With the withdrawal of the French, the United States and Britain found that their fleet, which had no advantage, became even less advantageous, and even the most basic numerical superiority could not be maintained! So far, the fleets of the United States and Britain in Europe mainly include the following two major parts, the largest of which is naturally the TF58 battle group of the US Navy's task force in Europe, and the commander of the battle group is Admiral Nimitz. The other part was the Home Fleet of the British Royal Navy, commanded by Admiral Cunningham. The former has up to 13 fleet carriers and 5 light aircraft carriers, while the latter has 5 fleet carriers and 3 light aircraft carriers!

After a series of additions and reinforcements, the Americans finally scraped together enough carrier-based aircraft for the TF58 task force, and the 18 aircraft carriers of various sizes were divided into the following parts. TF58-1 fleet, this fleet is a fleet under Nimitz's personal command, under the jurisdiction of 4 fleet aircraft carriers, namely Yorktown, Enterprise, Wasp and Hornet, these are the first four fleet aircraft carriers of the United States, in addition, there are 2 15,000-ton medium aircraft carriers Langley and Saratoga. (History has changed, don't copy it.) The most important feature of this fleet is the lack of defense on the flight deck, so in general, this fleet is deployed relatively far behind. is the reserve of the entire US Navy. The six aircraft carriers of this fleet have a total of about 550 carrier-based aircraft of various types. In order to improve the air defense of the fleet, the Americans this time increased the proportion of fighters in the TF58-1 fleet to 6 percent! This means that there are 350 F6F Hellcat fighters in the entire fleet! From this point of view, Americans are really afraid of well ropes after being bitten by snakes for ten years!

TF58-2 fleet, the commander of this fleet was Vice Admiral Fletcher. Although Fletcher suffered losses in the battle in the South Atlantic, losing 1 fleet carrier and 1 light aircraft carrier. However, after analyzing the entire battle report, the US Navy's top brass concluded that Fletcher's own actions were not wrong, and that he was able to detect his opponent and attack almost simultaneously with insufficient intelligence. As for the one-sided slaughter in the back, it can only be said that it is completely a matter of strength, the gap is too big, and it can't be fought alive or dead, what can you do? So Fletcher was able to lead the team again, and this time the fleet was bigger than the last time in the South Atlantic! He has a total of 4 fleet carriers and 1 light aircraft carrier, and the 4 fleet carriers are the Essex, the Valiant, the Franklin, and the Raider. The light aircraft carrier is the Independence, which is fully equipped with fighter jets. The fleet itself has about 430 aircraft of various types, and the ratio of fighters to attack aircraft is about 1 to 1.

TF58-3 fleet, the fleet commander is General Halsey, who is known as a brute bull at sea. His fleet composition was similar to that of Fletcher, with three other Essex-class aircraft carriers and two light aircraft carriers, the fleet aircraft carriers Ticonderoga, Randolph, and Bunker Hill, and the light aircraft carriers Princeton and Bataan. These aircraft carriers have a slightly smaller number of aircraft, a total of about 400 aircraft, but as the main attack fleet, the number of attack aircraft under the command of General Halsey is relatively large, about 60% of the attack aircraft, which is about 280 when converted.

Two more light aircraft carriers and the aircraft carrier of the Normandy fleet, left by the French, as well as three aviation cruisers, were individually turned into a squadron of fighter aircraft carriers. It is numbered TF58-4. In exchange for Darlan taking the main fleet away, the remaining French fleet was completely handed over to the Americans, this fleet was commanded by Spruance, and these light aircraft-carrying battleships carried almost no attack aircraft. Almost all of them are fighters, and their mission is to remedy when their own air defense network is penetrated.

The British's own fleet of 5 aircraft carriers and 2 light aircraft carriers were all placed under Cunningham's command. In terms of fleet power, the Royal Navy's home fleet is undoubtedly the strongest of all the sub-fleets. Among them are two examples of the original aircraft carriers, the Fury-class aircraft carriers Fury and the Brave. and scaled-down versions of the two Fury-class aircraft carriers, HMS Ark Royal and HMS Glory. and a single-story hangar aircraft carrier, the USS Tejlis, which is close to the U.S. Essex-class aircraft carrier. The two light aircraft carriers are the Centaur and the Son of Poseidon. These two aircraft carriers are light aircraft carriers converted from the original aviation cruisers, and their aviation capabilities are stronger than those of aviation cruisers that are not lower than half high. In total, this fleet has about 650 carrier-based aircraft of various types. Concentrated almost all the elite of the British Royal Navy. (There are two fleet carriers left, the USS Victory and the USS Dreadnought, one being refitted and one in the Indian Ocean.) ）

