"Fire! Fire!! "On the heavy cruiser USS Kidd on the outskirts of the U.S. rescue fleet, the air defense commander stood at the air defense command post and loudly ordered his anti-aircraft artillery to fire fiercely into the sky. In the dense shelling sound of the pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info, countless bullets flew into the sky, exploding black fireworks in mid-air.

The heavy cruiser USS Kidd is the latest generation of air defense warships belonging to the US Navy. This is a special air defense warship urgently developed by the Americans after learning the lessons of the defeat of the Japanese in the battle with the Ming army. It is not only equipped with a large number of air defense weapons, but also equipped with the latest sea-detection radar, with an effective detection range of nearly 30 kilometers.

In addition, the Kidd is also equipped with a new fire control command radar, which can effectively command the anti-aircraft fire of the entire ship. Its anti-aircraft combat effectiveness has been greatly improved compared with the previous old warships. And the biggest driving force for all this scientific and technological progress is that the losses of the Americans in actual combat are too heavy, and there is no chance of victory without large-scale improvements.

Equipped with hundreds of anti-aircraft guns of various calibers, the Kidd had extremely ferocious firepower, and they used close-fire fuse anti-aircraft shells, which were so powerful that they posed a huge threat to the air attack formations of the Ming navy.

The location of the Kidd at this moment is very important, it is on the way for the Ming attack formation to go to the core position of the US aircraft carrier. Moreover, as an air defense command ship, the USS Kidd also commanded several nearby US warships to conduct regional air defense operations together. In just a few minutes, the Ming attack aircraft group lost nearly 10 planes in this sea area.

The performance of Daming HNA's fighters is very good. Not only is it fast, long-range, and powerful, but any fighter is equipped with alloy armor. Its pilots are also extremely rigorously trained, carefully selected from many excellent pilots. And many pilots have more than 1,000 hours of flying experience and combat experience. Suffering such a heavy loss in a short period of time immediately attracted the attention of the commander of the Ming army.

In fact, in addition to its own outstanding ability, a large part of the reason why the Kidd was able to command several surrounding warships to achieve such results was because the torpedo aircraft attack group in the Ming attack aircraft group was entering the attack voyage and constantly reducing the altitude. At this time, the nearby Kidd seized the opportunity and beat several planes. Although he achieved good results, he also attracted the eyes of death for himself.

"Attention Red Arrow 11 squad, Blue Arrow squad 9." Colonel Ye Feng, who was hovering at high altitude and observing the entire battlefield with his own fighter plane, immediately began to give orders after discovering the strength of the Kidd: "The enemy's large surface ships in the Northwest-3 Sea area are fierce, you go and deal with it." ”

The so-called well-trained means to be able to skillfully use various combat tactics on the battlefield, rather than rushing out in a swarm to fight randomly. Layered and rhythmic execution of combat tactics is the real training.

As a formation under the commander's personal command to deal with the unexpected, an attack formation of eight dive bombers and eight torpedo planes soon roared towards the Kidd.

To be honest, with the strength of the Ming Army's naval aviation, these sixteen fighters are enough to deal with a large American aircraft carrier. It's just that the performance of the Kidd is too eye-catching, and Ye Feng is unwilling to give it any chance to turn over. Shoot the first bird, that's what you say.

The speed of the plane was very fast, and the more than a dozen Ming fighters were soon in place. The dive bombers flying high in the air roared down from an altitude of nearly three thousand meters and sped towards the Kidd. The eight torpedo planes on the surface of the sea were divided into two groups and approached quickly from the left and right sides of the Kidd.

The Kidd, which was suddenly attacked by a concentrated attack, did a good job in training, and they quickly adjusted their deployment and began to meet the rapidly approaching Ming fighters through the ship-wide air defense command system. At the same time, the Kidd began to accelerate in an all-round attempt to get out of the unfavorable situation.

The U.S. Navy officers and sailors aboard the USS Kidd have done a very good job. It's just that their opponents are too strong. The warships targeted by the elite carrier-based aircraft unit of the Ming Naval Aviation have basically not been able to successfully escape. Although the Kidd and the nearby warships fired frantically to stop the Ming attack, everything they did was in vain.

Only two of the eight torpedo planes that approached the Kidd from both sides were shot down, and they dropped their torpedoes at a distance of about 1,200 meters from the Kidd. Originally, according to the regular regulations of the Daming Navy, when a torpedo plane attacked a ship, the bombing distance was in principle 1,000 meters. In practice, the unwritten rule for pilots is 800 meters.

This is because the closer you are to an enemy ship, the better its chance of hitting. However, this time the six torpedoes were clearly just cover, and they were used to disrupt the course of the American warship. The real killer comes from the dive bombers in the middle of the sky. However, if the torpedo can hit the target, it is also powerful enough to destroy the battleship.

