Defeating the British army and taking Melbourne in order to obtain the population resources of three million in the greater Melbourne area is enough to satisfy Zhong Yixin. And the Mediterranean Fleet, before it had a strong naval force, there was nothing good to do with others, but I didn't expect that because of the unfavorable war in the army, the fleet commander Admiral Pet De actually decided to enter Phillip Bay to support the Anglo-Australian coalition forces.

When he got this information, Zhong Yi remembered a line from Uncle Zhao's sketch in his previous life: vacate the fish pond and train aircraft carriers. Does that admiral know this?

If Bass Strait is a fish pond, then Phillip Bay, which is less than 50 kilometers from north to south and only 40 kilometers from east to west, is a large bath, and the most important thing is that Phillip Bay has only 2 estuaries to the sea. 8 kilometers wide, just throw some mines, you can completely seal the channel, come to catch turtles in an urn.

When Yun Jiu came to ask for the code name of this operation, the commander comrade who was pondering blurted out: bath tub.

Operation bathtub, which was formulated by the Air Force, was divided into two phases, the first of which was to lay mines and seal off the shipping lanes into the sea. Otherwise, with the only 24 bombers in the flying regiment, there are not as many warships as there are, and they will run away as soon as they bomb them, and they will not be able to achieve great results at all. Only after the successful blockade of the shipping lanes can the second stage of bombing be launched.

Zhong Yi took the guard company back to the forward base of Uerdi, the machine factory can produce a variety of mines, choose to manufacture Anchor-1 type large triggered mines and Shen-2 type non-triggered sinking induction mines, not too much, so narrow channel with hundreds of them is enough, after the battle has to be swept away, Melbourne is the most important cargo port. The 1,000-kilogram aerial bombs and the more powerful "tuna" that the British fleet had been producing when it first arrived in Australia were loaded onto trains and transported to the air base in Adelaide.

Without submarines, let alone professional minelayers, mines can only be dropped by air. At four o'clock in the morning, just after dawn, the sailors of the British destroyer Hunter, who remained at the mouth of the bay, were still asleep, and the deputy captain of the ship, Major Terry, who was on duty in the wheelhouse, suddenly heard a roar in the sky. Grabbing the monoculars at hand, Terry muttered: Could it be that the pilots of the carrier-based aircraft on the Athletic God have been diligent to this extent? Coming out to train early in the morning without sleeping? For those guys who are always pretentious, Terry doesn't really like it. The navy is the navy, especially the officers of the British Imperial Navy, which was founded on the navy, should be the most noble, and it is really annoying that a bunch of guys who fly airplanes are mixed into the ranks of the navy.

"Huh?" Terry felt that something was wrong, the plane looked very strange, there should be no such plane on the Athletic! Coupled with the fact that the fleet had never issued a notice that a carrier-based aircraft had taken off, Terry pulled the siren violently, and a long and mournful roar suddenly sounded on the Hunter, and of course, Major Terry's roar: "Enemy attack!" ”

However, the panic caused by the sudden alarm on board the Hunter did not affect the mine-laying operations of the two H-5s. At an altitude of several hundred meters above the sea surface, the two H-5s flew side by side, and at the same time dropped mines, forming two blockade lines more than 100 meters apart at the mouth of Phillip Bay.

In the port of Melbourne, as the fleet's flagship battleship HMS Royal Oak, Admiral Pound was woken up in his sleep by the captain of HMS Royal Oak, Rear Admiral Richie, and the destroyer USS Hunter sent a telegram that the entrance to the sea had been mined by enemy aircraft and the shipping lanes were blocked. Pound immediately realized that he had made a big mistake, the entrance to the sea was blocked, and this Phillip Bay was a desperate situation, "Quick, Rear Admiral Rich, send minesweepers...... Oh no, it's too late, order the Hunter to bombard the sea, blast mines, and ......"

Mr. Admiral has an unfortunate remark that yes, it's too late. Before Pound could finish the order, another officer ran into the commander's lounge, and in a panic, he didn't even knock on the door, "Commander, enemy attack!" ”

The scale of the enemy attack was not very large, only a dozen aircraft, which made Mr. Admiral, who was already fully dressed on the bridge of the Royal Oak, very dissatisfied, "The Royal Navy has not really fought a war for more than ten years, and the quality of the current officers has declined greatly." Think of the Battle of Jutland more than a decade ago, dozens of battleships duel, and the sea water splashed by the near miss of the bomb kept falling on the deck like a torrential rain. ”

"Yes, Mr. Commander, I know that you were the captain of the Royal Oak at that time, and that you sank the Pomerania." Rich had heard Mr. Commander speak of this countless times, and it was his greatest honor.

Pound, who was scratched on the itch, smiled, "Compared to the big scene of hundreds of warships bombarding each other, what kind of enemy attack are these dozen planes, do you think they can hit our battleships?" Richie, order all the sea fighters of the Athletic God to take off to meet the enemy, and all the guns on the ships will fire at the maximum elevation angle, so that the little ones of the enemy know that we are not an army, and they can be provoked at will. ”

"Yes, Commander, the dignity of the Royal Navy is not something that the little planes can provoke."

In this respect, Richie is as confident as Mr. Admiral, although he has heard that the enemy's aircraft are very advanced, but in the face of the battleship of the castle at sea, what use can the most advanced aircraft be?

After flying over Phillip Bay, Gao Jian did not risk lowering the flight altitude, but ordered each plane to determine its own target and drop the bomb at an altitude of 5,000 meters. And Gao Jian didn't even look at the electronic sight, and directly threw away the two bombs, in such a big place, there are so many warships, who is unlucky to bomb them, the main target of the fighter brigade is those sea fighters, and there is a bomber brigade for bombing warships.

The British Athletic light aircraft carrier, the first specially designed aircraft carrier in human history, was later recognized as the ancestor of modern aircraft carriers. At this time, the eight Sea Fighter biplane carrier-based planes on the Athletic God had already taken off in formation, but just when the Sea Fighters were still struggling to climb upward, the long-awaited J-5 fighter group began to dive and shoot at an altitude of 8,000 meters.

"Damn, it's so fast!" The high sword that easily exploded a sea fighter looked around, and there was no longer a sea fighter in sight, and the eight British biplane fighters all exploded in the air or fell into the sea in just one round. The sea fighter with a maximum speed of less than 400 kilometers faces the J-5, which can reach a cruising speed of 800 kilometers, and there is no comparison, in the words of Gao Jian: "This is pure bullying!" ”