After learning that the German aircraft carriers had all been blown up and sunk, Spruance finally let go of the big stone in his heart, and this battle has been fought so far, and he can completely give an explanation to the country, but since he has achieved such an advantage, Spruance naturally wants to fall into the well and completely eliminate the German high seas fleet.

Although they had been predicted, the fact that all the conventional bombs had been dropped and not a single German battleship could be sunk was a disappointment to the American people, even though they knew that the main target of the conventional bombs was not the enemy's battleship.

However, the Americans still had powerful "goblets", and the two Soviet-class battleships with the worst protection and the heaviest damage in the previous bombing were the first to bear the brunt, although there were still speeds of 21 and 23 knots that allowed the sisters to successfully avoid more than 50 (Note 1) "goblet" bombs, but still 4 and 3 fell on the heads of the sisters respectively. The hull solidity and reserve buoyancy were far from being comparable with the battleships produced by Germany, and they sank soon after suffering such heavy losses, but the sacrifice of these two battleships consumed most of the Americans' "goblets" and won a glimmer of life for their comrades

The Americans, while very pleased with the great power of the Goblet, were disappointed with its dismal hit rate, but even then they did not hesitate to throw away the rest, and the target was none other than the German flagship, the Hindenburg. However, the Hindenburg, which had been raised to 31 knots, was far more difficult to hit than the two Soviet-class battleships that had been taken out before. As many as 30 "goblets" of the US military, only one hit the target.

However, this 1 "goblet" landed on the upper part of the front of the No. 1 main turret of the battleship Hindenburg, and only a loud bang was heard, and the huge turret was suddenly blown open, and billowing smoke poured out of it, reaching the sky hundreds of meters high, and the three thick barrels were completely deformed

Seeing this scene, Wegener's heart was suddenly cold, but just as he was waiting for death, the No. 1 main turret did not explode the ammunition he expected, and Wegener, who knew that he had escaped, was pleasantly surprised. I couldn't help but collapse and feel weak. Taking advantage of the fact that the US military fleet ran out of ammunition and retreated. Wegener hurriedly sent people to the No. 1 main turret to investigate the situation, and found that the "goblet" did not fall on the top of the turret, but coincidentally smashed into the thickest part of the turret armor, and because of the inclined design. The angle of incidence of that "goblet" is very large. The actual thickness of the armor that needed to be penetrated was more than doubled. It even exceeded 700mm, but it could not be directly penetrated, and now the large hole in the main turret was actually torn open by the detonation of a large amount of high-explosive in the "goblet" after the armor was partially penetrated.

Because of this. In addition, the ammunition depot under the main turret was covered with a layer of armor up to 360mm thick to avoid the danger of explosion. Knowing this, Wegener was suddenly afraid, Hu Weidong insisted on making the main turret somewhat similar to the "spire" structure, and also added a layer of thick armor outside the turret ammunition depot to improve safety, Wegener once thought it was a superfluous move, but now, he was really thoughtful at the time, if Wegener didn't think that the reserve buoyancy was a little left and did not insist on his opinion, then the Hindenburg at this time has been finished. But what Wegener didn't know was that the reason why Hu Weidong proposed such a design was actually because of the lesson of the historical battleship Tirpitz being killed by the "goblet".

Although the battleship Hindenburg escaped, the complete scrapping of the No. 1 main turret was unavoidable, and the danger of the enemy's fleet was likely to come again, which also made Wegener dare not delay at all, and continued to command the fleet to retreat to the southeast as fast as possible (Note 2).

The carefully prepared eighty or ninety super bombs actually only killed two battleships, which made Spruance quite disappointed, "I knew that the actual hit rate was so much worse than the theoretical value, it is better to let the bombers carry ordinary high-explosive bombs and blow up the enemy's battleships as much as possible, even if the aircraft carrier is not usable, there are still 4 new battleships on our side, at least it is enough to clean up the remnants of the enemy."

However, now that the "goblet" has been used up, the second attack of the B-29 can be just such a strategy, and Spruance is also out of this consideration, commanding the fleet to follow the German fleet, in order not to be distanced by the enemy, and even let the aircraft carriers in the fleet that have no attack ability and have slowed down to withdraw from the battle column to lose the burden. However, due to the large losses of the auxiliary ships before, there were less than ten intact destroyers that Spruance could separate to escort them back, let alone light cruisers, but the supply ships and other slow ships were also withdrawn along with them, so the scale was still not small. The streamlined Spruance fleet was much faster, no slower than Wegener's, and no matter how fast the Germans were, they still followed behind them

Wegener naturally hated these heelers, and he even went so far as to let the fleet return to the division to fight the enemy for a decisive battle, but Spruance would not give up the winning situation and play 4 against him on the battleship, although Spruance believed that the four undamaged Iowa-class battleships under his command could completely defeat the four old and wounded German battleships even without the help of the fleet, but since he could win at a smaller cost, how could he be so stupid?

Note 1: Historically, when the British used a "goblet" to blow up and sink the Tirpitz, the latter was berthed, and the hit rate was at least ten times higher, so it didn't consume much, but it was completely different to use it to bomb a warship under sail.

Note 2: The east direction of the German fleet is the British Isles, at this time most of the British Royal Air Force planes are unable to fly because of lack of fuel, but it is no problem to make up aviation gasoline that can be used by hundreds of aircraft for a battle, the British may be reluctant to do this in peacetime, but if the current high seas fleet is sent to the door, the British will not miss the opportunity to beat the water dogs, so Wegener can only choose to turn southeast to bypass the British Isles and the sea area within a radius of several hundred kilometers (to be continued......