In addition to the larger number of aircraft, the British also attached the first Spitfire 9 fighters to the fleet. The seven aircraft carriers are equipped with a total of 300 SeaSpitfire-9 fighters, and this kind of carrier-based aircraft converted from Spitfire-9 fighters accounts for more than two-thirds of the Spitfire-9 holdings! The British also made a bloody effort for this hard work! After a simulated battle, the British proudly declared that their Spitfire 9 was almost the best performing aircraft in the Allied forces, and it was also a completely capable competitor to the FW190 fighter. They will be the sharpest swords of the Entente Navy at sea! And in terms of attack aircraft, the British were also strengthened. The obsolete Swordfish attack aircraft was finally thrown into the dustbin of history and replaced with a full set of American equipment.

After this integration, the number of aircraft carriers in the combined fleet of the United States and Britain has reached a total of 25! The whole two dozen aircraft carriers really shocked the world, and even the Allied fleet was inferior in numbers! In total, there are more than 2,200 carrier-based aircraft of various types, and the huge cluster gives it a sense of impregnability! This is also why when it has become a foregone conclusion that the French fleet will go south to the Atlantic, the United States and Britain still dare to fight with the Allied fleet! The Americans' estimate of the German-Austrian fleet is very accurate, the German fleet has about 1400 aircraft, Austria-Hungary has about 400 carrier-based aircraft, and the total is only 1800, and the Entente still has a numerical advantage! Even if the 100 carrier-based aircraft on the newly commissioned Caesar-class battleships were missed, the Allies still had an advantage of 300 to 400 aircraft. At least on paper! It is conceivable that when such two fleets collide together. It can be described as Mars hitting the Earth!

In addition to the formidable carrier-based aircraft forces, the Entente were also doing everything they could to increase their land-based aviation. In Nimitz's plans, a decisive battle with the German High Seas Fleet was supposed to break out off the coast of France. Until then, the Entente fleet was to use the maneuverability of aircraft carriers to constantly clean up airfields deployed by the Allies in the coastal zone of the Ibilis Peninsula. Although the Allied land-based air forces had increased, the Americans believed that the Germans would be inferior in terms of reaction speed and command response to sea airfields that moved hundreds of kilometers in one night. Because no matter how prepared you are, when the other party sees a dense crowd of thousands of planes gathered to attack a small area, they will be at a loss. The density of the Luftwaffe on land was still too low for a maritime air group of this class! The target of the attack by the Americans will not be a target in the depths of the land, which will increase the reaction time of the opponent. The Americans are meant to wear down their opponents with repeated short and stubby assaults.

While using carrier-based aircraft to deplete the adversary, the Entente countries will also give the greatest support to the navy, and the United States and Britain will draw almost all the advanced fighters that can be drawn from the front line to strengthen the sea-based aviation under the navy. They would be the most reliable line of defense for the Allied navies. The Americans even planned to surprise the German fleet by combining land-based bombers and carrier-based attack aircraft into a joint formation after the appearance of the German fleet. But in the end, it was abandoned because it was too difficult to command and coordinate.

Just as the main fleet of the Central Powers was preparing to move westward into the Atlantic, and Count Luknall was leading a detachment to meet Raeder, the American and British fleets first completed the preparations for the battle and took the initiative to attack. A huge fleet was assembled on the British mainland, and then made its way through the English Channel to the southern coast of France! 2 dozen aircraft carriers are surrounded by hundreds of warships of all kinds and sail on the sea, such a spectacular scene gives people a sense of indestructibility! Such a large-scale fleet movement could not hide the eyes of the Allies, and the huge fleet composed of hundreds of ships of various types made it easy for the Allies' maritime and air reconnaissance forces to discover their opponents.

