In just half an hour, Nelson, who swallowed nine bullets in a row, is now full of holes all over his body, and fires have burned in many parts of the ship's hull. Twisted steel plates, thick black smoke, and broken limb fragments were everywhere. This strongest battleship of the Royal Navy, even if it is lucky enough to drive back to the dock, it is impossible to repair it if it does not lie down for half a year. The battered Nelson quickly relinquished the lead ship and pulled behind, and his place was taken by the Royal Oak behind him.

This wave of attacks by German naval aviation directly destroyed the command system of the British fleet, and the battleship Royal Oak, which was closely behind Nelson, quickly hoisted its command flag, and then angrily and vainly "pursued" the "escaped" German ships.

At this time, the German Navy did not want to have a "fair" artillery battle with the British at all. The two German ships, which were only concerned with "burying their heads in their flights," showed no sign of turning back to a decisive battle, except for bombarding the British destroyers with tail guns in a vain attempt to catch up with the British destroyers who had launched a lightning strike.

Although the British battleships were full of horsepower to chase their opponents, the disadvantage in speed only made them farther and farther away from the German capital ships. In the process, the British destroyers who were vainly trying to catch up with the German ships and launched lightning strikes were constantly intercepted by German destroyers and light cruisers, and could not occupy a good lightning strike position at all.

In the process of interception and counter-interception, the light auxiliary ships of both sides unloaded thousands of shells and fired torpedoes at each other. However, due to the German Navy's "lack of fighting spirit", on the surface it only wanted to escape (in fact, it was waiting for the carrier-based aircraft of the aircraft carrier to seriously damage the opponent first), and the light ships on both sides were only seriously injured, and the torpedoes fired at each other were all "zero hits".

At 8:15 a.m., the aircraft carriers Zeppelin and Sedlitz were receiving and flying fighter jets.

The fighters they flew were all planes returning home from the first wave of interception missions. After the release of the second batch of JU8Cs, the fighters immediately landed on board for refueling. At this time, over the two Zeppelin-class aircraft carriers, two waves of JU87Cs that had previously completed their attack missions were hovering in the sky. Drop in turn. Thanks to the revolutionary design of the beveled flight deck, German aircraft carriers could receive and release aircraft at the same time, which greatly increased combat efficiency

The first wave of 24 Wellington bombers sent by Churchill's air force in the early morning was already approaching the battlefield, and more Wellington bombers would arrive in the next half hour to an hour. The fighters released in the second wave had already gone to intercept them due to the high amount of fuel, and the fighters released in this wave were ready to replace them.

Due to the fact that the distance of the battlefield from the nearest land-based airfield of the British army was more than four hundred kilometers. Already outside the combat radius of British fighters. Therefore, in this bombing operation, the British could only send Wellington bombers with a long range.

Although the Wellington bomber is an excellent aircraft, it is a pity that this flight is a horizontal bomber, not a professional dive bomber, and its threat to the ship is not great. When dropping bombs horizontally, whether the dropped carrier bombs can hit the target or not depends purely on luck.

In order to support the Royal Navy, which was in a bitter battle, the three British armed forces coordinated last night, and three batches of a total of 120 planes were dispatched to support it at dawn. In a hurry. It is already rare for the Royal Air Force to send 120 aircraft to support in a few hours.

In the German fleet, which was in a state of "escape", on the bridge of a destroyer numbered Z43 in the rearguard position, Major Fafnier, wrapped in a thick blanket, drank hot coffee, and looked depressedly at the HE112 fighter flying overhead.

Today is an unfortunate day for Faviniel.

In today's attack, he twice met Captain Mason, an elite pilot in the British Naval Air Force, and he was unable to defeat his opponent with all his might. Then. The shameless Fafnir used the same tactics as he did against Garand in Kiel: he took advantage of the oil and stalked his opponent to the death. Stalking.

After three British aircraft carriers were shot in succession, Faninier got the news from the newsletter and proudly shouted in the public channel: "Boy, your nest has been taken and you can't go back!" ”

Overly complacent, he was bent on knocking down his opponent's plane in order to earn a crash. Still haunted by the fate of the fate of parachuting at sea because of fuel. As a result, in the final stage after the air battle, Captain Mason deliberately flew to a low altitude in the Spitfire, which had little fuel stock, and the murderous Faveniel followed closely, but was besieged by anti-aircraft guns from warships at sea, and his HE112 was shot in the air. Forced to return.

Captain Mason, who lured the opponent into the air raid trap at that time, then turned around and prepared to pursue Fafnier's injured fighter, but fortunately, there were friendly planes nearby to help him at that time, and Fafnier was lucky to escape the opponent's counterattack. However, his injured plane was also unable to return to the aircraft carrier, and after barely flying over the main fleet, it lost power and fell headlong into the sea.

