The U.S. and British convoy codenamed Z-0720 hastily withdrew to Flores Island, and after counting, it was found that a total of eight ships were lost in the attack, and five ships, including the "Wyoming," were wounded, and the number of casualties reached 520 -- half of them were wounded American soldiers who drowned on the troop carrier "Leicester." Since the opening of the Azores campaign www.biquge.info the United States and Britain have suffered more than 1,000 casualties in battles, and more than 10,000 officers and soldiers have been lost three times in one battle, so purely in terms of losses, the Z-0720 attack battle will not make the American and British camps feel disrupted, but its strategic impact must not be underestimated. At this time, the battle for the Azores was in a stalemate stage, and the two sides were not only fighting for wisdom and courage, but also for comprehensive national strength and logistics supply. On the Atlantic front, 300,000 US and British troops, hundreds of combat ships, and more than 2,000 military planes, even if there are no new military operations, the daily consumption is an astonishing astronomical amount; not to mention the fact that the Allied forces have recently greatly increased their ground aviation forces, which has sharply increased the air defense pressure on the United States and Britain, and the Allied fleets have dealt a devastating blow to the US and British naval aviation in combat operations in the waters east of the Azores.

With the strong strength of the United States and the abundant resources of the Commonwealth countries, there is no problem in the production and supply of war materials, and the key is to cross half the Atlantic to reach the Azores. In order to capture this strategically important sea pedal, the US-British coalition forces have made great preparations, including a strict and complete maritime escort system, but the encounter of the Z-0720 fleet shows that the conventional escort force is unable to resist an attack fleet composed of several quasi-capital ships, and the US-British Joint Operations Command quickly ordered all ships and flotillas sailing from North America to the Azores and from the Azores to return to North America to return to the port of departure, if this situation lasts for half a month, The front-line troops will face the dilemma of a shortage of war supplies, which, if it lasts for five or six weeks, will greatly affect the morale of the army and even cause irreversible consequences.

On the night of the attack on the Z-0720 fleet, the US-British Joint Operations Command made a logical tactical arrangement: from the main fleet assembled and deployed in the waters of Texel Island, the North Carolina-class battleship "Georgia" and the admiral-class battlecruiser "Anson" were dispatched to Flores Island at full speed, together with two heavy cruisers and three light cruisers.

In order to cover up the important adjustment of the two main warships "Georgia" and "Anson" to withdraw from the front line, the US and British navies used a trick to change the silhouette of the two cruisers with wooden planks and let them be stationed alone at the new anchorage, in an attempt to mislead the Allies about aerial reconnaissance, and prepared to let a British destroyer use the radio call sign of the "Anson" to sail and patrol at night. However, this kind of trick was used by the Allied navies more than ten years ago, and it was learned again in the previous stage, and the US-British allied forces did not use it so effectively, not to mention that their current opponent was no longer Admiral Beinke, who had more than enough ability and a little lack of resourcefulness, but a skilled craftsman in the field of military strategy, a genius commander with unsurpassed vision.

In the early morning of the day after the 4th Special Fleet left the anchorage of Texel Island, a Dornier Do-32 land-based long-range reconnaissance plane flew over this sea area, took a number of sets of photos with a high-precision aerial camera, and the accompanying technicians directly developed part of the film in the engine room, and found clues from the enlarged photos, and sent a coded telegram to the command on the way back.

After receiving the report, the Allied Azores Theater Command immediately ordered the Luftwaffe 54th Bomber Wing stationed on Sao Miguel Island to send six Do-32 long-range reconnaissance planes and eight He-77 long-range reconnaissance/torpedo bombers to carry out sector reconnaissance of the waters west of Texel, and the Allied Task Force 1, which was ambushed south of Texel, also dispatched four He-25 carrier-based combat/reconnaissance planes and six He-60 maritime reconnaissance planes to reconnoiter the predetermined sea area between Texel Island and Flores Island at the same time.

With such a tight reconnaissance net, the prey was "captured" in just two hours. A Do-32 spotted the 4th Special Fleet of the US-British coalition at high speed in the waters northwest of Texel Island, and reconnaissance photographs taken from an altitude of 6,000 meters allowed technicians to accurately judge the composition of this special fleet -- the valuable reconnaissance report was transmitted to the theater command through encrypted radio codes, and then quickly relayed to the Allied Task Force 1 with the German aircraft carriers "Swabian" and "Joachim I" and the battleship "Baden" as the core.

Despite the fact that the target fleet was located within the effective combat radius of land-based fighters on the islands of Texel and Flores, Task Force 1, commanded by Vice Admiral Max Bastian, immediately went on the offensive. Eight He-25s, four Me-50Ts, 18 Ju-17Ts, and six Ar-33s formed the first attack echelon, and after about 50 minutes of flight, they found the American and British fleet, which was sailing westward and was not protected by fighters. Such a God-given opportunity could not be missed, and the Allied carrier-based aircraft group immediately launched an attack, and the air attack pattern was the same: fighter cover and response, dive bombers frontal assault, torpedo bombers waiting for an opportunity to sneak attack.

