While the German naval aviation on the island of Malta was waiting, the battle between the Mediterranean fleet of the Royal Navy and the escort fleet of the Italian Navy was gradually escalating on the sea about one hundred and fifty kilometers east of the island of Malta.

After discovering the Royal Navy's A flotilla, the long-range convoy of convoys, about eight nautical miles behind the convoy, quickly rushed into the battlefield and fought alongside the escort ships in the convoy.

At a distance of about 20,400 meters, the four twin 203-mm guns on the Italian heavy cruiser Zara were the first to fire, and huge shells set off a series of soaring white fountains on the sea near the five light cruisers of Flotilla A, sprinkling countless seawater and shrapnel on the British sailors.

Sensing the arrival of reinforcements from the Italian Navy, Vice Admiral Tovey, who was outnumbered and outnumbered in firepower, immediately ordered a retreat to join up with the main fleet led by Cunningham.

When the two capital ships of the Italian Navy, the Caesar and the Count Cavour, arrived at the battlefield with six light cruisers and twelve destroyers, they happened to encounter the B fleet of the Mediterranean Fleet led by Cunningham, and the two sides immediately engaged in an artillery battle.

The 381 mm shells fired by the battleship Warweary of the Royal Navy fell one after another on the Italian naval fleet, but none of them hit, and seaplanes had to be called in to help with the calibration.

The salvo from the 320 mm guns on the battleship Caesar was much more accurate, and the second salvo fell between the battleship Weary and the two destroyers, the battleship Weary survived with its heavy armor, while the two destroyers, the Howard and the Decoy, were badly wounded and had to withdraw from the battlefield.

After about ten minutes of exchange of battleships, the C Fleet of the Mediterranean Fleet arrived, and the battleships Sovereign and Malaya joined the battlegroup.

The battleship Count Cavour, which had been hiding its strength from firing in the Italian Navy, immediately lifted the ban and opened fire on the British ships, raising the firepower of both warring sides to the top, forty minutes after the start of the engagement.

On the island of Malta. The roar of the engines was deafening, and the rapidly spinning propellers kicked up countless clouds of dust on the ground.

Chen Dao and Garland stood on the runway of Lucca Airport, watching their men fly planes off the ground one after another.

Fifteen Ju-87 Stuka dive bombers and fifteen Fi-167 torpedo attack aircraft rendezvous in the air. Two groups were formed to fly eastward as the first attack wave.

Standing in the rocking and undulating bridge, Admiral Cunningham looked through the window at the countless jets and splashes of water on the surrounding sea as the shells exploded. Patches of dazzling white in the blue waters;

Huge clouds of black smoke hung over the battleship's heads, darkening the sky; The stormy sound of gunfire provoked the sailors to shout wildly.

He also saw about 1 nautical mile away a Swordfish torpedo attack plane blazing into the sea, roaring into the sea, followed by a huge splash and ripples.

The battlefield was chaotic, but Admiral Cunningham's heart was unusually calm, as an old "sailor" who had served for more than forty years, he was no longer as impulsive as he was when he was young. When I heard that I was going to participate in the battle, I couldn't sleep at night.

The battle had been going on for about an hour, and Cunningham had been calmly observing the situation, giving orders one after another in an orderly manner, until the appearance of a group of planes made Cunningham's heart restless.

Cunningham did not panic at first when he saw this group of about thirty aircraft, and it was not the first time that the Mediterranean Fleet had engaged in a large-scale naval battle with the Italian Navy, nor was it the first time that it had been bombed by the Italian Air Force.

However, when a piercing scream sounded in the sky, Cunningham's originally unwavering face finally flashed a trace of emotional fluctuations.

Cunningham rolled his eyes and looked at the sky, where the group split into two teams, one of which pulled up high. Then it launched a dive at an angle almost perpendicular to the sea, and the strange whistling sound pressed against the sea like an invisible wall of air, adding countless panic to the hearts of the British sailors.

And the other fleet of aircraft is diametrically opposed. They silently approached the surface of the sea, drawing in an oblique line and swooping down on the British ships on the sea, with round and thick torpedoes hanging directly below the fuselage.

Dive bombers! And torpedo attack aircraft! They were Germans, not Italians, and Cunningham had completely lost his peace at this time.

The Italian Air Force did not have dive bombers and torpedo planes, and only the Germans could make such an attack.

The Germans could not frighten Cunningham, nor could bombs and torpedoes.

What really sent Cunningham into a panic was the speed of the Luftwaffe's reaction.