After parachuting, Fafnier was lucky enough to be salvaged by a nearby German destroyer. Fortunately, it was the end of February, the sea temperature had risen, and the rescue was timely, Favenir was fished up after only a few minutes of soaking in the seawater, but he was half frozen to death.

As a famous ace pilot in the Navy, Fafnier's status is not low, but he can easily enter the bridge of the destroyer. The radio on the bridge was constantly transmitting a sweet female voice, which was constantly informing the commanders of the ships in the fleet of the situation of the air battle in the sky 100 kilometers away.

The fighters that are now on the mission of intercepting bombers from land-based airfields are the second batch of fighters released by two Zeppelin-class fighters. Without escort planes, the forty Wellington bombers would have become a meal for the fighters and planes. Although these British bombers formed a dense air defense formation, in the face of more than 20 HE112 bites, the formation soon collapsed and fell into a bitter battle.

According to the radio, Fafnier and his teammates had already shot down three Wellington bombers in a row, which made Fafnier, who could only stare here wrapped in a blanket, extremely depressed.

Ffnier cursed angrily in his heart at the pilot of the Spitfire, numbered "101".

"That damn British plane! Stingy British, your plane is going to fall anyway, let me fight down and die! ”

"Yawn!"

About 50,000 meters away from Faveniel, Captain Mason sneezed hard from a cold.

He was one of the lucky few pilots to survive this disastrous air battle. His plane was not shot down in an air battle, but because he could not find the landing aircraft carrier, he was finally forced to abandon the plane and parachute, and then was salvaged by a nearby destroyer. As a result, like his "best friend" Fafnier, who had been entangled with him for nearly an hour, Captain Mason also froze cold in the icy waters. Because the Spitfire and the HE112 are too similar in appearance, the overstimulated rookie gunner often gets the target wrong because of nervousness.

Captain Mason wasn't so lucky today either.

When he was about to abandon the plane and parachute at the last moment, the anti-aircraft guns on a nearby British destroyer did not know what the wind was pumping, and actually fired fiercely at his landline with ping pong, it turned out that the sailors on the destroyer were nervous and mistook his Spitfire for a HE112, and one of the shells even hit his rear fuselage and exploded. Luckily, the Spitfire's fuel tank was empty, its ammunition was nearly depleted, and the damn ping-pong gun had malfunctioned at a critical moment, otherwise Mason couldn't believe he would have had the luck to escape the "accidental hit" of his friend.

The first batch, forty Wellington bombers, intercepted by German naval fighters, and in the end only ten barely flew to the German warship to attach air-dropped bombs, but while dealing with the pursuit of HE112 behind them, they also had to drop bombs horizontally at an altitude of two thousand meters without being able to dive and drop bombs. This act of throwing wrist beans at the tip of a needle at high altitude did not achieve half of the actual results except to scare the unlucky sailors at sea half to death.

In the end, the effect of the first wave of Wellington bomber bombing was only a few serpentine maneuvers on some of the warships in the German fleet.

At 8:40 p.m., the second wave of British Wellington bomber planes was again effectively intercepted by the carrier's carrier-based fighters, and a small part of the bombs that flew over the aircraft carrier were intercepted by a small number of smashers, and the direct hit rate was still the same, and the deviation was also very outrageous. Churchill, the layman of aviation, did not know at all that horizontal bombers and dive bombing were completely different things. He sent Wellington bombers to support the native ships, and with fighter escorts, this was purely an initiative to give the opponent a head.

By nine o'clock sharp, the Royal Air Force had sent three batches of 120 Wellington bombers, but after paying the heavy price of 55 downed and more than 40 damaged, they had achieved no effective results. Many of the damaged Wellington bombers were thrown headlong into the sea on the way back because the planes could not support them. If only there were ships nearby, otherwise the hapless pilots would have to fend for themselves.

Luckily, the ping-pong cannon failed and jammed after a few shots, but fortunately, Captain Mason managed to escape.

At 9:15 a.m., after repelling the horizontal bombardment of British land-based planes, the German navy, pretending to be fleeing, again dispatched dive bombers to attack the British warships.

This time, not only the two combat aircraft carriers, but even the three escort aircraft carriers 100 kilometers away also sent all the dive bombers out at this time.

Together with the JUU87 sent by the escort carrier, this wave of air offensive of the German Navy, the total number of JU87s dispatched is as high as 85! For a time, the sky over the entire Royal Navy fleet was filled with black-pressed aircraft.

"Those screaming JU87s sound like banshees from hell to us!"

After the war, a surviving British sailor said so, and JU87 was given the nickname "Banshee" because of this. (To be continued......)

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