"Baby, steady, steady, don't fly......"

Bach, piloting the Ju-198 on a test flight mission, prayed as he swooped toward the end of the deck at a galloping speed. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

But it backfired, and at the end of the deck, the Ju-198 did not fly as he wished, but first raised its head upwards, and then planted its head downward, "plopped", and even the plane with a torpedo fell into the sea, and the people below immediately fished out Bach quickly, otherwise he would have been swept to the bottom of the ship.

This "plop" was like a heavy drum beating on the hearts of Cranke and the others. He shrugged his shoulders and smiled bitterly, "It doesn't seem to work...... I had to give up. ”

"Otherwise, let's bring bombs to attack again, we can't sink the opponent, at least we can paralyze the opponent!"

Cranke shook his head: "Forget it, get ready to retreat." ”

"Sir!"

"Forget it, the loss of personnel today is too great." "Forcing a tired dive bomber pilot to attack again is tantamount to sending them to their deaths, and you have to remember that it is always the pilot who is more valuable than the warship!" It wouldn't be good to sink one more U.S. warship, they would soon be able to produce another batch, and I'd rather kill 50 more of their pilots than sink one more enemy ship! As you can see about today's battle situation, the US military is larger than ours and has suffered more losses than ours, and the reason is that the pilots are not good enough. ”

"The route is 290 degrees, the speed is 15 knots, let a few hedgehog-class ships come to join us as soon as possible, go north first, see the situation tomorrow, and have no chance to find an opponent to fight!" At 15:21, Cranke gave the order to retreat, giving up the idea of competing with the American forces.

Almost at the same time, Spruance made the same decision: to abandon the attack and prepare to return to Cape Town.

"Sir, why don't we attack?" Roddick asked, "The SBD sent to search in the morning has returned home with refueling bombs, and the enemy now has only one aircraft carrier, and with these and spare aircraft, we can form a second attack wave ......"

Spruance waved his hand and said, "It's too far...... Can't go back. ”

Roddick thought that there was indeed a problem, now the distance between the two sides has been nearly 700 kilometers, even if the SBD is attached to the auxiliary fuel tank, the range is only a little more than 1600 kilometers, and it only takes more than 2 hours to fly over the German army at a sad speed of more than 300 kilometers, and the Germans will run out at least 50 kilometers, how to calculate the range is not enough, and it is already dark when they return, this group of pilots has basically not been trained at night, which is equivalent to letting them launch a decisive attack. Although Cunningham used it once in the Battle of Cape Verde, it was also a last resort, and now the adverse consequences are very obvious - there are warships, and there is a shortage of good pilots! The more warships are served, the more pilots are lacking!

The US planes returned one after another, convinced that the first attack had sunk a German fleet aircraft carrier and two destroyers and paralyzed a heavy cruiser, Spruance and others were slightly relieved, indicating that the battle situation that Kent had reported to him just now was accurate. In Spruance's view, the loss of the San Jacinto and the Unicorn was not large, and together they were equivalent to a fleet aircraft carrier - he didn't know that the Savoy looked big, but it was actually a showcase, barely equal. In addition, the destroyer losses on both sides were basically close, and the Wasp was heavily damaged, and a Hipper-class heavy cruiser of the enemy army was paralyzed - barely a loss.

But he didn't see Kent, so he asked, "What about Lieutenant Colonel Kent?" ”

Many people answered that they did not know, and only one person replied that Kent had taken some planes to attack another aircraft carrier, and they had returned early because the attack had been completed, so they did not know the specific result.

The clock slowly crossed 5 o'clock, and Spruance and Roddick's faces became more and more ugly: they originally thought that there might not be enough containment space after losing 3 aircraft carriers in one go, but except for the SBD in the morning, which was basically completely flown back, the first attack wave suffered great losses, and only more than 40 planes were collected one after another, and many pilots reported that they ran out of fuel and landed on the sea on the way back, and he could only send a frigate to rescue - the plane could not be saved, and it was good to leave people behind.

But even then, the loss is a bit scary.

The total number of planes on mission at the time of departure of the entire TF44 formation was slightly excessive, a total of 264 planes, and after sending 24 SBDs to carry out reconnaissance missions in the morning and retaining 72 fighter aircraft for air defense, a total of 168 planes were handed over to Kent to take out. In the air defense operation just now, the F6F was shot down 37 for various reasons, plus 3 were seriously damaged and thrown into the sea, a cumulative loss of 40 aircraft, as usual, he should have 224 aircraft.

But now he has no planes on hand, except for the 32 F6Fs patrolling in the air (which have been replenished once), the 22 SBDs that have landed (2 have not returned) and the 37 planes that have returned in the first attack wave, even if he counts the 19 planes that made a forced landing on the sea, he only got back 110 planes (89 actually got back), which is still 114 planes short of the standard number.

