After letting the second batch of bombers depart, Huang Xiaotian sent a group of fighters that needed to be refueled to the two fleet aircraft carriers to refuel, and all 24 fighters returned to their air defense patrol positions before half past eight. By this time the fleet was already in air defense, the radars on all cruisers were on, and the fleet was fleeing the battlefield at high speed to the east. Huang Xiaotian did everything he could, and now all that was left was to wait for the enemy bombers to arrive.

Without knowing the exact location of the enemy fleet and the preparations of the enemy fleet, although it is impossible to accurately determine the arrival time of the enemy bombers, it is possible to roughly calculate a time. Task Force 4 had been spotted at about half-past seven, and if Halsey had arranged for the bombers to take off, it would have taken about half an hour just to release them. If we calculate the distance of 200 nautical miles, plus or minus 50 nautical miles, then the US bombers will arrive between 8:50 and 9:30. This is also an approximate time, if the US military moves quickly and closely, then its bomber group will be able to advance by about ten minutes, if it moves slowly and the distance is long, then it may have to wait until after half past nine.

Huang Xiaotian estimated this, so he made the fighters of the five squads enter the air defense patrol state at half past eight, and expanded the air defense patrol radius of the fleet to 40 nautical miles. These fighters are capable of patrolling the skies over the fleet for at least an hour and a half, and still have enough fuel for air combat. In other words, when the US bombers arrived, they would be intercepted by 60 fighters with all their might, followed by dozens of anti-aircraft guns on the ground. It is not so easy to tear apart the air defense network of Task Force 4 easily!

When the fleet sailed east, the two fleet carriers were in front, and the two small carriers were behind. This was not deliberately arranged by Huang Xiaotian. It's an unintentional situation. The power systems on both small aircraft carriers are seriously aging and do not have very good acceleration capabilities. And the two fleet aircraft carriers newly commissioned are much better. In addition, more than 30 dive bombers in the second group of bombers took off from small carriers, which released fighters much slower than fleet carriers, so the two small carriers turned a few minutes late. As a result, the battle groups of the two fleet carriers ran at the front, and the third carrier battle group, with two small carriers as the core, fell behind the fleet.

At 9:15, just as Chai Zhizhong's group was preparing to bomb the 32nd Task Force, the radar on the heavy cruiser "Stinging" located in the westernmost part of the fleet discovered the group of planes that were rapidly approaching in the west, which was the bomber group sent by Halsey! The "Shock" is the escort cruiser of the small aircraft carrier "Taishan," and near this aircraft carrier there is the heavy cruiser "Lichun" and six destroyers, and the small aircraft carrier "Huashan" of the same formation has already gone to the east with several other escort warships.

The US bombers flew 240 nautical miles in an hour and 20 minutes, and the US pilots who led the group were worried about whether they could find the Fourth Task Force. More than 20 fighters from two squads killed from a high altitude immediately reminded him that Task Force 4 must be nearby, and it was not far from them.

Immediately the air battle broke out. The escorting F4U quickly rushed over, but the US fighter pilots immediately discovered that it was not 24 air defense fighters that came to intercept them, but 50 air defense fighters. These fighters from the Northeast. The east and southeast directions flew over, and they were all very fast. At this time, none of the American pilots suspected that Task Force 4 was ahead of them.

At 9:25 a.m., the US pilots spotted the "Taishan" aircraft carrier formation, which was sailing at full speed to the east, and immediately identified the small aircraft carriers in the formation, two "Trotto"-class heavy cruisers, and six "City"-class destroyers. Immediately after that, the shells of the anti-aircraft guns also came, and the 120-mm large-caliber anti-aircraft guns in the fleet opened fire first.

The US pilots were clearly told that there were two fleet aircraft carriers in the Fourth Task Force, and that the significance of striking fleet aircraft carriers was far greater than attacking small aircraft carriers.

Therefore, only a dozen SBDs and more than a dozen TBDs rushed towards the aircraft carrier formation "Tarzan". And behind the butts of these American fighters are more than a dozen "Falcon" fighters. As in every previous fleet air defense operation, fighter pilots on air defense missions would not hide from the fleet's anti-aircraft artillery fire at all, but would chase after the US bombers until they were shot down or themselves were shot down.

