Chapter 267: Operation Longbow (Part II)
The second more
The so-called extreme reversal of things, the Swordfish attack aircraft, which was extremely slow, used the night to play low flight at the altitude of the "seawater washing wheel", and the BF11O night fighters who intercepted them were helpless. The intercepting German plane tried to lower the altitude and intercepted twice, but only two Swordfish were shot, and two of them were also dropped. In the face of the bullets that kept coming indiscriminately behind him, the British Swordfish attack plane turned a blind eye and continued to maintain its flight course.
Although the over-the-top BF11O can pull up the nose, climb, and turn back to attack again, this process takes a lot of time, and the number of times it can intercept the Swordfish group is actually very limited, and the British plane took advantage of the BF11O's misses and quickly approached the port of Oss 6.
"Amazing tactics!"
On the Scharnhorst, Hannah scanned the embarrassment of the German night fighter unit and couldn't help but praise her opponent. This kind of situation is very familiar to her from the future.
In the brutal Soviet-German battlefield, the Soviet night bomber unit with the main force of the wave 2 used similar tactics, constantly attacking German positions at night. For the harassment of the wave 2, which was only more than 100 kilometers away, the German night fighter units at that time were also extremely headaches. During the Soviet-German war, the Soviet Union built more than 30,000 of them for pilot training and battlefield. Later, on the Korean battlefield, Bo 2 used the same tactics to tease the US Air Force to death, and even got the nickname "Charlie of Chapu".
And Germany itself, which later learned from the Soviet Red Army, formed its own low-altitude and low-night bomber unit with the GO149 trainer aircraft as the main force, and achieved good results on both the Eastern and Western Fronts.
Faced with such a low height. Low-flying night aircraft, whether it is the Soviet and German sides or the British and American air forces, are a headache.
On the Soviet-German battlefield, the kind of low-level aircraft with a degree of only more than 100 kilometers, whether it is the Wave 2 or the German GO145 or FI156 battlefield liaison aircraft, are the least favorite targets for pilots on the battlefield. Because they are "too slow," the plane will fly over its head if it is not careful, leaving a very small window for the pilot to shoot -- taking Germany as an example, the survival time of the extremely slow battlefield liaison plane FI156 on the Soviet-German battlefield is actually ten times that of the BF1O9 from a fighter.
At 6:25 a.m., at the cost of one crashing into the sea and four being shot down, the remnants of the 19 Swordfish successfully broke through the interception of the German night fighter unit and flew over the port of Oss 6.
Right now. In front of them, only the anti-aircraft artillery positions in the harbor and the anti-aircraft guns on the German ships in the harbor were left in front of them.
On the Scharnhorst, all the anti-aircraft fire was already in place at this time. Several quick-start destroyers have also sailed to the side of the Scharnhorst and the Tsiberlin, and in addition to providing the necessary air defense cover, they also have to use their bodies to "block the guns" of the two capital ships if necessary.
When flying over the port of Oss 6, a small number of Swordfish attack aircraft with flares began to climb. The flares dropped illuminated the pitch-black harbor, illuminated by bright pillars of light. The aircraft carriers Scharnhorst and Zeppelin, which had just started Operation Spiral, were clearly visible.
The five climbing Swordfish attack planes were quickly locked by the searchlights that had been prepared in the harbor for a long time, and then they were greeted by a dense rain of anti-aircraft guns. However, at night, the effectiveness of the anti-aircraft guns was not too high.
The remaining fourteen Swordfish attack planes, with the light released by the flares, swooped down in unison in the direction where the battleship Scharnhorst was located.
And dive bombers, different. When a torpedo attack maneuvers to attack, its flight path can be predicted in advance.
"Well done! I admit I underestimated you! But that's all there is to you! ”
Feeling the approach of the British plane, Hannah, who was hidden on the Scharnhorst, snorted in her heart. Under the guidance of her radio on the ship, the air defense units near the port were already on standby. All the searchlights pointed exactly where the British plane was located.
The first to fire were the 128mm high-level dual-purpose guns on several warships, but after the shells were fired, Hannah realized that she had overlooked another thing.
The 128-mm anti-aircraft guns of the German ships anchored in the harbor are now using the newly developed VT shells with radio proximity fuses.
This is extremely advanced technology, but in the face of the backward torpedo attack aircraft of the Swordfish, the use of this shell is not as good as expected.
