While recovering from battle wounds, and with all the spare parts and airworthiness of the remaining Boeing P-26/281 fighters exhausted, as well as the impending Fall of Nanking, John Huang Xinrui's 17th PS of the 3rd PG was renewed into the 29th PS with new Gloster Gladiator fighters, of which he was promoted to captain and CO in January 1938; he would go on to score several more victories in this fighter aircraft. On 23 February 1938 (some sources date 24 February), in what was to become the British-made Gloster Gladiator's first aerial combat engagement ever, Capt. John Huang Xinrui led nine of his 29th PS Gladiators along with three of the 28th PS Gladiators (belonging to squadron commander Capt. Arthur Chin), in the interception of thirteen Nakajima E8N fighter-attack seaplanes from the "tenders" "Notoro Maru" and "Kinugasa Maru"; the Chinese pilots efforts were severely thwarted in the ensuing battle however, as most of the machine guns on the Gladiators jammed, nonetheless, five of the E8N were still shot-up enough to go down as victory claims by Capt. Huang and the other pilots targeting the bogeys with only one, two or three working guns (out of four) per Gladiator. Arthur Chin revealed later that the cause of the jamming of the Gladiator's machine guns were the result of defective Belgian-made ammunition rounds. Tragically, the bad ammunition led to fatal consequences, as the Gladiator flown by Lt. Xie Chuanhe (Hsieh Chuan-ho) targeted an E8N, all four of his guns jammed, and the E8N was able to counter-attack, hitting Lt. Xie's wingman Lt. Yang Rutong, whom also appeared to be unable to fire his weapons, and was sent down in flames from a burst of machine gun fire from the counter-attacking E8N; Lt. Chen Qiwei (Chen Chi-wei) was lost under similar circumstances.