The 120-mm anti-aircraft guns on the "Lichun" and "Stinging" showed their might, and in just five minutes, the two cruisers shot down a total of eight US bombers. At this time, the US bombers also left the best killing range of the 120-mm anti-aircraft guns, and just when most of the US pilots thought that success was in sight, another batch of 71 bombs that came to their heads immediately made them dumbfounded.

This is the latest 80-mm 71 shell of the Don Imperial Navy. The first batch of 80 mm 71 shells equipped before had the problem of few shrapnel and low power, but after solving the problem of miniaturization of proximity fuses, the Tang Imperial Navy obtained improved 80 mm 71 shells, and the power of the shells increased a lot under the premise of ensuring the reliability of the fuze. The main improvement is the addition of more than 200 5-gram steel balls to the shell to increase the number of fragments, increase the killing power, and the killing range. And the combat effectiveness of anti-aircraft defense of the 80-mm anti-aircraft guns using the second batch of 71-mm 80-mm shells was no longer under the 120-mm guns.

Of the 24 US bombers that launched an attack on the aircraft carrier "Taishan," only 6 successfully broke through the air defense network, and all of them were SBDs, and not a single TBD was able to break through from a low altitude. Four of the six SBDs ran away after dropping bombs, and the other two were shot down immediately, but that was not the end of the story.

At this time, the "Tarzan" was sailing eastward at full speed, and when the lookout discovered that the enemy plane had dropped bombs, they immediately raised the alarm, and the aircraft carrier immediately began to turn to the left. In the whistling of bombs. The aircraft carrier narrowly avoided the first five bombs, and the sixth bomb landed right at the front of the aircraft carrier's flight deck, almost blowing up more than 20 sections of the battleship's head! And that's not even the worst of it. Of the 2 SBDs that were shot down, one of them crashed directly into the carrier. And the anti-aircraft gunners on the aircraft carrier at that time were not able to react immediately (and even if they did, they simply did not have time to crush them). The SBD crashed directly into the left side of the aircraft carrier island, and most of the more than 100 officers and men who were on the island at that time suffered casualties, and more than a dozen people, including the captain, were killed.

More than half of the fuel in the SBD was not used up, and then a violent explosion occurred. And it triggered a firefight, which is the most deadly!

The shortcomings of small aircraft carriers are also very clear in the batch of "Shan" class aircraft carriers renovated by the Tang Empire, these small aircraft carriers do not have armored flight decks, and even the armor on the main deck is only more than 20 millimeters thick. In addition, many key parts of the aircraft carrier are not protected by armor, even ammunition depots. The aircraft carrier adopts a large compartment structure, and the whole ship has only six horizontal watertight baffles and one longitudinal watertight baffle, that is, there are actually only 14 watertight baffles under the waterline of the aircraft carrier. If 4 watertight compartments on either side, or a total of 7 watertight compartments are flooded, then the aircraft carrier is finished!

The 160-pound ground-based aviation armor-piercing projectile first penetrated the wooden flight deck. Then it penetrated the weak armor of the main deck below, and then exploded on the third deck, the waterline, and the aircraft ammunition depot on the aircraft carrier was just behind the ground baffle at the explosion point. The weak baffle simply could not stop the huge shock wave, and the explosion also ignited all the ignited items on the aircraft carrier. Then, the jet gasoline leaking from the SBD caused an even more intense fire.

The fatal flaws of the "Tarzan" were exposed. If it was a "lake" that was bombed

class fleet aircraft carrier, then this bomb is by no means lethal enough, and it will not even damage the aircraft carrier's ability to receive returning fighters, but this is only a small aircraft carrier with a displacement of about 13,000 tons. In order to carry as many fighters as possible, in order to carry as much aviation fuel and aviation ammunition as possible, there are very few parts used to enhance the survivability of aircraft carriers in the limited displacement.

