At 10:15, Bai Zhizhan received a message from Liu Xiangzhen on the "Longjiang".

The battle over Task Force 21 was over by 10 o'clock, but it took another ten minutes to figure things out.

The "Mohe" was taken care of by enemy planes, and the damage was very serious.

In addition to the 500-pound bomb that hit the flight deck directly, two aviation torpedoes were hit, and both hit the right side of the hull. One of them hit the back of the amidship and blew through the hull and anti-torpedo compartments, causing water to flood more than a dozen compartments, including boiler room No. 2.

In just over ten minutes, the water inflow of the "Mohe" exceeded 3,000 tons.

The bomb that hit the flight deck exploded in the hangar, and although it did not cause damage to the parts of the hull below the waterline, the fire caused by it had a serious negative impact on the damage management work, and the toxic smoke from the combustion made the interior of the hull a forbidden area for life.

At 10 o'clock, in order to regain the hull that had been seriously tilted to the right, the captain of the "Mohe" ordered the corresponding compartment on the port side to be filled with water.

Even so, the "Mohe" leaned more than 10 degrees to the right.

This aircraft carrier will definitely not be able to fight, and even if it can struggle to return to port, it will take months, if not half a year, to repair.

The situation with the "Longjiang" was slightly better, except that the stern was hit by an SBD.

It's just that aviation combat capability has also been lost.

The point is, the SBD rushed onto the flight deck, spilling fuel and burning all the barrage and barrage nets at the back of the flight deck.

The aircraft carrier has spare barrage and barrage nets that can be replaced during the voyage.

It's just that the burned armor plates can't be replaced.

The "Longjiang" class was renovated with an armored deck, and the rear end of the deck was mainly covered to protect the boiler room and engine room below.

The armor steel plate is too hard, and problems such as rust prevention should also be considered. If the armor plates are connected together by riveting, the problem of rivets falling off easily has to be solved. Even with the welding process used, the weld seam needs to be treated specially. As a rule, above the armored deck, there is a layer of paved armor plates made of wood. A similar approach is adopted by all aircraft carriers, differing only in the material and thickness of the planks.

Crucially, wood is easy to replace if it is damaged.

Usually, aircraft carriers carry some spare planks that can be replaced during combat training, but no aircraft carrier will carry too many spare planks.

These planks are also often used to plug leaks.

Because the fire was too great to be extinguished immediately, more than half of the armor plates were burned.

It takes more than half a day just to clean the flight deck, and after that, it takes another one to two days to reinstall all the nets and cables.

This battle, obviously, will not last that long.

However, there is also a piece of good news.

Task Force 21 has sunk the Sarah.

Before the last carrier-based aircraft returned home, the pilots visually confirmed that the stern of the "Sarah", or the tail end of the flight deck to be precise, had sunk below the surface of the sea.

The aircraft carrier was hit with at least 11 250-kilogram aerial bombs and 7 aerial torpedoes.

It must be admitted that when dealing with aircraft carriers with armored decks, the power of the 250-kilogram aerial bomb was significantly insufficient, or rather not penetrating.

Because the mass is too small, that is, the inertia is too small, it is difficult to smash through the armored deck even if the bomb is dropped at high altitude.

After being hit by more than a dozen bombs in a row and the flight deck was blown to shreds, the "Sarah" still stubbornly floated on the sea.

Comparatively, torpedoes strike much more powerfully.

The Exocet of both squadrons attacked from the port side of the "Sarah", and all 7 torpedoes hit the left side of the "Sarah" hull.

Five of them hit the second half of the hull.

Had it not been for the captain's timely order to fill the starboard compartment with water, I am afraid that the "Sarah" would have capsized before the bombardment was over.

However, this did not save the "Sarah", but only slowed down the sinking speed and won a chance for more than 1,000 officers and soldiers to escape.

Because the stern of the hull was the most damaged, it was the stern that sank first.

It was only after the stern completely sank that the "Sarah" broke off from the middle, and as the front of the hull left the water, the huge dead weight caused the hull to break.

At 10:23, the "Sarah" sank completely.

After that, during the sinking process, the "Sarah" was broken in two.

Of the more than 2,000 officers and men on the ship, more than 1,300 were spared.

In addition, two light cruisers were sunk and one was damaged.

On the way back to the attack group, the escort fighters also intercepted a batch of F4Fs that had returned.

As a result, the "Sarah" became the first aircraft carrier to be sunk in this naval battle, and it was also the first large warship lost by the Nuland Federation after entering the war.

The first blood shed by the Nuland Navy!

In addition, another group of attack aircraft from Task Force 21 reached the vicinity of Task Force 16 in Nuland at around 10:10.

However, the attack did not go well.

The reason is also simple: the attack aircraft group sent by Task Force 21 was discovered by the escort fighters of Task Force 16 shortly after departure.

Because they had to form in formation during the flight, the torpedo planes and bombers that departed first flew at medium and low altitudes, while the escort fighters of the Nuland group attacking the 21st Task Force were at high altitudes.

At that time, the Nuland group was already approaching the 21st task force, and there were air defense fighters nearby, so the escorting F4F did not attack the torpedo planes and bombers below, but only contacted the leader and the captain to report the situation to the fleet in time and let the fleet prepare for air defense.

It is precisely in this way that Hal was able to send air defense fighters in time, in fact, to concentrate the fighters in the northwest direction.

In order to more effectively intercept incoming enemy planes, more than a dozen F4Fs of Nuland's 16th Task Force Fleet flew more than 100 kilometers forward to carry out long-range interceptions on the attack aircraft group.

The effect is very good.

Seventeen of the intercepted "Wasp" squadron and three "Exocet" squadrons were shot down, and the rest were all scattered.

In the end, only 5 of these bombers and torpedo planes found the 16th task force, but they did not break through the air defense network, and all of them were shot down by anti-aircraft guns in the process of assault. The rest were forced to drop their bombs and torpedoes because they used too much fuel during the search.

Seven of them also flew to Task Force 41 with a group of attack aircraft from Task Force 41, which arrived later.

After that, another squadron of "Wasp" arrived with a squadron of "Exocet".

Because the escort fighters had caught up, and those F4Fs that had come out had already dispersed in the previous battles, and there were no air defense fighters left in the northwest direction of the fleet, both squadrons successfully broke through the outer air defense network and approached the Nuland aircraft carrier under the cover of the escort fighters.

It's just that an air defense fighter with an emergency takeoff was encountered.

While the F4F was in full swing to intercept the attack aircraft group from Task Force 21, another attack aircraft group was rapidly approaching to the south.

That's right, the attack aircraft group dispatched by Task Force 41.

In fact, the group of attack planes sent by Liu Xiangzhen and Bai Zhizhan was about 15 minutes apart.

It was this 15-minute gap that when the attack aircraft group commanded by Shenpu arrived, Nuland's Task Force 16 was almost undefended.