Under the concentrated attack of two German battle cruisers, the sea around the "Hood" was like a forest, the towering tower bridge was repeatedly wet by the splashing seawater, and the huge hull was also jolted and swayed by the waves. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 infoBefore the birth of the longitudinal stabilizer, the battleship could not carry out accurate aiming in such sea conditions, and the innovation of technology brought about magical changes, the British spent a lot of money to build the "perfect battleship" - "Hood", fired calmly in the rain of bullets, the shells flew nearly 20,000 meters, most of the bullet impact points were quite close to the target, and three rounds of alternating firing to complete the calibration, the second round of salvo formed a straddle fire on the enemy ship, and the fifth round of salvo was hit, The haze of repeated misses by British capital warships in the waters of Flanders and the Faroe Islands 19 years ago has since been swept away!

After winning the last war, the rigorous and industrious Germans not only did not put their swords and soldiers into the warehouse, but the whole country's admiration for force and military expansion reached an unprecedented peak, and the proportion of defense spending in government expenditure remained at a very high level for a long time, but few voices were heard protesting against the excessive military spending and calling for the reduction of the army. Germany's Earl Tirpitz class battle cruiser and the British admiral-class construction difference is only a few months, the latter's high price has been staggering, the former's standard displacement is only 1000 tons more than the latter, the cost of a single ship is 124% of the latter, you must know that more than ten years after the war, Germany's shipbuilding industry has fully caught up with the British, through the scale effect of the corresponding reduction of energy consumption and cost, in the case of almost the same tonnage, the high technical content and material quality of the Earl of Tirpitz can be seen. In the attack on the "Hood", the "Count Tirpitz" and the "Prince Heinrich" completed the school fire with two rounds of alternating fire, and formed a straddle fire in the third and fourth rounds of salvos respectively, thus putting great pressure on the opponent in terms of technical performance and mental psychology.

In the fifth salvo, the "Count Tirpitz" was the first to hit, but to the choke of the Germans and the British were fortunate enough, the armor-piercing shell that hit the stern of the "Hood" passed directly through the ship, except for leaving a pair of holes in the walls of the two sides, and did not cause substantial damage to the British battle cruiser.

After about two minutes, it was the turn of the Hood to test the strength and luck of the Count Tirpitz. Learning from the bitter lessons of the last war, the British Navy painstakingly honed ammunition technology after the war, and the armor-piercing shells of its main warships were no longer as sensitive as before. Four consecutive rounds of straddle shooting, the "Hood" hit the target for the first time was a "double hit": one shot hit the starboard side of the German ship between the bridge and the main chimney, the impact point was about 40 centimeters above the waterline, this is the key protection area of the German battle patrol, is the thickest part of the protective armor, according to the German engineer's assumption, it can completely withstand the long-range shelling of the 16-inch naval gun, and this is indeed the case; A shot hit the starboard deck, the impact point was located about four meters next to the side of the No. 3 main turret, almost took the lives of more than 2,000 officers and men of the "Count Tirpitz", fortunately, the ship-building engineers listened carefully to the suggestions of the admirals in the design stage, and had a full foresight of the trend of long-distance fleet artillery warfare, so three horizontal decks were set up to weaken the kinetic energy of the shells layer by layer, and block them from the deadly areas such as ammunition depots and power compartments, so the explosion in the ship caused by this British armor-piercing shell seemed to be violent, The raging smoke of the flames created the illusion that the battleship had been heavily damaged, but in fact only some innocuous compartments and part of the wiring were damaged, and only two anti-aircraft guns on the starboard side lost their normal combat effectiveness......

Seeing the black smoke billowing from the enemy's flagship, the British fleet suddenly boiled. In the combat bridge of the "Hood", a staff officer said in ecstasy: "Hit!" We've hit it! Damn 'Tirpitz', you're done this time! ”

Dudley Pound stood silently among his subordinates, who, like everyone else, wanted to see the German battleship capsize and sink in a violent explosion, but rational mind told him that even if it had happened, it was unlikely that it would be now, and that the new German battlecruisers would not be as fragile as the British battlecruisers of the previous war!

Sure enough, the light of the main gun fire continued to flash on the battered German battle cruiser, and in the blink of an eye, a salvo of heavy shells came at the "Hood", once again forming a straddle fire at the "Hood", and one of the shots landed on the side of the ship, which was a close miss that could damage the hull.

In the blink of an eye, the salvo fire of the second German battle cruiser roared, one of which smashed firmly into the starboard side of the "Hood", the wall between the two decks was blown open with a large black hole, a twin auxiliary turret was directly destroyed, and the other auxiliary turret located on the upper deck was seriously damaged, and the small amount of ammunition that was killed caused a small fire, and the rising plume of smoke could be seen dozens of nautical miles away......

