This is because some people jumped into the tail of the plane for help and the radio was filled with confusion. It wasn't known that the coalition forces had jet planes. I and others had spotted the jet plane earlier, and it was only a matter of engaging them with it. After passing the aircraft, I made a sharp turn. The plane itself was shaking and rattling. As the plane approached, my sights were aligned with it. The pilot of a plane behind me missed the majority of his shots, some of which hit my fuselage. Since I hadn't noticed the bandit in my tail, I had to execute a maneuver to gain an advantage during this dogfight. During that situation, I was calm, and I executed the maneuver, which caused him to overshoot. As I fired my machine gun, I hit the tail of the aircraft, which was smoking, and I was able to shoot him down. I forced the pilot to bail out after he noticed what I was doing. In their search for bandits, Yashiro and others found one, but the jet plane sped away and they lost track of him. The jet plane was fast for them but the maneuverability was poor, similar to the old or new J2Y variants. My squadron shot down four of them but we lost two pilots in the dogfight, and most of them did a hit-and-run attack on us. I can say that there was a short dogfight between the two. There was a point when we had to disengage the bandits due to the fact that they were speeding away from us. This would waste fuel too, so we headed to a refueling airbase and all went for a drink. Some of the men argued that they could have gotten the bandit, while others argued that there was no other option to leave them. It is interesting to note that when I, along with my friends, were talking about that bandit, we said that both Yashiro and my friends tried to shoot it down with cooperation, but Ottorino added that I was able to kill one since he was on my tail. Yashiro and Kojima commented that I got lucky with this sortie and added that they got a few kills during the same sortie. We joked around and laughed, and we finished our drinks for today and went back to our air base. We saw some planes that had been damaged earlier before going out for a drink and saw that they had been temporarily patched with something made of wood and were now being fixed by someone who knows how to metal bend it. Some pilots did give feedback that it looked like it hadn't been damaged by anything. We all began our jets, flew to the runway, and headed to our air base. There was an announcement that some squadrons would be required to go to the briefing room later, so we went straight to the briefing room to be debriefed. The commander began explaining about the bandits we had encountered earlier. That was the P-80 we had seen before, and he added that the Jet plane was similar to the J2Y. He went on to say that he and a few others were fortunate enough to shoot down one of them, and that we did lose two pilots, but that they would be replaced by rookies. We did get some word regarding the jets that we had battled earlier; one did crash on our side, but it was nothing serious. The commander went on to say that they had some ideas for combating our J2Y planes, but that if they did go one-on-one, it would likely depend on the pilot skills because both were slow horses owing to the engines. We were dismissed by our commander, and it was approximately midday, and it was still raining, with no sign of stopping. We were hungry, so we walked straight to the cafeteria, where the meal was soup or other dishes that were served on a daily basis. We tried the soup, and it was as wonderful as the other dishes, although other people didn't enjoy it for a variety of reasons, including personal preferences or tastes, such as leftovers from home. But we just ate and ate till we were full, and there was no notification summoning us to the briefing room, so we took some time off and went back to our barracks. I started writing in my journal and thought of the frontline soldiers "It was fun flying in the sky, but what's the point of fighting in this war? To die for the sake of being deemed cannon fodder? " And I added, "I had been on this airbase for months and hadn't seen my family, yet my wife still writes me letters every two weeks." I did have some notebooks full of writing ranging from stories to journal entries that I did months ago when I had some free time. Some were incomplete, which I hadn't finished writing yet, and others were finished, which I would read from time to time. There were some people in the barracks who started singing after jamming around with a guitar, some who had horrible singing talents and would just sing along and have fun, and some who were great enough to be musicians. Some were writing messages to their families, while others were simply relaxing for the day. We didn't have anything planned for that day because we hadn't been called for another sortie, so we just relaxed. But the next day, we were summoned to the briefing room for a briefing on what had occurred on the front lines and another sortie for today. We were tasked with another routine bomber escorting mission, and the commander informed us that we would be stationed at that refueling airbase for a week. He said that we would be temporarily shifted to that refueling airbase in order to save the time it took to return to base and that we would be more scramble ready in that base due to increased attacks on the eastern frontlines, and added that we would have the option of switching to Bf-109s because we would be more focused on escorting planes rather than providing ground assistance. It would take a few weeks to get used to the new planes. The commander also stated that the P-80 was still harassing a few bombers during a few flights, forcing them to return to base. As well as some insight into the effectiveness of the jet plane from the crashed P-80 that we downed earlier. That was all the information about today, we were dismissed for today, and we went to our planes, but I had an odd feeling that today would be different. My mechanic did tell me the bullet holes had been repaired and everything was working fine now. I told him he did a good job and I started the plane and went to the runway. As we took off from the base, I had that strange feeling on that day. We joined the bomber squadron and escorted them to the town of Shanguan. While some of the men radioed in that they felt something odd during the flight, others said it was nothing to worry about.

A fallen angel lies ahead.