Because the Swordfish attack aircraft was an old biplane with a large amount of canvas skin, the overly advanced radio proximity fuse could not achieve the desired effect at all - a similar situation was similar to the situation in history at the end of the Pacific War, when the metal-deficient Japan used the old canvas aircraft to carry out kamikaze attacks on American ships, and the VT shells on American battleships at that time also encountered a similar situation.
Unfortunately, fortunately, because the VT radio proximity fuse is a new product, and because it has just been produced and the production is insufficient, it is currently a priority to supply naval ships, and the anti-aircraft artillery positions on the 6 can only use backward timing fuses.
While all the barrages fired by the 128-mm high-level dual-purpose guns failed, the medium-range barrages fired by two 88-mm antiaircraft artillery batteries on the shore successfully exploded in the group of Swordfish attack planes 7,000 meters away, and three Swordfish attacks were shot down in this wave of barrage.
The remaining eleven Swordfish planes were divided into two squads and continued to assault in the face of increasingly fierce anti-aircraft fire. Now in front of them, all that was left was a barrage of 4o-mm Bofors anti-aircraft guns, and 3o-mm five-barreled Gatling guns.
The five-barreled Gatling anti-aircraft cannon is another weapon that appeared in advance of World War II brought by Hannah and Lin Han, the two traversers.
The multi-barreled Gatling cannon, in terms of World War II technology, does not have any technical threshold problems, the only problem is just a conceptual unexpected. A five-barreled Gatling cannon can drop at least as much bomb per unit of time as a quadruple cannon of the same caliber, but its weight and footprint are much smaller. In the German Navy, the 3o mm Gatling gun even replaced the 20 mm gun, and together with the 4o mm Bofors anti-aircraft gun, it formed the main force of short-range air defense.
The Swordfish attack plane piloted by Captain Mason was carrying flares and bombs. You don't have to brave the hail of bullets to charge. And for him, the swordfish with a bombing bow sheet, because its "threat" is not great, Hannah, who directs the ground anti-aircraft fire, has no heart to pay attention to him. Anti-aircraft fire, both ashore and ship, is now focused on encircling and suppressing torpedo-laden Swordfish attack aircraft, which pose the greatest threat.
As soon as the Swordfish attack flew to a distance of six thousand meters from the German ship, it began to be intercepted by fierce 4o-mm Bofors anti-aircraft guns. At a distance of five thousand meters, the five-barreled Gatling cannon also joined the ranks of the firing.
There was the help of flares and searchlights. The night still affected the hit rate of the ground anti-aircraft artillery, but under Hannah's guidance, the anti-aircraft fire from all directions still fiercely weaved a blazing anti-aircraft fire net in front of the eleven swordfish.
For the pilots of the Swordfish attack aircraft, the greatest threat was not the 4o-mm Bofors anti-aircraft guns, which could kill them with a single hit, and the cover of night greatly affected the hit rate of these anti-aircraft guns. As long as they were not unlucky enough to be caught by the beam of light from the shore searchlights, their attack aircraft would be much safer.
The real threat was the 5-barreled 3O-mm Gatling cannon mounted on the left side of the Scharnhorst's bridge, and its stormy fire was terrifying. Now this five-barreled 3o-mm cannon. Without anyone directly operating it, it fired fiercely at the Swordfish swarm. Although there are sailors next to it who are responsible for adjusting the delivery of the cartridge belt, the aiming and firing is completely "automatic".
The man who operated the cannon was none other than Hannah, who had been integrated with the Scharnhorst. Relying on the perception of the ship's soul, she manipulated the five-barreled Gatling mechanism to spit out deadly tongues of fire, and with a high fire of 1,08 per minute, she smashed the approaching Swordfish attack planes one by one in the air like a roll call.
When Scharnhorst is locked by a Swordfish attack plane, she fights back with anti-aircraft guns. Hannah felt the power of faith accumulated in her body be consumed a hundredfold higher.
This kind of situation is more than Lin Han and she have encountered.
When their spirit ship is threatened with "life", if they want to use their ability to escape the "fate" that was hit. In the process, the power of faith consumed will be dozens or even hundreds of times greater than usual.
In 1935, when he was born in the night battle of the Shanghai Sea, Lin Hanjiling encountered it once when he was on the torpedo boat Nanchang, and the consumption of the power of faith at that time was amazingly high. However, at that time, Nanchang was just a "small boat" of several hundred tons, not a 40,000-ton giant ship like Shane, and the power of faith required was much smaller.
