The fears of the White Stop War are not unnecessary.

At 8 o'clock, the "Longjiang" intercepted a telegram from the seaplane of the 41.2nd Squadron, and then received a telegram from the "Wuzhou", knowing that the 41st Task Force had discovered the Nuland aircraft carrier, was reviewing the reconnaissance findings, and the next step was to launch an attack.

Crucially, the two Nuland aircraft carriers are closer to Task Force 21.

At 400 kilometers, the Exocet and Wasp can take off with a full load, and they do not need to let the aircraft carrier turn, that is, to meet the returning carrier-based aircraft.

It's just that the problem is also in front of Liu Xiangzhen.

At the time of receiving the news, Task Force 21 had just sent its last carrier-based aircraft on attack mission, and it was also in an all-deck attack state.

That is, it is not possible to send too many carrier-based aircraft into the air in a short time.

In addition, it is necessary to choose between attack and air defense.

If you want to focus on air defense, you must first send the fighter to the flight deck, let the fighter stop at the front of the deck, and then catapult into the air after completing the preparations.

Otherwise, you have to put bombers and torpedo machines in front.

In fact, before receiving the news, the crews on the two aircraft carriers were preparing according to the air defense, that is, sending fighters to the flight deck.

At 8:30, after receiving a telegram from the second seaplane of the 41.2nd detachment, Liu Xiangzhen ordered to adjust his tactics.

That's right, it's for the aviation crew to arrange the attack.

Of course, the first thing to do is to lift the fighters into the air first, but to carry out escort missions, you need to hang up a large auxiliary fuel tank.

It's just that the next step is to prepare for bombers and torpedo machines.

Liu Xiangzhen made this decision on one basis: Task Force 41 would not attack the two Nuland aircraft carriers, but not because they were too far away.

In fact, Liu Xiangzhen didn't know that the 41.2nd team and the 41.1st team had been separated.

In other words, if the location of the "Wuzhou" is the standard, the 41st Task Force is closer to the two Nuland aircraft carriers.

What caused Liu Xiangzhen to make this wrong judgment was actually a telegram sent by the "Wuzhou".

"Wuzhou" is the escort battleship of the "Imperial Capital", and it also replaces the fast battleship, which is definitely the absolute main force covering the "Imperial Capital".

As long as there is something unexpected, and it is particularly serious, why break the radio silence?

The signal emitted by the long-wave radio station on board the battleship can be intercepted even from thousands of kilometers away, and it can definitely be located by triangulation.

Also, why the telegram sent by the "Wushu"?

According to Liu Xiangzhen's judgment, Bai Zhizhan deliberately let the "Wuzhou" send a report instead of the "Imperial Capital" to confuse the enemy.

The next step is to strengthen the air defense of the fleet, after all, after sending a telegram, it is possible to be targeted by the enemy.

Crucially, there are still two "York" class ships that have not appeared.

In fact, at that time, a staff officer mentioned that the discovery of the seaplane of the 41.2nd Detachment was contradictory to the discovery of the seaplane of the 42.2nd Detachment.

The Nuland Navy has only two "Leke" class, so it is possible that there will be three at the same time?

However, Liu Xiangzhen leaned to the discovery of the 41.2nd detachment that there was a problem, that is, the pilots of the seaplane mistook the "York" class for the "Leke" class.

In addition, instead of two, there was only one aircraft carrier in the sea area reported by seaplanes of the 41.2 detachment.

What if Bai Zhizhan had a similar judgment?

Obviously, he will try to lure the other two carriers out, and at the same time be ready to attack, making sure that he will strike as soon as he finds out.

In other words, Bai Zhizhan was actually luring the enemy, attracting the enemy's attention, and leaving the opportunity to Liu Xiangzhen.

The Nuland aircraft carrier task force is eyeing Bai Zhizhan, and naturally there is no way to deal with Liu Xiangzhen, so Liu Xiangzhen can take the opportunity to harvest people's heads.

In this way, Task Force 41 will certainly not attack immediately.

At that time, Liu Xiangzhen ignored a very critical issue.

If his speculations are correct, Bai Zhizhan is indeed focused on the overall situation, puts aside personal grievances, and is willing to be a foil.

So why not send a telegram directly on the "Imperial Capital"?

Even if the "Wuzhou" is next to the "Imperial Capital", it is a very troublesome thing to communicate with the voice radio and relay the telegram.

Besides, even if the "Wuzhou" is asked to shoot and send a telegram, why not just say it?

Can't you pull it down?

Now that you've decided to be a green leaf, do you still have face to speak of?

At 8:30, Liu Xiangzhen gave the order.

According to the arrangement, the aviation crew first lifted the fighters that had been sent to the flight deck into the air, and then began to prepare for the bombers and torpedo planes.

At that time, the "Longjiang" and the "Mohe" each dispatched eight "roaring sky".

The two aircraft carriers each prepared 8 fighters, in fact, because the 16 fighters that took off before dawn were sent to cover Task Force 42 and Task Force 43 respectively. In addition, the first wave of attacks was launched, and 16 fighters were arranged for escort missions.

After sending these 16 fighters, the two aircraft carriers also had a squadron of fighters each.

It is a pity that these fighters were not sent into the sky in time.

To make matters worse, there was no way to keep these fighters on standby on the flight deck because bombers and torpedo planes had to prepare for an attack.

According to the normal arrangement, these fighters will not be sent up until the second wave of attack aircraft has departed.

At around 8:40 a.m., the "Longjiang" let the last "roaring sky" take off.

At this time, it was less than twenty minutes before the 21st Task Force was attacked.

Just as Bai Zhizhan feared, Task Force 21 had already been discovered.

Shortly after dawn, after 7 o'clock to be exact, a Newland Navy seaplane spotted the light cruiser "Xuncheng" sailing 20 kilometers in front of the "Longjiang". Because of the very low flight altitude, the seaplane was not detected by the radar on the escorting "Luhe". What's more, the seaplane pilot saw the fighter coming from the northwest in time.

That's right, it was the fighters sent by the "Longjiang" to cover the 42nd task force.

The two air defense fighters were climbing, and the pilots did not pay any attention to the low altitude to the east, and did not spot the Nuland seaplane flying at a low altitude.

The Newland seaplane then turned back and sent a telegram at 7:30 a.m., more than 100 kilometers after it had flown out.

What's worse is that none of the battleships in Task Force 21 intercepted the radio signal sent by the Nuland seaplane!

Probably because of the radar, I feel that I can sit back and relax.

At about 7:35, Hal on the "Lek" gave the order to attack.

In order to save time, the "Leke" was the first to dispatch bombers and torpedo planes, to be precise, to let the slow torpedo planes take off first.

Fighters who carried out escort missions were reversed to stay at the end.

By 8 o'clock, all torpedo planes and bombers had been sorted, as were some fighters.

At that time, it was a "wildcat" that was on an escort mission, and after taking off, it was hovering nearby, and the "wildcat" waiting for the formation spotted the seaplane sent by the 41.2nd detachment because it was flying at a low altitude, and successfully approached the "Leke", and rushed over to shoot it down.

Before being shot down, the pilots failed to send a message that the enemy fleet had sent a group of attack aircraft.

According to the time calculation, the first torpedo planes to strike will reach the skies over Task Force 21 before 9 o'clock.