When Garland arrived at the battlefield, he happened to see a shocking scene on the battlefield.

The sea was full of warships of all types, large and small, with battleships bombarding each other with huge naval guns at a distance of more than 20,000 meters, while destroyer cruisers rushed to a distance of 10,000 meters or even only a few thousand meters to shell and fire torpedoes without stopping.

The shells that shot the lost water created countless white fountains of all sizes on the blue sea, and the black smoke and red flames emitted from the guns were dotted with them.

A huge warship lay on its side on the sea, sinking rapidly with the light and smoke that rose into the sky, bringing a huge whirlpool on the sea.

Beside the whirlpool, countless lifeboats and crews who had no time to escape struggled and cried, swept to the bottom of the sea by the huge suction.

Tons of azure water rushed down from all directions, filling in the whirlpools and the bones of British sailors.

Viewed from above, the battlefield is as terrifying as the purgatory depicted by Goethe in Faust. When Garland heard that a British aircraft carrier had appeared near the battlefield, his head was hot and he did a desertion without permission.

When he personally led eleven HE-100D1 fighters to the battlefield, his head had already regained consciousness.

Instead of leading his men directly into the battlefield, he divided into six two-plane formations and circled around the battlefield, looking for the aircraft carrier they were looking for.

The sea is hot, and the sky is not willing to be lonely.

The 2nd and 3rd attack waves of the German naval aviation from the island of Malta, as well as the dive bomber formations of the Luftwaffe 2nd Air Force from the airfields near the military port of Sicily and Taranto, had already obscured the skies of the battlefield.

More than 200 Ju-88 and Ju-87 dive bombers and FI-167 torpedo attack planes swooped down on the Royal Navy in waves of thunder.

Aerial bombs hail down British warships on the surface of the sea. One torpedo after another rushed towards the target with terrifying ripples.

The British sailors did not sit still. The shells of the 20-mm machine gun and the 40-mm Bofors anti-aircraft gun burst into countless white "marshmallows" in the sky. From time to time, planes are hit, plunging headlong into the sea with smoke and flames, and the pilots who parachute then spread out white umbrella flowers in the sky.

In order to save their lives, the British gunners were very brave, but they could not resist the swarming German fighters.

After the battleship Malaya, the battleship Sovereign became the next success of the German bombers.

Seeing the battleship Malaya sink to the bottom of the sea, the powerless battleship Sovereign could only turn its bow and retreat while discharging smoke to interfere with the enemy's line of sight according to Cunningham's orders.

It was as if inspired by the freshly sunken Malaya. In the first salvo after turning the bow of the ship, a 381-mm shell from the stern main gun hit the stern of the battleship Count Cavour near the propeller at a distance of 22,000 meters, causing the Count Cavour propeller to stall and paralyze on the sea.

Before the crew of the battleship Sovereign could enjoy the joy of inflicting heavy damage on the enemy, a roar of rage emanated from the ship's bridge and spread through the microphone to every corner of the warship.

"Watch out for the port side, there are torpedo machines."

Colonel Philip, the captain of the battleship Sovereign, had accurately determined the position of the enemy plane and quickly pointed out the direction of the plane with his hands.

Members of the bridge could all see an aircraft on the port bow very close to the sea level, and it was coming at a very fast speed.

It was a torpedo bomber of a model they did not recognize. It was about 2500 yards from the battleship Sovereign, still flying towards them at high speed. There was a panic in the bridge. The occupants shouted the alarm signal with various microphones.

None of the gunners saw the enemy planes flying on the port side, and on the two twenty-millimeter Erlikon anti-aircraft gun emplacements in front of the battle command room, eight gunners stared intently at the dive bombers overhead, ping pong with their anti-aircraft guns, trying to drive away these grim reapers, who would scream terrorously.

It wasn't until the first mate leaned forward from behind the wave screen and scolded them that the eight gunners woke up from a dream and turned around to look at the port side, looking for the target that the first mate had said.

When the gunners found the torpedo plane, they were horrified to find that the plane was only about 1,500 yards away.

"What are you looking at? Fire, fire quickly. The first mate shouted.

A second passed, maybe two seconds, and the gunners still seemed at a loss. Then suddenly it dawned on me!

