Major General Becky knew that the British would soon find the place, but he did not expect it to be so fast, and he was puzzled by the first planes that flew in: it was actually Mosquito fighters and Spitfires that could only bomb horizontally. However, he was not in the mood to think about it so much, on the one hand, he commanded the fleet to form a wheeled air defense formation, and on the other hand, he watched the battle situation of the Bf-219s, whether they could get out of the air defense circle unharmed and avoid repeating the mistakes of the "Bismarck" depended on the skill of these fighters.

Seeing that 18 German planes were rushing towards him, and that there were still 6 planes left over the shelling formation, Major Smith, who led the British bomber group, also secretly complained: he did not expect that the Germans would prepare so many covering fighters, and what was more troublesome was that the original plan might not be useful.

In the plan drawn up by the General Staff, the Spitfire should first break through after escorting the bombers to the scene, so as to attract the attention of the German escort fighters as much as possible, and then retreat while fighting, turn around as soon as possible, and pull out the gap and provide cover for the bomber assault, but now there are so many German planes, this tactic is obviously wishful thinking, Even if the Germans did send 8 fighters to deal with the Spitfire, there would still be 16 planes to cover the fleet - just right against the Mosquito.

But the matter has come to this point, and it is useless to dwell on it, so he can only bite the bullet and let the Spitfire break through first, hoping to make the opposing commander miscalculate, and he has a vague expectation in his heart that the Spitfire is the best fighter in Britain, and he hopes to suppress the enemy's escort fighters. However, he did not expect at all that the pilots of the German Navy, especially the fighter pilots, were all aces of the Air Force, and most of them had a record of shooting down more than 30 enemy planes, and some people even recorded more than 70 planes, and at least 14 successes, so they would not be deceived by such a simple tactic at all. Although the performance of the Spitfire is excellent, it does not have a significant advantage over the Bf-219 in low-altitude dog fighting, and whether it can exert its power depends on the quality of the pilot.

The Mosquito bomber is a headache opponent in the night air attack, fast speed, small radar reflection, but when dealing with high-speed maneuvering surface ships, this ability is not enough, horizontal bombers must be lined up in a tight formation to effectively improve the hit rate, excellent maneuverability, fast Bf-219 obviously will not let the British get their wish, the formation commander Major Wagner quickly divided the group in two, on the one hand entangled the Spitfire, on the other hand, with speed advantage to impact the Mosquito dense formation, the latter was quickly dispersed, the characteristics of maneuverability and flexibility were not brought into play, and the ingenious tactical arrangement finally turned into a melee flying up and down.

At 8:56, the first round of British air raids ended, 6 of the 16 Mosquitoes were shot down, 3 of the 8 Sea Spitfires were shot down, and only 1 of the Bf-219 was shot down, and the results of the first wave of air raids by the British army at a great cost were pitiful, a total of 32 bombs were dropped, except for 1 near-miss bomb to the Tirpitz, the rest of the warships were unscathed, which relieved the nervous German officers and soldiers.

At 9:07, before everyone could catch their breath, the first round of air raid planes sent by the Icelandic side came to the front again, this time it was 12 Blenheim medium bombers and 6 Firefly fighters, with the first response experience, the confidence of the shelling formation increased a lot, Colonel Toph teased: "Why do the British always send horizontal bombers?" Do they think they can deal with Tirpitz like this? ”

Major General Bei shrugged: "I don't know, probably the horizontal bomber flies fast, right?" Those slow attack aircraft are not even as fast as our seaplanes......"

"That's a good reason!"

Colonel Toph didn't expect that the reason that Major General Bay said was true, because there was a sharp difference in speed between the various types of British aircraft, so Fraser could not assemble all the planes and put them into battle at once, so he could only put them into batches and times. His wishful thinking was that when the German escort fighters always ran out of fuel, as long as he continued to start a wheel war, he would definitely consume the Germans to death - but he had no idea that the Bf-219 was the kind of small strong that could fight for 5 hours, and this wishful thinking would soon be shattered.

Originally, the Swordfish, Barracuda, and Big Mackerel, which were slow and poorly defended, needed to be escorted by excellent fighters like Spitfire, but the speed difference between the two was too great to be combined, and the Spitfire was forced to fly at the speed of the Swordfish, either the plane would easily fall into a stall, or it would crash due to the premature depletion of fuel - it would take 5 hours for the Swordfish to attack back and forth at a time. The Spitfire can't fly for 5 hours even with the auxiliary fuel tank, so the Spitfire can only escort the fast Mosquito, but the horizontal bombers are difficult to deal with the fleet.

