When Halsey saw the group of bombers flying from the northwest, he suddenly realized that it must be the group of bombers from Task Force 4. It was already 8:15 a.m., and the bombers had begun to take off at 6:40 a.m., and if they had flown at the fastest cruising speed along the way, it would have taken only an hour and twenty minutes to cover the 26o nautical mile distance. Therefore, this batch of bombers must have been sent from Task Force 4. At this time, the bombers sent by the first task force had only left for less than five minutes, and the situation in the fleet was extremely chaotic, the two aircraft carriers had already left the cover of the escort warships in order to avoid bombs and torpedoes, and in the face of the newly arrived bombers, the two aircraft carriers had almost no ability to resist! To make matters worse, both aircraft carriers were already badly damaged by this time, and their ability to evade bombs and torpedoes was even worse.

The torpedo on which the "Valiant" was hit was on the starboard side of the carrier, about a third of the ship's length. This is exactly where the boiler compartment of the aircraft carrier No. 2 is located. The torpedo actually did not hit the underwater armor of the aircraft carrier, but hit the aircraft carrier at an angle of almost 7o degrees, and then exploded. … ap．bsp; If the underwater armor of the "Valiant" had been as thick as a battleship, the torpedo would not have posed much of a threat in practice, and at most it would have burst out a few cracks. But the problem is that the waterline armor of the "Valiant" is only about 1oo millimeters, which is much thinner than the armor on the battleship, and the 25o kilograms of high-energy explosives contained in the aviation torpedo can easily tear through this thin layer of armor. There were two boilers in the boiler compartment No. 2, and the torpedo left a large hole in the hull of the ship that was directly almost 2 meters. "Essex"

The layout of the four boiler compartments and the fact that the partitions of the boiler compartments were armor steel plates saved the other three boiler compartments, but this also caused the aircraft carrier to lose a quarter of its power. The degree of the "Valiant" has been reduced to 27 knots, and it is simply impossible to maintain the maximum degree of navigation. To make matters worse, boiler room No. 2 is the place where the propeller on the far right is powered, and when the propeller stops, the carrier generates a right-turn torque, which makes it much less agile when turning to the left.

And at this time. If the "Valiant" wants to aim in the direction of the bomber's attack, it should pass to the left, not to the right!

The "Valian" could only continue to turn to the right, but this would increase the right angle of the aircraft carrier, which was extremely detrimental to the aircraft carrier's leveling. It can be said that in the face of the newly arrived bombers, the resistance of the "Valiant" was mostly a little overwhelming. At this time, half of the power supply on the aircraft carrier has been lost, and if a few more torpedoes are fired, the aircraft carrier will be basically finished. Of course. Most seriously, a third of the anti-aircraft fire was lost on the battleship, especially the anti-aircraft guns on the port side and the starboard rear end of the battleship were destroyed. If the aircraft carrier turns to the right, then less than half of the remaining anti-aircraft guns of the battleship will remain in service.

In the face of at least 16 dive bombers and 16 torpedo bombers, "Brave"

The resistance of the horn was too weak. The pilots of Task Force 4 will not miss such an opportunity to sink the aircraft carrier.

After the Fourth Task Force went to the Southwest Pacific Theater, its main combat mission was to support the ground, as well as suppress the US airfields on other islands, and cover the Third Task Force and the 6th Task Force. In addition to these boring missions, which made the pilots feel bored, perhaps the most exciting thing was the two bombing campaigns on the "Washington Express". Also, during these months. Task Force IV also bombed three times U.S. transport vessels that were unloading supplies at anchorage.

No matter what kind of bombing. In fact, they are dealing with targets with weak air defense and little "value". Now I finally ran into two US fleet aircraft carriers, and they are the latest aircraft carriers of the US Navy. These pilots, who had always envied their counterparts in the 1st and 2nd task forces, would naturally not let go of such a good opportunity.

This group of bombers had already been on the bombers of the returning First Task Force before they arrived at the US fleet, because most of the backbone pilots in the Fourth Air Wing (at this time, the Navy's carrier-based aviation ground reform had not yet been carried out) were drawn from the First Air Wing and the Second Air Wing, so they were very familiar with the pilots in the First Task Force. Clouds that are too low will not affect the attack of torpedo bombers, but only dive bombers. When it was not possible to dive bombs, these pilots did not choose to slide and drop bombs, but directly carried out horizontal bomb bombing in the form of low-altitude entry.

