Watching the masts of the two British Queen Elizabeth-class battleships disappear from the sea one after another, the tense atmosphere in the battle bridge of the "Hesse" has been completely replaced by excitement. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 infoDrinking in wartime is an iron rule that no one can violate, and the officers toast to this perfect victory with tea instead of wine.

With Natsuki's battlefield experience, he naturally will not get carried away by such a tactical victory, nor does he need the praise and praise of others to satisfy his vanity, he did not join in the celebration of the subordinate officers, but stayed alone, in the eyes of others may be a cold pretend, in fact, he is thinking about the overall situation, is pursuing victory at the battle level.

About half an hour later, the ship's radar detected a new enemy situation: a large group of aircraft was flying 80 kilometers to the northwest.

The news of the attack by the enemy planes was as if an uninvited guest with a foul smell had entered the banquet that was in progress, and the pleasant atmosphere suddenly disappeared. The officers on the bridge turned their eyes to the commander of their fleet, the hopeful savior, His Majesty King Joachim I of Ireland.

As people expected, this commander with a special status maintained his usual calmness: "Pass the order, carry out the No. 1 plan we have rehearsed, and all of us are ready for air defense combat!" ”

From assembling to participating in the war, the Allied reinforcement fleet spent two days and one night in the Atlantic, conducted a round of live-fire drills during the voyage, and also practiced three formation formations with completely different purposes.

After receiving the combat order issued by the flagship, the destroyers that were salvaging the surviving enemy personnel in the surrounding waters were gathered one after another, and then each was responsible for anti-submarine alert or frontal air defense according to the arrangement during the exercise, and the cruisers accompanying them formed a shield-type air defense array around the three battleships one step ahead, that is, they sailed at the same speed at a position of about two or three thousand meters on the left and right sides of the ship, and their task was to guard against the enemy torpedo planes flying at low altitude, and to shoot them down or force them back with a dense air defense barrage.

By the time all the ships had arrived at their intended positions, a quarter of an hour had passed. At this time, the crew could clearly see the incoming enemy aircraft group with the naked eye, and those carrier-based aircraft were divided into several echelons according to their altitude and order. As for the number of enemy planes, the observation number given by the lookout is 55, and the number provided by the radar room is 57, which data is more accurate, the strategizing fleet commander does not care, because what he is most concerned about now is not whether his fleet can withstand this wave of attacks from the air, but the position of the enemy aircraft carrier, which is the key scoring point that determines the outcome of the battle.

Accurate calculation and analysis is the specialty of the navigator officer, and the staff team brought by Natsuki has such a professional role. Major-Ahern was a Irishman by full blood, having served as a seafaring officer aboard the light cruiser Orsian and the heavy cruiser Dagda, and had two round-the-world voyages, attending the Kiel Naval Academy as an exchange student and then as a senior instructor at the Royal Naval College in Limerick. Since boarding the ship, he has spent most of his time immersed himself in the navigation room, and with the cooperation of Major Stadek, the navigator of the "Hesse", he has sorted out a clear combat route and a map of the situation between the enemy and the enemy, which has provided very strong support for the fleet commander's decision-making.

After the radar detected the enemy planes attacking, Major Ahern quickly calculated the possible location of the enemy carrier, marking it in red on the moving glass plate of the nautical chart, forming an elongated oval area. Major Ahern was clearly dissatisfied with the results of his current work, because the span was too large to be a direct basis for an attack by his own carriers. However, the enemy fleet remained silent on the radio, and the information he had in his hands was very limited, and it was difficult to narrow and shrink the area of speculation. So, the troubled Major Ahern said to himself: "We have been exchanging fire with the enemy's advance fleet for a long time, and the enemy's main fleet must know our position, so there is no doubt that the enemy's carrier-based aircraft must have flown in the nearest straight line, and if we can know how much fuel they have left, we can calculate the position of the enemy's aircraft carrier formation." ”

Major Stadeck, who was on the sidelines, speculated, "Let's shoot down the enemy plane, and then go to check how much fuel it has in its tank?" ”

As soon as he finished speaking, Major Stadecker himself felt that his idea was unreliable, so he shook his head again and again.

Just then, Colonel Messer arrived. Listening to Stadek talk about the current troubles, he confessed: "It is not difficult to find out how much fuel the enemy planes have, and a careful observation of what happened when they explode or after they fall can make a rough inference, but the enemy knows where we are, and if half a tank of fuel can make a round trip and complete the attack, is it necessary for them to fill up the tanks of the planes?" ”

There is a way to listen to the dark, and to listen to the clear, Messer's analysis made Major Ahen feel very useful, he nodded and said: "The colonel is right, even if we know the remaining fuel situation of the enemy aircraft, we can only roughly guess the location of the enemy aircraft carrier, and the aircraft carrier of our main fleet still has to send carrier-based aircraft to conduct reconnaissance, so as to confirm the location of the enemy aircraft carrier, launch an attack, and strive for the final word." If he is not fast enough, we will probably be subjected to two or even three rounds of air strikes, and no one can say how big the losses will be. We might as well think about it from another angle, and when the enemy planes return from the air raid, let our planes follow us from a distance, and if it goes well, we can find out the location of the enemy's aircraft carriers at one time, and even find out the size of the enemy's fleet. Even if it fails, it will only lose a few carrier-based aircraft and some time. ”

"Uh-huh!" Colonel Messer replied with a smirk, "About five minutes ago, His Majesty Joachim ordered the communications officer to send a secret telegram to the escort formation, asking the auxiliary aircraft carrier to dispatch carrier-based aircraft to track the enemy aircraft and probe the location of the enemy aircraft carrier. You haven't discussed this deployment before? ”

Major Jochen shook his head: "Your Majesty's most common saying is that 'the plan can't keep up with the change', and no single battle plan can estimate all the situations, so careful deployment is to prepare for the contingency of battle." ”

This is not profound at all, as long as people with some actual combat experience can understand, the biggest difficulty lies in the immediate battle, the correct decision does not rely on a flash of inspiration, but the overall situation of the battle cognition and control.