Two German war cruisers were engaged in a heated fight with the "Hood", and the other British battle cruiser "Rodney" did not quietly act as a spectator, and its target was the "Prince Heinrich" in the corresponding position. With almost no outside interference, the "Rodney" was able to calmly display its level of gunnery. Three rounds of alternate firing were fired accurately, the fourth round of shooting achieved a straddle shot, the fifth round of salvo fire formed a close loss damage to the enemy ship, the seventh round of straddle fire achieved the first hit, the eighth round of straddle fire hit continuously, the ninth and tenth rounds of volleys missed, and the eleventh round of salvo achieved a third hit. More than a quarter of an hour had passed since the battle began, and the Rodney had been like a brilliant crossbowman, striking and weakening the enemy with accurate long-range fire.

In the space of only five or six minutes, the "Prince Heinrich" suffered three direct hits and four or five near-misses, which was a severe test of the protective ability of the Count Tirpitz-class battlecruisers, its strong main armor belt successfully defused a direct hit, and the close misses only caused a slight leak in part of the oil tanks, and the real blow was two 16-inch shells that hit the deck and superstructure - the first hit the root of the main bridge, pierced the side armor of the bridge, and killed all the officers and men in the navigation room in an instant, cut off a large number of communication lines, and almost sent the officers on the battle bridge back to their hometowns; The second shot hit the second deck in the lower part of the rear chimney, easily penetrating the deck and the perforated armor plate that protected the smoke exhaust channel, and almost blew through the armor partition used to protect the No. 3 boiler group, and the huge earthquake caused by the explosion caused the right engine of the German ship to malfunction, so for the next nearly twenty minutes, the "Prince Heinrich" and the entire German fleet had to reduce the speed to about 15 knots, which almost pushed William August and his fleet into a corner, fortunately from the "Karl Emperor" The first wave of carrier-based aircraft arrived on the battlefield in time and relieved the urgent needs of our fleet.

Designed and built in the mid-to-late 20s, surface ships placed a much higher emphasis on air defense than earlier warships, and the British Admiral-class battlecruisers were no exception, with 16-inch guns equipped with shotguns capable of firing into the air.5 The 5-inch (140mm) twin secondary guns were used for both high and flat purposes, and a large number of specialized 4-inch (102mm) single-mounted anti-aircraft guns, 2-pounder (40mm) anti-aircraft guns, and 0. 5 inches (12. 7mm), all combatants have received formal air defense training and live-fire drills.

The British fleet's air defense capability was not weak, and the German carrier-based aircraft's ship-to-ship attack capability was unambiguous, and the most formidable weapon was the Ju-17 carrier-based dive bomber, known as the "Thor's Hammer", which the German Navy regarded as a weapon to defeat the enemy, which had never been exported to any country since its official entry into service in 1928, and only a very small number of Allied pilots had the opportunity to fly them. Because of the high secrecy of its performance and its wonderful performances in many joint naval exercises, the Ju-17 has been shrouded in mystery in the eyes of the world.

The 20,000-ton Confederate class has a standard configuration of 52 carrier-based aircraft and 4 spare aircraft, while the American Independence class of the same tonnage can carry 72 carrier-based aircraft. The first wave of fighters sent by the "Karl Emperor" totaled 18 fighters, and for reconnaissance and escort needs, the Albarrot H-25 fighters accounted for 8 units, and the remaining 6 Ju-17 bombers and 4 IK-22T torpedo planes.

Seeing the enemy attack, the British fleet quickly adjusted its formation, and the cruisers and destroyers formed a ring of anti-aircraft defense around the two battle cruisers, so as to prevent the enemy torpedo planes from carrying out low-altitude torpedo bombardment of their capital ships, but this conventional defense method was basically ineffective against the Ju-17 diving down from a high altitude. I saw six Ju-17s in groups of two, performing the stunt that the British relied on to become famous -- these dive bombers roared down from a height of 1,000 meters in the posture of ospreys, penetrated the anti-aircraft fire network of the British fleet, and smashed the armor-piercing bombs weighing 500 kilograms at the target.

Six heavy armor-piercing bombs, one alone was enough to inflict heavy damage or even annihilation on the 44,000-ton British battle cruisers, and the "Hood" and "Rodney" had no choice but to use full horsepower and repeatedly use sudden turns to avoid enemy aircraft attacks, and the intensive anti-aircraft artillery fire also played an effective role in interfering with the technical and psychological levels, none of the six bombs hit, one of the four torpedo planes was shot down by the British ships during the forced attack, and the remaining three planes also failed to achieve results.

Although the ferocious attacks of the German carrier-based aircraft group were fruitless, they still played a significant role in the course of the naval battle. As the British gathered their battle formations with trepidation, the German fleet had passed its most dangerous stage, and as the "Prince Heinrich" regained sufficient momentum, William August led his men with iron determination to rush forward, and seized the fleeting opportunity to successfully seize the T-head at a distance of 17,000 meters from the enemy!

(End of chapter)