Cunningham quickly sketched an invisible chart in his mind of the Germans' planes flying from the west, most likely from Sicily or Malta, a hundred and fifty kilometers away.

The Italian fleet was attacked. It was not the Italian Air Force that first appeared on the battlefield, but the Luftwaffe. What does this mean?

There is only one answer, the Luftwaffe has long been ready and waiting for the appearance of the Mediterranean fleet. And they are the main force of the air attack.

There was no reason why the Italian fleet had not been given priority to inform its own air force when it was attacked, but to summon the Luftwaffe.

The battle was a trap, a trap for the Mediterranean fleet. Luring the Mediterranean Fleet into attack with false intelligence, then using the Italian Navy to entangle itself, and then using the ambushed Luftwaffe to deliver a fatal blow, this is certainly the case.

Arriving at this horrific conclusion, hot sweat ran from the gap in the brimmed hat on Cunningham's head.

In the middle of the lightning, Stuka swooped down in the sky and dropped a string of aerial bombs, and the FI-167 torpedoes came close to the surface of the sea and threw stout torpedoes into the sea, even the frantic anti-aircraft fire of the British ships could not stop them.

At the cost of three torpedo planes being shot down, German naval aviation dropped twelve torpedoes, none of which hit.

The artillery fire from the British ships disrupted their formation, causing torpedoes to rush towards the British fleet in a scattered manner, which was then dodged by the British ships or detonated in the water by anti-aircraft fire fired from below.

Compared to the torpedo machines, the results of the Stukas were much more beautiful.

With a loud "rumble", an unprecedentedly thick column of water appeared on the starboard side of the battleship Weyer, and tons of seawater hit the foredeck of the Weary and cleaned the deck of the Weary once for free.

1,000 kg bomb, only 1,000 kg bomb can set off such a large column of water, Cunningham glanced at the water column that was only more than a hundred meters away from the War Weyware, and instantly came to a terrifying conclusion.

The Warweary narrowly escaped, and about a kilometer to its right, the battleship Malaya was a different story.

A large hole of about five or six meters appeared on the deck next to the main turret of the stern of this tall and mighty battleship, and the curved steel plate at the gap flipped downward in an irregular jagged shape.

Inside the hole, an oval PC-1000 armor-piercing bomb tilted its fat body into a steel plate, and the tail round fan whizzed and whirled, making a terrifying whistling sound.

Moments later, the rotation of the fan came to an abrupt halt, and a dazzling flash of fire rose from the gap in the deck, interspersed with countless steel plate debris and severed limbs.

The powerful shock wave caused the nearly 200-meter-long body of the battleship Malaya to shiver on the sea, and almost all the surviving crew members on board fell to the ground one by one.

Blazing flames shone through every crevice in the stern of the battleship Malaya, and endless black smoke flew into the sky as the flames burst out of the hull and then converged into huge plumes of smoke to obscure the sunlight.

The creaking of metal twists and the roar of ammunition detonation mingled into each other, drowning out the miserable wails of the sailors.

Unwilling and fearful of death, the battleship Malaya tilted to the left with a speed far beyond the capabilities of the damage crew. The crew who had escaped to the deck by luck threw down their lifeboats and lifebuoys and jumped off

Looking at the hellish scene on the battleship Malaya through a telescope, Cunningham knew that the Malaya was finished.

"Retreat, retreat immediately." Cunningham shouted hoarsely to the staff officers beside him

On the island of Malta, Garand took a telegram and shouted angrily to Chen Dao: "Those idiot Italians, why didn't you say earlier that they were attacked by carrier-based aircraft." If it weren't for the fact that our pilots saw the British planes, we would not have known that there were British aircraft carriers near the battlefield. ”

"Aircraft carriers!" Chen Dao was stunned.

"Yes, it's an aircraft carrier, there is at least one aircraft carrier nearby, and our pilots have seen their carrier-based aircraft."

"So what are you waiting for? Send a reconnaissance plane to find it immediately, and be sure to kill it. Chen Dao shouted.

"Wait, what are you doing?" Chen Dao stopped Garand, who turned around and left.

"Go to the bathroom." Garland shouted without looking back.

Twenty minutes later, in Chen Dao's stunned eyes, a HE-100D1 fighter slid over the airport runway, and Garland sat in the cabin and waved his hand to Chen Dao in a dashing manner, showing a smug smile.

"There's a kind of you don't come back." Chen Dao pointed to the fighter plane that was soaring into the sky and jumped to his feet and roared. (To be continued)