It was the first time that German naval aviation fighter pilots had seen fireflies, but they had generally seen the Tubenose Swallow, and when they saw that this aircraft was somewhat similar to the latter, they wondered if it was an upgraded version of the Tubenose Swallow. It is also true that the Firefly fighter is developed on the basis of the Pipe Nose Swallow fighter, due to the use of a new type of wing clamp, the wing can be rotated 90 degrees and then folded to both sides of the fuselage, after improving the strength of the wing, the wing area is also increased, making it stronger and easier to maneuver, and the firepower level has also been enhanced, with four 20mm cannons. But this improvement is only equivalent to the pipe nose swallow, and the German pilots found that the performance of these planes was worse than that of the Spitfire, slightly equivalent to the level of the Hurricane, and everyone finally put their minds at ease.

Historically, the Firefly fighter did not begin to be used on the Royal Navy aircraft carrier until June, and now Fraser is hungry and eats, and all the planes that can be used are taken out of the move, even the Firefly that has just been handed down, although these fighters with a maximum speed of only 505 km / h have very excellent maneuverability at low altitudes, but in front of the Bf-219, this maneuverability can only be said to be slightly inferior, but the Firefly is stronger than the Spitfire is the range, which can provide full escort for the bomber.

A 500-pound bomb exploded on the foredeck of the Tirpits, and the 50mm-thick upper deck withstood the test, but two twin 105mm anti-aircraft gun emplacements were blown up, killing 5 soldiers and wounding 4. After a fierce battle, 4 Fireflies and 5 Blenheim were shot down, and the German Navy also lost 2 Bf-219s, but the overboard pilot was quickly saved by the destroyer.

The artillery formation, which continued to move north and made several high-speed maneuvers, was not delayed much by the air raids, and by 9:25 it had reached a distance of 400 kilometers from Iceland, but due to the continuous air raids by aircraft, the position of the fleet was firmly controlled by the British, and soon a third wave of air raids was ushered in, a joint attack team of 16 Skua dive bombers and 8 European swallows sent by Iceland.

Seeing the figure of the Skua appearing in the air, Major Admiral Bei felt the pressure increase sharply, and his face became solemn - the destructive ability of the dive bomber and the horizontal bomber is different, although the speed of the Skua is less than 370 km / h, which is slightly slower than that of the Stuka, but the Königsberg light cruiser in Norway was killed by the Skua air raid, and everyone has always been worried about it. Although the capabilities of the European swallows are not as good as those of the Bf-219, after the two sides are entangled, there are many gaps left for the skuas.

Tirpitts, the largest and most threatening, became a thorn in the side of the British aircraft, a total of 8 skas pounced one after another, the speed of the Tirpitts has accelerated to the highest 29 knots, like a flexible spinning top, 4 skapas were shot down by Bf-219 before they entered the dive trajectory, the remaining 4 successfully dropped bombs, 3 bombs were avoided, but the one that landed on the stern could not be avoided no matter what, and Captain Toph did not dare to toss too much in commanding the engine to avoid - The tail of the Bismarck-class was relatively fragile, and the Bismarck was destroyed by the British when they hit the propeller and steering gear, so Topp would rather let the bomb fall on the aft deck than on the lower deck.

The 500-pound bomb penetrated the upper deck, but then was blocked by the 80mm thick main deck and exploded violently, the armor steel plate was blown apart and twisted to form a strange crater, which also caused a fire and billowing smoke, and scattered debris.

Perhaps it was Tirpitz's smoking appearance that gave the other planes the illusion, and another 5-6 Skuas rushed over, and the Bf-219 shot down 3 of them, but the last one entered the dive at a tricky angle, and it was too late to block, and at the critical moment, the twin 37mm near the tail turret made a meritorious service, and a shell hit the diving Skua head-on, blowing it to pieces.

At 9:48, the Skapas and the European Swallows began to retreat, and both sides suffered considerable losses in this round of attack, the British lost 9 Skua, 5 European Swallows, and 4 escort fighters. Counting the previous losses, the number of escort fighters totaling 24 in the early morning dropped to only 17, and the only good news was that only 1 pilot was lost, and the remaining 6 were saved after falling overboard.

At 10:06, the shelling fleet was 420 kilometers away from Iceland, and just when everyone thought they could breathe a sigh of relief, the lookout post reported the most dismal news, more than 30 enemy planes were coming from the southwest...... (To be continued.) )