Night falls, 7:40 a.m.

Yin Ke piloted the fighter plane and flew towards the point of light in the distance, where the Chinese Grand Fleet was shrunk - all the warships turned on all the lights, and the lights were bright, and the sea within a radius of tens of kilometers illuminated by thousands of bright lights was as bright as day.

This is the specialty of the Chinese task force. Housekeeping skills at night.

-- Searchlights, lights, speedboats, anti-submarine aircraft, and the occasional depth charge.

Even if you don't look at it from a high altitude, on the sea, dozens of kilometers away from the defense circle of the Chinese Grand Fleet, you can clearly see the bright light of the Grand Fleet. As for in the air, it is even more obvious.

Suddenly, three red flares lit up from the sea below, and Yin Ke could vaguely see the appearance of a warship below, which should be a high-speed destroyer cruising outside the defense. After discovering the group of aircraft in the air, a signal flare was fired, and the model was still the latest Swordfish-class destroyer produced by Beiyang Heavy Industries, which was said to have a pervert with a maximum speed of nearly 40 knots.

Yin Ke knew what the meaning of the three red flares was, and in addition to pointing the way, there was also a greeting.

An hour and a half ago, they had endured a 35-minute battle. In just 35 minutes, 107 of the 230 fighters of Yin Ke's first team were lost, and the pilots directly smashed the iron shell of the European detachment with their own blood. However, the loss rate of close to 50% is also shocking.

Of course, things should not only look at the losses, but also on their results: two super dreadnoughts were heavily damaged, one battle cruiser sank, and four heavy cruisers sank in half.

Of the 200,000-ton total tonnage of this fleet, only one super dreadnought and one battle cruiser of the 12 capital ships are considered good, and the other two heavy cruisers and two large armored cruisers have already been painted, not to mention the inevitable decline in the speed of heavy damage.

107 fighters in exchange for the heavy damage of two super dreadnoughts, in exchange for one dreadnought. The sinking of one battle cruiser and two heavy cruisers, as long as you recognize the splendor of this victory, incomparably high respect will rise from everyone's heart.

Of the 107 lost fighters, at least 20 bravely crashed into the enemy ship after being damaged, including Yin Ke's cousin.

One purebred Ukrainian, one who has been in China for fifteen years. Ukrainians who love China infinitely.

Because Yin Ke's father is called Yin Lei, his grandfather is called Yin Wan, and his real name is Ivanovich Kulik. At the beginning, when he was in Xinjiang, he was captured with the Marquis of Roy, and the development after entering the Qin army was of course not as good as that of Marquis Roy, but he also lived peacefully until the founding of the country, and he also hung the rank of major general before retirement, and also had a pure Chinese name.

With China's complete victory in the Sino-Russian War, Yin Ke's grandfather sent people back to his hometown and brought all his relatives to China. Naturally, all the relatives also became Chinese nationals. Yin Ke's cousin is the child of his second aunt's family.

If it is a normal Chinese person, such a relationship is a bit far away. But who made the Yin family an outsider, the social environment made all their relatives unusually close, and before the appearance of the Yin family was initially orientalized, such a 'foreigner' would be more or less ostracized. The cousins entered Sungkyun Public School together, and later they were selected into the flight academy together, and the airplane was still a secret weapon at the beginning.

Blood relationship, experience in the army. Jean Yoon Ke has an excellent relationship with his cousin.

It was precisely because of this good relationship that Yin Ke witnessed his cousin driving a burning bomber headlong into the battle cruiser's chimney. It's so painful in my heart, and I can't forget that scene until now......

When the first batch of fighters landed and all the numbers were reported to the general headquarters, the command headquarters, which was still excited about the results of the first batch of fighters, immediately calmed down. 107 fighters, that's almost half of the volume.

Liu Xian's whole person was like a cold and hard marble, and he had expected such casualties at the beginning of the war. Otherwise, how could 1,200 fighters be prepared. By doing so, he had the intention of hurting others. Use China's strong strength to fight against these steel behemoths in thick steel armor.

It takes no more than a week for an aircraft to be produced and completed, and if you count the production cycle of precision parts such as engines and machine guns, it is only half a month at the latest. But how much does the production cycle of a dreadnought take? That's about the year.

The British Empire is the most powerful shipbuilding country in the world, how many dreadnoughts did they build at one time? China's aircraft production is measured in 1,000 aircraft per month. Desperate to drive full horsepower, it is not impossible to produce 10,000 units per month.

There is no comparison between the two sides at all.

