At 12:13, the San Jacinto was the first to be shot, and two 400-kilogram aerial bombs hit the center of the deck one after another, causing a violent explosion, and in less than 10 seconds, two more bombs exploded near the location of the explosion just now. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 infoAfter all, this is only an Independence-class light aircraft carrier, which cannot withstand such destruction, and the entire deck, along with the hangar and power compartment, was blown to pieces, and it stubbornly floated for a few minutes before it began to sink, leaving thousands of officers and men with precious time to escape.

The Unicorn has better sinking resistance, but it is not much stronger than the Independence class, and the bow, stern, and deck areas of the ship ate 7 bombs in a row in just 4 minutes, and the violent explosion ignited the fuel compartment on the ship, and then induced a large explosion of the ammunition depot, and the entire warship sank rapidly. Spruance, who was sitting on the Bunker Hill, watched the warship explode in front of him, and even witnessed a 76mm anti-aircraft gun on the ship being smashed into the main gun of the destroyer escorting the ship, scrapping the 127mm high-level dual-purpose turret on the spot. In the end, only more than 100 officers and men escaped.

The Germans didn't make a move, and they directly took out 2 aircraft carriers as soon as they made a move, and everyone who watched gasped, Spruance felt that his heart was dripping blood, and closed his eyes in pain, but the killing of the Germans continued.

Seeing that the two aircraft carriers of our side were sunk in a row, the F6Fs who killed the red eyes did not care whether they would be accidentally injured by anti-aircraft fire, and rushed in to fight together, and now the altitude is at a low altitude, although the Ju-198 who have finished dropping the bomb has been a lot lighter, but the air combat is obviously inferior to the opponent, and the Do-412 Although the firepower is fierce and the speed is also fast, it is not suitable for entanglement combat, and can only continue to use BZ tactics to harvest F6F, and the battle situation is so fierce that there are constantly planes falling down from the sky.

Walter still had 14 Ju-198s in his possession, and he ordered them all to attack the Wasp, although he was eager to attack the Bunker Hill, where the American flagship was located, but chose another target because of the latter's heavier anti-aircraft fire. However, after all, he has a lot of experience, so he first beckoned the attack group to pounce on the Bunker Hill, and when the anti-aircraft fire of the surrounding destroyers was around the Bunker Hill and the remaining F6Fs were desperately escorting, the attack aircraft group suddenly split in two, the Do-412s stayed to deal with the F6F, and the Ju-198s turned around to find trouble with the Wasp.

Seeing this false action of shaking a shot, the many officers and soldiers watching the battle below couldn't help but exclaim: "The Wasp is dangerous!" ”

Spruance and Roddick sighed: Now the US pilots are easy to find, but the elite pilots and excellent commanders are more lacking than aircraft carriers, and the Germans have used many small tricks today, and their own side has been hit without exception, and now they can only pray that the Wasp will have better luck.

"Boom!"

Now the besieged target has become the Wasp, the ship first ate 2 bombs near the bridge and blew up a circle of anti-aircraft guns, and then in less than half a minute, the third bomb exploded on the second elevator, directly stuck, unable to move, but the deck barely remained intact. However, this was just an illusion of the US military, after the fourth and fifth bombs fell in turn, the Wasp could not withstand it, and the core section of the flight deck between the two elevators was blown open by the bombs, and the steel plates were cocked up in various strange shapes, and the big hole in the middle looked like a giant beast that could devour people.

But the German attack hit the 7th bomb and that's it, although the entire superstructure was blown up in a mess, but the Wasp luckily escaped the fuel and ammunition explosion, the core cabin was also well preserved, and the entire warship still stood upright like Xiaoqiang, not only shot down 3 Ju-198s in air defense operations, but also maintained a maneuvering speed of more than 20 knots, which made people have to sigh the solidity of the regular aircraft carrier of the United States.

Walter, who commanded the attack, sighed, after all, there is still a difference between a 400-kilogram bomb and a 500-kilogram bomb, and it is not a heavyweight with a torpedo, if it was 7 torpedoes that hit this aircraft carrier just now, not to mention that he was Essex, even the Iowa class had to kneel, but it was 7 400-kilogram bombs, which only hit hard and could not destroy the Wasp, he could only lead the group to leave the attack site with endless regrets.

The German attack fleet of 84 attack planes, at the cost of losing 15 Ju-198s and 9 Do-412s, a loss rate of almost 30%, sank 2 aircraft carriers and severely damaged the Wasp, which was worth everyone, and now Walter had to pull the formation back - this is at least 500 kilometers of difficult return route.

At 12:57, Cranke on the Ise received two telegrams in succession, one was a report on the results of the battle from Walter, and he was obviously very happy to hear that he had sunk two ships and severely damaged one, and now his side had a temporary advantage in the balance of forces; But then the second telegram made his face look ugly, it was sent by the Savoy, "The American group is about to attack, our army will fight to the last breath, long live the Führer!" ”

The U.S. attack formation still discovered the decoy formation of the Savoy first, although it was strange that another German aircraft carrier was missing, but the commander did not think much about it, and still ordered the formation to kill the aircraft carrier in front of him first and then look for another one, he believed that the other party could not escape.