The Kidd has a full load displacement of almost twenty-five thousand tons. To provide an effective firing platform for the many anti-aircraft guns it was carrying, the Kidd was more than 210 meters long and nearly 28 meters wide. This size was already very close to the battleship. However, its displacement was only half that of a battleship. In this case, its armor defenses are very weak.

Even though the Kidd had already run at an ultra-high speed of more than thirty-two knots at this time, its huge body was no different from the target ships encountered during training on weekdays in the eyes of the elite pilots of the Ming Army who swooped in from a high altitude.

Eight dive bombers were not shot down during the attack on the Kidd due to the angle. Only one dive bomber, because the bomb was dropped at too low a height, could not be successfully pulled up after the bomb was dropped, and crashed headlong into the sea. Another was hit at close range by the Kidd's anti-aircraft guns after changing its dive trajectory and fell.

Three of the eight heavy armor-piercing shells hit the Kidd's wide hull directly. The fatal first armor-piercing shell landed on the foredeck of its No. 1 main gun, easily piercing through several layers of armor as if it were tearing through white paper, before exploding near the main ammunition depot beneath its main gun.

What are the consequences of a heavy armor-piercing projectile weighing half a ton exploding near a wartime ammunition depot? That, of course, is the detonation of the ammunition depot. The enormous power of the detonation of the main ammunition depot is not to mention a thin-skinned heavy cruiser, and even a thickly armored battleship will have to return home. The Kidd was killed by the sheer force of the ammunition at its main ammunition depot, and the forward third of the ship was blown in two.

No other results were needed, just one hit bomb was enough to destroy the ship. Not to mention the fact that at this moment there were two armor-piercing shells that directly hit the plunge and rear turret of the battleship, several near-miss shells that were only tens of meters away, and a torpedo with good luck.

The Kidd, ravaged repeatedly, its entire long hull densely enveloped by a huge white column of water, had become a monster that had not even had the bow of the ship when it rushed out of the sea area with its high-speed inertia and reappeared in front of everyone.

The battered Kidd was sunk in a very short time, and only three of the more than 1,000 officers and men on board survived. Because the bow section of the ship was blown in two, it sank too quickly. There was no time for the crew to escape.

And what happened to the Kidd was just a microcosm of the battlefield. The main target of the Ming army was actually the American aircraft carrier, if it were not for the Kidd blocking the path of the Ming army, and the anti-aircraft fire was too fierce to attract attention, then the Ming army might not have paid attention to this kind of warship before destroying all the American aircraft carriers.

The number of fighters in the first attack wave of the Ming army was as high as more than 300, and in addition to about 70 fighters used to seize air supremacy, the other 200 dive bombers and torpedo planes had already swooped down on the aircraft carriers that were flying their fighters at maximum speed under the US anti-aircraft fire.

Admiral Higgins arranged a formation with four escort carriers in front and six fleet carriers behind, so when the Ming army began to attack, it was the four escort carriers that were the first to be hit.

All four escort carriers were converted from large transport ships. Although its tonnage is not comparable to that of a real fleet aircraft carrier, because it uses civilian armor technology, its volume is similar to that of a fleet aircraft carrier.

On the battlefield where bullets are flying, the pilots of the Ming Dynasty are not in the mood to identify who is on the battleship on the sea one by one. They are all in a situation where they could be shot down at any moment and their souls return to the sea. At this time, you must attack the target closest to you.

The four escort carriers are the USS Corregidor, USS Liscom, USS Shipley, and USS Stimaar. Because it is a different modification of the ship, its displacement varies from 18,000 tons to 25,000 tons. The same goes for carrier-based aircraft. From more than thirty to more than fifty.

Although the number of fighters loaded is not large, because the quality of the officers and men is not as good as that of the regular fleet aircraft carriers, and because it is an escort aircraft carrier, it is not equipped with steam catapults, and the speed at which the fighters are released is far inferior to that of regular aircraft carriers.

When the Ming attack aircraft group began to attack them, there were only about 20 US fighters in the surrounding airspace that had just taken off and had not even had time to climb high.

The four escort carriers were no more than a nautical mile or two away from each other. Most of the warships on the perimeter were old-fashioned warships. Cutting-edge air defense warships like the USS Kidd are basically deployed next to the six regular aircraft carriers a few nautical miles away. In this case, the fate of these four escort aircraft carriers has already been sealed.

Although the US fighter pilots resisted desperately, they even flew their own fighters directly to the Ming torpedo planes that swept over the sea, and vigorously carried out mid-air collision operations. But they couldn't do anything about the very bombers in the sky. (To be continued.) )