If Task Force 1's bombers had also been horizontally dropped, their losses would have been frighteningly high. Right now. The anti-aircraft fire on both aircraft carriers was much weaker, and the escort battleships did not encircle the aircraft carriers at all. The bomber enters at a low altitude and is high, and dropping bombs at an altitude of less than 2oo meters can also ensure the accuracy of bomb dropping (much worse than the accuracy rate of dive bombing), and at the same time, it can also try to avoid the bomber rushing over the head and not doing dangerous and difficult maneuvers.

Halsey was forcibly taken off the aircraft carrier at this time and transferred to the nearest cruiser in a fireboat. Originally, he didn't want to leave the "Valiant", but the 6 fighters on the aircraft carrier (the U.S. Navy also has different numbers of 6 teams on the battleship, and these 6 teams are mainly responsible for the security work when the battleship enters the port, as well as to protect the retreat of important officers on the battleship during the battle) does not care so much at all. directly put this stubborn and still big-tempered general on a fireboat. It is their duty to protect Halsey's safety, and the U.S. Navy will never allow the commander of a warship to be martyred.

Halsey's withdrawal from the "Valian" actually means that the US military has given up on saving the "Valian", or rather, the US military no longer has much hope for the aircraft carrier. The anti-aircraft guns that could be used on the aircraft carrier, as well as the machine guns that had been temporarily erected, and the submachine guns in the hands of the officers and men of the 6th Sentai were all firing at the flying bombers, but in fact, these weak resistance could not change the fate of the "Brave" at all.

The first batch of eight "Sea Eagles" entered directly from the port side of the aircraft carrier, and at this time, the first batch of eight "water birds" had already circled the front of the aircraft carrier and then flew over. Eight "waterbirds" first reached directly in front of the "Valian", about yoo meters away, and the eight bombers dropped their bombs almost simultaneously, and then quickly climbed higher to avoid being affected by the shock wave from the bomb explosion. Eight bombs smashed into the aircraft carrier in a parabolic trajectory. The aircraft carrier quickly turned to evade the bombs. Then, eight "Sea Eagles", which were assaulting in the direction of the port side, also dropped torpedoes. Only one "Sea Eagle" was concentrated by a 4o-mm shell on the aircraft carrier when it changed the bombing course, dragging black smoke and hitting the sea.

The time for the eight bombs to fall was just over 2o seconds, and the aircraft carrier turned at most 3o degrees in these more than 2o seconds. The first two bombs fell on the side and rear of the starboard side of the aircraft carrier because of the small amount of advance, and the third bomb directly hit the rear of the starboard side of the aircraft carrier, killing all the more than 20 members of the damage management team who were damaged before the emergency repair. The fourth bomb fell on the elevator in the middle of the aircraft carrier, blowing the huge elevator to pieces. The fifth bomb landed on the side of the aircraft carrier island, and the thousands of shrapnel produced by the explosion killed almost all the officers and men in the bridge of the navigation ship. At the same time, it also left a huge hole in the flight deck. The deadliest was the sixth bomb, which originally fell into the sea, but it turned out to hit below the waterline in the front of the port side of the aircraft carrier, and the violent explosion left a large hole with a diameter of more than 5 meters in the left bow of the aircraft carrier, and the adjacent five compartments were quickly flooded by the seawater, and then the seawater poured into more than ten other compartments nearby. Although the damage management team quickly closed the other watertight doors, this had caused hundreds of tons of water to enter the aircraft carrier and caused severe bow rolling.

Of the eight torpedoes dropped in the first batch, three hit the port side of the aircraft carrier 10 seconds after the bomb hit the aircraft carrier. Every time a torpedo explodes, the aircraft carrier will shake violently.

Three torpedoes were concentrated in the bomb bay in the left front (at this time the bomb bay was already filled with water). Boiler room No. 1 in Zhongbe. and the No. 3 engine room in the back. At least 2o more than one compartment was quickly flooded by the sea, and the aircraft carrier was flooded with thousands of tons of seawater in two minutes.

Halsey saw the Brave "trembling" from the bombs and torpedoes on the fireboat. He was so distressed that he could barely speak. It was the third aircraft carrier he chose as his flagship, and the last he commanded. But he never imagined that a few days after taking over the "Brave", he would say goodbye to this aircraft carrier completely.

