The stars and moon are hidden, the dark clouds are surrounded, and under the dark night sky, a large fleet is slowly returning south. Due to the strict control of the lights, there was not the slightest light on the sea as far as the fleet could reach, except for the faint low sound of the propellers stirring the waves, which quietly drifted in all directions with the whimper of the sea breeze.

"Your Excellency, the 5th Squadron lost the battleship Württemberg, but managed to prevent the American fleet's plans for a surprise attack on the landing site." In the dimly lit navigation room of the Kaiser Wilhelm, an adjutant said after handing the telegram he had just received to the old man in front of him. The full text of this telegram is not long, and the language shows the plain and concise of the traditional Prussian army, but anyone who reads it can get a sense of what kind of bitter battle the sender went through from the comparison of forces and battle losses mentioned in the telegram. As a veteran detachment that has been in the army for 20 years, there is no doubt about the powerful combat power of the 4 Bavarian-class, and it is such a core force that has been in the middle of the mainstay that has still suffered unprecedented severe trauma in the battle!

Scheer stared silently at the telegram in his hand, and every character seemed to condense the desperate struggle of thousands of officers and soldiers; As a veteran fleet commander, he could fully imagine what it would be like. After a while, he slowly spoke: "Mashal has done a good job. The U.S. Rapid Battlefleet was battered and could no longer muster the forces to return to the ocean for months to come; In this way, our last concern is completely cleared. Orders were sent to the sub-fleets, asking them to make detailed statistics on the specific conditions of their warships, and report the damage to equipment and casualties to the flagship after dawn. The current battles are over, and some of them should also return to domestic shipyards. Necessary repairs and maintenance were carried out. The adjutant obeyed his orders.

At the same time that the 5th Battlefleet rushed to Dominica to meet the American fleet. In another sea area, the sea and air battles are also raging. Despite being subjected to an unprecedented fierce interception by opposing fighters. However, with the advantage of guided weapons, the German army's first attack aircraft group still achieved a considerable record of sinking one Essex-class and two Wasp-class aircraft carriers of the United States, a total of three aircraft carriers, and severely damaging two Essex-class. The aviation combat strength of the U.S. fleet was sharply reduced by nearly seventy percent, and this directly prompted Admiral Kim to give the order to retreat in advance. He now understood why the British Navy had been so badly defeated in the naval battle five months ago: apart from the fact that the empire on which the sun never set had indeed lost its former glory, the most important reason was that they had found the wrong opponent! Admiral Kim has already made a decision that his own aircraft carriers will do their best to avoid a head-on confrontation with the enemy's main forces until the US Navy has developed equipment capable of effectively interfering with the enemy's guided weapons and equipped its aircraft carriers with torpedo planes capable of effectively attacking the enemy. Otherwise, the US Navy will surely suffer a catastrophe under the blows of the other side!

However, in order to achieve this result. The German naval aviation, however, also paid a heavy loss. In the battles of the first wave of attack aircraft groups alone, as many as 31 fighters and 46 attack aircraft were shot down under repeated interceptions by a large number of American fighters; The total number of German pilots who failed to return to the group exceeded 120, including many core old birds like Kohl, who sank the large aircraft carrier "Chilsäch". This was undoubtedly the heaviest loss suffered by the German carrier-based aviation since it became an army. When the first attacking warhawks re-landed on the carrier's armored flight deck, the ground crew still couldn't believe that they had suffered more than 20% combat attrition, so much so that they repeatedly asked the exhausted pilots if any of their teammates had been lost! Nearly 50 American fighters that intercepted the Germans were also shot down in this unprecedentedly fierce battle, and more than 40 fighters were buried at the bottom of the sea along with the sunken aircraft carrier, and the first round of the game between the two sides was full of strong blood.

In contrast, the German fleet suffered only three ships, including a heavy cruiser, and the Austro-Hungarian aircraft carrier "Schwarzenberg" was damaged, which was much lower than the other side in terms of tonnage and personnel. Since the Americans did not intend to inflict heavy losses on the main forces of the German fleet through the Guò Aviation. Less than one-third of its fleet is equipped with bombers, and the TBD torpedo planes, which proved to be meat-only only a few months ago, have disappeared from the hangars of American aircraft carriers. This determined from the outset that their attack must be weak and weak. The only intensity of the battle came from the air, and a large number of American fighters escorting the bombers engaged in a desperate battle with their German counterparts who came to intercept them. This time, with the support of the anti-aircraft fire of the battleships, it was the German fighters who had a clear advantage in the downfall, and they repelled the incoming group of aircraft by a score of 16 to 25.

