Spotting the torpedo speeding on the sea, the commander of the "Melton" ordered the ship to make an emergency turn while ordering the eight-barrel rocket-type deep/smoke grenade launcher on the port side to fire urgently. As soon as the operator completes the parameter setting as quickly as possible, eight rocket-type deep bombs with zero delay setting are launched within five seconds, and in a blink of an eye, they build a special defensive barrier on the sea surface hundreds of meters on the side of the side.

This violent explosion broke the silence of the night and made the more than 3,000 officers and men on the two new United Kingdom Navy cruisers realize that their situation was far more difficult than expected; The waves of water from the explosion turned into droplets in the air, and they glowed with a colorful sheen under the searchlights of the "Melton", and the ship's lookout crews widened their eyes and struggled to search for traces of torpedoes, while in the sonar room of this light cruiser, sonar operators wearing senior master chief armbands returned to work after a short interval to track dangerous targets in the water with the help of sophisticated instruments.

"Azimuth 060, two torpedoes, we are still 500 meters away!"

After the sound of trying to maintain composure came from the sonar room, the atmosphere on the bridge froze for a moment, and then a loud and powerful voice gave the officers and men at the combat post a firing command. A moment later, the five twin 20-mm guns and the three twin 40-mm guns on the port side of the battleship scrambled to let out a deafening roar, and the close-in fire force formed a barrage of barrages on the sea surface on the side of the ship.

The officers and men of the "Melton" have done everything they can to intercept with deep bullets, close defense against artillery fire, and mobile evasion, but torpedoes, as the two major ship killers on a par with mines, have always been a sharp weapon in naval warfare since their birth, and people have not yet found an effective way to crack them. Fortunately, the two torpedoes eventually passed through the waters behind the stern, and one of them was only a dozen meters away from the propeller! However, the danger from under the water was not eliminated, and in a blink of an eye, two more torpedoes were discovered by sonar crews, and from the abnormal signal waves received by the sonar system, it was preliminarily judged that these were the active acoustic torpedoes of the Italians.

On the powerful Red Dragon-class destroyers, equipped with equipment specially designed to jam sound-guided torpedoes, but there was no such "escort with a knife" on this trip, and the cruiser's inherent shortcomings in anti-submarine were undoubtedly revealed.

In order to get rid of the ensuing attack, the "Melton" desperately accelerated, and successively performed a sharp angle of steering maneuver. After some better preparation, the crew fired a wave of rocket-like deep shells from the starboard side, trying to detonate or destroy the enemy torpedo, but this weapon that could effectively deal with the enemy submarine still did not work wonders, and the enemy torpedoes still came quickly. In a few moments, the crew fired another wave of rocket-type deep bombs from the port side, and launched interceptive fire with the fully warmed machine guns on the ship's side, and a dense roar resounded across the sea.

Under the glare of the searchlights, the two Italian torpedoes appeared and disappeared under the surface of the sea.

Watching the white torpedo track approach, the Irish officers on the bridge only had time to lament "damn it" when they felt a violent tremor of the world shake, and a loud, eardrum-piercing explosion hit in an instant......

After narrowly avoiding three torpedoes, the "Melton" failed to dodge the fourth torpedo, hitting the rear of the light cruiser on the port side and exploding. Before the thirties, not to mention cruisers, even battlecruisers or even battleships, it was entirely possible to be sunk by a torpedo. At this moment, not only the crew of the "Melton" was shocked, but even the officers and men of the "Farr" were extremely shocked: The invincible majesty and unsinkable recklessness of the new British Navy since the beginning of the war, should not be folded here?

The anti-submarine capability of the "Farr", which hurriedly returned to defense after hearing the news, was as weak as that of the "Melton", but under the personal command of Colonel Moroy, the crew still resolutely threw themselves into the search and attack of the Italian submarine. Eight-barrel rockets, deep bombs/smoke grenade launchers, and sonar equipment, which usually seem to be better than nothing, have become their lifesavers. Under the circumstance that it was difficult for the ship's radar to detect underwater targets, the crews used the sonar detection data as a guide to launch wave after wave of depth charges at the lurking positions of the Italian submarines, and even if it was difficult to make any gains for a while, they also wanted to deter and interfere with the opponent so that it could not launch a follow-up attack on the damaged "Melton".

