At 4 a.m. on November 13, 1942, the sun had not yet risen, but the airport on Kuah Island was already boiling, and fighters, bombers, and torpedo planes took off one after another from the four runways of Kuah Island. Everyone knew that big fish had entered Iron Bottom Bay last night, but the navy did not have the strength to keep them, and they were seriously injured by their bites. Fortunately, these fish were also injured, and I believe that they will not be able to run fast, and if they hurry up, the Cactus Air Force will definitely be able to repay the blood debt to the Navy.

In the sea north of Kuah Island, a Japanese fleet was on the run. This fleet was none other than Abe's shelling fleet. Originally, if all went well, they would definitely have been able to escape from the range of the cactus air fleet on Kuah Island before sunrise, but now, alas, it is difficult. The battleship Hiei was not only hit by a large number of shells, the superstructure was badly damaged, but also was hit by 3 torpedoes, which not only damaged the steering gear, but also damaged the boiler room. Now the ship can barely run to 10 knots, which is slower than ordinary transport ships, and it is strange that it can run out.

If Kirishima wasn't injured, he could have dragged her to run, or Abe would have let the Kirishima run alone, and running out would be counted as one. It's a pity that Kirishima himself wasn't easy. Not long ago, I was hit by a torpedo, and I didn't feel anything at the time, but an hour ago she suddenly had an explosion and fire, probably when the torpedo was hit, the fuel pipeline was cracked, and the highly volatile Borneo crude oil (Japan was not only short of oil during World War II, but also lacked oil refining capacity, + one + book ~ read + novel + ybdu and Borneo's crude oil can be used directly in the boiler of the battleship, but this crude oil is too volatile, and once it leaks, it may lead to a fire) is the result of leaking. After extinguishing, the fire was extinguished half an hour ago. Although the ship was fine for the time being, the power compartment was badly damaged, and the ship lost most of its power, and now the ship could only run at 10 knots, and left a ten-kilometer film of oil on the sea behind her. The chances of Americans discovering them have increased dramatically. This is really, Abe roared angrily in the Snow Wind: "Why am I carrying it like this!" ”

At 5:13 a.m., a US reconnaissance plane that flew over with the oil film appeared in the fleet's field of vision. At the same time, the technical officers of the electrical reconnaissance group listened to the radio signals emitted by the reconnaissance plane. The reconnaissance aircraft was outside the range of the fleet's anti-aircraft fire, and the fleet had nothing to do with him. Abe had already requested support from the Navy Command before the plane appeared, but the Navy's aircraft carriers were too far away to provide them with a constant air umbrella. Their fighters will have to return after staying in the sky over the fleet for a maximum of 15 minutes, and the land-based fighters will not support for more than 20 minutes even if they reach the sky over the fleet because of the lack of range.

What's worse is that these protective forces take nearly three hours to arrive. The land-based fighters set off a little after 3 o'clock, but they have not yet arrived. Carrier-based fighters will arrive much later.

"Amaterasu, bless the Empire's fighter jets to arrive soon!" Now Abe has no better way but to pray. If the American attack aircraft group arrives first, not to mention that both warships are already seriously damaged, even if they are still intact, they are also vulnerable in the face of air power. This was demonstrated by the Imperial aviation during the siege of the British battleships Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser Counterattack. Two battleships in good condition, one of which was still a cutting-edge battleship, was sunk without fighting back under the watchful eyes of the aircraft. Abe understood that once the US attack aircraft group arrived first, there was no chance that the two old battleships under his command would survive.

At 5:20 a.m., the reconnaissance plane, which had been trailing, suddenly turned away, and then Abe saw more than 40 Zeros appear in the west of the fleet.

"Ahh They're finally here! The sailors in the fleet cheered. They frantically waved their hats at the Zeros, as happy as if they had crawled out of a grave to be reborn.

However, Hiroshi Nishizawa, who was sitting in the zero battle, was far less optimistic. He was now higher than the men on the ships, so he could see what those people hadn't seen yet: to the southeast of them, a huge group of planes was approaching. There is no doubt that it must have been the attack cluster of the Americans.

The other side must have discovered themselves as well, and they had already begun to accelerate their climb, apparently preparing for their own air battles.

