After losing power, the Arizona became the Luftwaffe's best target. A swarm of bombers surrounded the badly wounded battleship like vultures with carrion, but unexpectedly, the first sixths of the hits were still the most accurate single attack of this attack, and the remaining bunch of bombers bombed with accuracy ranging from one-eighth to one-tenth! The final result of the first wave of more than 40 bombers was only 6 bombs! But 6 bombs is not a lot, which at least means that more than a ton of high explosives fell on this poor battleship! Perhaps it was because the Germans liked to make the delay of the bombs longer, even though they were high-explosive bombs, but they could still smash through the unprotected upper deck and then explode inside the hull.

The end result was that the ton of picric acid explosives did not destroy the Arizona's armor box, but it turned most of the compartments outside the armor box into a sea of fire. The Arizona turned into a mountain of flames floating on the surface of the sea, and the fire ignited almost everything that could be burned, from the teak deck to the various decorations of the interior and even the steel that was consumed by the sea of fire. The officers and men of the Arizona tried to save the fire, wearing asbestos fireproof suits, gas masks, and water hoses, desperately trying to extinguish the fire, but in the face of the fire demons that spread wantonly along the various pipes inside the ship and the tunnel that was about to collapse, the Americans' rescue attempt ultimately failed. This is a real deck wash, and the entire deck of the battleship is engulfed in flames, which is much more efficient than firing high-explosive shells with rapid-fire guns!

In the face of incoming bombers from the sky, the US Navy did its best to cover the battered Arizona. They attacked the German bombers that were constantly circling in the sky with a weapon with an elevation angle greater than 45 degrees, and the Americans used everything from 12-pounder rapid-fire guns to Browning machine guns. Their efforts paid off somewhat, and in the half-hour-long air raid, at least 12 German planes were shot down! The fiery snakes weave together into a dense web of fire, driving away the opponent as much as possible. This may be the reason why the hit rate in the later stage is not as high as the first wave of attacks.

When the Arizona turned into a pile of scrap metal, the first wave of bombers who participated in the bombing had begun to return, and the Americans couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief when they saw the departure of these air deaths. But before they could catch their breath, another group of bombers flew over! The number of bombers in this group was slightly smaller than in the previous wave, with only 36 units. However, in terms of formation, this bomber formation was more experienced than the first wave of attacks, and the entire group was divided into 4 squads, each with 9 bombers. They flew towards the American fleet in a neat formation. This time their target was the USS Mississippi! The reason is simple. At present, it is the least maneuverable of the warships in the US fleet that still have combat effectiveness! After being hit by a 15-inch water-in-water bullet, the battleship can be described as a broken foot, most of the left side of the entire bow is submerged in the water, and the water is poured into the opposite side of the guò, and the situation of the left tilt has improved somewhat, but the head tilt is even more powerful. Originally, with the distance widening, the problem of slowly draining the battleship while fighting should not be very big, but the attack from the sky put the American battleship in crisis again!

Relative to Britain and Germany. The U.S. Navy did not recognize the threat of the Air Force, and the British paid attention to it because the Royal Navy Army successfully sank a King-class battleship. And the attention of the German Navy is due to its own losses. And the rookie of the US Navy just entered the war is not aware of this matter at all, even if there are a number of jù and information, they can only understand these threats on paper, as for the specific situation at the time of the war, there is no understanding at all, and what is even more tragic is that the British air force takes the torpedo route, and when attacking, it is close to the low altitude to launch torpedoes, while the Luftwaffe takes horizontal and shallow dive bombing, which slides from the middle altitude and then drops bombs.

However, because the Mississippi was included in the British fleet, at this time, Jericho naturally would not sit idly by, gritting his teeth and sending 2 light cruisers and 4 destroyers to cover the Mississippi, which was incapacitated. "Based on past experience, I have found that formation cover bombing has a higher hit rate than single bombing in shallow dives or horizontal bombing, and if a bomber piloted by an experienced pilot in front of the bomber makes a corrective attack on the target in advance, then the accuracy will be higher, because the bomber behind can be readjusted according to the attack situation of the aircraft in front. And when bombers drop bombs in formation, the possibility of the opposing battleship dodging will be even less. Colonel Keitel, who commanded the second wave of bombardment, said this after the battle.

It has to be said that the colonel's attack method is very close to the horizontal bombing method of the Japanese Navy during the 2 war, which is a formation covered bombing with a leading aircraft to provide correction. The only problem may be that it doesn't do a good job when it comes to getting into the attack route. Colonel Keitel chose to enter vertically from the opposing side, not from the rear, reducing their relative speed.