The fire burned on the aircraft carrier for more than ten minutes, and the first thing that was ignited was the aviation gasoline in the hangar oil pipeline, and then the wooden flight deck also burned, and the fire spread rapidly, and soon the hangar was also engulfed in flames. By 9:50 a.m., the chief engineer of the acting captain had to give the order to abandon the ship and abandon the rescue of the aircraft carrier. At 10:15 a.m., before the last group of officers and men could withdraw, the aircraft carrier's ammunition depot exploded, and more than 200 officers and men, including the chief engineer, died along with the aircraft carrier.

The "Tarzan" was shot, and the pilots on the fighters, as well as the anti-aircraft gunners on the battleship, immediately went crazy as if they had been beaten with adrenaline. The US bomber group continued to advance, and soon caught up with the "Huashan" aircraft carrier formation, which was about 4 nautical miles east of the "Taishan." In this short period of a few minutes, at least 20 US bombers were shot down, and the air defense fighters of the desperate attack bombers were also taken advantage of by the US escort fighters to knock down more than a dozen of them.

In the "Huashan" formation, the anti-aircraft gun barrels on the cruisers "Mangzhong" and "Da Xia" began to smoke, because the small aircraft carriers were not equipped with 120-mm anti-aircraft guns, so the long-range air defense tasks were almost all completed by these two heavy cruisers, watching the US bombers approaching step by step, the anti-aircraft gunners on the cruisers cursed loudly, as if their shouting and cursing could attract the enemy.

When the assault reached the airspace over the "Huashan" aircraft carrier formation, the US military had only 20 SBDs and about 10 TBDs left. Although there were two fleet aircraft carriers not far ahead, the American pilots did not continue to move forward, but concentrated on bombing the small aircraft carrier. These American pilots are not stupid either, there are 20 escort warships near those two fleet carriers, and the anti-aircraft fire of the fleet carriers themselves is not under the cruisers. With the current bombers, it is simply impossible to complete the breakthrough and take out the fleet carriers, and concentrating on another small aircraft carrier is the best option.

At 9:34 a.m., less than 10 minutes after the "Taishan" aircraft carrier was hit, the "Huashan" was hit by two aerial bombs and one aerial torpedo after avoiding at least six bombs and two torpedoes, and two more bombs and two torpedoes hit the aircraft carrier two minutes later. This also included at least four SBDs that were badly damaged and were destined to not return to Task Force 31.

"Huashan" and "Taishan" are sister ships, the second of the "Shan" class small aircraft carriers. The structure of the two ships is almost exactly the same (because it is remodeled, not newly built, so each aircraft carrier of this class has slight differences), and its survivability is definitely not much stronger than that of the "Tarzan", after receiving four bombs and three torpedoes, the aircraft carrier disappeared from the sea at 9:50, that is, 25 minutes before the silence of the "Tarzan", and the officers and men of the whole ship lost more than 600 people, of which at least 300 did not have time to withdraw. And those who died with the aircraft carrier.

Looking at the thrilling battle that took place in the west, Huang Xiaotian's expression was unusually cold, and the sacrifice of the two small aircraft carriers finally saved the two fleet aircraft carriers. After the US bombers left, Huang Xiaotian issued three orders in succession. The first is to let those warships escorting small aircraft carriers salvage the officers and men who have fallen into the water as soon as possible, and then catch up. The second was to let the fleet continue to sail eastward as fast as possible, and immediately send a new rendezvous point to the two bomber groups. Finally, and most importantly, send the possible sea area of Task Force 31 to Task Force 1 so that Task Force 1 can complete the attack as soon as possible.

From the time of arrival of the US bombers, Huang Xiaotian made a rough judgment about the location of the 31st Task Force, that is, the 31st Task Force should be between 220 and 270 nautical miles away from the Fourth Task Force, and it should be directly west of the Fourth Task Force (the north-south deviation is about 10 degrees).

After making this judgment, Huang Xiaotian immediately sent out the telegram, Tan Renhao was still holding the two sharp arrows of the First Task Force, and if he wanted to kill the 31st Task Force, it would depend on whether Tan Renhao's two arrows could hit the target!