The first round of bombing by the bombers of the Tang Empire had completely paralyzed the "Brave". The carrier's right-leaning was miraculously reversed, but then it was quickly left-leaning. At present, only the propeller on the inside of the right side of the aircraft carrier is still working, and the degree has been reduced to less than the second batch of eight "Sea Eagles" and eight "Water Birds" have entered the attack channel. This is the group of bombers that buried the "Yongmeng", and the paralyzed "Yongmeng" no longer has any ability to dodge this attack.

The eight "waterbirds" were dropped separately, almost as if the dive bomber pilots were being trained to drop bombs horizontally. Six bombs6 continued to explode on the carrier, two of which were drilled directly into the holes left by the previous bombs, and one of them exploded near the ammunition compartment of the No. 1 anti-aircraft gun. Dozens of tons of anti-aircraft ammunition inside became martyrs. The other exploded near the jet fuel depot near the hull waterline, cracking the armor partition of the depot and igniting the jet gasoline. Fires caused by aviation gasoline are almost impossible to extinguish.

Eight torpedo bombers were divided into two groups to drop mines. Because the aircraft carrier has been reduced to less than 8 knots, these torpedo bombers do not need to fan and drop mines to ensure that a torpedo hits the target. Four torpedoes hit the "Valiant" one after another, and all four of these torpedoes exploded on the port side. When the torpedo hit, the left tilt of the aircraft carrier had already reached 2o degrees, and these four torpedoes opened four more large holes in the aircraft carrier, adding to the water intake of the port compartment of the aircraft carrier. It also increases the degree of the aircraft carrier's left leaning. Even if the aircraft carrier does not end up with the explosion of the fuel depot and ammunition depot, a severe left tilt will be enough to cause the aircraft carrier to capsize.

The US officers and men on the aircraft carrier made a final effort, and the chief engineer, who gave the order on behalf of the captain who had already died, made two-thirds of the cabins on the right side of the aircraft carrier open the sea valve, allowing seawater to enter the cabin on the starboard side of the aircraft carrier to smooth out the left tilt. In fact, this could not change the final fate of the aircraft carrier, it only gave the officers and men on the aircraft carrier more than 10 minutes more time to escape. In the end, serious water ingress, as well as an unrecoverable pumping capacity, will lead to the sinking of this aircraft carrier!

When the aircraft carrier was slowly pulled back and began to sink rapidly, and the officers and men on the battleship began to quickly lower the lifeboat, or jump directly into the sea in life jackets, trying to swim away from the aircraft carrier, Halsey avoided his eyes. The "Intrepid" is finished, and no force can save the aircraft carrier.

There was a loud explosion, and Halsey snapped open his eyes, then turned his head to look southeast of where the explosion had come. The first thing that appeared in front of him was a huge cruiser, and when the cruiser slowly turned around and the fireboat approached the cruiser's side, Halsey saw that the aircraft carrier "Hornet" three nautical miles away was completely enveloped in flames.

At the time of the attack on the Valian, the Hornet was also besieged by more than 3o bombers. In fact, the "Hornet" received more bombs than the "Valiant". Under the strikes of two batches of bombers of the Tang Empire, the "Hornet" received a total of 18 bombs and 8 torpedoes.

Although the American officers and men on the battleship did their best to save the aircraft carrier, the results still did not make any difference. The ammunition compartment where the torpedoes were stored on the "Hornet" was hit by an armor-piercing shell, and the result was tragic, all the more than 4o torpedoes stored here were detonated, and this is equivalent to the huge power of more than 4o bombshells!

The violent explosion almost shook the flight deck of the aircraft carrier, and completely destroyed the main structure of the aircraft carrier, and even the keel below was blown off. After the explosion, the "Hornet" struggled for less than five minutes before breaking into two pieces from the middle of the hull, and the front section of the aircraft carrier first disappeared from the sea, and then the part of the aircraft carrier was raised high, and the four propulsion shafts were exposed to the water, and then disappeared from the sea like a huge steel coffin!

When Halsey boarded the cruiser and looked in the direction of the Hornet again, the aircraft carrier had completely sunk to the bottom of the sea, and then he turned his head and looked in the direction of the Valiant. On the sea, only the tall mast of the "Brave" remained......