Starry Sky Wings 179, Interception Fortress (2)

Text 179, Interception of the Fortress (2)

Tulip One, the Imperial fleet has just entered the detection range of the keyhole, to speak, an Imperial-class space carrier is in the center of the fleet, in addition to two Sabre-class cruisers and a River-class destroyer, there are eight escort fighters, four Banshees, four Super Banshees, and one Keyhole, at the current speed and course, it is expected to reach the ambush position in thirty minutes. Major Tulle, who was on a nearby keyhole warning and control plane, broke the silence and reported to Risen using a short-range communication system, his voice low for fear of alarming the Imperial fleet if it was too loud.

"They are really punctual, every minute is not bad, inform everyone in the wing, keep their positions, do not expose the target, wait for the signal to attack, and absolutely prohibit starting the ion engine in advance."

"Understood, Tulip One."

After a brief communication, the gravel area was quiet again, everything seemed so natural, unless you looked closely near the gravel area, there was no difference in the slightest, nothing noticeable......

Unlike the Alliance, which was silent before the battle, the tense atmosphere on the Fort at this moment gradually relaxed as the fleet got closer and closer to the Pearl Harbor base, and now there is less than a day to go, although the whole fleet is still on yellow alert, most of the crew and pilots have gradually stopped paying attention to it, although they are still on their posts because of the yellow alert, but their attention is no longer there, They are now discussing with their colleagues how to relax and enjoy themselves when they return to the base. With the current condition of the Fortress, the refurbishment period after returning to the base is estimated to be less than a month or two, which means that they can temporarily escape the brutal and tense fighting, compared to those colleagues who are still fighting the rebels, they are already considered lucky, and the current rebels have become a difficult and troublesome opponent, and they are no longer the group of people who can easily defeat the rabble before. They are now well-trained and well-armed, and many of the rebel commanders turned out to be the elite of the Empire. And fought against the empire for many years. He is very familiar with and understands the strategy and tactics of the Imperial Army, and the danger of fighting the rebels is no less than fighting the regular army of the Federation, and even more so, if not careful, he may be killed, and he is on the front line of clearing out the rebels. Nerves had to be tensed at all times, sometimes even to the point of rumors, because so many highly decorated troops had quietly disappeared from the Empire's battle sequence, and the Imperial military authorities could not even figure out where some of the attacks had taken place.

Another reason for the relief of the Imperial officers and men was that they had the most important starship in their fleet, an Imperial-class space carrier, to date. I have not heard of a single Imperial space carrier destroyed by the rebels in regular combat. The loss of the Fifth Fleet was an exception, a small trick of the rebels.

The officers and soldiers of the empire seem to be wishful thinking. In their impression, the rebels were not willing to use their weak military strength to fight the Empire, they always avoided the powerful Imperial fleet accompanied by space carriers, and focused their attention on attacking those escort convoys or weakly defended space stations, and even the only attack on the large military base of Agamera was to seize the gap that the base happened to have no space carriers stationed at the time. Although the Fortress is currently moderately damaged, and the number of carrier-based aircraft it carries has also suffered a lot of losses in the battle with the rebel Seventh Fleet, but fortunately, there has always been a squadron of starfighters on an escort cruiser that can be slightly replenished, and later there is an additional cruiser from nowhere in the escort force, which has brought another squadron of starfighters to this fleet, and the rebels are even less likely to have the courage to challenge them, unless they suddenly change their combat style and come to fight hard with the Empire.

So, when the enemy attack sirens echoed in every inch of the ship, when the internal radio communications were hoarsely ordered to enter the red alert state, people's initial feeling was that they would be suddenly attacked by the rebels, and the rebels would dare to attack this fleet with a powerful space carrier so close to the Pearl Harbor base, could it be true?

The astonishment and stupeness lasted for several seconds before the Imperial officers and men woke up from a dream, the crews quickly turned their attention from small talk and jokes back to their posts, and the pilots hurriedly climbed onto their starfighters, closed the canopy with the help of ground crew, activated the ion engines, and prepared for the ......

"It's too close, it's too close," the captain of the USS Bastion turned a little pale, and the screen showed a map of the situation of both the enemy and the enemy, and it was obvious that the fleet was in an unfavorable position, and the red dots representing the rebel fighters were mercilessly approaching from three directions.

"What about our fighters?" He asked, he felt very uneasy in his heart, the number of the three groups of rebel light starfighters added up to hundreds, not counting the keyhole and other types of aircraft, that is by no means the number of fighters that the rebels' fast space carriers can carry, the previous intelligence has mentioned that in addition to their modified fast space carriers, there may be a regular space carrier, because the actions are strange, and the contact reports are too few, so the intelligence department is not sure, now it seems that it should be true.

He knew that today's battle might be a disaster for him, and the enemy fleet had maintained their usual strange style of action, quietly moving here without their knowledge, waiting for his arrival, although he did not know where the enemy fleet was, but the rebels seldom fought battles that they were not sure of, and since they had come specifically for him, they said that they had made full preparations, and that it was a surprise attack, and the situation was really bad enough for him.

"Twenty-two have taken off so far, captain, but the fighters on the cruisers Agulis and Furst have already been sorted."

"How, so slow, let them speed up." He was a little agitated, though he knew that his pilot couldn't be blamed for it. The damaged part of the Bastion included part of the launch channel, which greatly affected the launch speed of the Bastion's carrier-based aircraft.

"Captain, the rebel fighters are already fast

The range of quantum torpedoes is too small, and the number of our escort fighters is too small, simply human. One of the crew members nervously reported.