The "Farr" bravely rushed up to contain the enemy submarine, and the "Melton" was also actively engaged in self-rescue. On the basis of the mature protection system of the Fiona-class light cruiser, the Lista-class has further enhanced the anti-sinking performance of the ship by strengthening the longitudinal strength of the hull and adopting advanced designs such as box-type reinforced beams, double-layer watertight compartments, pressure-resistant watertight doors, backup power systems and electrified damage management monitoring networks. In addition, more than 80 percent of the non-commissioned officers of the "Melton" are elites who have served for more than six years, and most of the sailors are veterans who have served for three years; these soldiers grew up in the era of independent Ireland, witnessed the development and prosperity of the motherland, and have been cultivated a strong sense of national self-confidence and honor, and have the spirit of dedication that is not afraid of hardships and dangers, and have the courage to dedicate themselves, coupled with good basic education and military training, they can be regarded as the most ideal sailors.

In the brutal battlefield of naval warfare, any disaster may come suddenly, and at the moment of life and death, the quality of the officers and men, the quality of the ship's design, and the quality of damage management can often determine the fate of the warship and hundreds or thousands of sailors......

After the violent explosion of the Italian torpedo on the battleship, there was no explosion on the ship, and there were no immediate signs of rupture or sharp tilt of the hull, but the internal situation of the ship was not at all optimistic. The violent explosion directly penetrated the armor belt below the port side waterline, and the aftermath of the explosion buffered by the double compartment still penetrated the 100 mm thick protective armor of the power compartment, damaging the two oil-fired boilers on the left side, cutting off the exhaust pipes here, and then causing the two oil-fired boilers on the right to shut down one after another within two minutes.

Four oil-fired boilers struck one after another, the power output plummeted to zero, and the battleship was about to fall into a dangerous situation of losing all its speed and most of its combat effectiveness. At the critical moment, the ship's C damage management team rushed into the boiler room at the risk of suffocation, rescued people and repaired at the same time, and it took only 6 minutes to restore the right front boiler to operation, drive an electric steam turbine to operate, and give priority to the power supply of the water injection/drainage system. Three minutes later, the loss management team and the engineer crew restored the right rear boiler, driving the second steam turbine to operate, and the speed of the battleship gradually increased from near stop to 12 knots.

This short period of nine minutes can almost be said to be the nine minutes that decided the fate of the "Melton". On the one hand, an unpowered battleship is undoubtedly an excellent target for a submarine, and in the state of light sailing, an Italian medium submarine only takes ten minutes at most to switch from the bow to the stern to the enemy, and if the Italian submarine is still and then reloaded, the best result of the Italian submarine in the joint exercise of the Allies is to load four torpedoes in 24 minutes, and in wartime, ten minutes is enough for them to load at least one torpedo into the torpedo tube. On the other hand, the boiler compartment was completely shut down, and the backup power system could only maintain the emergency operation of lighting, communications, radar, sonar, and damage control equipment for a short time.

Even after surviving the most fatal moments, the "Melton" and its crew were far from out of danger, and the bombs during the day and the torpedoes at night had already damaged the light cruiser all over its body, and it was even possible to cause irreparable damage to its main structure. The Italian submarine that had submerged could tell by the sonar equipment that its prey was still floating and moving, and the Italians would certainly not miss a good opportunity to make a name for themselves so easily, and they could attack again at any time, while the slow-moving "Melton" could hardly cope with the opponent's acoustic torpedoes.

The submarine force of the Italian Navy regards the acoustic guided torpedo as a killer weapon, and in the camp of the Western allies, the naval technical strength is second only to Germany's new United Kingdom, and instead of ignoring the military value of this weapon, it has a more forward-looking vision and thinking than the Italians. In addition to equipping light ships and submarines with sound-guided torpedoes, the new United Kingdom Navy has spared no effort in developing anti-submarine torpedo technology and has experimentally equipped some of its ships. It is a pity that for the sake of secrecy, none of the ships of the new United Kingdom Navy, which had been deployed to the Mediterranean before the war, were equipped with such the most advanced anti-submarine weapons, otherwise the "Farr" and "Melton", both equipped with triple 533-mm torpedo tubes, would have sent the Italian submarine to the bottom of the sea.

In order to cover the evacuation of the "Melton", the "Farr" fired dozens of rocket-type deep bombs at any cost. As far as the effectiveness of antisubmarine warfare is concerned, a 20,000-ton heavy cruiser is not as large as a 2,000-ton destroyer and a several hundred ton submarine hunter. Fortunately, the continuous bombardment of the "Farr" caused the Italian submarine to maintain a depth of more than 40 meters for a long time, and had to repeatedly adjust its course to avoid depth attacks.

Forty minutes later, the crew of the "Melton" miraculously repaired the third boiler, so that the battleship was restored to three-quarters of the power, at this time the watertight compartments on the left and right sides were filled with 1,000 tons of water, barely maintaining the balance of the hull, and staggering forward at 18 knots, while the heavy cruiser "Farr" was dragged far behind, carefully guarding against the Italian submarine.