Chapter 583: Dönitz's Counterattack

When the Axis bomber group was already just over 80 kilometers away from the port, the second group of Yamaman fighters took off and rushed head-on, instantly disrupting the formation of the dreadnought dive bombers. The second group of fighters was not a lightning fighter, this formation was composed of the Golden Eagle 3 fighters imported later, as well as the BF109E fighters produced by the Yamaman Empire, facing the slow dive bombers, these single-engine fighters were more agile, they quickly pounced on the opposing group and began a slaughter.

With a speed of only 341 kilometers per hour and two 7.7-millimeter machine guns firing backwards, the dreadnought bomber was powerless to defend itself against an enemy plane with a large-caliber cannon and a speed at least half that of the bomber.

In the face of the menacing Yaman Air Force, they could only throw bombs indiscriminately to reduce weight, and then scattered. The Yaman Air Force did not intend to spare these enemies who had already begun to flee, and they relied on their speed advantage to begin to chase and slaughter.

The Avenger torpedo group at a low altitude saw that no one was paying attention to them, and they thought they had a plan, and they still rushed towards the port of The Hague at a low altitude, and the harbor gradually approached, and when these planes rushed through the clouds to the dock area, they were directly dumbfounded.

The warships that were supposed to be neatly parked on the pier actually disappeared, and the entire pier was empty without the slightest shadow of a target, and the pilots of these torpedo planes had not yet reacted, and the anti-aircraft artillery fire from all directions had already covered them, and they were caught off guard, and the torpedo planes, which were already flying at low speed and low altitude, were shot down one after another before they had time to dodge.

Seeing that there was no trace of the enemy fleet, and that the torpedo planes were carrying aviation torpedoes, which were not at all suitable for bombing port targets, they quickly turned around and evacuated while calling the fleet on the radio. With a lot of scars, the torpedo formation left behind more than 30 companions, and then broke through the fire net and withdrew towards the fleet.

Hearing that the other side was ready, the bomber group that had scattered and fled also wanted to flee from the fleet, and even the fighter unit disengaged from the other side, with a higher speed than the lightning fighter, the F4U Corsair fighter group also began to retreat, but they didn't know what to do, and the danger had just begun.

When the carrier-based aircraft of the Axis Third Fleet exchanged fire with the land-based air force in the port, Rear Admiral Bastian telegraphed the situation to Vice Admiral Dönitz, and Vice Admiral Dönitz, who received the news, immediately sent six BF109T fighters with auxiliary fuel tanks to take off, and they flew towards the open sea of The Hague Port to search for the Axis fleet, but the Yamans were not lucky, and until the end of the air battle, they did not find the location of the opponent's aircraft carrier.

When Major General Bastian again reported that he had repelled the enemy incoming fighters and was in pursuit, Lieutenant General Dönitz sensed that an opportunity had come, and he ordered the long-range Lightning fighters to continue the pursuit, while at the same time letting all the carrier-based aircraft take off with full ammunition and fly in the direction pointed by the Lightning fighters.

Dönitz didn't know the exact location of the Axis fleet, but he knew that if he got closer to the other side, he had a better chance of success, and he was taking a dangerous gamble that if the planes ran too much fuel and still didn't find the opposing fleet, they would have to turn back. If such a situation occurs, not only will it lose the opportunity to attack the opponent's fleet, but it may be attacked by the opponent.

Many of the Axis planes that were as active as lost dogs were seriously injured, and they were afraid that they would not be able to fly back to the ship and land and crash on the sea, and the fighters behind them were chasing closely, how could they think that they would summon ghosts, and when the lightning fighters saw the opposing fleet from afar, this coordinate was immediately reported to Dönitz.

With accurate coordinates, the Yamaman carrier-based aircraft group immediately swooped down on the Axis Third Fleet. At this moment, Vice Admiral Princeton, the commander of the fleet, did not know that the danger was approaching, he only ordered the fighters on guard over the fleet to drive away the lightning fighters that were chasing after them, and those lightning fighters had completed their missions, and the fuel was about to run out, so they chose to return without fighting those pirate fighters.

Seeing the other side leaving, Lieutenant General Brinston immediately ordered the returning plane to land. Just as the planes were landing one after another, the air defense sirens of the Axis fleet sounded. The mixed formation of Yaman carrier-based aircraft finally arrived in the sky above the Axis fleet, and because the No. 1102 Black Feather reconnaissance plane finally completed the locking of the radars of the warring parties, at this time he had turned on his radar jammer at full power, and under its interference, the radars of both sides were snowflakes, which could not play an early warning role at all. All radars failed, and the Axis fleet had to rely on lookouts to detect the enemy, but the planes were so fast that by the time the lookouts gave warning, it was too late.