"Command the fighters who have already taken off, quickly go to intercept, tell them that their main task is to drag down the attack of the rebels. Disrupt enemy attacks. ”

"Yes. Captain. ”

In the cockpit of Rayson's lightning fighter. The beep before the torpedo lock became louder and faster, and all his attention was already focused on it, and when the beeps were one after another, and finally turned into a long, sharp beep, he did not hesitate in the slightest, and said, "Torpedo lock." Launch. ”

His fingers gently and immediately pulled the trigger.

Four torpedoes, one after the other, left his Lightning fighter, and he could feel the slight shaking of the torpedoes as they left the plane, but when he looked out of the cockpit, in the direction of the enemy fleet, he saw a spectacular sight, and there were more than four. Countless blue earth ion trails. From three main directions, towards the Imperial fleet, approaching.

"This is Tulip One. Torpedoes have been fired, and all fighters, scattered to attack. ”

He pulled up his lightning fighter first, and the three squadrons of the Tulip Wing, as they usually trained, immediately dispersed and rushed towards the oncoming Imperial fighters, who were only half as many as them at most.

Finished. The captain of the Bastion stared blankly at the dense yellow highlights that were so numerous that they almost drowned out the small dots of red, green, and other colors, all of which were quantum torpedoes fired by enemy planes.

He knows this type of attack, and it's called a saturation attack. However, in actual combat, this attack method is not rare, the key is that the attacked side will never let the attacking side easily approach the range of launching quantum torpedoes, keyhole aircraft or important interstellar ships are equipped with long-range sensors, can detect the enemy aircraft approaching when the enemy aircraft is far from reaching the range of quantum torpedoes, and command their own escort fighters to intercept, can break through and intercept the attacking side of the interstellar fighters approaching the range, basically can no longer maintain the coordination of attacks, scattered torpedo attacks, In the case of intensive artillery fire interception by the close defense system of the space carrier and its escort ships, there are very few quantum torpedoes that can break through the last line of defense, and even if they are lucky, the shield system of the space carrier or battleship can block the attack of one or two quantum torpedoes.

Wasting a lot of quantum torpedoes and turning out to be futile can often have a negative impact on morale, especially when quantum torpedoes are rare and rare, and this kind of inefficient attack is not worth it.

On the other hand, if the attacking side's escort force is weak and is simply unable to prevent the attacker's breakthrough and attack, then there is no need to saturate the attack, and there is no need to even launch a torpedo attack.

Therefore, the more frequent and more efficient torpedo attack method used in actual combat is to launch at close range from the approaching ship, so as to reduce the reaction time of the attacked party and improve the effectiveness of the attack, but this is no longer called a saturation attack, and it is not absolute, for example, when it is urgent to quickly solve the injured ship, when the attacking party's defensive fire is intensive, or when the intercepted enemy aircraft is pressed very tightly, the pilot will often choose to launch the torpedo at the maximum distance, as for whether it hits or not, that is another matter.

Saturation attacks of quantum torpedoes are rare, if not absent. However, he was lucky to have seen it today, and the attack was still aimed at the ship he commanded, the USS Fortress Space Carrier? Or is it unfortunate?

With so many torpedoes, in his experience, it is difficult to completely intercept, there will definitely be torpedoes to break through the defense and interception, and there must be more than one, it is difficult for him to do anything now, it is impossible to maneuver to evade, the bulky mothership is not a flexible starfighter, it cannot escape the locking and pursuit of torpedoes, and those torpedoes are coming from several different directions, where can the fortress evade?

Numerous quantum torpedoes approached the Imperial fleet from all different directions, and only from the number of torpedoes, all the officers and men in the Imperial fleet, who understood what these numbers of torpedoes meant to the fleet, and the escort planes that went to intercept the rebel fighters did not care about the engagement with the rebel fighters, and their targets turned to those torpedoes that frightened them; The Banshee and Super Banshee fighters, who had just taken off from the USS Fortress space carrier, quickly turned around before they could form and meet the yellow highlights closest to them; On the ships, whether it is close defense artillery fire, or the main guns of each ship, any weapon that can spew energy into space, is crazy to meet those who are getting closer and closer to death, the officers and soldiers of the empire are almost crazy, they have not shown their potential to the extreme, the space is constantly shining with explosions of fireballs, those are destroyed quantum torpedoes, they have not reached their goal, they have ended their mission in advance, but more of their partners, but thanks to their sacrifices, Having successfully broken through the combined line of defense of the Imperial escort fighters and the dense defensive fire of the fleet, these torpedoes had only one target, and that was the largest ship, the ship that was still making a last-ditch effort to take off the last fighter - the USS Fortress.

"Explosion warning, all personnel prepare for the onslaught, hurry up ......" The captain of the Fort hurriedly issued a warning, he was doing his last bit of effort, although he did not know how many people would survive the explosion of multiple torpedoes, the ship, the crew of this ship.

The captain sat in his captain's chair as the first quantum torpedo made a graceful arc and was about to hit the USS Bastion, and although his men were panicked looking for shelter, he was only a little different from usual, his hands gripping the handles of his chair tightly, and, strangely, his mood was very calm, it was an indescribable calm.

What a perfect attack, who is the rebel commander who commanded this ambush and organized this quantum torpedo saturation attack? If I have the chance, I really want to meet him.

He thought silently......

A dazzling white light shone in from the outside of the ship, illuminating the entire bridge..... One Hundred and Seventy-Nine, Interception Fortress (2)