Taking advantage of the fact that most of the enemy's anti-aircraft fire was led away by the fighters in the sky, these 24 Type 97 heavy bombers took the lead in flying over the enemy fleet and dropped bombs on the six battleships, but even if the pilots took the risk of reducing the bomb altitude to an extremely dangerous 3,000 meters, only two of the 24 bombs hit the enemy ships. The Japanese battleship Fuso was first blown up by a heavy oil boiler, which directly led to a great reduction in speed, and the leaked heavy oil caused a fire that was difficult to extinguish, and more than ten minutes later, the uncontrollable fire detonated the main ammunition depot on the ship, and after an earth-shattering loud noise, more than 1,000 people from the captain Fujita Taro Osaku and the battleship were buried in the sea together, and only more than 50 people were rescued by the nearby Japanese warship. And although the sister ship of the battleship Fuso, the Yamashiro, was not blown to the vital part, the huge crack on the deck that was blown open was really shocking

Although lowering the bombing altitude greatly increased the hit rate of horizontal bombing, it also put these Type 97 heavy bombers in great danger; even though the Japanese anti-aircraft shells were only equipped with backward fixed altitude fuses, their large-caliber anti-aircraft guns still shot down seven Type 97 heavy bombers, and another five were damaged to varying degrees by the shrapnel sputtered by their air explosions. Among them, it is worth mentioning that the bomber pilot Yan Haiwen felt that it was difficult to drive the plane back to the airfield after it was heavily damaged, and resolutely drove the plane into the enemy's battleship Ise. One of them was shot down by Japanese small-caliber anti-aircraft guns, and the pilot of the other plane was too injured to control the plane, but instead he staggered and accidentally crashed into a minesweeper, killing more than 100 devils on the warship

Whether the horizontal bombing can succeed is purely a matter of luck, and the next dive bombing is the focus, including 45 Soviet-made SB3 bombers, 8 Mitsubishi Type 96 land medium attack planes, 35 Mitsubishi Type 97 light bombers, and 22 Kawasaki Type 98 light bombers, a full 110 bombers lined up in a formation and swooped down on the enemy ships diagonally below. And because of the weakness of the low bomb load of dive bombers, their preferred bombing targets were naturally those who had already been wounded

"Hit! Ulla! Lilia, a young female Soviet pilot. Litvak's nickname. In the future, I will use this abbreviation, the full name is too long) clenched her little fist excitedly and waved, the high-explosive bomb weighing 600 kilograms she had just dropped not only successfully hit the enemy battleship Yamashiro. And coincidentally, it smashed into the big crack on the deck that had just been blasted open by a 2-ton bomb, and then exploded in the belly of this battleship

Only a loud bang was heard, and the huge hull of the battleship Yamashiro shook violently, and then another earth-shattering explosion sounded out, and the super dreadnought-class battleship, which had been hit by five bombshells one after another, was detonated because of the main turret powder magazine, resulting in devastating damage to the hull structure, and quickly sank into the sea in just 10 seconds

Seeing that another enemy battleship was sunk, the Chinese and Soviets on the battlefield all cheered in unison, and the sharp-eyed Pokryshkin, although far away, saw quite really. smiled unconsciously, "What a lucky little girl, but then again, too bad luck can't become a trump card"

Another wounded battleship, the Ise, was also the focus of the dive bomber group, after being hit by five 400-kilogram bombs, eight 450-kilogram bombs, and six 600-kilogram bombs. After all, he reluctantly sank to the bottom of the sea, and more than 700 Japanese officers and men sank with the ship

At the same time, Ise's sister ship, the Hyuga, was besieged by more Chinese bombers, and although the ship's captain, Ugaki Yudaisa, relied on his skilful steering Jishu to avoid a full 27 bombs, the battleship was still hit by 11 600-kilogram bombs and five 800-kilogram bombs, and the entire warship was reduced to a burning iron hull. Completely incapacitated in combat and even action, Captain Ugaki Tsui saw the fire spreading, and knew that the ship would not be spared, and he did not want to see it sunk by the enemy, so he drove the surviving subordinates away from the warship as much as possible and opened the water gate at the bottom of the ship, fulfilling the oath he made with a few classmates when he was a student at the Naval University

Seeing that four battleships that even Britain and the United States were afraid of were sinking one after another in less than half an hour, Vice Admiral Yoshida Zengo, commander of the Japanese fleet, was full of sadness in his heart, and he couldn't help muttering to himself, "Is the era of giant ships and cannons over?" Battleships, are they really outdated? ”

However, Yoshida did not have much room to sigh, because at this time his flagship battleship Nagato was under siege by dozens of enemy aircraft, including more than two dozen Mitsubishi Type 96 land medium attack aircraft carrying aviation torpedoes

Hu Weidong had analyzed the pilots before the war, and the two Nagato-class battleships, which were the backbone of this ship, were not only larger in tonnage than the other four, but also significantly thicker in armor, even if a 2-ton bomb failed to hit the vital parts, it would be difficult to cause fatal damage to it, and the hit rate of horizontal bombing was too low, so it could only rely on torpedoes. But the aviation torpedo is not so easy to use, because the torpedo bomber needs to maintain a fixed altitude, course and speed at a low altitude before dropping the torpedo for a period of time, and after stabilizing down, it flies to a position not too far away from the enemy ship (generally within one thousand meters) in order to throw the torpedo to ensure the necessary accuracy, and the speed of the aircraft can not be too fast, otherwise the torpedo will explode directly when it enters the water, this is not too short a time The torpedo bomber is close, the speed is slow and the flight path is very easy to predict. It was simply a good live target for the anti-aircraft guns of enemy ships

Therefore, these two dozen torpedo planes did not attack immediately, until the four battleships were sunk one after another, and some dive bombers that had not yet dropped their bombs turned to attack the two Nagato-class battleships, although they could not penetrate the armor, but suppressed the anti-aircraft fire on the ships to a large extent, they seized the opportunity to quickly approach the two giant ships and try to drop the torpedoes on them......)

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