As the red sun draws to a close, the sunset fades, and a thick gray-black cloud drifts from the northern sky to the south, with bright lightning faintly thunderbolting through it. On the sea, more than 30 kilometers away from this cloud area, fighter planes roared, huge ships cleaved waves, and the confrontation between British bombers and German battleships was nearing the end of the moment.

Under the fierce attack of the British pilots, who were not afraid of life and death, they finally hit the target with four more bombs in a quarter of an hour. However, the British soon found themselves desperate to find that their own efforts and the sacrifices of their comrades had been exchanged for the shattering of their dreams of sinking the German battleship. The German battleship, with its astonishing main turret, was always moving at great speed on the sea; Except for the flames and black smoke billowing from the bridge, there was no damage caused by the explosion at the beginning and end of the ship!

"Boom!" The waves were surging and white, and the sea ten meters away from the port side of the Bismarck suddenly burst into a surging water wave like a floating island hill; Lindemann, who was in the command tower, could clearly feel the unusual shaking of the battleship, as if it had been violently applied by an external force. Next to him, Fang Yan was full of calmness, not worried about the fate of the battleship at all; This level of near-miss bomb can even withstand its own aircraft carrier, let alone this magnificent giant ship with armor stronger than the mountains!

"The outer hull of the watertight compartment No. 5-149 is ruptured, there is a water leak in the tank, and the battleship is not tilted at present." Half a minute later, the damage management department sent the real-time damage to the warship to the command tower. Lindemann breathed a sigh of relief in his heart, but he still maintained the severity of his verbal reply. For a ship with perfect waterline armor, the damage caused by a near-miss bomb is limited to a small amount of water ingress caused by the hull being fractured. It seems that the situation is indeed as the young man next to him said, the torpedo does not come out, and no weapon can threaten the survival of this battleship.

"The British attack is coming to an end." Fang Yan carefully observed the situation of the surrounding sea and air. He spoke softly. By this time, the British bombers flying around the Bismarck were already single-handed, and the other planes had either dropped bombs and returned home, or were shot down by anti-aircraft guns. Unconsciously, this sea and air offensive and defensive battle lasted for nearly an hour; The eastern sky is deep and blue, and the pale white crescent moon has faintly emerged.

Lindemann nodded. For the first time, there was a hint of relaxation in his expression. At this time, the damage to the battleship was much better than his initial expectations, not only the core compartment was intact, but even the damage to the outer area could be quickly repaired. Suddenly, Lindemann was not so repulsed by his task of luring the enemy this time; Although the young man in front of him made himself cannon fodder, he seemed to have really thought it through.

"We can't sink that German battleship anymore." When the last British bomber with ammunition dropped two 500-pound (237kg) high-explosive bombs and stirred up waves in the sea, Major Clarke, a British Air Force major who had been hovering high in the sky on the battlefield and had not left, said to himself full of pain. Before the attack, he had confidently declared. It was sure that the incoming German fleet would pay the price in blood, but when the battle was over, he realized that there was a huge gap between reality and imagination. In the fight with this German battleship alone, as many as 7 bombers under his command were shot down, but their sacrifice was only exchanged for a few flames on the German battleship, and the opponent did not even reduce the speed slightly!

Looking at the German battleship still raging below, Clark suddenly thought of something. He slammed the nose of the plane and steered the two-seater bomber towards the sea below. Harry, the telegraph operator sitting in the back, was taken aback by the sudden turn of events. Hurriedly said loudly: "Sir, what are you doing here?" We don't have any bombs left, you won't tell me I'm going to ram that German battleship, are you! ”

"Don't talk nonsense, get your camera ready and get a close-up picture of that German battleship!" Clarke, with a menacing face, looked back and roared, and then lowered the plane's altitude even more violently. After learning that the commander was not carried away by anger. Harry, the telegraph operator, let out a long sigh of relief; He expertly manipulated the dial instrument in front of him, and soon, a delicate camera hole poked his head out from under the belly.

As the core credential for rewarding pilots for meritorious deeds, the camera is undoubtedly an indispensable equipment for combat aircraft. Taking advantage of the low altitude, there were other friendly planes that attracted the anti-aircraft artillery fire of the German battleships. Clarke, who was a master of the arts, lowered the height of the landline to only more than 800 meters above the sea. Before the German ship's anti-aircraft fire could focus on him, Harry in the back seat quickly pressed the shutter a dozen times, and the face of the battleship below was fixed into a clear light and shadow.

After doing this, Clark immediately climbed back to altitude in the plane, and escaped with a gun and shell in a difficult maneuver such as rolling and rocking. When the target on the sea surface was reduced to the size of a matchbox, Clark resumed level flight in the plane, but by this time, the direction of the nose was already returning to the southwest of the base.