At 4:15 a.m., Ron set off with the first strike group, which included 20 escort P-38 fighters, 10 Avenger torpedo planes, and 15 dive bombers. Ron led them to the northwest to search, but never found the enemy fleet. Although the target had not yet been found, at 5 o'clock, Ron still had the second strike formation take off, convinced that the Japanese were nearby.

At 5:15, Ron got the direction of the Japanese fleet sent back by the reconnaissance plane. Sure enough, as he expected, the Japanese fleet was not far from them.

A little later, the reconnaissance plane again sent back a telegram saying that the enemy fleet was protected by a large number of Zero. Ron immediately ordered: "All fighters climb and accelerate, prepare for air combat." "At the same time, the bomber units were ordered to lag slightly behind and be ready for an attack.

Hiroshi Nishizawa also climbed quickly with Zero Battle. It is always advantageous to occupy a higher position in air combat. But he immediately found himself facing a problem, all the American fighters rushed in front of him, where were the bombers? If there are bombers behind the enemy, or torpedo planes, climb too high on their own, and the enemy's torpedo planes suddenly appear at low altitudes, then it will be troublesome.

The dive performance of the Zero Battle is very poor, once you get entangled with people at a high place, and when you find the enemy bomber, you want to get rid of the enemy's entanglement and dive down to attack the enemy's bomber, which is not ordinarily difficult. Because it means that you need to turn your ass towards the enemy, and automatically make the enemy kick your ass. Even if his technology was too good to be that of Hiroshi Nishizawa, he didn't dare to say that he would be able to dodge so many attacks.

But Nishizawa made the decision right away, because time did not allow them to hesitate. He continued to climb with the most experienced 20 fighters, leaving the rest to protect the low altitude.

However, when it comes to climbing, the altitude has now passed 5,000 meters, and the Zero War without a supercharger at this altitude is simply looking for death compared to the P-38, even if he is piloted by the super ace Hiroshi Nishizawa (there are real people in history, super aces). There was no way to make him climb faster than the P-38. Soon the P-38 fleet led by Ron had a high superiority.

The group of American planes that had the advantage of altitude began to dive towards Nishizawa and them, and Nishizawa was already familiar with this kind of attack (those who were not familiar with it died in the battle in front) With a slight turn, Nishizawa avoided an enemy plane that was rushing towards him, and he knew that he could not be in a hurry, and he must be very calm. Now the speed of the enemy planes is very high, and it is difficult to find an opportunity to attack them, but according to the custom, after this round of attacks, the enemy will take advantage of the high speed to pull up at high speed, and then do it again. If you can induce the enemy plane to make a big overload action when attacking, you may be able to find an opportunity when he pulls up again.

But this time, the enemy's response was beyond Nishizawa's expectations, and the American fighters did not pull up, but continued to dive downward, aiming directly at the Japanese fighters below who were protecting the low altitude. At the same time, a group of bombers began to appear in everyone's field of vision.

"Quick! Attack those bombers! "The Zero, which was responsible for protecting the low-altitude fighters, immediately pounced on the bomber group, but at this time, above them, the American P-38 was already roaring down. Now every Japanese pilot was faced with a dilemma: to stop the enemy bombers, they had to expose their butts to those P-38s, and to do so, for these rookies, was to seek death and suicide. To save his life, he had to abandon his attempt to attack the enemy bombers and watch them attack the Imperial warships.

At this time, the effects of long-term militaristic education became apparent. None of the Zero chose to give up the attack, and they braved shells fired from the direction of 6 o'clock to launch a life-and-death attack on the American dreadnought dive bombers.

However, this is not a wise approach, the Dreadnought is a very strong aircraft, and the firepower of the Zero is not too good, and it is impossible to kill a flying tank like the Dreadnought in one hit, but the P-38 behind them has the most powerful firepower. The result of this game was: 20 Zero Fights were completely destroyed, and 5 Dreadnoughts were wounded. Then Ron pulled up with the P-38 group and pounced on the Nishizawa group that was hurrying over. I believe that there is an example of the group of Zero in front of them, and I believe that Nishizawa and they will never start the idea of bombing before they have solved the threat of Ron.

Now 15 Dreadnought dive bombers and 10 Avengers are in place. However, the Nishizawa group was held back by Ron, and the Japanese fleet was in danger.

