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Artillery fire roared, bullets rained down, and countless warplanes shuttled through the dense air defense iron curtain to launch a fierce attack on the battleships flying the St. George's flag on the sea. As they swooped and skimmed, towering columns of water rose on the surface of the sea like giant trees of Fuso, and red and purple fireballs that were as powerful as mountains. Blazing flames and billowing smoke rose from one battleship after another, and soon increased to more than a dozen regiments; As far as the eye could see, the blue sea was full of burning steel, and the originally fresh and bright warship became distorted and shattered under the attack of this divine punishment, and the situation was unbearable.

After more than ten minutes of attack, the four aircraft carriers in the British main fleet were all in flames, the tall hulls began to tilt slowly, and countless British sailors rushed to the sea like dumplings. Although they had been trying to dodge at sea at a speed of 30 knots, the guided weapons controlled by the German pilots were always locked onto their figures. In order to crush the opponent's aviation forces in one fell swoop, the German aircraft group did not show the slightest mercy, and used more than half of the guided bombs and torpedoes in the formation on these core targets. In the deafening explosion of loud explosions, these armored aircraft carriers with perfect protection were finally exhausted, and in the face of the damage that could no longer be saved, the captain could only be forced to order the abandonment of the ship. At this time, except for the dreadnought, which was lucky enough to encounter a dud, it was still struggling to hold on. 3 aircraft carriers, including Ark Royal, are irretrievable.

At the same time that the British aircraft carrier was under onslaught. The battleships that looked like floating islands in the mountains also trembled under the bullying of these light aircraft. Face these pocket mosquitoes and flies that fly like electricity. The huge cannon clusters they had spent so much money on were of no use other than to accelerate the sinking of the ship after it had been hit. And large-caliber anti-aircraft guns are only powerful at medium and close range, and every 2,000 shells fired on average will not necessarily shoot down an enemy aircraft. If they encounter German planes that do not carry guided weapons and need to attack at a distance, the British battleships can also resist a little through their not dense small-caliber air defense nets, and if the other side drops wire-guided torpedoes and guided bombs from 5~8 kilometers away, the only thing the British sailors can count on is to use anti-aircraft guns to intercept the incoming bomb torpedoes halfway, or expect these guys to malfunction themselves!

On the battleship Prince of Wales, British gunners were maneuvering their four eight-mounted 40mm ping-pong guns into the air, under the full reload of the reloaded soldiers. Large specks of light always chased around the German planes. As one of the newest battleships in the British fleet, it was also under the radar of the German fleet, having already been hit by two bombs and a torpedo in previous battles. Since it was a new battleship, its heavy armor and relatively reasonable compartment layout allowed it to withstand this wave of attacks, and the high-explosive shells and less powerful aerial torpedoes did not cause serious damage to its core compartment. Despite the fact that the battleship was flooded with thousands of tons of seawater and a large number of ground facilities were destroyed, it was still doing a serpentine evasion at a speed of 26 knots and trying to attack the German planes in the air. After not knowing how many shells were fired, a Ju-87 finally exploded with a flash of fire, and the sailors on the British deck suddenly thundered with joy. It's as if he wants to vent all the blows and humiliations he suffered today!

"Enemy aircraft spotted directly above!" The exclamation of the British gunners suddenly brought the joy of the gunners back to the cruel reality. Looking up, I saw a Ju-87 coming out of the sky through the clouds. It was swooping down at a near-vertical angle, and the British gunner could even see the round figure under the belly of the gun. Before the artillery commander could give the order, the neighing of anti-aircraft artillery fire sounded intensively again. However, to the anxiety of the British sailors, the orange points of light shot from their battleship whizzed past the plane, and the bullets rained down like a single shot, but none of them made a direct hit.

In fact, this is also a situation that is difficult to change in the current technological background of the times, that is, the gunners are almost unable to carry out effective strikes against high-speed moving air targets. As far as the short-range anti-aircraft fire on the warship is concerned, all hits are not precision strikes based on accurate judgment of the position and advance of enemy aircraft, but purely rely on firing a huge amount of bullets to try their luck. In actual combat, shooting down a fast enemy plane with 2,000 rounds of small-caliber shells is already a commendable example, and if luck is not on the side of anti-aircraft fire, it is not uncommon to fire even 4,000 rounds without a single hit!

The beep was terrible and the screeching was so loud that it was not long before the British sailors on the deck of the Prince of Wales heard the terrifying hiss that was close at hand. A blunt bomb with a blunt warhead fell from an altitude of nearly a thousand meters, and the perpetrator quickly pulled up the nose of the plane, ending the dive in a smooth arc and re-rising. Thanks to the previous dive acceleration, the bomb already had an extremely high initial velocity at the beginning of the drop, and in just a few breaths, it fell straight into front of it from the air. With the violent vibration caused by the impact of the ship's hull, more than a dozen damage management team members who were rushing to extinguish the fire on the deck immediately couldn't stand and staggered. For a moment, there was a strong sense of joy in their hearts: the terrifying sight that seemed to be like the earth rushing to the sky did not appear in the area of hit, and the German bomb must have been a dud that failed to detonate!