As early as the appearance of Allied long-range reconnaissance planes, the temporarily organized 4th Special Fleet sounded the air defense alarm and sent a telegram to the US-British Joint Operations Command in Texel asking for help. The eight ships modeled the air defense formation of the Allied support fleet to resist the strong attack of US and British fighters, with the capital ships in the middle, the light cruisers on the flanks, and the heavy cruisers in front of the other. Most of the crew members of these US and British ships have rich experience in actual combat, and the officers' military and psychological qualities are also quite excellent, and they lack practical proximity fuse technology, which leads to a qualitative difference in the air defense efficiency of the two sides.

The USS Georgia, which was under the heavy care of Allied fighters, was undoubtedly the most powerful and technologically complete battleship in the US Navy's active service, and its three main indicators, firepower, protection, and power, were all very dazzling. Based on the simulation of the US Navy, the North Carolina class has an overwhelming advantage over any active capital ship of any country, except for the slight advantage over the German German class and the British Great Britain class, which is a result that the Americans are very proud of. During the Azores Campaign, the "Georgia" and the ship of the same class "North Carolina" fought in the east and west, and performed well in both fleet artillery battles, bombardment on the opposite shore, and roundabouts in rushing attacks. In the early days of the Battle of San Miguel, the USS Georgia was damaged by Allied carrier-based aircraft, and during the Battle of Flores, the USS North Carolina suffered the same hardship. Facing the siege of Allied fighters again, all the combat personnel of the "Georgia" did their best, nearly 100 anti-aircraft guns spat out tongues of fire all the time, the smoke of explosion and gunpowder filled the sky, and the fierce anti-aircraft fire quickly achieved results, a Ju-17T broke its wings during the dive, and a He-25 was shot down when it flew over the starboard side, but this did not deter the determined attackers, and the German dive bombers came one after another, and the black aerial bombs seemed to have eyes, and they smashed into the American battleship. In the two minutes when the attack was most intensive, the "Georgia" suffered four light bombs and one heavy bomb in succession, and although the 250-kilogram aviation armor-piercing shell did not pose a fatal threat to it, it cut off the main power supply lines on the ship, causing a considerable number of ship-borne weapons to become the traditional manual drive mode in the half after the air attack, and the combat efficiency was greatly affected.

The "Georgia" reduced its anti-aircraft firepower slightly, and the last few Ju-17Ts rushed down, pouring all the bombs on the bow of this striking American battleship, and the light aerial bombs of 50 kilograms could not penetrate its horizontal deck, but killed and injured a large number of the crew in the anti-aircraft combat positions, blowing up the originally neat and majestic superstructure, and the heavy aerial bombs that fell on the foredeck and near starboard caused substantial damage to the hull......

In previous naval and air battles, the torpedo planes of both sides have always played the role of dangerous assassins, which has also made the combatants of surface ships on both sides especially vigilant against low-altitude targets at all times. Under the strict alert of the two U.S. and British capital ships and their subordinate ships, the six Ar-33 torpedo bombers failed to perform a miracle scene, and all the torpedoes were avoided.

As the air raid drew to a close, land-based fighters that had taken off from Flores Island finally arrived, and the situation on the battlefield was suddenly reversed: once the carrier-based fighters on the Allied side were unable to stop the "Eagle Falcon" and "Mountain Hawk" twice their size, the Ju-17T and Ar-33, which were slower and weaker in self-defense, could not escape a massacre.

In the face of the crisis, the fighter pilots of the Allied countries resolutely faced their opponents. The He-25 and Me-50T they flew successfully withstood the test of actual combat, and their handling, stability and safety were excellent. At this time, a group of He-77s from São Miguel Island arrived in the airspace of the battlefield, and their arrival distracted the attention of American and British fighters, and half of the "Falcons" turned to new targets, thus relieving the pressure on the Allied fighter pilots.

As a twin-engine long-range reconnaissance/torpedo bomber aircraft, the He-77 has advantages over carrier-based bombers in terms of stronger self-defense firepower and higher flight ceiling. Finding that the timing of their arrival was really not good, they decisively dropped the aviation torpedo under the belly, climbed upwards while closing the formation, and used the 13mm machine gun in the nose and tail and the 7 in the rotating turret when the American fighter approached. 92 mm twin machine guns for defense. In the face of the ferocious attack of the "Eagle Falcon", the He-77 formation lost one bomber, and three were injured to varying degrees, they finally climbed above the clouds, rationally gave up the original attack plan, turned around and returned to Sao Miguel Island, and this by no means means means that the whole attack operation was over, a large wave of Ju-30 tactical bombers and Ju-28 heavy bombers were under the protection of the Fokker G-51 formation towards Texel Island, The carrier-based aircraft group departing from Task Force 2 also flew at a low altitude to Flores Island, which will indirectly weaken the protective umbrella provided by the US and British land-based air forces for this special fleet and create ideal conditions for Task Force 1 to kill targets.

(End of chapter)