For the bomber and torpedo forces, to be honest, attacking the Hiei and Kirishima was too easy. Almost all of the anti-aircraft guns on these two battleships were destroyed last night by the 152mm guns of the American cruisers (speaking of which, this kind of gun is still a classic of the US Navy and the Army, which like to use British units, engage in 6-inch guns, and make a 152mm caliber. The army wanted to use metric units, so it used 155mm guns) to blow up, and all the anti-aircraft fire had to rely on the destroyers escorting the escort. In addition, the speed is surprisingly slow, and it is really difficult not to get hit.

In just two minutes, the battleship Kirishima was directly hit by three 1,000-pound bombs, one of which pierced the deck and exploded in the power compartment, completely destroying her power system. It turned her from hemiplegic to completely paralyzed. The Hiei was no better, although it only suffered a direct hit of one 1,000-pound bomb and lost its D turret, but it suffered a near-miss of 1,000 pounds on the broadside. The near-miss bomb exploded near a place where it had been hit by a torpedo yesterday, and as a result, the hole that had been tried to be plugged immediately cracked again, and the sea water rolled in. At this time, the torpedoes dropped by the torpedo machine also pulled a long white line and went straight to them.

Several loud noises of "boom" and "boom" came. This time the Hiei was lucky, and some of the torpedoes fired at her were crooked, and some were ...... Blocked by the cruiser Nagara.

Nagara stopped an air-dropped torpedo for Hiei, but of course, she herself was choked by the torpedo. Originally, except for the broken superstructure, her power was still very good, and she ran very fast, but now, the torpedo hit near her power compartment, and the power compartment was flooded. She lost most of her motivation and collapsed on the surface of the sea in one fell swoop.

The Kirishima had no such luck, and only one of the four torpedoes hit her without exploding. A large amount of sea water poured into the ship, and the hull began to tilt gradually. Due to the loss of power, the pumping system could not work, and it was only a matter of time before it sank.

The bombers finished their work, laid their eggs, turned their heads, twisted their butts, and ran away.

Now that the bombers are gone, there is no need for the fighters to entangle with the Japanese anymore. To say that there are really some of these devils who are quite skilled. For example, the plane that kept biting Ron, when Ron had just shot down an enemy plane, he was bitten by this guy who ran out of the oblique stab, and he was bitten by a few 7.7mm bullets, and even a 20mm shell. It took a lot of effort to get rid of the enemy plane's attack, only to learn that Foss had killed two more enemy planes in one go.

"Damn! If this continues, this guy's record will surpass me sooner or later. ”

"All of them are out of the house and go home!" Ron gave the order.

The P-38s began to dive and accelerate, quickly closing the distance between themselves and Zero, and then went home triumphantly (anyway, Zero's speed is tragic, and you can't catch up with you). At this time, the 20 Zeros that took off from the Japanese aircraft carrier finally arrived.

The Zero Fight that arrived this time did not enjoy the cheers again. The sailors on the warship had already seen a cruel truth from the First World War: the Zero War could not protect them now.

How could the commander of the fleet, Hiroki Abe, know even more about what the sailors already knew, and he knew even better: this wave of attacks is by no means over, and the US forces will soon launch more attacks. Obviously, not only the Kirishima, whose side was tilted close to the sea, was not saved, but also the Hiei and Nagara, which were still floating on the sea. They can't run out of the range of the Americans, they can't run anyway. Maybe it's time for you to think about how to keep the other warships.

Sometimes there is a gambler in the casino who, after losing almost all of his money, tends to suddenly take a special care of the last few copper plates, and Abe is like this now. So he ordered:

"Bring the Emperor Tamarong (the picture of Hirohito's old boy) on the Kirishima and Hiei here, and scuttle her. Nagara did the same. ”

"General! This ......"

"Let's do it!" Abe bowed his head, and he finally became the first general in the history of the empire to lose a battleship. Although, we can't say that what he did was wrong, but it is not a good name after all.

After 20 minutes, a second wave of attack groups, including 20 F4U and 10 Avenger torpedo planes, and 10 dreadnought dive bombers, arrived. After looking around the nearby seas, I couldn't find anything at sea except for the Hiei, which had only half of its bow exposed on the water and had not completely sunk.

After Abe Hiroki returned, he was deemed unfit by Yamamoto to command warships because he had lost all the important ships. So he retired honorably and went back to Japan to hold his grandson. The war was over for him.