"Li Jing" quickly turned to the left, and then sailed southwest at the same speed two thousand meters from the port side of the aircraft carrier "Taizu". According to the new air defense formation, the "Li Jing" will be responsible for covering the port side of the "Taizu," while another heavy cruiser will be responsible for covering the starboard side of the "Taizu," the other two aircraft carriers will also have two heavy cruisers each covering on the left and right, and the other heavy cruiser will deploy an air defense interception line on the outer periphery, and the destroyer will be located between the two layers of air defense fire network.

"General, you should go to the command cabin!" Several officers in charge of Liao Hanxiang's security became anxious.

"No, I'm not going anywhere, I'm here!" Liao Hanxiang's bull temper also came up, "I'm going to die, replaced by Chief of Staff Wu Xianyu, Chief of Staff Wu Xianyu is dead, replaced by Ji Xiaobin, Ji Xiaobin is going to die, by ......"

"General, don't say unlucky things, go to the command cabin!"

"You stop me, I said, I'm not going anywhere!" Liao Hanxiang shook off the two officers who grabbed his hand, "Major Tan Renhao, you are responsible for replacing Commodore Ji Xiaobin, as long as our Fifth Fleet still has a breath, we can't admit defeat!" ”

Tan Renhao nodded, and while the two officers were entangled with Liao Hanxiang again, he called Hao Dongjue and Chang Jianxin over. "You go to the combat headquarters and see if there is anything you can help, and pay attention to Brigadier General Ji Xiaobin's safety."

The two immediately left the commander's command cabin and went to the operational command below.

On the battleship, all the gunners were on the gun emplacement, and some of the officers and men on rest were busy carrying ammunition to the gun emplacement. Although it looks busy, every officer and soldier knows what to do. According to the operational regulations of the Imperial Navy, more than sixty percent of each warship will be assigned two personnel, and during the battle, the officers and men who are temporarily absent will be responsible for transporting artillery shells and acting as damage control personnel.

When the anti-aircraft artillery of the heavy cruiser "Daxue", three nautical miles to the left of the "Li Jing", opened fire, the air defense operation of the fleet began. The anti-aircraft fighters that were still attacking the Japanese bombers at the beginning left the range of the fleet's anti-aircraft fire one after another in order to avoid accidental damage (in the fleet's air defense operations, the gunners on the air defense battleships could not quickly distinguish who was the enemy plane and who was the friendly plane) and went to intercept the Japanese bombers behind.

The heavy cruiser "Heavy Snow" is one of the heavy cruisers of the "Trotto" class, and its main anti-aircraft fire is six twin 120-mm anti-aircraft guns, eight four-mounted 40-mm anti-aircraft guns, and 12 20-mm anti-aircraft guns. At the beginning of the construction of the "Tsaver" class, it was carried out according to the standards of air defense battleships, for which even all torpedo tubes in the middle of the battleship were removed and anti-aircraft guns were installed, and their anti-aircraft firepower was no worse than those battleships that had not been modified.

The effective range of the 120-mm anti-aircraft guns reached 8 km, but the rate of fire was not high, and it was difficult to hit the target directly at this distance, at most forcing the Japanese bombers to disperse and abandon the dense formation. Of course, if the gunner's skills are good enough and if he is lucky, it is safest to destroy enemy aircraft at this distance.

At the time when the 40-mm air guns on the "Heavy Snow" were fired, the 120-mm anti-aircraft guns on the "Li Jing" also fired. At the same time, the fleet began to maneuver evasively, so that the Japanese bombers could not easily enter the bombing channel, which could delay time and give the anti-aircraft artillery more opportunities to shoot down enemy aircraft.

Tan Renhao and Liao Hanxiang both came to the porthole on the left. The Japanese bombers in the southeast sky were still a small black spot, but the black smoke from the shells that exploded in the middle of the Japanese bomber group was so obvious that it even obscured some of the bombers. These anti-aircraft shells are all high-explosive, and whether they can hit the target or not depends almost entirely on luck.

Soon, a bomber fell with a black tail of smoke, and the officers in the staff shouted excitedly, but they all quickly returned to their positions.

"It seems like they're all twin-engined long-range bombers." Tan Renhao frowned slightly. He did not say that it was impossible for those bombers on the Japanese Navy's aircraft carriers to launch an attack on a fleet more than 1,000 kilometers away, and its combat radius was only a few hundred kilometers.

Liao Hanxiang didn't speak, but he relaxed a lot in his heart. These bombers, which could only carry out horizontal bombing, posed a much less threat to the fleet than dive bombers and torpedo bombers. This has been proven by the Fifth Fleet in later exercises, as long as the fleet can quickly evade, it is difficult for horizontal bombers to drop bombs on battleships at an altitude of more than 3,000 meters.

The Japanese bomber fleet still uses dense formations, and apparently, the Japanese bomber pilots also know this. If you want to hit a warship on the sea by dropping bombs horizontally, then the best way is to take a dense formation and drop bombs at the same time to hit the warships on the sea with a rain of bullets. Maybe fifty bombs will hit one, but that's better than not hitting one.

The Japanese bombers in dense formation became the best targets for the 120-mm guns, and if the Japanese planes used scattered attacks, the effectiveness of the 120-mm guns would certainly be much lower. In less than 30 seconds, four Japanese bombers were shot down in a row. However, the rest of the Japanese bombers did not separate at all, did not "pay attention" to the anti-aircraft fire on the battleship, and all flew towards the nearest aircraft carrier "Taejong".

"Damn it!" Tan Renhao scolded secretly, and at the same time clenched his fists.

The first Japanese bombers to reach the sky over the "Taejong" began to drop bombs almost simultaneously. At this time, the artillery on the air defense battleship could only look into the sky and sigh, the elevation angle of the 120-mm anti-aircraft gun was only 75 degrees, and it was simply unable to deal with the bombers overhead, and the firing height of the 40-mm anti-aircraft gun and the 20-mm machine gun could not reach those bombers.

The "Taizong" began to turn to the right almost at the greatest angle, and if you look at it from a high altitude, you will find that this huge aircraft carrier is like a small snail, leaving a white arc trail on the sea. It takes about half a minute for a bomb to fall from an altitude of more than 3,000 meters, while an aircraft carrier can sail more than 500 meters in this half a minute, which is about the length of two hulls. The lookout on the aircraft carrier will closely "watch" the bombs falling overhead, and the captain of the aircraft carrier will give the command to turn in the event that these bombs fall. Perhaps, now the lieutenant colonel captain on the "Taizong" is already sweating profusely.

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