The planes returning from the raid on the port were landing in large numbers, and the decks of several aircraft carriers were filled with all kinds of aircraft, including bombers, torpedo planes and fighters that had just landed, as well as other fighters waiting for the next wave to replace the alert planes.

A large number of Swordfish torpedo planes lowered their altitude and rushed to the sides of the large warships, desperately releasing torpedoes, while those Junker 87B dive bombers attacked the wide deck of the aircraft carrier with aerial bombs weighing 800 kilograms at a vertical angle of nearly 90 degrees.

As soon as a dozen Corsair fighters on alert tried to come forward to intercept them, they were stopped by as many as 70 BF109T fighters, and the two sides engaged in a fierce battle in the sky, while the Axis powers, which were at an absolute disadvantage in numbers, quickly began to lose money.

Seeing that their fighters were at a loss, they were about to run out of fuel, and a large number of Corsair fighters that had not yet landed also rushed up, but they didn't have much fuel, and under the air battle with a large overload, the fuel was quickly exhausted. In just seven or eight minutes, fighter planes had to make a forced landing on the sea, and at the end of the day, the Axis bombers and torpedo planes that had no chance of victory also rushed up to interfere with the Yamans' attack.

The warships immediately erected their own anti-aircraft guns, and used dense firepower to weave into a fire net, tightly sealing the sky above the fleet, but the Yamans were unmoved, and still persistently attacked the fleet. The whistling of airplanes, the explosion of bombs and the rapid firing of anti-aircraft guns mingled, and the whole sea seemed to boil.

The torpedo planes of the Yaman Air Force were desperately attacking, but under the dense anti-aircraft fire, they did not have much advantage, especially when the perimeter of the aircraft carrier was surrounded by small warships, and their torpedoes were often blocked by destroyers who were not afraid of death.

By the time the torpedo fleet had run out of ammunition, they had destroyed only five destroyers, three cruisers, and one battleship, and the carriers had not succeeded in any of them, because they were the most heavily protected, and more than twenty of them themselves were shot down because of their slow speed.

Compared with the old torpedo planes, the Junkers 87B carrier-based dive bombers built by the Armans themselves had a much better record, and when diving from the air, the flat through runway of the aircraft carrier became the best target, and the first aircraft succeeded in a sneak attack, first dropping an 800-kilogram bomb on the middle of the deck of the aircraft carrier Lexington.

This heavy aerial bomb penetrated the flight deck without armor protection, fell directly into the hangar and exploded, igniting several fighter jets parked in the hangar full of fuel and bombs, the fire ignited the aviation fuel in the next cabin, and the violent combustion caused a large explosion of the entire aircraft carrier, and the aircraft carrier with a displacement of up to 37,500 tons immediately fell into a raging fire, and it was already a matter of time before the ship was abandoned.

The Bostonians' inexperience in aircraft carrier design made them suffer, and the flight deck without armor protection became the most vulnerable target, and when the aircraft carriers were set on fire, Vice Admiral Princeton even had the heart to die.

After all, the bomb load of carrier-based aircraft is limited, and when the carrier-based aircraft of the Dönitz fleet began to return home, six aircraft carriers belonging to the Third Fleet of the Axis countries still survived, while the other seven aircraft carriers had little salvage value, and they had long since become the most expensive torches at sea.

After the catastrophe, the Axis fleet was busy rescuing soldiers overboard, repairing ships and fighting fires, while aircraft carriers began to busily dispatch the surviving planes to land quickly, and if these planes did not land again, they would also crash on the sea, and the surviving planes were mostly Avenger torpedo planes with a longer range, and those fighters and bombers were already floating in the sea.

While the fleet was busy, the air defense sirens sounded again, and the dazed sailors looked at the sky, wondering where the attack was coming from. And in the distance, a group of black and oppressive planes was approaching. When those planes were in the air, the Axis sailors were surprised to find that these huge figures were actually the Kunpeng 2 bombers of the Yaman people.

Rear Admiral Bastian was not a mediocre man, and when he learned that Dönitz's carrier-based aircraft force was preparing to attack the Axis fleet, he immediately forcibly requisitioned more than 90 Kunpeng 2 bombers from various nearby airfields, and let them fly towards the same coordinate point with a large number of 500 kilograms of bombs, and they were protected by the refueled Golden Eagle 3 fighter group.

Rear Admiral Bastian proved to have a very good idea, and when the Axis fleet had experienced an air raid and was doing its best to save the wounded and warships, the Yamaman Army's land-based bombers were in the air. The Axis sailors hurried to the anti-aircraft gun emplacements, but the Yamans bombs had already fallen.