At 2:10 p.m., the "Chicheng" was shot for the first time.

Although the ferocious and intensive anti-aircraft fire shot down three dive bombers in succession, the bomb dropped by the fourth "Wasp" accurately hit the "Chicheng".

This ordinary 250-kilogram aerial bomb gave the "Chicheng" a fatal blow!

The point is, the hit point is too delicate.

It smashed directly on the second elevator in the middle of the flight deck!

In addition, the "Wasp" dropped bombs at an altitude of less than 500 meters and at a speed of more than 500 kilometers per hour. Although the "Wasp" was hit by antiaircraft guns after the bomb was dropped, and immediately after it crashed headlong into the sea, killing both pilots, this style of exchanging lives for lives directly extinguished the last glimmer of hope for the "Chicheng," and by the way, several hundred officers and men of the narrow-minded navy were buried with them.

With sufficient speed, the aerial bomb smashed through the elevator deck, then the hangar deck, and then through two decks in succession.

Eventually, the bomb was detonated inside the No. 2 boiler chamber.

If the "Chicheng" is compared to a person, then this bomb is a dummy bomb!

The violent explosion not only destroyed the No. 2 boiler compartment and dozens of adjacent compartments, killing hundreds of officers and men, but also caused the keel to break and tear a 30-meter-long hole in the underwater part of the port side of the hull, resulting in the flooding of the left one-third of the cabin.

If I want to say, the "Chicheng" did not blow up directly, which is already a great luck.

With such a serious water ingress, the "Chicheng" must be hopeless.

The fact that a bomb can cause such huge damage has a lot to do with the refit completed last year, or the initial design of the aircraft carrier.

Originally, the Chicheng had a three-tier flight deck, a three-section flight deck arranged in a stepped manner to be exact, with a double-decker hangar at the back. It was only after the service that it became clear that such a clever design did not make sense at all, and it was only four years ago that it returned to the shipyard and underwent a complete overhaul.

The main part of this renovation was to flatten the flight deck, set up a semi-enclosed hangar underneath, and added a small ship island in front of the middle of the port side. As for the annoying chimney, it is also set on the side side and is bent down to eliminate the disturbance of the deck caused by the smoke exhaust.

In addition, a lift was added to the middle of the flight deck.

The purpose of adding this elevator is to increase the speed of sortie and recovery of carrier-based aircraft, and shorten the transition period between the flight deck and the hangar. Don't forget, in the previous design, the carrier-based aircraft could take off directly from the hangar, and the first flight deck on the top was mainly used to recover the carrier-based aircraft.

It's just that the elevator installed during the renovation will inevitably destroy the overall strength of the flight deck.

In addition, the hangar deck under the lift was not strengthened!

Perhaps the Engineer felt that the flight deck had been strengthened following the example of the Royal Navy of Bran, and there was no need to strengthen the hangar deck. Besides, the structural strength of the elevator itself is not low, which is equivalent to the addition of a roof with some protective effect above the hangar deck.

Of course, it must also be related to the already seriously excessive water discharge.

After this improvement, the standard displacement of the "Chicheng" exceeded 36,000 tons, and the power system, which was not very strong, was not strengthened, and the speed was reduced from the previous 33 knots to 312 knots, and it was necessary to find ways to reduce the tonnage.

In any case, just one bomb "ended" the "Sincerity".

Although the "Chicheng" did not sink immediately after being bombed, and the officers and men of the ship did not give up and were still working hard to rescue it, judging from the damage to the hull, especially the flooding of a large number of compartments, even if there was no attack from behind, the "Chicheng" would certainly have sunk.

In fact, the negative impact of the transformation can still not be ignored, that is, the increase in tonnage leads to an increase in draft, which greatly reduces the buoyancy of the reserve, that is, the ability to resist sinking.

In addition, the use of an armored flight deck increases the height of the center of gravity and reduces the stability of the hull.

All in all, from the beginning of the renovation with the battlecruiser, there were many problems in the design of the "Chicheng", some of which simply could not be compensated for or solved by the modification. I didn't show it before, it just didn't go through the test of war, and this time it was all exposed.

Of course, a similar fatal flaw is found in almost all aircraft carriers of the "treaty type" fleet, and even more serious.

The "Chicheng", which did not sink immediately, became a magnet for bombs and torpedoes.

Just three minutes later, at 2:13 p.m., the "Chicheng" was shot again.

The hit point was at the rear of the flight deck, penetrating the flight deck, but it did not penetrate the hangar deck, detonating in the hangar, destroying half of the hangar, and incidentally blowing up several anti-aircraft guns arranged in the rear of the battleship, resulting in the anti-aircraft fire in the rear hemisphere of the battleship being weakened by more than half.

At 2:17 a.m., the "Chicheng" came under the heaviest attack.

Led by Major Shenpu, commander of the 1st Group of the 1st Carrier Air Wing, 22 Exocets were divided into two groups and attacked simultaneously from the left and right flanks, and at least 17 of them dropped torpedoes less than a kilometer from the "Chicheng."

Subsequently, at least seven hit the "Chicheng".

There is no doubt that this is an absolute fatal blow.

Not to mention aircraft carriers, even battleships with rough skin and thick flesh will definitely not be able to withstand the bombardment of aviation torpedoes weighing more than two hundred kilograms with seven battle mine heads!

According to the tests done by the Imperial Navy, this aviation torpedo, nicknamed "pike", could sink a destroyer with one piece.

In the next three minutes, the "Chicheng" received two more 250-kilogram bombs.

Although both bombs were detonated inside the ship, they did not cause more serious damage other than killing and injuring hundreds of officers and soldiers.

By 2:20 p.m., the officers and men of the "Chicheng" had basically given up their efforts.

At the same time, the "Linghe", which was hundreds of kilometers away, sank.

At the captain's compulsion, the officers and men of the Mobile Fleet Command, including Lan Yun, boarded the transport boat and left the flagship that was about to sink.

Ten minutes later, at about half past two, the captain of the "Chicheng" gave the order to abandon the ship, and also ordered the bilge valve to be opened, allowing the battleship to sink by itself.

Subsequently, the officers and men of the "Chicheng" began to evacuate and took lifeboats to the light cruiser that came to meet them.

The massive battleship still stubbornly floats on the surface of the sea.

It's not that it won't sink, it's that it's not sinking that fast.

It's just that for the officers and men of the "Chicheng", this is not a bad thing.

Because the battleship did not sink immediately, there was enough time to calmly organize the evacuation of officers and men and provide assistance to the wounded.

After struggling for more than an hour, at about four o'clock in the afternoon, the "Chicheng" was completely engulfed by the sea.

According to the battle report later published by the Sagai Navy, less than 500 of the approximately 1,700 officers and men on board the "Chicheng" returned to the mainland alive, but some of them were killed on other warships, and about 1,000 were killed or killed along with the "Chicheng."

Among the officers and men who died in battle, it was mainly personnel from the marine and navigation departments.

However, the "Chicheng" is not the first narrow-minded aircraft carrier to sink in battle.