There is no doubt about the advanced nature of this attack method, but the price is not small, because if you enter the attack route in a large formation, the opponent's anti-aircraft fire can concentrate the attack, and the formation bombing will improve the accuracy but the mobility will go down. A large number of antiaircraft guns of various calibers of British escort warships attacked the bombing formations fiercely, and it has to be said that the British did have a relatively high level of anti-aircraft shooting, at least they had relatively perfect anti-aircraft aiming equipment. A 75mm anti-aircraft gun shell exploded in the air, countless shrapnel flew in the air, a twin-engine plane flew with shrapnel on the left side, the fuselage was crooked and out of formation, and before he could rebalance, another shell hit the fuselage straight into the fuselage, blowing the entire plane into a flaming fireball.

As the altitude continued to decrease, the firepower of the British battleships became more and more fierce! A large number of 37MM guns were put into anti-aircraft combat, and these weapons with extremely fast rate of fire and flexible turning became the biggest enemy of the German attack aircraft group! In less than 2 minutes, two bombers were shot down by flying shells, and the remaining German bombers finally could not bear the pressure and began to disperse. The attack of the first squad was completely disintegrated by the attack of the auxiliary warships of the British Navy. The few remaining bombers, even if they barely dropped their bombs, were quite far from the target. But before the British could hail their victory, the other two squads killed almost simultaneously.

When the British wanted to intercept it, they realized that the target was too close, and this time the number was doubled! Although the fierce anti-aircraft fire of the British knocked down at least 6 bombers attacking from a height of several hundred meters, many more bombers have successfully dropped bombs, and the escort warships have done their best, and the rest can only depend on the Mississippi itself! Two bombs hit the turret and hit the bow of the ship, the former was blocked by the heavy armor of the turret, but the huge shock still destroyed some of the equipment inside, and the bomb that hit the bow of the ship once again opened a big hole near the waterline, the entire bow was almost filled with seawater, and the third bomb was even more deadly, this was a near-miss, landing only 2 meters from the port side of the Mississippi!

The power of a bomb exploding at this distance is already about the same as a torpedo, after all, the former has more charge than a torpedo of this era. The huge water pressure generated by the explosion directly tore the entire hull plate apart, and then a large amount of seawater mixed with high-pressure bubbles poured into the hull, they crashed through layers of highly elastic steel plates, and finally hit the side wall of the motor room, the huge water pressure pushed the shrapnel to cut through the armor plates of the side wall and poured into the engine room, because of this blow alone, the poor Mississippi lost nearly half of its power! By the way, there are also more than 1,800 tons of water intake! However, the iron turtle is the iron turtle, even if it is washed by N more than 14 inch shells, 15 inches of water bullets and more than 300 kilograms of near-miss bombs, it still stubbornly floats on the water! This American battleship washed away the humiliation suffered by its ships of the same class in Saipan that year! "The United States is unsinkable!" A U.S. Navy officer and sailor aboard the USS New Mexico shouted excitedly when he saw the battleship USS Mississippi that was still struggling!

"This thing is going against the sky!" Looking at the scarred battleship USS Mississippi, the Germans also had a headache, although the entire bow was almost level with the water, but the American battleship was still floating on the water, and the 3 turrets were still spewing deadly tongues of fire. "The anti-sinking capabilities of the improved New Mexico class are definitely not inferior to those of the Bismarck-class battleships." This is Hipper's evaluation of this class of American battleships after the war, and just when the United States and Britain were congratulating that they had finally held on, and when Hipper was choosing, the fourth attack formation finally arrived.

"And there's more!" Enraged Allied warships attacked the last wave of bomber formations with all the weapons they could muster, the Germans still insisted on their formation bombing tactics, and the Allied escort warships continued to sweep away air targets with ferocious anti-aircraft fire. In the third bombardment, at least 4 bombers were smashed into the sand and were shattered by flying shells. The third wave of attacks was disintegrated, and only one bomb landed on the hull, blasting two secondary guns into the sky. "It's all over? Seeing that no new planes appeared in the distance, the Americans breathed a sigh of relief. "It seems that their nightmare is over, the opposing air force has completed the attack, and according to Guò's previous intelligence analysis, it seems that the other side should have used all the long-range bombers that can be dispatched, that is, there will be no more attacks from the air! The Americans cheered!

Thanks to the book friend zhouyu1976 for the tip~~~. (To be continued......)