In a panic, they flattened the muzzle of the cannon that was originally pointing at the sky and opened fire on the enemy planes clinging to the sea.

With the deafening intermittent sound of explosions, more and more anti-aircraft guns turned their muzzles to the port side, and the dense shells shot rows of white columns of water on the sea, like a wall in front of the enemy planes.

The torpedo plane dropped a torpedo when the situation was not good, and then it screamed and circled around the sea, and staggered out of the fire net.

Colonel Philip then gave the order to fill the rudder on the left, and the battleship Sovereign immediately turned to the port side like a plucked pointer, and the huge right side of the hull was raised high, making huge waves on the sea, turning the hull in a direction parallel to the torpedo firing.

Looking at the torpedoes that flickered over from the sea more than 100 meters away from the left side of the hull, nearly a thousand crew members from Colonel Philip down breathed a sigh of relief.

"Watch to starboard, watch to starboard, there are two enemy aircraft." A heart-rending voice rang out in the bridge.

Before Colonel Philip could come to his senses, the voice shouted, "Oh my God, they dropped the bomb, they dropped the bomb." ”

Seeing this, Colonel Philip hurriedly ordered his men to make another sharp turn, but it was too late, and one torpedo grazed the bow of the battleship Sovereign and slid across the sea, and another torpedo hit the stern to the right side.

A strong tremor quickly traveled along the huge hull of the Sovereign to the bridge, and Colonel Philip stumbled and almost fell to the ground.

Colonel Philip regained his footing with the help of his staff, and then asked the departments to report the damage.

It didn't take long for the chief of electrical and mechanical engineering to send a report. The right propeller of the battleship was blown up. Fragments of steel plates jammed the servo. The steering compartment is flooded.

By this time, Colonel Philip had noticed that the speed of the battleship under his feet had dropped sharply, and the huge hull had become more and more bulky.

Huge battleships were always the first target of German fighters, and a wounded battleship was tantamount to shouting at German fighters to open fire on us.

The assault on the battleship Sovereign began in a "beating the water dogs".

Hundreds of aerial bombs and shells flew towards the battleship Sovereign from all directions, and the blast wave and shrapnel of the explosion mercilessly destroyed the buildings on the deck one by one, and countless sailors died.

Torpedo planes released torpedoes one after another against the surface of the sea, drilling holes in the hull near the waterline to accelerate its sinking.

"Our ship has lost power and is under siege by enemy forces. We will fight to the last bullet, long live the British Empire, long live the Royal Navy. ”

After sending the last telegram to the flagship, Colonel Philip and his men stood in the bridge like nails, quietly waiting for the last moment.

On the fore and aft decks of the battleship Sovereign, on the left and right sides, the British gunners were dying and desperately firing at the enemy with their weapons, trying to attract the enemy's attention with powerful artillery fire. Buy time for the escape of the main forces of the fleet.

Under the joint siege of the German and Italian air and navy, the earth-shaking cannon sound on the Sovereign did not last long.

Thirty minutes after being hit by a torpedo. The front and rear main guns on the Sovereign were finally dumbfounded, from the stern to the bow, from the deck to the superstructure, smoke billowed from holes, and the stationary hull began to tilt to the right.

After another ten minutes, no cannon fire could be heard on the Sovereign, only the sound of explosions when it was hit by shells of various calibers.

Two FI-167 torpedo bombers descended from the sky and fired two additional torpedoes at the starboard side of the battleship Sovereign, accelerating the sinking of Sovereign.

On deck, hundreds of British sailors fled in all directions, scrambling to jump into the sea first, but it was too late.

With a violent right-hand flip, the battleship Sovereign sank into the icy dark waves of the Mediterranean.

The Sovereign's sacrifice bought Cunningham's fleet precious time, and Vice Admiral Tovey led five light cruisers of Flotilla A to cover the eight destroyers around him to release torpedoes at the oncoming Italian Navy, disrupting the pace of enemy ship tracking, and then turning the bow to chase the battleship Weariness, which had gone first.

Large clouds of white smoke rose from the array of the Mediterranean fleet, obscuring the view of German fighters in the sky.