While the U.S. fleet and Scheer's fleet were engaged in an air exchange, another German aircraft carrier fleet, located more than 100 kilometers away, also released attack aircraft groups from the former. Compared with the team led by Scheer, this batch of fighters not only has a significant reduction in number, but a small part of them are even outdated wooden biplanes due to the number of two Italian aircraft carriers, which makes the aviation combat strength of this fleet compared with Schelle's team. The German naval hierarchy was generally very unoptimistic about the help of the Italians: not to mention that the gourmets of the Apennine Peninsula had not familiarized their pilots with naval warfare in the aviation age, and the inferior performance of their carrier-based aircraft could only bully small destroyers with weak anti-aircraft firepower. Once intercepted by American fighters, these Italian planes have almost no power to fight back!

However, it was extremely fortunate for the Italians that the aviation combat strength of the American fleet had already been lost by half with the sinking of five aircraft carriers. Without the protection of an armored flight deck, the US aircraft carrier would be deprived of its aviation capability if it was hit in the hangar area by a single 250kg high-explosive bomb, and the current US fleet is facing this embarrassing situation. In addition, the attack wave and umbrella originally released by 9 aircraft carriers can now only be accommodated by 4 aircraft carriers, which makes the US aircraft carriers focus all their attention on recovering aircraft, and their ability to resist incoming aircraft groups is greatly reduced.

When this group of planes approached the skies over the retreating American fleet, the American aircraft carriers, which were overwhelmed by the heavy burden of containment and rearmament, were eventually able to send only four squadrons of fighters to intercept: these American fighters were quickly overwhelmed by the German fighters escorting them, and they had no time to pay attention to the attack aircraft groups carrying a large amount of explosives. However, only ten minutes were left for the German attack aircraft to perform. Due to the difference in the departure position, the range of these fighters was originally farther than that of the aircraft departing from Schelburn; This, coupled with the early retreat of the American fleet, undoubtedly worsened the conditions for their offensive. The German attack aircraft, which had little fuel left, launched a short attack on the enemy in front of them, blowing to pieces 2 cruisers and 3 destroyers on the perimeter of the fleet; The large aircraft carrier Courage, which had been seriously wounded before, did not escape the bad luck of sinking, and the Germans ended its short service with a wave of fan torpedo attacks.

In service, the American fleet sank 4 aircraft carriers and 2 battleships, another battleship was sunk by submarines, and the loss of carrier-based aircraft was close to 200 aircraft; Most of the losses of carrier-based aircraft were due to the sinking of the aircraft carrier. In the German fleet, 1 battleship was sunk and another 110 warplanes were shot down. While U.S. industry was sufficient to compensate for these losses, the strategic severity of its situation was irreparable: Germany's military presence in the Caribbean was consolidated, and the entire eastern sea zone, including the Panama Canal, was within the operational radius of its naval and air forces. Whether merchant or warship, the Guò Canal would have to run a huge risk of being intercepted by air raids and fleets, the maritime connection between the eastern and western oceans of the United States would tend to be disrupted, and the Pacific Fleet would have to resist the Japanese attack alone.

In addition, the U.S. Atlantic Fleet had only four aircraft carriers and two fast battleships available after this battle, and its combat strength withered sharply, and the sea supremacy of the entire Atlantic Ocean was firmly in the hands of the Allies, and thousands of merchant ships were able to travel all the way between the German mainland and the South American continent. And with the increase of Germany's military power in South America, the pressure of the United States in the Caribbean will increase exponentially: Dominica and Cuba are under the direct command of Germany, and German bombers can also fly to the United States!

Just as the U.S. government and opposition were terrified of their defeat in the Caribbean, bad news came from the Pacific Ocean to the west: the Japanese Navy, which had been dormant for months, launched the Battle of Midway, and its peak lineup also dwarfed the Hawaii-based U.S. fleet. In the face of cutting-edge aircraft carriers such as Akagi and Shozuru, as well as core warships such as Nagato and Mutsu, although the US fleet achieved some results by virtue of its code decipherment, its obvious inferiority in the number and quality of warships still made them defeated, and they were forced to abandon this extremely critical outpost position. The old battleships USS Arizona and USS Oklahoma were sunk in an air raid, and one of its only three carriers, the Yorktown, was also heavily damaged: ironically, it was the carrier's artillery design that allowed it to withstand a torpedo attack by its underwater defenses without sinking. The Japanese Navy began to use this as a base to look into Hawaii as far away, and continued to hoard supplies and troops on the island; The United States, on the other hand, had already begun to prepare for the worst-case scenario, abandoning Hawaii and withdrawing its entire army to the port of San Francisco. (To be continued......)

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