At about 10:45 a.m., less than five minutes after receiving the enemy attack warning from the AWACS, bombers flying from the north launched anti-ship missiles over the sea area about 350 kilometers south of the Gulf of Antalya, northwest of the island of Cyprus, about 350 kilometers from the "White Stop".

This distance is too close!

As can be seen from this attack tactic, the enemy did not know the exact position of the two aircraft carriers, so he could only fire in the general direction.

In other words, it is possible that the electromagnetic waves emitted by 2 cruisers of the "Qingzhou" class were intercepted.

Because the aircraft carrier was not found and was about to be intercepted, the Vulcan bombers of the Empire could only drop missiles at as close as possible.

In fact, with a maximum range of 500 kilometers, these anti-ship missiles can hit Alexandria.

In this case, it is very likely that the Imperial Air Force launched a counterattack a few days ago and destroyed the reconnaissance satellite, resulting in the paralysis of the military satellite system of the Western Continent Group, which could not rely on the space-based reconnaissance platform to search for the aircraft carriers of the Imperial Navy, and the Nuland Republic may not have provided relevant information in time.

This means that those anti-ship missiles are not only aimed at aircraft carriers, but also attack other warships encountered along the way.

Two minutes later, at 10:47, the anti-missile interception battle began.

Because the bombers had already dropped missiles and turned to evacuate, the first four "Battle-9Bs" did not pursue the bombers, but switched to firing at the anti-ship missiles.

To say, this is a harsh reality that must be faced.

Although it is a pity to let those bombers go, but in order to keep the aircraft carrier and protect the fleet, it is necessary to aim at the flying anti-ship missiles.

The first few minutes are the most critical.

Although the heavy anti-ship missile nicknamed "Destruction" funded and developed by the Manman Air Force has a range of 500 kilometers, the core technology comes from Xiluosha, which is not only not perfect, but also has many flaws, some of which can even be said to be quite deadly.

For example, in order to reduce the overall mass, you have to make a trade-off in performance.

The heavy anti-ship missiles developed by Xi Luosha, such as the SS-N-19 mounted on submarines and large warships, and the Kh-32 equipped with bombers, are all veritable heavy anti-ship missiles, the former reaches 7 tons, and the latter also weighs 6 tons, and the performance of these missiles is very good.

But the problem is, it's too heavy!

6 tons of Kh-32, "Vulcan" can only be mounted on 2 pieces in case of overload.

According to the theory of saturation attack, to deal with a three-carrier battle group with five air defense cruisers, it is necessary to project at least 120 anti-ship missiles, which means that 60 bombers must be mobilized, and it is absolutely not an easy task to mobilize and organize 60 bombers to launch an attack at the same time.

Strictly speaking, it can't be done at all!

With the organizational and command capabilities of the Manman Air Force, it is already the limit to put 20 bombers in one direction at a time and ensure that these bombers attack at the same time.

This requires that a bomber be able to carry 6 anti-ship missiles.

Because the maximum bomb load of the "Vulcan" is only 10 tons, and the external missile will increase the flight resistance, the weight of the missile must be strictly controlled.

Then, only a part of the performance requirements can be reduced.

To this end, the engineers of the Empire came up with a very ingenious solution, that is, to separate the warhead from the body of the bomb, and equip the warhead with a small rocket engine to ensure that the warhead accelerates to Mach 2 during the sprint phase and flies the last tens of kilometers at this speed.

In addition, in order to reach a maximum range of 500 km, the mid-section needs to be flown at high altitude.

In fact, this is also the most serious flaw of "destruction".

After completing the climb and reaching the end of the preset mid-trajectory, the "Doom" must remain at an altitude of more than 10,000 meters.

In addition, it is to fly according to a pre-set route.

At this stage, no matter what happens, the missile will not maneuver to evade it, and it will be easily intercepted.

It is in this way that 4 "Battle-9Bs" switched to intercepting anti-ship missiles.

It's a pity that the number of fighters is too small.

There were more than 100 incoming missiles, and only 4 fighters arrived at the first time, even if 4 were added since then, for a total of 8.

Intercepting a heavy anti-ship missile flying at high altitude is not much different from dealing with a supersonic bomber.

Although the supersonic bomber has long since receded, and the few that remain are mainly based on ultra-low-altitude penetration, the KK-9 was designed to be mainly aimed at supersonic bombers flying at high altitudes, and since then it has also enhanced its ability to deal with sea-skimming targets through improvement.

What's more, "Destruction" is not a real supersonic anti-ship missile, which has a flight speed of only Mach 1.5 in its middle section.

After two interceptions by fighter jets, some 60 anti-ship missiles were still fired at Task Force 51.

