This blow was like a wake-up call, allowing both sides to completely understand their weakness. At this point in the war, Britain and Germany have lost too much strength in the 4-year-long war of attrition! Now they are so weak that they can't even guarantee the escort force of the main fleet! Needless to say, the German fleet, after many attritions at sea, the Germans had even more capital ships than light cruisers! This time there were only 9 light cruisers that went to sea with the main fleet! There are also 2 of them that were commissioned in 1910! So much so that the officers and men of the German light cruisers joked that the branch with the highest casualty rate in the entire German Navy was definitely none other than themselves!

The rich peasant's house in Germany has been hollowed out by the war, and there is no surplus food in the home of the British tyrant! Britain in World War II in history had nearly 60 light cruisers of various types before the end of the war, nearly twice as many as Germany's 32 light cruisers, but the Germans only had to fight each other in the North Sea, while the British had to fight each other in the North Sea and the Mediterranean Sea at the same time! The light cruiser died quickly! This time the Grand Fleet came out, and the British did not bring out enough light cruisers, only 15 ships, and these 15 ships are almost all the household goods that the British Royal Navy can use! More than half of the remaining 45 light cruisers have sunk to the bottom of the sea, while the other half are either on escort missions overseas or repairing in dockyards!

The light cruisers all died so simply, the destroyers couldn't even make a splash, and every time the torpedo boats and destroyers of the two warring sides died, one by one! And the British, for the sake of anti-submarine, also pulled out the already somewhat stretched destroyers and deployed them on the transport line. Therefore, the British fleet at this time was also completely exhausted in terms of auxiliary warships! In addition to a large number of capital ships that can still hold up the scene in the battle sequence of the two sides, there are not many warships left under the remaining ship species! What the? Americans, you say? All right. The Americans really have a lot of destroyers, but there is not a single light cruiser! That's right, you read that right, historically, the Americans did not have a new 5000-ton light cruiser with the ordinary equipment of the great powers before World War 1, but there were quite a few patrols.

In previous engagements, submarines simply could not effectively attack the main fleet, and this time. With a significant reduction in the number of escort warships on both sides. Moreover, the British played with the whole line of pigs, and a large number of auxiliary warships were used for lightning strikes and anti-lightning strikes, which also gave the German submarines a chance, in a chaos. The German submarine, numbered U75, unwittingly dealt a fatal blow to the Royal Oak! If the Saxony has the slightest chance of making it back alive, then the Royal Oak will definitely die unless God sends it back himself! In less than 1 hour after the opening of the film on both sides, the British and German sides lost two battleships each. Three of them are first-rate capital ships armed with 15-inch guns. This kind of loss is too much for both sides to bear!

Even if you are desperate, you can't fight like this, right? Jericho and Hipper's hearts couldn't help but exude a piercing chill! The slipway has been busy for nearly 3 years, and the capital ship costing nearly 3 million pounds has been sent away lightly, this is no longer a war, it is a death! Jericho was afraid, it was impossible for the auxiliary warships at this time to protect their fleet from submarines, and who knew if there were other German submarines in this area? If the other party sinks a ship like this, the British will directly admit defeat. Still hairy? So he decided to re-distance himself and shrink the auxiliary battleships. And Hipper is just as bad. The destroyers and light cruisers on their side have been spelled out, there are two or three small fish and shrimps, and the secondary guns on the capital ship have suffered heavy losses, and even Hipper does not dare to guarantee that he can deal with the decisive charge of the opposing torpedo boats, in this case, everyone pulls the smoke and disperses a little, stop hand-to-hand combat, such losses are unbearable on both sides!

At the end of the first round of the battle between the 15-inch bosses, the Germans had a slight advantage, and the two battleships exchanged 10 15-inch guns and 8 14-inch guns for the opponent's 16 15-inch guns. And in the back, the American Iron Turtles and the German Iron Turtles are equally killed! The Yorks and Mackenson had a deal with two New Mexico-class battleships, and the battle between the two sides was like twin brothers, because the Russians had built the Izmail-class battleships with reference to the American design, so they were similar in appearance, and both were armed with 12 14-inch guns. As the battleship with the largest number of barrels on the entire battlefield, these 4 battleships all want to drown their opponents with a sufficient number of shells, and if you calculate purely from the number of shells fired from the main guns rather than the mass, the output of these 4 battleships ranks the highest in all the navy!

It's so hard! It seems that the lethality of the 14-inch gun against the opponent is still limited. Even if they were close, it would be difficult for New Mexico and York to hurt each other's muscles. After all, their firepower is 14-inch level, even if the 14-inch guns on the Yorker are more powerful, but they are still inferior to 15-inch, and the protection is at the same level as the Bismarck-class. As a result, while the Bismarck-class battleships and the Vengeance-class battleships could penetrate each other, the Iron Tortoises still couldn't do anything to each other.