However, only moments later, the British sailors suddenly felt a new and powerful tremor coming from inside the ship's hull; The tremor was even more ferocious than before, as dozens of people fell heavily on the deck. A bright light lit up from the hole near the bridge behind the battleship, mixed with crimson flames and black smoke as thick as ink, and the speed of the entire battleship was drastically reduced!

Since the battleship had the strongest horizontal protection of all surface ships, ordinary high-explosive shells could no longer meet the needs of strikes, in this case, armor-piercing bombs designed to penetrate the horizontal protection of enemy ships came into being, and became another standard equipment of German naval bombers. It has a higher reload coefficient and an order of magnitude smaller explosive shells, but a qualitative leap in armor penetration. In some sense, this armor-piercing bomb can be seen as a large-caliber AP shell, and since it was dropped by a dive bomber, its fall angle of more than 60 degrees undoubtedly gives it an innate horizontal penetration ability that is far superior to that of artillery shells. At this moment, an 800kg armor-piercing bomb effortlessly pierced the Prince of Wales' 124 mm thick power compartment main horizontal armor and blew up three of the four steam turbines below it. Losing most of its power, the Prince of Wales lost speed, plummeting from 26 to 14 knots, making it an ideal prey for German aircraft.

"Boom! Rumble! "Two stout columns of water in a row rushed straight into the blue sky. The Prince of Wales, having lost its speed, was no longer able to effectively evade the incoming torpedoes, and was soon hit by two torpedoes in quick succession. The violent impact of the explosion was effectively conducted under the bearing of seawater, and instantly blasted two large holes of tens of square meters into the hull shell; The remnants of the high-pressure wave of seawater continued to weaken, and it broke through the two 19mm lightning protection partitions inside it and went straight into the core module. The main generator room and a large number of wiring were flooded as the water rushed, the lights in thousands of cabins were suddenly extinguished, and even the most important pumping pumps were halted by power outages. The surging waters flooded one cabin after another, and the intake of the battleship began to lose control; However, the German planes still did not let go of the seriously injured beast, and in the midst of the splash, three more torpedoes quickly pounced on it!

With a shocking roar and rushing waves, the Prince of Wales came to the end of its short service in the midst of this violent blow. As the ship began to tilt and the draft deepened, the British sailors quickly removed the liferafts from the ships and threw them to the surface, and then jumped into the sea one after another. This huge ship, with a standard displacement of more than 40,000 tons, did not use its nine 406-mm heavy guns to let out a roar at the German fleet, and slowly sank under the blow of the air force, becoming the prey of the soul buried under the aircraft.

"We have lost this war." Looking at the flames of the sea around him, Tovey, who was standing in the command tower, hissed in a slightly trembling voice. In less than 20 minutes, it was as if its fleet had sailed into a hell's crucible: the four aircraft carriers had already been turned into complete torches under the bombardment of dozens of bombs, and the light of explosions of aviation fuel and torpedoes was constantly coming from them. Even if their own destroyers did not carry out lightning strikes on them, they would not be able to hold out for long after being attacked by multiple German torpedoes. Those missiles and torpedoes that could be turned and aimed wiped out the last glimmer of hope in Tovey's heart: the opponent had mastered such a powerful weapon, and he could not have any chance of winning!

And the main fleet, which had invested a lot of money and was regarded as the cornerstone of the decisive battle by the entire navy and the country, was also hit hard by unbearable destruction. The Prince of Wales sent an abandonment telegram, the Brave-class battleship Barham capsized and sank after being hit by three torpedoes, and the Revenge-class battleship Royal Oak was drilled into the ammunition depot by an armor-piercing bomb, and the entire warship was instantly blown into thousands of pieces like firecrackers. Except for the 2 Fortitude-class battleships that had not yet been attacked, the remaining 10 capital ships were all damaged, among which the Duke of York was incapacitated. And in the sky, the attacks and bombs of German planes did not stop! These capital ships, along with the 6CRH shells that had been painstakingly developed before the war, became useless waste in this naval battle, and the days of being battleships are gone. (A good event for pie in the sky, cool mobile phones are waiting for you!) Follow from ~ Dian/Chinese network public account (WeChat add friends - add public account - enter ddxiaoshuo), participate now! Everyone has a prize, now pay attention to ddxiaoshuo WeChat public account! (To be continued......)

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