Under the smoke, the British warships kept stirring their bows to run the S-shaped route to avoid bombs from the air.

Instead of joining the attack, Garland and his squadron of fighters took advantage of the speed advantage and swooped over the Mediterranean Fleet in a flashing direction.

"Wild Wolf No. 3 calls Wild Wolf One, Wild Wolf No. 3 calls Wild Wolf No. 1, I found the target, I found the target, please call back when you receive it, over."

"I'm Wolf One, we're on our way, we'll be there soon." Garland said excitedly over the radio.

Garland then turned the radio frequency to another channel.

"Wolf One calls Falcon One, Wolf One calls Falcon One, we find Prey One, bring your people with me, the coordinates are"

After reporting the coordinates to the bomber unit, Garand's plane also flew to the battlefield to rendezvous with Wolf III.

After the outbreak of naval battles between the Mediterranean Fleet and the Italian fleet, the Swordfish attack aircraft on the aircraft carrier Eagle continued to attack the Italian Navy, and the torpedoes they fired did not give anything but some panic to the Italian Navy.

A Swordfish torpedo plane that had completed a lightning strike mission was unfortunately discovered by the Wolf III.

Following this Swordfish torpedo machine, the Wolf III easily found the aircraft carrier Eagle.

When Garand arrived, he happened to see Wolf III chasing the enemy plane in the air, and after saying hello on the radio, Garand let out a cheer to join the pursuit.

Nine Swordfish torpedo planes circled over the aircraft carrier after carrying out the lightning strike mission, and were about to land one by one according to the navigation, when they suddenly saw the German fighters appear, and immediately scattered and fled.

The Swordfish torpedo aircraft had an old-fashioned two-wing structure and an open cockpit, which looked not much different from the old aircraft of World War I.

His top speed was only a pitiful 225 kilometers per hour, while the He-100D1 fighter piloted by Garland had a maximum speed of nearly three times that of him.

Garland flicked the joystick, and the plane swayed from side to side in the air a few times. Deftly dodge bullets from the backseat machine gun of the Swordfish torpedo machine in front of you. It is then firmly slipped into the sight. The 20-mm cannon mounted in the engine and the two MG-17 machine guns on the left and right wings opened fire.

Garland clearly felt a rhythmic vibration of the fuselage, and then saw that the right wing of the Swordfish torpedo plane suddenly snapped, and the fuselage did an irregular spiral rotation to the sea, and the three humanoid objects were thrown out of the cabin one after another, drawing a graceful curve in the air and falling towards the sea.

Garland skillfully maneuvered the plane into an accelerated dive, flashing past a dancing British pilot.

The moment he brushed shoulders with the blood-stained pilot, Garland raised his hand and waved his fist at the stunned pilot, and then drove away in style.

Poof. A tall splash of water splashed on the surface of the sea, and a moment later, a humanoid object surfaced in a large shape

When Garland re-assembled his fighters to rendezvous with his men at high altitude, none of the nine Swordfish torpedo planes were spared, and all of them were shot down, and he immediately shifted his target to the aircraft carrier Eagle.

The USS Eagle swayed left and right on the surface of the sea, making S-shaped maneuvers, and its huge hull swayed and swayed white waves on the sea.

Keeping a safe distance from the USS Eagle, the shells fired from the ship's anti-aircraft guns burst into white "marshmallows" in the surrounding sky.

Garland led his men around the sky to the stern of the ship, and then formed two columns and swooped down to the deck of the USS Eagle against the British anti-aircraft guns.

The moment it flew over the deck. 20mm machine gun shells and 7.92mm machine gun bullets carved numerous bullet holes in the deck, and even swept a bloody path in the deck's anti-aircraft gunners.

Twelve fighters strafed in turn. After a bloody scene, the anti-aircraft fire on the aircraft carrier Eagle was sharply reduced, and the Falcon One, which had just arrived at the battlefield, immediately led its men to launch a deadly attack.

With a special scream, a squadron of nine Stuka formed three three-plane formations and launched dives in turn.

There was not enough anti-aircraft artillery interference, and the amazing hit rate of the Stuka dive bomber was fully exploited.