During the Battle of China, two warships were sent to Lin Han and Li Huamei. There were also many planes shot down by the Guò rifled guns, but at that time their planes were used as mobile anti-aircraft batteries, and most of the targets were not directly aimed at them, plus the ship was small, and the wear and tear could be bearable.
During the Battle of the Norwegian Sea. When Hannah measured that the shell that would hit the turret of the Scharnhorst and drive the battleship to turn to evade, in that short period of ten seconds, the power of faith was consumed even more than the entire naval battle.
Therefore, by the time of the Battle of Bergen, the Scharnhorst was hit by an opponent's 16-inch shell, and the rear turret was stuck and difficult to turn. At that time, she had a way to avoid the shell hitting the cannon ring in advance, but in order to save the loss of the power of faith, and the Scharnhorst was about to withdraw from the battlefield at that time, she still took a hard blow. Because Hannah calculated at the time that the power of faith required to dodge this blow was far greater than the cost of repairing this damage.
And the "minor injury" she received at that time, Hannah didn't use her ability to repair it directly on the battlefield during the battle - not because she didn't want to do it, but when she needed to repair it in the battlefield state, the power of faith that needed to be consumed was so great that she couldn't pay for it at the time. It wasn't until the end of the battle and when the Scharnhorst returned to anchor in Oss 6 that the power of faith needed to repair those wounds was restored to an "acceptable" level.
To paraphrase Lin Han, this is the "law" of this world, the restriction of these "unscientific" existences.
Hannah felt the danger when these Swordfish attack planes approached the Scharnhorst, threatening it with all her might, and as she resisted it with all her might, the power of faith was depleted at a hundredfold rate compared to before.
Like firecrackers, one after another Swordfish were blown up by Hannah in the air, and in just one and a half minutes, six torpedo-loaded Swordfish attack planes were shot down by her, and three Swordfish were destroyed by shelling from other directions.
But there were also two Swordfish attack planes, bravely approaching a distance of less than a kilometer, and then dropping torpedoes mounted on their abdomen, and the two torpedoes were aimed at Hannah's Scharnhorst.
"Damn it!"
On the Scharnhorst, Hannah cursed inwardly, knowing that at this distance, no matter what evasive maneuvers she drove the Scharnhorst, she would not be able to dodge.
Just as Hannah ordered the ship's crew to steer the rudder and drive the battleship to face the torpedo with the bow, a burning black shadow slammed into the second turret of the Scharnhorst, and it was Hannah who hit the seventh torpedo plane just after throwing the torpedo and pulled it up, and he directly hit the second turret of the Scharnhorst with residual inertia.
For the Scharnhorst, whose frontal armor was close to four hundred and fifty millimeters thick, the impact of the Swordfish was harmless. The Swordfish smashed into the turret, but the gasoline on board flew and ignited the Scharnhorst's hull, making it a visible target in the darkness.
Almost as the Swordfish smashed into the Scharnhorst 2 turret, the last Swordfish attack plane, also pulled up and disengaged, was hit by the Gatling cannon mounted on the other side of the Scharnhorst's hull and suddenly fired, and exploded directly into another bright firework in the air.
At this moment, all the crew members of the Scharnhorst, from the captain in the bridge to the sailors in the engine room on the lower floor, heard an angry female voice roaring.
"Hurt me, and you still want to run!"
Seconds later, two huge columns of water rose from the port side and center of the Scharnhorst, and the violent explosion was mixed with the muffled grunt and angry roar of a woman in pain.
Lieutenant Merlin, who had already finished dropping the bomb and was preparing to leave in the air, saw a spark in the Scharnhorst. During the torpedo firing at the Scharnhorst, two destroyers rushed up desperately to "block the gun" as Hannah instructed, but due to the deep depth of the British torpedoes, the two torpedoes passed directly under the destroyer.
Captain Mason screamed out of shape over the radio communication channel.
"We hit that female cousin!"
Soon, the wireless telegraph operator in the back seat of him made a short code message to the carrier Eagle.
"The arrow has hit!"
Later, the code word appeared on the front page of The Times the next day, as the headline of the edition.
Ask for likes, everyone has likes to like, don't be stingy (to be continued!)
ps: Ask for likes, everyone has likes to like, don't be stingy, I'm writing the third chapter at night, but it's impossible to change it tonight
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