1,800 fighters can be easily handled by China in half a month. 1,800 Hainan Airlines pilots can be trained in half a year. But what about the Grand Fleet of Europeans? That is their accumulation of a hundred years, and it took the entire Western world all their resources to produce it after seven or eight years. The two sides are going to fight so hard, and who is the one who suffers, you don't know.

"This is just the beginning. The joint navy of the three countries has a total of eight detachments, and the one encountered by the first batch should be the most powerful of the eight detachments, but other detachments cannot be underestimated. The first wave was down, and the losses of 3/400 aircraft were less. ”

Liu Xian's expression did not fluctuate at all when he spoke, as if he did not know that the 500 fighters represented the lives of 500 pilots and many more crew members. The hard-hearted old emperor is really cold-blooded, Liu Xian, who has been accustomed to battles all his life, does not feel sorry for these officers and soldiers who have spilled blood in the sky, since he is a soldier, he has to think about the day of sacrifice.

This is different from watching the European submarines sink Chinese ships and warships in vain, and he is silent and cannot be known.

Now it's war.

War requires sacrifice.

1,800 fighters, including torpedo planes, dive bombers, reconnaissance planes, anti-submarine planes, and so on, many planes cannot be driven away by a single pilot, and the entire crew needs to cooperate in order to give full play to the maximum capabilities of the aircraft. Under the coordination of the old emperor, a total of 2,122 pilots were mobilized in this battle, plus the thousands of pilots owned by the three task forces themselves, the total number of which was as high as more than 3,000. There are also tens of thousands of crew members. The 'value' of these people is several times or ten times higher than that of the elite Marines who accompany them.

For a whole night, the 'big bulb'-like Chinese Fleet was constantly releasing planes, retracting planes, and replenishing planes, and the entire fleet was busy and did not stop for a moment.

Casualties and losses are constantly being summed up. The results of the battle are also constantly being collected in the hands.

The Europeans already knew the traces of the Chinese Grand Fleet, and the eight detachments rushed towards the Chinese Navy's Grand Fleet as long as the warships could still be moved. Although it was late at night, the bright lights were easily detected by the Chinese attack planes, and then a swarm of swarms attacked.

One sea after another was blazing with fire, and the guns exploded brightly. The black night sky was reflected red.

It was a night that was remembered in the history books of the East and the West.

The distance between the fleets on both sides was less than 40 kilometers at its shortest, and the battleships on the periphery of the defense circle of the Chinese Grand Fleet were more than 10 kilometers stronger than the pursuers behind the buttocks, and five destroyers and light cruisers were sunk by the huge artillery of the Europeans, and two light cruisers were damaged, and then had to go diagonally to break away from the large fleet, and their speed could not keep up. Although it was only affected by the main artillery of the Europeans.

Liu Xian also concentrated the dreadnoughts at hand to fight, but did not send fighters to bomb in the first hour. Because when the Europeans approached, the 12 Chinese aircraft carriers were in the stall of recovering the aircraft.

It wasn't until an hour and seven minutes into the artillery battle that the Chinese war eagle that flew into the sky again swooped down. At the cost of 6 fighters, the two battle cruisers that caught up were cleanly sunk.

These two battle cruisers should have been escorted by a large number of warships, they were arranged together with super dreadnoughts, and together with heavy patrols and mounted patrols, but now they chased alone to the tail of the Chinese Grand Fleet, accompanied by only three vulnerable light cruisers, and no one except Liu Xian could judge whether this small fleet was a small force of a certain detachment, or all the forces that a certain fleet could still pursue at high speed today.

After the battle. The speedboat sent to search for the captives brought back the news of the death of the famous German Admiral Franz von Hipper. It also confirms the 'identity' of this small fleet, and they are indeed all the remaining high-speed mobile forces of a trilateral naval detachment.

The entire fleet withstood two aircraft attacks. One by one, capital ships and non-capital ships were sunk or traumatized, and the speed could not keep up with the two battle cruisers. Franz von Hipper resolutely led two battle cruisers and three light cruisers to continue the pursuit of the Chinese Grand Fleet, and then there was the scene that everyone had just experienced.

Vice Admiral Hipper, when the battlecruiser Seydlitz, Germany's most powerful battlecruiser, sank, refused to leave the warship, accompanied by the 28,500-ton (largest) sea behemoth. A piece sank to the bottom of the deep Gulf of Aden. With at least 100 German sailors who refused to leave the Seydlitz like Hipper, and with the addition of those killed in battle and swallowed up by the sea, less than half of the 1,244 crew members of the Seydlitz battlecruiser boarded the Chinese Navy's lifeboats alive.