Messel had a thoughtful expression. After a while, the sound of cannon fire broke out on the sea, and before returning to the battle bridge, the colonel said to the two: "Anyway, we must deal with this wave of attack before us!" ”

Of the more than 50 US and British fighters that attacked, about 20 or so were fighters that did not carry bombs, and this high proportion shows that the enemy commanders do not really know the opponent's operational layout. If you knew that there was only one auxiliary aircraft carrier of the Irish Navy in this area, there would be no need to send so many fighter jets to "charter the field".

After the enemy planes approached, the first to open fire was the Irish destroyer "Meate County" piloted in front of the Allied fleet, which used four IK-30 twin 4-inch naval guns, which was characterized by a fast rate of fire and dense firepower, and was a fairly sharp melee weapon.

The Irish military sees the munition as a secret weapon, but the technology is not the first of its kind in Ireland, but comes from its ally Germany, a joint research effort between the German royal family-funded Wilhelm Institute and the University of Berlin. This melee fuze uses the principle of electrostatic rather than the radio principle as it was later known, and for metal objects the size of aircraft, its initial effective distance is only one meter, and after repeated improvements, it has been increased to more than five meters, and unlike radio proximity fuzes, which are susceptible to deception and interference, the reliability of this proximity fuze reaches more than 80%.

War is a catalyst for technological progress, as the war is approaching, the military of various countries invariably set their sights on those technologies that can be used on the battlefield, proximity fuse technology has blossomed in Germany and Ireland, but large-scale equipment is still a matter after the outbreak of war.

The anti-aircraft fire of the "Meathshire" formed a barrage in the air, and a monoplane with a stubby fuselage was accidentally shot, tumbling and falling. Seeing this, the US and British fighters quickly broke up the large formation, and they flew in groups of two and four in a group, avoiding antiaircraft artillery fire from the sea on the one hand, and looking for suitable opportunities on the other. As a result, the battle situation heated up rapidly, and in the blink of an eye, the flames and smoke of explosions were everywhere in sight.

In the command room of the Hesse, protected by heavy armor, the captain, Colonel Messer, gazed closely at the sea on the starboard side with his Germanic depth. In theory, the solid waterline mine-resistant armor and bulk-type design of the German-class battleships were enough to withstand the attacks of ordinary torpedoes, and the double horizontal deck was able to withstand the attack of 500 kg of armor-piercing bombs, but this was only theoretical. The two Battle of Texel, the Battle of San Miguel and the Retreat of Flores, not only the American and British fleets suffered from air raids, but also the Allied fleets.

"Watch out on the port side, enemy torpedo planes are coming!"

With the shouts of the air defense commander dispatching and deploying, people's spirits suddenly became tense. In that direction, 4 American-made "Destroyers" attacked at low altitudes, finding an angle of attack from between the two cruisers, dropping a volley of aerial torpedoes at a distance of about three thousand meters from the "Hesse".

"Left full rudder!" Without hesitation, Messer gave the turn command.

The torpedoes dropped by the US torpedo planes were speeding on the sea, but fortunately, the reaction speed of the "Hesse," which was unusually large, was not as sluggish as that of a giant whale. I saw that its sharp bow cut through the blue sea like a sharp blade, the towering bridge of the entire battleship tilted to the left, and the thick black muzzles of the eight 16-inch main guns pointed high at the sky, since the enemy planes attacked, they had not fired a single shot, not because they did not have the ability to shoot at the air, but because the shrapnel carried on this trip was very small, and it had to be used at the most critical moment.

After throwing the torpedoes, the 4 "Destroyers" pulled up the bow and climbed quickly, the slightly clumsy fuselage slowly climbed and deflected to one side, in the bombardier position on the back of the plane, the young crew members were staring at the gray-white German battleship below the side with wide eyes, the direction of its bow had changed greatly from before, and the torpedoes dragging the white waves were still speeding away in the direction they were originally aimed at, whether the two could intersect was not something that could be seen at a glance, But not all of these American pilots had the opportunity to see the answer with their own eyes, and although the enemy flagship was turning at full speed, the staggering number of anti-aircraft guns on it were not idle. After the first few seconds of readjustment, the powerful and extremely fast 88mm twin and the 37mm guns with a fairly high accuracy on short-range targets opened fire, with only a few loud bangs, and a "Destroyer" turned into a blinding fireball in the flames, and the fragments exploded in the wind.

As the enemy torpedoes approached, the officers and sailors of the "Hesse", especially those in port positions, almost raised their hearts to their throats. These German soldiers did not doubt that their warships could be like the "Regent of Louisport back then", even if they were hit by a torpedo, they could still return to port, but it is definitely not a good thing to lose normal power on the battlefield, and the previously sunken British ship "Palermo" is the most direct lesson!

(End of chapter)