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Nimitz's order was resolutely carried out, and the US fighters avoided a frontal battle with the Japanese fighters as much as possible, and only used one dive attack after another to destroy the Japanese bombers one after another. Although the lethality of a single blow out of tactics was low, because the battle lasted for a long time, the small number of US fighters achieved considerable results, and the exchange ratio set a new record since the Pacific War.

However, it is difficult to stop the bombing of the US aircraft carriers by the Japanese bomber group only by sneak attacks from time to time, but it is already a great success to be able to maintain a deterrent to them and prevent them from acting recklessly. However, the Japanese commander's response was also extremely fast, he asked the torpedo bombers not to risk getting close to the torpedoes, but to launch attacks at a relatively long distance, with the main goal of disrupting the air defense formation of the US fleet, and the task of the main attack was handed over to the dive bombers to complete, anyway, the enemy's fate was already doomed, and it may take several more attacks to sink the US aircraft carrier with dive bombers, but the losses were certainly much smaller than the torpedo planes that were like targets when attacking, and the Japanese had already killed too many excellent pilots, It is also ハオデ to be able to lose one less

In line with this idea, the commander of the Japanese aircraft group naturally regarded those US fighters that came down from time to time to sneak attack and wanted to destroy but could not catch up as a thorn in his side, so he suddenly came up with a plan and ordered that the dive bombers in charge of the main attack should not be in a hurry to blow up and sink all the aircraft carriers, but should take damaging the flight deck of the US aircraft carriers as the main goal. The goal is to make it impossible for those pesky U.S. fighter jets to land

No matter how strong the carrier's defenses are, the flight deck is relatively fragile, especially in the second wave of the Japanese fleet, which has a higher proportion of aircraft carrying 1.6-ton super-heavy aerial bombs (most of them come from Midway airfield, which naturally increases due to the decrease in the total number of aircraft). With such a large size placed there, no matter what kind of bomb type, as long as one of them hits, the aircraft carrier will have to suffer heavy damage, let alone a mere flight deck. In fact. It is precisely because this super-heavy bomb is too powerful. Obviously, the goal of the Japanese bombers at this time was only to destroy the flight deck of the US aircraft carrier, but they still sank three of them

The reason is simple, the Independence-class light aircraft carrier, with a standard displacement of just over 10,000 tons, simply cannot withstand the devastation of such a super bombshell, and even if the goal is only to destroy the flight deck. To ensure hits under the protection of the enemy's dense close-quarters artillery fire. The Japanese would also drop at least a few bombs on each aircraft carrier. As long as the dive-dropped bomb can drop the bomb, the hit rate is at least seven or eight percent, so most of the hits are more than one. The results can be imagined

The two aircraft carriers, the Belle Forest and the Monterey, were each hit by two of them, and the hull was completely deformed on the spot, and they sank to the bottom of the sea before they could survive for 5 minutes, while their sister ship, the Corpens, was lucky enough to hit only one, but it was also heavily damaged, and finally followed in the footsteps of the other five Independence-class aircraft carriers because the fire detonated the ammunition depot. It is worth mentioning that the United States has only modified 6 Independence-class light aircraft carriers in this time and space, so the sinking of the USS Corbans means that there is no longer an Independence-class light aircraft carrier on Shijie

Although the three Essex-class heavy aircraft carriers are larger because of their large hulls and better anti-sinking design (after all, the Independence-class light aircraft carriers are converted from light cruisers, and there is a big gap in design compared with the Essex-class, which is currently the most advanced heavy aircraft carrier on Shijie. None of them sank, but they were all traumatized. The Valiant was the most severely damaged, not only did it have two more large holes in the flight deck with thick smoke, but the power system was also severely damaged, and the speed was almost completely lost, so Nimitz had no choice but to order the destroyer to fire a torpedo and sink it, so that she would not become a trophy of the Japanese after the war. The flagships of this fleet, the "Essex" and "Ticonderoga", were also seriously damaged, but fortunately, the vital parts were not injured, and the officers and men on the ship were damaged in time, so they could barely keep up with the speed of the fleet, but the unrecognizable flight deck could not let those fighters in the sky land safely in any case

After achieving its goal, the Japanese aircraft group did not continue to strike while the iron was hot, but directly dropped the bombs that were not dropped and all retreated, obviously wanting to wait for the US fighter planes to run out of fuel and crash because they could not land, and then come to clean up the US fleet that had lost the protection of the fighters.

Nimitz could naturally see the intentions of the Japanese army, but he couldn't think of any active countermeasures at all, all he could do was let those fighters pursue the enemy and take one more bite. Even this goal could not be fully achieved, and under the interception of the Japanese fighters, the US fighters could not play the tactics of breaking away from the attack with a very high exchange ratio, and at the same time biting the enemy's group of bombers retreating at full speed, and finally only shot down a few bombers and left behind the 20 or 30 Japanese fighters before completely losing the target, and finally fell into the sea because of the exhaustion of fuel.

Although most of the pilots who parachuted were rescued by the US warships waiting nearby, everyone, including Nimitz, knew very well that without the protection of these fighters, no matter how large the fleet was, it would only be a dead end, and the pilots would be able to survive for an extra hour or two if they were rescued on the ship

Someone proposed to Nimitz to disperse and break out, but he immediately vetoed it, just like he had previously vetoed sending fighter jets to search for enemy AWACS, all of which were just useless. Although large planes are slow, they are at most 30 percent slower than fighters if they are specially modified, and the detection distance is more than 100 kilometers away, as long as they deliberately hide (although the US military's shipborne radar can detect suspected early warning aircraft, but as soon as the fighter approaches, people will inevitably retreat quickly, and the distance is quite far, and it is easy to withdraw from the detection range of the shipborne radar. ), which cannot be found at all, but will greatly weaken the air defense of the fleet. Now, if the breakthrough is dispersed, the speed of the ships is so much slower than that of the aircraft, and the enemy has AWACS aircraft to guide it, it is impossible to get rid of the enemy's pursuit, but because of the dispersion of anti-aircraft fire, the enemy will be broken by each with extremely low losses

However, Nimitz still accepted one suggestion, that is, to leave the aircraft carrier "Essex", which will definitely become the main target of the next wave of Japanese attacks, and take a relatively inconspicuous ship instead, so as not to hang up early and cause the fleet to lose unified command (to be continued......