In addition, after the interception of the 2nd batch of 4 "Battle-9B", more than four-fifths of the "Doom" dived to low altitudes and flew at an altitude close to the sea surface.

This is also a major feature of "destruction", or a trick borrowed from SS-N-19.

When attacking an aircraft carrier 500 kilometers away, the biggest problem is actually to locate the aircraft carrier, that is, to accurately grasp the whereabouts of the aircraft carrier.

If anything, this is a world-class conundrum.

In this regard, the engineers of Xi Luosha came up with a very ingenious method, that is, to let a small number of anti-ship missiles carry out forward reconnaissance missions.

When launching an attack, a small number of anti-ship missiles act as "leading bombs", fly at high altitude before reaching the sea area where the fleet is located, and use the missile radar to search for ships on the sea surface, and then use the data link to transmit the obtained information to the missiles flying covertly at low altitudes, and guide these missiles to attack the most valuable targets in the fleet, which is often the warship with the strongest radar reflection signal.

"Doom" does not fly fast enough during the cruising phase, takes longer and needs more forward guidance.

For this reason, the technology of the SS-N-19 was borrowed.

The "Golden Bell Jar" system, which is carried by the "Qingzhou" class, has a detection distance of more than 500 kilometers for high-altitude targets, and even small targets such as missiles can reach 400 kilometers, but for sea-skimming targets, affected by the curvature of the earth, it is certainly impossible to exceed 40 kilometers.

That is, when it comes to intercepting ultra-low-altitude targets, the combat effectiveness of the air defense cruiser will be greatly reduced.

This is also the key reason why the Imperial Navy has always paid attention to the data link system, and has also tried to integrate carrier-based early warning aircraft with air defense warships to expand the air defense system.

It is a pity that the "Finger-6D", which is equipped with an advanced data link and can directly guide the operation of anti-aircraft missiles, as well as the new anti-aircraft missile with an active radar seeker, are still under development and have not yet entered service, so the "Qingzhou" class can still only fight alone.

What the AWACS can do is to tell the cruiser the direction and time of arrival of the anti-ship missile.

At this point, the air defense operation entered the most dangerous juncture.

At 4:58, the "Huizhou", located in the northernmost part of the fleet, opened fire first.

Within half a minute, the ship's two vertical launch systems, the front and rear, each fired eight anti-aircraft missiles, attacking four targets each.

All intercepts were high-flying missiles.

Intercepting 2 anti-ship missiles with 8 DK-1Ds is a clear waste of ammunition.

But at the critical moment when the attack is about to be attacked, there is not so much to care about.

Because the air defense warship has already opened fire and has entered the stage of air defense operations, it may not be able to identify friend or foe in time, and the fire control system of the warship will often regard all nearby air targets as a threat, and fire at the target that is the closest or the fastest flying, so the fighters that intercepted the missile before have already turned to evacuate and actively flew out of the engagement area, and did not continue to pursue the missile.

That's when the problem came to light.

To the north of the fleet, there was only one air defense cruiser "Huizhou".

The other two air defense cruisers in the fleet, "Danzhou" and "Mingzhou", were in the west and southwest respectively.

As a matter of fact, the "Huizhou" was in the northwest of the fleet, and only turned to the east after the AWACS aircraft spotted the bombers that were killing from the north.

The "Danzhou" has also turned, but it is too far away.

When the "Huizhou" opened fire to intercept the incoming anti-ship missiles, the "Danzhou" was about 60 kilometers southwest of the country.

This distance caused the "Danzhou" to be unable to provide cover for the "Huizhou" at all.

Just after 5 o'clock, the "Huizhou" was hit.

Although in the last dozen seconds, the two rapid-fire guns on the "Huizhou" shot down five anti-ship missiles, more than 10 missiles were fired at the ship.

Subsequently, "Huizhou" was hit by 3 anti-ship missiles.

According to reports from neighboring ships, at least three anti-ship missiles abandoned the "Huizhou," which was close at hand, after being jammed and deceived by decoy shells.

It's just that the attack doesn't end there.

At this time, the "intelligent" characteristics of the "destruction" of anti-ship missiles appeared.

After the attack on the "Huizhou", the remaining 30 or so anti-ship missiles did not attack the warship again and continued to fly south.

The key point is that he directly let go of an anti-submarine frigate south of the "Huizhou" and rushed straight to the "Li Mingbo" aircraft carrier.

In fact, the "Li Mingbo" is about 10 kilometers south of this frigate.

That is, the anti-ship missile, which climbed back to a high altitude and was responsible for guidance, detected the aircraft carrier to the south of the frigate at the same time as detecting the frigate.