Two battle cruisers and three light cruisers, the lifeboats of the Chinese Grand Fleet carried back a thousand people. The rest is up to their own good fortune.

The situation of the Chinese Grand Fleet is indeed dangerous. Night is not a good time for fighters to take off for combat, and the aircraft of this era will be fundamentally unsuitable for night operations. It is also a pity that on the sea, Liu Xian made preparations early, and most of the more than 100 submarines of the Chinese Navy were deployed in this sea area, not to ask them to rob and kill the European fleet, but to make a 'mark'!

It is precisely by relying on the fact that more than 100 submarines pop up from time to time and put a 'large' eye-catching glass lantern that China's war eagles can distinguish between east, west, north and south in the dark night and find a way to kill the enemy.

The direction of the Grand Fleet is directly controlled by Liu Xian, and under the bug, some small disasters and small difficulties cannot be avoided, such as the sinking of one or two peripheral guard warships by a European submarine that was hit, such as a small battle with the European fleet for a while, Liu Xian also sent a part of the warships to camouflage the main force and successfully lured a European detachment to deviate from the direction, which naturally really deviated from the main force of the Chinese Grand Fleet.

In short, the Chinese Grand Fleet lost 15 warships in pieces overnight [8 light cruisers, 7 destroyers, not counting speedboats], but it did not consume any real strength. Just talking about the ability of the Grand Fleet to fight artillery, the losses of the Chinese Navy are only a drop in the bucket.

What really hurts the Grand Fleet is the loss of fighters, in one night, 600 planes were dropped, what kind of concept is this? The Chinese naval fleet fought a series of air battles with the Europeans in Somalia, killing and alive how many planes were lost before they lost a few planes? But there were 600 of them all at once this night?

Jericho and Scheer were not fools, they had already sent a telegram to all the commanders of the detachment before 6 o'clock, asking them to retreat immediately, as far away from the Chinese Grand Fleet as possible, and to retreat to the Suez Canal immediately if they could.

"The war was lost." Reinhardt Schell, 57, returned to his room after sending the telegram to Berlin, where a gunshot rang out two minutes later. Alfred von Tirpitz, a staunch supporter of the father of the German High Seas Fleet, ended his life with a pistol.

The panicked attendants and guards opened the door to the room, and saw only Scher's body and a postcard on the table: it was when Germany had withdrawn from the war......

Jazz Trumpet. The fourth of the Queen Elizabeth-class battleships.

Jericho looked at Lieutenant General Louis in front of him expressionlessly, and allowed the two sailors to take him away without the slightest anger or resistance. Louis shuddered, Admiral Jericho was obviously a big living person, but at the right moment, he only felt that His Excellency the Admiral was like wood, without the slightest trace of human vitality.

Jericho also sent a telegram to London about the defeat of the battle, the combined navy of the three countries suffered heavy losses, and the naval essence of the British Empire stained the Gulf of Aden with blood. Jellicoe was then dismissed from his post as commander of the Grand Fleet by London, and his arrest was announced.

The fleet was the most valuable asset of the British Empire, and Jericho's loss in this battle was hated by everyone in London. Of course, there must have been unspeakable factors in the decision to arrest Jericho, and London should shirk its responsibility and pass the blame for the defeat. So is there a more suitable object in this world than Jellico?

As a result, a well-known Royal Admiral immediately became a sinner awaiting military trial.

"Emperor, it's not a European fleet that is retreating, it's all European warships retreating. The submarine unit called to report whether they should take the opportunity to rob and kill them and slow them down. ”

The old emperor, who hadn't slept all night, was in good spirits and smiled when he heard this, "What's the use of that?" You can't keep a few by relying on submarines, and you have to take risks. ”

"Let them go. Let's go to the canal! "As long as this point is stuck, no matter how many warships in the Combined Fleet are, they will not be able to cross the Mediterranean. Don't think that after a night of fierce fighting, the naval forces of the Chinese Grand Fleet can still have much combat effectiveness. All the pilots and crew members were very tired, and the officers and men in charge of the ground work of the aircraft carrier were even more exhausted, as well as the officers and men on the transport ships.

The Chinese Grand Fleet still maintains a good artillery combat capability, but in air combat it is severely disabled, and if it does not recuperate for a day or two, its physical strength and energy cannot be recovered.

But by scare, the current Chinese fleet can also scare the Europeans! (To be continued.) )