If the fight between the Bismarck-class battleships and the Revenge-class was a life-and-death fight between the underground black boxing arenas, then the Iron Tortoise was much better, and the two sides were competing for points, rather than completely destroying each other. It's not that I don't want to, but I can't. But even so, after a long time of fighting, the two sides can still be separated, the Germans' superb gunnery is stable over the Americans, and in the case of the same 12 tubes, the York-class battleships will at least hit about 3 to 4 percent more than the other side!

After nearly an hour of artillery fighting, the two New Mexico-class battleships were beaten with blue noses and swollen faces. Although the side chord was not penetrated, there was still more or less armor misalignment and cracking of the back plate, and there was some water ingress at the end and end, but this was nothing for the new American battleship with enough pumping power and good compartment division. The superstructure was blown to the ground. But the problem of fire control and the main turret is not big, if the sidestring defense of the New Mexico-class battleships can be described as hard, then the frontal defense of the main turret can be described as invulnerable, and the Bavarian 15-inch guns are close to 8KM and cannot penetrate them, let alone the 14-inch guns. However, sadly, the No. 2 turret mount of the New Mexico was hit and directly stuck.

The situation was better for the two York-class battleships, there was a little water in the head and tail, 2 turrets were blown off, the superstructure was ignited, and then there was nothing. After fighting for a long time, they couldn't do anything to each other, which made both sides very irritable. But at this moment, I don't know if it was a 15-inch shell fired from the Bismarck-class battleship that actually flew towards the Mississippi in a daze, this shell entered the water about 30 meters away from the target, and then hit it like a torpedo, and the shell weighing more than 800 kilograms continuously hit the protection composed of 3 layers of highly elastic steel, and finally exploded directly in front of the ammunition depot of the No. 1 turret at the bow of the ship!

Accompanied by a violent explosion, a huge column of water surged up from the port side of the USS Mississippi. And even more tragic is that the shell entered the hull diagonally, destroying several watertight compartments directly from the longitudinal direction! Several compartments on the port side of the battleship Mississippi were damaged, and even affected the ammunition depot not far away! It's not that the explosion could detonate the ammunition in the ammunition depot, but because of the shock of the distance, the ammunition depot was flooded! In just a dozen seconds, the 15-inch shell caused severe damage to the Mississippi.

However, as the pinnacle of the US Navy. The Mississippi said that this kind of damage is still within the range of bearing, but it is obviously a little powerless to continue fighting, and the bow of the ship has been strictly zhòng into the water, if it fights for a while, it will be Yan zhòng's head tilt plus left tilt. In this case, it is obviously better to retreat first, and after greeting the New Mexico in front, the two American warships began to release smoke to distance themselves so as to buy precious time for the rest of the damage management.

After the first battle, the two sides reopened their distance and fired at each other. But the bloody battle that followed was still going on, with the American fleet led by Simms covering 3 British Dreadnoughts and Scheer's 8 Dreadnoughts still engaged in brutal mid-to-close combat. (Two Nassau-class battleships are battling the remaining four dreadnoughts of the British.) The lineup of the Americans is, the 3 ship of the New Mexico class, the USS Ioda, two Pennsylvania-class battleships and 1 USS Nevada and 1 USS Florida

Although the American battleships are all iron turtle attributes, even if they agree to the turtle, they must be divided into three, six, nine and so on. And the Nevada and the Florida are just one of the inferior turtles, the armor thickness is sufficient, but the armor quality is relatively poor, these two battleships were built in the Second Sino-Russian War, and the armor used is also old-fashioned armor, and the internal compartment and layout are not reasonable, after all, it is the super dreadnought of the US Navy in the early stage, and it is understandable that there are various problems. Especially for the Florida, although a 14-inch gun was installed in the reserved gun ring of the Florida, the resulting increase in weight greatly increased the draft of the battleship, resulting in a significant reduction in the exposed part of the armor, and what was even more fatal was that the upper part of the armor belt thickness of the Florida was relatively thin! And in this way, because the increase in draft is equivalent to a change of direction to weaken the Florida's protection.

And when the two sides were engaged in close combat, the USS Florida and USS Nevada were already at a disadvantage when facing the Caesar-class battleships. The latter only needs a good chance to make these two old warships doomed!

Thanks to book friends zhouyu1976, hukaikaka, athlon9527, Wang Daozhishi for their monthly pass support ~~~, and book friends I kill my monthly pass support ~~~. Yesterday the subscription hit a low point in nearly two months! Ask for subscription, ask for support! (To be continued......)