Obviously, aircraft carriers are more attractive.

As a result, at least 20 "destruction" missiles rushed towards the "Li Mingbo", and about two-thirds of the missiles used dive attack trajectory.

This is also a major feature of "destruction".

Against high-value targets such as aircraft carriers, even if they penetrate from low altitudes, the "destruction" will climb at the end of the trajectory and then launch a dive from an altitude of thousands of meters.

The point is that it is more difficult to intercept a dive missile.

In addition, the speed can be increased by diving, which increases the power of the missile.

However, this also happened to "save" the "Li Mingbo".

In just 3 minutes, at least 11 "destructions" hit the aircraft carrier, 7 of which hit the flight deck of the aircraft carrier.

Although the flight deck of the aircraft carrier was completely blown up, the bridge was destroyed, and hundreds of officers and men were killed and wounded, the missiles did not cause serious damage to the hull, and the damage caused by the explosion, especially the fire caused by it, was brought under control and did not lead to irreparable damage.

The "Xue Yuanzheng" class not only used an armored deck, but also took the lead in using composite armor.

When designing, the Imperial Navy actually took a fancy to the weight reduction effect of composite armor. Compared to conventional armor, it can reduce the weight of about 1,500 tons at the same level of protection. After equipping, it was found that in the face of supersonic anti-ship missiles, the protective efficiency of composite armor far exceeds that of traditional steel armor, such as the warhead that can detonate anti-ship missiles in advance, thereby reducing the damage caused by explosions.

As a result, from the "White Stop", composite armor became standard, and all key parts were strengthened. When the "Xue Yuanzheng" was first returned to the factory for repairs, necessary improvements were made, including the use of composite armor to strengthen the flight deck.

In addition, several large aircraft carriers of the "Chen Bingxun" class have all made similar improvements during the mid-term overhaul.

In fact, this is also to counter the serious threat posed by heavy anti-ship missiles.

To say that the four "destructions" that hit the hull of the ship almost killed the "Li Mingbo".

All four missiles hit near the waterline, about 5 meters above the waterline to be exact, and they were all detonated inside the hull after penetrating the hull.

The key is all on the right side.

In less than 10 minutes, the water intake of the "Li Mingbo" exceeded 5,000 tons, and the hull tilted to the right by more than 10 degrees!

If there is no full load displacement of up to 100,000 tons, replaced by more than 70,000 tons of "Chen Bingxun" class, 5,000 tons of water may not be saved.

It's just that, by this time, the battle is not over.

The "Bai Zhizhan" is just south of the "Li Mingbo", and the distance is about 20 kilometers.

Immediately, the "White Stop" was also attacked.

There were 12 "destructions" that pounced on the "White Stop".

At a critical juncture, an anti-aircraft missile launched by the "Danzhou" shot down 4 high-altitude "destructions", followed by 2 climbing "destructions".

In the end, only 6 "destructions" flying at low altitudes approached the "White Stop".

In the final stage of the interception battle, the 730 close-in defense guns on the "White Stop" shot down only one "destruction", but it was a radar jamming bomb that was ejected, which led to two "destruction".

Within 10 seconds before and after, the "White Stop" was hit by 3 "Destruction".

At the beginning of the battle, Li Shenzhi was taken away from the commander's bridge by the guards and went to the tactical command center inside the hull and protected by armor.

To say, this is the safest place on an aircraft carrier.

Even so, when the "White Stop" was concentrated by missiles one after another, the violent explosions still made the officers and men in the command center taste the bitterness.

By the time Li Shenzhi came out of the command center, the captain of the "White Stop" had already given the evacuation order.

It was not to abandon the ship, but to let the fleet command transfer to other warships, that is, the "White Stop Battle" had already lost its combat capability due to damage.

In fact, the situation of the "White Stop" is not much better than that of the "Li Mingbo".

All three missiles hit near the starboard waterline, and the hit points were relatively concentrated, all in the middle of the hull, that is, near the No. 2 elevator on the right.

The aircraft carrier has already tilted to the right, and even if there is no danger of sinking, it will certainly not be able to continue the operation.

At 5:15, Li Shenzhi left the "White Stop" by helicopter and went to the "Mingzhou" that rushed over to pick up.

As for those carrier-based aircraft that are still in the air, those that are running out of fuel can only make a forced landing, and some of the fuel ones have already received orders to fly to Alexandria, and the fighters who have rushed into the air and run out of ammunition will remain over the fleet and continue to provide cover for the fleet.

At this point, 2 aircraft carriers have suffered heavy losses, and Task Force 51 has lost its combat capability.