After more than half an hour, planes returned one after another, and when asked whether they were going to attack another aircraft carrier, the total number was pitiful, only 3 TBFs and 2 SBDs, and then it was reported that 2 F6F and 3 SBDs ran out of fuel and made a forced landing, as for whether there were other companions, they couldn't say.

The survivors brought back two pieces of news to Spruance: the first was a battle briefing, informing the German aircraft carrier and the German battleship that they had suffered heavy damage after each eating two torpedoes (false alarm); The second is the news of Lieutenant Colonel Kent, whose plane was seen shot down and did not parachute, presumably killed.

Although the news of the heavy damage to the two capital ships made everyone happy, Spruance was so sad that his heart was about to break when he heard that Kent was killed - this is one of the few experienced commanders, since the Pearl Harbor incident, a mid-level aviation commander like Kent has lost more than ten with the rank of lieutenant colonel and colonel, most of them are killed, and half of them are captured, and he doesn't know what to do next.

As night wore on, Spruance insisted that Bunker Hill turn on the lights to greet the pilots, it was clear to everyone that it was unlikely that anyone would ever return, and that they would run out of fuel in time. And the pilots, after recalling, also gradually painted a picture of the situation of the first attack wave, according to their estimates, more than 80 aircraft were lost in the first attack.

Although the battlefield is very complicated, and everyone has contradictory parts, everyone is afraid of the fierce anti-aircraft fire of the German hedgehog class, thinking that "I have never seen such fierce firepower", and some people are impressed by the firepower and attack power of the Do-412 fighter, which Spruance knows very well - he lost 40 planes and 18 pilots were killed or wounded in the air defense operation, while the German losses were estimated to be only in their early 20s, and of course the pilots were either killed or captured.

In order to find out why there was such a huge disparity, he deliberately asked two captured German pilots to understand the situation and asked them to report their own achievements.

"Kohler, Captain of the German Navy, 57 points shot down before this war, winner of the Knight's Cross of the Order of Silver Oak Leaves."

"Wolff, German Lieutenant, 48 shootdown points before this war, Knight's Cross."

"Mr. Wolfe's Knight's Cross does not have silver oak leaves?"

"I don't, I'm only eligible to apply when I'm 50 points, and if today's results are counted, it's just enough to qualify, but it's a pity that ......"

"With a two-place record, how many can you rank in your country's HNA? Can you make it into the top 10? ”

"Can't get in...... I'm probably in my 80s. ”

"I'm definitely out of 100......"

Spruance waved his hand weakly to make them retreat, and there was no need to ask anything about the rest - the combined record of these two men exceeded the entire record of the pilots killed in the air defense battle today, and the reason for this is needless to say?

That night, Spruance sent a long telegram to Washington: "...... Today, it fought with the German Falkland Island Broken Fleet, sinking and creating 1 aircraft carrier of the enemy fleet, 1 Zhongchuang battle cruiser (Gneisenau), suspected of destroying 1 Hippel-class heavy cruiser (Sedlitz), and sinking 2-3 destroyers; Our army sank the San Jacinto and the Unicorn, the Wasp was heavily damaged, the deck and hangar were destroyed, and 3 destroyers and 1 frigate were lost; Our army shot down more than 50 enemy planes, our side lost more than 170 planes due to various reasons, and 134 pilots were killed or missing...... The ship will continue its search tomorrow to see if there is a chance to completely annihilate the enemy fleet. ”

His telegram was still written more cautiously, and he did not dare to say that the Ise was "heavily damaged", because he thought that even if he hit 2 torpedoes (actually 1) according to the pilots, it was estimated that it would not be fatal based on the transformation of the battleship Ise, not to mention that the results of 2 were obviously doubtful, and there were only single-digit torpedo machines in total, and 2 in Gneisenau? Ise 2 more? The Germans did not have such a good hit rate, and he thought that there must be a mistake in it, so he simply wrote it conservatively until it could not be verified - in fact, this writing just corresponded to the actual situation, but the American side did not know about it.

Receiving the telegram from Spruance, Washington also frowned, from the results of the battle, it seems that this side still has a slight advantage in comparison, considering the number and the balance of forces is normal, the problem is that after this exchange, there is still an intact aircraft carrier left on this side. After fierce debate, the Joint Chiefs of Staff held that in view of the current tense situation in Great Britain, the more important goal of the South Atlantic Squadron was to help Britain stabilize India and at the same time send reinforcements to the Pacific Ocean as soon as possible.

Spruance, who received the telegram, sighed and said nothing, letting Roddick carry out the order......