"Sir, what do we want these pictures for?" Harry, who was eternally curious, couldn't see Clarke's gloomy face with his back to him, and asked again. Clark took a deep breath, forcibly resisted the urge in his heart to roar in anger due to loss and pain, and gritted his teeth, "Although our attack failed, we must bring back enough information about the other party. This time we were very, very fortunate to be able to approach the German battleship, and the next time we got close we did not know when; Therefore, taking a close-up picture of her will help us effectively eliminate the blind spots of cognitive information about this mysterious battleship. ”

Harry suddenly realized. He was about to praise his commander for his foresight, but Harry heard the man in the driver's seat in front of him say again, "In addition, these pictures can also be used for propaganda purposes, to show the public that the German battleship has been severely damaged." Otherwise, the tragedy that happened in Scapa Bay today would not be explained to the government and the people. This would be a complete disaster for Britain, which had just been thrown into the war. ”

Harry was shocked when he heard this, isn't this kind of thing for politicians to think about? However, thinking of Clark's aristocratic family background who participated in politics, he also vaguely understood the factors that the other party would have such thoughts. Harry was silent and didn't say anything more, and through Clark's words, he also thought of the home fleet that had suffered heavy losses today. With the roar of the motor, Harry couldn't help but be full of regret: if Britain had not declared war on Germany today, how could the Royal Navy, which has a glorious history of hundreds of years, suffer such a catastrophe?

Under Clark's command, the British "combat" bombers, which were hanging in the air, spiraled into the sky like snowy vultures that had given up eating, gradually breaking away from the effective range of the German ship's 40-mm anti-aircraft guns. The 128-mm anti-aircraft guns of the Bismarck and the four destroyers opened fire again, as if to make a final send-off for the British planes. The noisy and vibrating air gradually calmed down, and the air breeze was heard again.

The remnant sun is sinking in the west, and the sunset is in full swing. Thousands of miles of ocean swaying, in the afterglow of the sunset looks magnificent and dazzling. The Bismarck, which had ended its combat alert, began to slow down slowly, and used a light signal to call several accompanying destroyers to move closer to her. Even before the battle began, in order to avoid damaging the weakly armored destroyers by bombs, the Bismarck let the destroyers out of her side, leaving them to provide fire support only from a distance. Because of this, they were largely ignored by the incoming British planes, and except for the Z11, which was slightly damaged by a 250-pound bomb, the other three remained nearly intact in combat. ，

Fang Yan walked out of the command tower and looked at the bridge scene that was already unrecognizable at this moment with a complicated expression. At the explosion points, the steel plates were charred and twisted, the cabins were broken and messy, some of the anti-aircraft guns were even melted and deformed, and the gun carriages and seats were full of dented wounds from shrapnel. However, he was relieved that the battleship's open-air armored deck withstood the attack of this wave of high-explosive shells. In many places, the violent explosions left only a shallow black dent on the deck; With the exception of a few light bulbs that were shattered, the chambers below were intact.

A few steps away, Lindemann's expression was also unable to distinguish whether it was loss or emotion. Although his own warship was not damaged in this wave of air raids, the loss of nearly one-fifth of the ship's combat personnel, as well as the destruction of most of the anti-aircraft artillery fire and radar, doomed the Bismarck to not participate in the next operation to break into the Atlantic, but to return to the mainland for repair and replenishment. However, as a member of the German Navy, Lindemann witnessed a hearty victory over the British bandits today: the carrier-based aircraft sent by his own aircraft carrier successfully attacked the British Scapa Flow, and the victory they achieved was something they had never dreamed of!

"Your Excellency Colonel, I'm sorry to let you and your warship end the expedition early." Fang Yan said to Lindemann with an apologetic look on his face. Lindemann lifted the wide-brimmed military hat on his head, shook his head slightly, and said: "Although I regret that I was not able to sink the British battleship directly, I am also a German soldier, and I will not ignore the interests of the army and the country because of my own wishes." In any case, today is an unprecedentedly great day for the German Navy. ”

Lindemann took a deep breath and looked a little excited: "We have achieved what the entire High Seas Fleet failed to achieve in the past, and we have punched Britain, the root of the evil that has directly led to the centuries of war in Europe. This punch not only shattered their bloody teeth, but also made them taste unprecedented fear and pain! This group of gentlemen who pretend to be glamorous and civilized in appearance, but in fact the soul is filthy, vile, greedy and shameless Anglo-Saxon demons, has finally been punished by the justice of the European continent, which has been poisoned by it for hundreds of years. After today, I see if this robber will dare to set fire to Europe! ”

"However, we did not hit the British hard enough. Only by cutting off the lifeblood of their sea communication can this arrogant, fierce, domineering, and tyrannical robber understand what real pain is. Fang Yan did not forget the core of his strategy towards Britain in the slightest, and added unhurriedly. He looked up at the twilight sun in the western sky slowly sinking into the sea, and said hesitantly: "Today's Britain is the sunset that is about to disappear. When the war is over, Britain will never see this beautiful splendor again. (To be continued.) )