With the outbreak of the War of Resistance and World War II in Asia following the &lt;a href="Marco%20Polo%20Bridge%20Incident"&gt;7/7 Incident&lt;/a&gt;, then-Lieutenant Cen Zeliu along with his ex-Guangdong warlord air force squadron mates were all assigned to their station at Jurong Airbase as the 8th Pursuit Squadron of the 3rd Pursuit Group of the Nationalist Air Force of China equipped with the Fiat CR.32 fighter planes; they would engage the Imperial Japanese in aerial combat for the first time on 15 August 1937 when Imperial Japanese Navy G3M bombers of the Kisarazu Kokutai raided Jurong, and Lt. Cen Zeliu and Lt. Huang Chuku would each share a G3M kill each with their 8th PS squadron mates in this battle.A total of fourteen G3Ms were shot down by various pilots of the 3rd, 4th and 5th groups (flying Hawk IIs/Hawk IIIs and P-26 Model 281s) in this engagement over the Nanjing area, and this was a severe blow to the Japanese Naval Air command whom were strongly influenced with the idea that they could simply neutralize the Chinese Air Force and the Nationalist government with the blitz of their "schnellbomber" (fast bomber) attack, based on the aerial warfare theories of Giulio Douhet as exemplified a few months prior in the Bombing of Guernica in Spain, but unbeknownst to the Japanese, the Chinese Air Force had the advantage of an effective early air raid-warning net, and fighter aircraft that were almost as fast as the modern and sleek G3Ms (G3M max-speed of 232mph vs CR.32 max-speed of 220mph, or 225mph and 234mph of the Hawk IIIs and P-26/281s respectively in primary use by the CAF), but can still engage the fleeing G3M bombers with the proper vectoring and diving maneuvers.