Chapter 1,240 Thunder in the Sky 1
Chapter 1240 Thunder in the Sky 1
"Start the attack! Target the German super-dreadnought battleship, focus on attacking the flagship and the third battleship!" Colonel Short issued the attack order. A few minutes later, through flags and shouting, the order was finally issued. Under the leadership of the aircraft, Group A, which had been preparing for a long time, finally launched the most violent air attack since the beginning of this war!
"The British are coming, and we can't stop them." At this time, the vice-captain of the Scimitar Squadron wrote in a telegram to the Navy. In the end, after careful consideration, he added a sentence that could only express sympathy, but there was no egg. Words to use: "May God bless you."
However, the telegram ultimately provided Count Spey with about 15 minutes of warning time. "The fleet turned and sailed to the northeast, preparing to release smoke screens. The distance between the ships increased, and they could break away from the battle line if necessary." The count was also helpless now. The fleet had no effective means of resisting these gods of death in the air. Now, we can only leave it to fate!
Clouds of smoke began to be released from around the battleship, and the destroyers next to it also began to maneuver around the fleet dragging black smoke. Like encountering a dangerous octopus, the German fleet was once again hidden in the smoke screen it released, but this time It was a lot lighter at the beginning, there were not enough smoke canisters, and the entire German fleet gave people a feeling of being careless about the beginning and the end.
"Our opportunity has come! Charge forward. If we can't kill them, none of us will be able to go back!" Lieutenant General Eberhart said excitedly. Following the air strikes from British bombers, the Black Sea Fleet also rushed forward as if on stimulants. As the Black Sea Fleet commander said, they had no choice but to fight the Germans for a chance of winning at this time. They didn't even have a chance to escape! Because if this wave cannot kill the opponent, you really can't expect the Russian fleet, which has a speed of only 15 knots, to slip away from the Germans!
"I saw it! It's at 2 o'clock!" The lead aircraft of a V1500 bomber first spotted the battleship Reschadier with half of its stern exposed out of the smoke. Under its leadership, 6 torpedoes The plane lowered its nose and flew toward the distant target!
The huge aircraft slid down and flew at an angle of 15 degrees. Its wings, which were more than 30 meters long, spread out like the wings of a giant dragon. The fleet of seven aircraft formed a gray figure on the sea under the sunlight. They tried They maintained the formation like a medium bomber, but the size of the four-engine bomber was indeed too large, and the operational performance of the World War I aircraft was very poor, so when they were about to pull up at the end, an accident occurred among these giant beasts gathered together!
The dive angle of a V1500 bomber was slightly larger, so the descent speed was a bit slower. When it got closer to the aircraft in front, the pilot in panic pulled the control stick fiercely, and the nose of the aircraft began to rise. The huge resistance instantly slowed down the originally too fast aircraft. Due to the too violent operation, the aircraft lost both height and speed. At this time, it was less than 300 meters away from the sea! The pilot subconsciously prepared to change his attitude.
However, the speed continued to decrease and reached the edge of stall. Finally, the plane's gravity overcame the buoyancy, and the huge body made contact with the water first before throwing away the torpedo.
"The difficulty of having four-engine bombers conduct bombing in formation at a height close to the sea is no different from walking a tightrope with a box. In order to ensure the formation, we must control the speed. In order to ensure that the torpedo is thrown, we must control the speed and altitude. However, a 20-meter-long Meter, how can a big guy with a width of nearly 40 meters be so easy to control? At low altitude, maybe just by pulling the lever a little bigger, it may fall directly into the sea or collide with friendly forces next to it!" After the war, a British pilots described it this way.
Perhaps due to the impact of this accident, the British did a very poor job in the first lightning strike. Almost all bombers dropped torpedoes at a reasonable distance. There have been 7 strikes since takeoff. For several hours, during this time they endured the fatigue caused by the long flight and the threat of air interceptors, and their nerves were stretched to the limit. If we have to make an analogy, it is similar to the situation when the Japanese Air Force attacked Guadalcanal from Rabaul. Simple fatigue has exhausted them.
Five torpedo planes fired 5 torpedoes sporadically within a range of 1,200 meters to 800 meters. These torpedo attacks were random. After two consecutive turns, the Reshadier successfully evaded the attack. The first wave of British attacks was launched, but at this time, the British horizontal bomber detachment also entered the battlefield!
"They are like a dark cloud. Looking from the sea, you can clearly see a black shadow flying towards us quickly. The opponent entered at an altitude of about 500 meters, then continued to drop, and finally seemed to stop at 100 meters meter height, (don’t be dissatisfied, in World War I, the British bomber force still dropped bombs at a height of 80 feet, and achieved very good accuracy.) Then they flew over like a carpet and dropped the bombs neatly! "A German officer recalled the scene at that time.
Unlike the torpedo attack, the bomb attack this time was unusually good! The covering strike formed by 8 bombs successfully landed around the Reshadier. The explosion of the 800-pound and 1,000-pound bombs raised a water column that almost obscured the entire battleship. Explosions like thunder came from around the battleship, and from time to time there would be balls of fire shooting out!
The first hit bomb successfully hit the middle of the hull of the Reshadier. This 1,000-pound bomb directly shattered the chimney at the back! An orange fireball rose into the sky, and the resulting shock wave swept across the upper and middle decks of the hit area. A large hole measuring dozens of square meters appeared in the superstructure of the ship's hull. The blackened steel plate was covered by a huge The shapeless steel beams distorted by the force tell people just how terrifying this level was! What's even more tragic is that this bomb was very close to the No. 2 power supply cabin of the battleship. Although it was not directly destroyed due to the protection of the armor box, the severe vibration still caused some malfunctions in the diesel generator inside, and the leakage in the All the wires outside the engine room were destroyed, and the entire battleship instantly lost nearly one-third of its power.
The other bomb was somewhere between a hit and a miss. This bomb weighed a lot, about 800 pounds, but it fell far away from the battleship, about 50 meters. Therefore, although it was still equipped with hundreds of pounds of explosives, the damage caused was relatively limited. Except for some shrapnel that made some holes in the hull shell, the internal mine protection compartment was not greatly damaged, and there was also a lot of water intrusion. So few that the men aboard the Reschadier were unaware for a long time that they had been hit….
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