"The Austro-Hungarian Navy's flagship aircraft carrier, the USS Bohemia, has been sunk, and the Loudon has suffered medium-range damage, presumably an aircraft that hit the battleship's sidestrings, causing a fire. In addition, two destroyers were sunk and several other warships were damaged. An officer informed Tycho of the results of the battle and stepped aside, and now it was up to Tycho to decide whether or not to take off a second group of planes to attack. Although the officer still hoped in his heart that the Italian Navy could defeat the opponent in one fell swoop.

"To be honest, I'm disappointed that we sent more than 140 planes and only sank one unarmored aircraft carrier." Tycho looked at Lin Yongsheng and said slowly.

"Let's go, we won't have another chance in today's battle, the land-based aviation has been exhausted, and it would be quite good to be able to put together 100 aircraft in the second wave of attack with the remaining three aircraft carriers, and the other side still has at least 70 or so fighters in the air (including twin-engine planes taking off from Crete). At least 2 fleet aircraft carriers and 1 aircraft carrier can start normally, and if they attack rashly, they will be sent to death. Lin Yongsheng said.

"I still don't want to do it, we lost at least 100 planes for this campaign. And that's not counting the downed planes in Benghazi and the battle-damaged heavy cruiser Gorisia. Tycho said with some reluctance. He had thought that this attack would destroy at least two aircraft carriers of the opposing side.

"The bomb was not powerful enough, and if it weren't for the torpedoes, we might not even be able to destroy the Bohemia. This is a technical limitation, not our process, Mr. Marshal. Su Mo on the side also opened his mouth to admonish. The tactics and timing were pretty good. But what if the weapon is not powerful? In this case, just get some cheap, don't be greedy.

"Okay. After recovering the fleet, we returned home. Tycho knew that after the withdrawal of the Heilongjiang aircraft carrier in China, the attack power of the three aircraft carriers was relatively limited, and it really did not make much sense to hold on. If the other party fights back, it is possible to steal chickens and rice. After all, Tycho did not know whether the USS Louden would be able to continue taking off and landing aircraft. If you can, it's still 3 to 4, and you'll suffer a loss on your side!

"The Italians are gone?" Marshal Jordy, who had just been transferred from the Bohemia to the battleship Prinz Eugen, looked at the flagship in the distance, which was slowly sinking to the bottom of the sea, and asked.

"Hmm. They all withdrew, and our reconnaissance planes followed and discovered the position of the opposing fleet. If it had been 45 minutes since the intelligence was sent, their fleet had probably withdrawn about 35KM. Even if we send planes now, it's too late. Said the officer in charge of aviation operations.

"It's going pretty fast." If Tycho was just a little reluctant to go, then Holdie was left with infinite remorse! The Italians had the upper hand, though. But at the same time, a certain amount of carrier aircraft was consumed. Now the other 2 aircraft carriers and 1 aviation cruiser in the Allied fleet have recovered the fighters attacking the port of Benghazi and released a second wave of attack aircraft, and although the Loudoden has a big hole in the side chord, the planes on the deck can still be released, and the other side is gone! Even if the fighter plane in the air is immediately chased now, it will take more than an hour, then the other side can run more than 50 kilometers, plus the distance between the two sides. Then by the time they flew above each other's heads, they were already nearly 300 kilometers away from the fleet. This is beyond the current limit combat radius of carrier-based aircraft, to paraphrase a later generation, the enemy turned into it as fast as the wind, and we can't catch up!

It was obviously impossible to fight back, and the withdrawal of the Italian fleet meant the end of the campaign, but for Jordi, the real troubles had just begun, and he had to bear the responsibility for the defeat of the campaign alone, first of all, the fleet outside the port of Beda was heavily damaged by the air cruiser Aegean and the loss of several transport ships, and then the aircraft carrier Bohemia was sunk in the battle off the coast of Benghazi, and the responsibility for the heavy damage of the aircraft carrier Loudon. Such losses cannot be said to be heavy, but Holdie knows that even if he loses this battle, he will not be blamed much, because when he communicated with the Austro-Hungarian high-level, he had already mentioned that Benghazi might be a trap, and the high-level strongly demanded that he should fight, and he could not blame himself for the defeat, and from a tactical point of view, he really did not make any major mistakes in this engagement.