"I have never seen such a spectacular scene, and he is even more spectacular than the scene in the Battle of Jutland during the First World War! I saw countless points of light from the radar screen. Among them, the brighter ones are aircraft carriers or battleships, the lower ones are cruisers, and there are some spots of light that are not there, which should be destroyers. Their numbers are growing. Like a starry sky, I couldn't analyze the composition of the opponent's fleet through radar, so I was driven by curiosity. I decided to take the plunge and take a closer look. ”

The BMW 801 engine used in the JU88G reconnaissance aircraft provides ample power for this aircraft, plus some fuel has been consumed. So the reconnaissance plane could fly faster than the standard in the flight manual, and it bravely flew towards the target. And with the camera, he quickly photographed the huge fleet cruising in the sea. "The other side has at least 3 aircraft carrier battle groups, each group probably has more than 4 aircraft carriers, and there may be 1 or 2 aircraft carrier battle groups in the back, but it is too far away to see clearly. I'm willing to bet that this time the Allies sent all their capital ships at their disposal, and they were coming at us like the spear of the god of war, and no one knew where the first target of such a huge fleet would be! "A German pilot who participated in the reconnaissance operation wrote in the report that in order to obtain first-hand information, Germany lost at least 15 long-range reconnaissance aircraft.

The sudden large-scale dispatch of the Allied navy really caught the Germans a little off guard, and the German military top brass could not figure out the opponent's goals and strategic objectives at all for a while, and at the first time, the German navy believed that the opponent might have to attack the many islands in the western part of the Strait of Gibraltar, where the guards at the door of the German navy were the gates and defense lines for the Germans to enter the Atlantic. Moreover, the Luftwaffe air force is mainly deployed on the back of the Ibilis Peninsula, and the west is weaker, if these 2 dozen aviation warships really kill it, it can be expected that it will not take long to sweep away the entire outer islands!

And more importantly, at this time, Count Luckner also led an aircraft carrier detachment at the west entrance of the strait to prepare to pick up the Ridder fleet to return to sail, if it happened, Luckner's fleet would not be gnawed to the point that there would be no scum left? No matter how powerful the German naval aviation is, it will not be able to withstand a wave of attacks with several times the strength of its forces! If this really happened, with a direct loss of a small half of the forces, the Allied fleet would not have to fight. So the German Navy was very attentive to the direction of action of the combined fleet of the Entente! A large number of submarines and reconnaissance planes were sent out to find out the direction of the opponent's movement at any cost, and Count Spee gave Count Luknall an order to abandon the Raeder fleet and return home if necessary.

But then the situation was somewhat out of the Allied medical conditions, the Allied fleet acted very carefully, they carried out a limited cautious attack almost under the cover of land-based air forces, they chose the shallow and deep targets off the coast of Spain to attack, when a wave of attack aircraft was released, the land-based air fleet flying from the land airfield could make up for the defense gap over the fleet, in order to ensure the safety of the fleet, the Entente sent all the foxbat fighters that could be found, and there were also some P47D fighters, THE AIRCRAFT WERE REINFORCED WITH FIRE AND HAD FOUR 20MM MACHINE GUNS AND TWO 50 MACHINE GUNS. As a pillar of the fleet's high-altitude defense. The large number of aircraft made up for the weakness of the aircraft carrier defense, and the Germans did not fail to attack the fleet, but after several trials, even the most optimistic Luftwaffe officers believed that under the protection of the enemy's shore-based air forces, only an attack at the level of an air force could cause fatal damage to the enemy. In other words, there are no more than a thousand planes, so it's better not to go!

At the same time, the attack of eight or nine hundred or even thousands of planes like a point of attack also made the German land-based aviation force suffer a little. The Americans fought very cunningly, they made full use of the dawn to attack, at night, the huge fleet would be close to the coast, when the sky was just dawning, the planes on the deck were ready, when the Germans got up and had breakfast to prepare for the day's life and battles, the American planes were already on the way, and when the Germans had set up the planes on the airfield, the American bombs were dropped right down! It's not that the Germans haven't thought of a way to deal with it, but at night, the Germans really can't do anything with a large-scale US fleet, not that the night attack can't be launched, but that the conditions are too harsh, the yield is too low, and the opponent's self-defense firepower is too fierce!

Thanks to the book friend zhouyu1976, Fengyu 15 for the tip~~~, and the book friend Piccolo Big Demon King 007, zhouyu1976, return to 1m, bog, and big spot for monthly pass support ~~~. Yesterday's subscription hit a new low, and it is estimated that it is the lowest subscription that the author has updated in two years, in his early 400s, and the first order ratio is 40 to 1. I can't pass it on one day this month.,When there's no new chapter update that day, the subscription is basically this number.。 Don't say anything. Hold on a little longer and see how it goes. (To be continued......)