At 13:08, the 16 Do-412s guarding the Savoy began to climb and occupy a favorable position, and Lieutenant Huergen, who led the team, was also in a heavy mood when he looked at the black and oppressive enemy formation--the Savoy was probably unable to be saved, and his biggest responsibility today was to shoot down more planes and try his best to cover the safety of the flagship Ise. Therefore, these 16 air defense fighters did not stick to the front of the fleet, but seized every favorable opportunity to use BZ tactics to attack and harass enemy aircraft groups, and the priority target was the torpedoed TBFs who were slow to swallow.

The commander of the US army, Lieutenant Colonel Kent, was surprised that the German air defense fighters had dispersed on their own initiative, so he ordered the escort fighters to cover the SBD to attack the Savoy, and on the other hand, let the other fighters cover the TBF. In his opinion, there was no need for him to press all the strength of such a small enemy ship in front of him, and he still had to retain his attack strength to deal with another German aircraft carrier, in order to find the enemy ship as soon as possible, he also drew 8 SBDs to disperse to find another part of the German ship.

He thought that he would be able to complete the mission soon, but the next scene surprised him, accompanied by 16 F6Fs, 24 SBDs launched a rapid dive attack on the Savoy, but the surrounding destroyers suddenly burst out with extremely fierce anti-aircraft fire, and the phalanx used airtight ammunition to build a steel storm in the air, so that the SBDs that tried to dive and attack crashed one after another, and in less than a minute, 9 SBDs and 4 F6Fs were shot down or exploded in the air.

"This ...... What kind of anti-aircraft fire is this? "Everyone was terrified.

The rest of the SBDs that were not shot down were intimidated by the frightening interceptor fire, and hurriedly dropped bombs at an altitude of about 2,000 meters, although the safety of the aircraft was preserved, but the accuracy of the bombs was much worse, only one near-miss bomb hit, and the other bomb hit the Z29 destroyer, which sank on the spot.

Kent frowned at such a poor hit, but he also knew that the enemy's anti-aircraft fire was fierce and difficult to deal with, and the task must first disrupt the formation, so he asked the TBFs to drop torpedoes. Just now he had been paying attention to the German aircraft carriers, but he didn't realize that in a short period of time, 16 free-hunting Do-412s had eaten 10 TBFs and 4 F6Fs, and he had only lost 2 of them.

24 TBFs that received the order immediately lowered the altitude and began to launch torpedoes, because the performance of US torpedoes is far inferior to that of Japan and Germany, TBFs must approach within 1000 meters to effectively hit, and this happens to be the effective fire interception position of the hedgehog-level phalanx, so the TBFs began to break through like moths swooping into the fire, and the lucky ones can drop torpedoes through the fire net, and the bad ones are only falling into the sea, 17 TBFs successfully dropped torpedoes, and 7 were destroyed before the mines, The other four were also shot down after being dropped because they could not avoid it.

In the face of the fan-shaped torpedoes, the Savoy formation was forced to turn and start evading, the original airtight air defense formation began to disintegrate, as soon as there was an opportunity, Kent immediately let the second wave of SBD attack, this time the US attack finally achieved results, a bomb exploded in the cabin after hitting the deck, but now it was empty, there were neither excess aircraft and fuel, nor the army officers and equipment carried, at best the structure was blown to shreds, and the second and third bombs continued to hit the Savoy, And penetrated two decks and fell into the power compartment and exploded, the ship lost 4 boilers, and the speed fell to only 18 knots at once.

At 13:24, the slower Savoy was hit by a third torpedo after avoiding 2 torpedoes in a row, and a huge gap was blown up on the starboard side, and the officers and men desperately blocked the leak, but the continuous influx of sea water made the ship more faltering, 2 minutes later, the ship ate another torpedo, the captain thought that the warship could not be saved, and immediately issued an order to "abandon the ship", and in less than 5 minutes, this comprehensive aircraft carrier rebuilt with the most luxurious Italian cruise ship announced its sacrifice in the first operation, and the whole ship lost nearly one-third of its officers and men.

The destroyer and the heavy cruiser Seydlitz on the side dodged the torpedoes, with the exception of the Sedlitz which was hit by one bomb.

Kent didn't want to let go of the large warship, so he let 16 SBDs pounce on it, but now the 2 Hedgehog-class ships around the Sedlitz formed a regional anti-aircraft fire, and shot down 4 SBDs while the ship ate 2 bombs. Thanks to the good sinking resistance of the German warship, although the speed of the Sedelitz was reduced to 23 knots and the overall inclination was 5 degrees, there was no danger of sinking.