That's right, you read that right, from a macro command point of view, there is nothing wrong with the top of the Allied fleet, as Su Mo estimated, there is no shortage of fighters in the sky above the Allied fleet, but because of the frequent climbs and combat guidance of one will be higher and the other will be low, the number of fighters available when the opponent penetrates the defense is too small. Jordi and Raeder left enough decks and tried their best to prepare as many fighters as possible, but the performance of the opposing twin-engine bombers at high altitude and high speed was too good, beyond the interception ability of most German and Austrian fighters, and the director needed to send more planes in order to intercept a wave of fast bombers. This was beyond the pre-war estimates, and the analysis of the pre-war intelligence section concluded that it was impossible for the Entente to concentrate such fast bombers for a group attack. So if there is a real accountability, then the intelligence services will bear the brunt.

But even so, Haldi has not yet figured out a question, that is, why is there so many planes in the opponent's attack aircraft group this time? According to intelligence, there are less than 300 carrier-based aircraft on Italy's three aircraft carriers, and even if an aircraft carrier can release up to 40% of the carrier aircraft in a wave, then there can only be about 120 aircraft in a wave at most. But in fact, according to intelligence, there were at least 140 planes in this wave, how did the Italians do it? "The other side has at least one aviation cruiser and one aircraft carrier." When he saw the incoming fleet, Jordi judged it like this. But then the reconnaissance planes discovered the opposing fleet and found that the Italians had only 3 aircraft carriers and no other large air units.

Raeder was not relieved by the fact that after the campaign, he felt that the German naval hierarchy needed to reassess the strength of the Italian navy and the gap between the Allies and the Allies in terms of aviation technology. For the former, although the Italian navy's performance in the first war was not bad, except for the first battle with Majifen suffered a little loss in the major battles, the rest were victories, but the German navy's top brass still evaluated the Italian navy as a second-rate standard, that is, weaker than the Anglo-German and Chinese navies, and the Suzhì was comparable to the French navy, stronger than the Austro-Hungarian and American navies. However, it can be seen from this engagement that the will and tactical level of the Italian navy was far stronger than that of Austria-Hungary, and that the Luftwaffe and navy could not have done a better job of such cooperation in terms of the organization of this air war alone.

Compared with the relatively strong Italian navy, what worries Raeder more is the gap in aviation technology between the two sides, if the Lancers Wing blew up Florence not long ago, Raeder felt the strength of German aviation technology, then in the Battle of Naples, the desperate blow of the Italian and Allied air forces made Raeder's heart tighten. Today, when he personally learned about the British attack aircraft and the Chinese Foxbat fighters, he was skeptical of German aviation technology.

"Our Navy has had the most formidable warships and technology on the planet since 1905, our battleships have proven themselves strong in all naval battles, and I have always thought that our Air Force will be the same as the Navy, especially when I first saw strategic bombers, but in fact, we have not been able to get rid of our weak position in the field of aviation since World War 1, especially in this campaign, The twin-engine fighters of the Chinese and the twin-engine fast bombers of the British surpass our country in the field of technology and design, and we do not have the same weapons as them, just imagine, if in the face of every twin-engine fast bomber, we have to use 2 or even 3 times the strength of the troops to intercept, then in the face of the Entente and Huaxia, whose national strength is stronger than ours, how will our future war be carried out? In the report, Raeder wrote.

When mentioning the Austro-Hungarian fleet, Raeder's evaluation was decent and unremarkable, but at the same time, he also believed that there were no major loopholes in the command of Marshal Jordi in this battle, and the idea that the other party might be attacking behind the scenes had been discerned, and at the same time he had dealt with it in the formulation of the plan. If it weren't for the technological gap between the two sides, maybe the other side wouldn't have been able to sink even a single aircraft carrier. And, like Jordi, he also sensed that the sea-based aviation of the last wave of attacks was too strong. It is beyond the limit of the sortie of the Italian Navy's carrier-based aircraft, but one thing he is more clever than Jordi is that he has already suspected the Chinese fleet that is "evacuating" overseas Chinese in the Mediterranean, but this kind of unfounded speculation obviously cannot be written casually on the official document, and it is not good to cause trouble! So he only mentioned it in a private letter to Hipper.

Although the first two things are very important, if they are compared with the third thing, it is nothing, because Raeder figured out the lessons learned from this navy to reformulate the future planning of the German Navy and Air Force, of course, this matter is very important, and it is not for him to decide alone, but in some aspects, he and the Air Force came to watch the battle Admiral Kesselring has similar views, so the report and judgment jointly launched by the two of them will inevitably have some impact on the German high-level.

Yesterday's two changes, as a result, the subscription hit the lowest point in nearly a month, not even a third of the highest subscription this month. The side position hurts too much! (To be continued......)