Two 1,000-kilogram armor-piercing bombs and four 50-kilogram high-explosive bombs fell almost simultaneously on the middle deck and tail of the aircraft carrier Eagle.

The shock wave and shrench of the four 50-kilogram bombs swept away almost half of the crew on the deck in an instant, and a few unlucky people standing on the edge of the deck were pushed out of the deck by the air wave and flew towards the sea with their hands in dance.

Two PC-1000 armor-piercing bombs chiseled through the floor of the flight deck and the steel plates underneath before being detonated by a fan-like time-delay fuse.

Dazzling flames erupted from the massive gap between the flight deck and the hull, interspersed with several humanoid objects in between.

With the sound of the explosion, large pieces of steel plates and wood chips were torn apart by the shock wave and flew into the sky.

Before these dangerous UFOs could land, a fierce firelight burst into the air like fireworks, almost enveloping half of the hull of the USS Eagle.

With a series of dull explosions sounding from inside the hull, the back half of the hull of the USS Eagle was instantly torn apart.

A huge blast wave spun into the sky with countless human stumps, ship parts, and even two Swordfish torpedo planes.

Under the double detonation of the fuel bunkers and torpedo compartments of the carrier-based aircraft in the hull, the aircraft carrier Eagle, the only battleship-converted aircraft carrier in the British Royal Navy, lost half of its hull in an instant, and then sank in the sea in less than three minutes.

Garland sat in the cabin and took in everything on the sea.

Seeing the tragic situation of the USS Eagle, he swallowed dryly, looked down at the fuel gauge on the dashboard, calculated the distance, and then gave the order to return.

Garland left the battlefield with a fighter unit in style, but the desperate journey of the remnants of the Mediterranean Fleet led by Cunningham on the sea continued.

With the Italian Navy chasing behind, the Luftwaffe in the sky chasing and intercepting, Admiral Cunningham stroked his sweat-covered forehead and pondered countermeasures.

After the battleship Sovereign sank with Vice Admiral Wippel, commander of the C fleet, the light cruiser Mohawk first sent a telegram in clear code, claiming that it had been damaged by German fighters and that it was unable to keep up with the actions of the large forces, and that it had voluntarily stayed behind, and then turned its bow and rushed towards the Italian navy following behind.

This was followed by telegrams from the destroyers HMS Enemy, HMS Sloppy, and HMS Grace, similar in content to the light cruiser USS Mohawk.

With great courage, the four battleships launched a suicidal charge against the Italian fleet, which had absolute superiority in numbers and firepower, and fired at the enemy ships with torpedoes, naval guns, anti-aircraft guns, and even rifles carried by the crew.

The light cruiser Mohawk was paralyzed on the surface of the sea, refused to accept the surrender of the Italian Navy, and then opened the sea valve and watertight hatch and sank to the bottom of the sea.

Cunningham had neither the time nor the energy to be moved by the heroic sacrifice of his men as he faced the greatest crisis of his life.

As the only surviving capital ship of the Mediterranean Fleet, the battleship he was aboard was unsurprisingly the central target of the Luftwaffe's pursuit.

An almost endless stream of bombs and torpedoes pounced on the Weyware, and under the desperate resistance of the Weary and its surrounding auxiliary ships, torpedoes slid past the Weary with a terrifying trail.

Deadly armor-piercing bombs rubbed shoulders with the war-weary, setting off endless waves on the sea.

After paying the price of being hit by three 50-kilogram high-explosive shells and killing and wounding hundreds of sailors, the War Weary finally withstood another wave of attacks.

Looking at the dwindling German planes in the sky and the increasingly sparse white water columns on both sides of the hull, Cunningham secretly breathed a sigh of relief, and said in his heart that this catastrophe should have been avoided.

A voice instantly made Cunningham's relieved heart hang again.

"Enemy torpedo planes were found on the starboard side, two in number."

Cunningham hurriedly mustered up his spirits and looked to starboard, where he clearly saw two torpedo planes coming towards the warweary, dropped two torpedoes, and then turned and left.

Cunningham glanced at the trajectory and distance of the torpedo's advance, and his old heart stopped beating almost instantaneously.

Oh no, you can only dodge one at most. (To be continued......)