~Chapter 789 The Gladiatorial Fight of the Sea Giants

"I saw the aircraft carriers of the Americans, they were ......" Contact sent back by a Japanese reconnaissance plane came to an abrupt end, and the last sound was accompanied by the scorching heat of machine guns rubbing against the air.

"Moximoxi!" No matter how the contact radio on the Feihe called, there was no movement over there.

"They're finally here!" Yamaguchi looked out at the sea with a cold face.

A faint cloud obscured his far-sighted vision. The weather in the South Pacific has always been changeable, and a rain has just taken off, landing and flying.

However, the Type 99 shipburst D3A on the Feihe, accompanied by Zero and Super Zero fighters, still launched an attack on the American cargo ship formation.

If you don't bite such a big piece of meat, the Japanese are always itching in their hearts.

However, they soon discovered that the fat was mixed with hard bones.

Nimitz would not let the cargo ship go for damage, and in addition to some of the cargo stranded in Pago Pago, he also installed numerous anti-aircraft weapons on many cargo ships. Even the anti-aircraft weapons prepared for the Australian allies were used in advance.

When the Japanese fighters pounced, they immediately found themselves trapped in clouds of black smoke and bullets.

Still, Nimitz underestimated the Japanese.

The Japanese had seen a dense barrage of bullets in the vanguard, and many pilots on the Feihe had also been baptized by anti-aircraft artillery along the coast in Bohai Bay.

The cargo ship is still a sheep with anti-aircraft guns installed, and it is not a battleship shepherd dog armed to the teeth.

The Japanese understood that as long as the sheepdogs were killed, the remaining sheep would either be sunk or disarmed, and they would be left to their own devices.

Greedy, they prefer to confiscate this batch of weapons and military supplies. As long as the battleship formation in the rear arrives and defeats the US Navy, there will be nothing threatening them in this sea area, and the Japanese will have the final say on how to handle this batch of cargo ships.

Besides, the frugal Japanese believed that the 250-kilogram bombs exploded by the Type 99 ship were meant to deal with those American aircraft carriers, and they would not be easily wasted on those cargo ships.

Of course, it is also possible to deal with cruisers and destroyers, as for the battleship of Iowa, although it is not too clear about its armor, but the Japanese have gone through strict arguments, the effect of 250 kg of bombs on the battleship is really not great, so the torpedo attack of the 97 ships mixed in it is a killer move against the battleship of Iowa.

Just to cover the attack of the 97 ship, the 99 ship explosion also came over to throw bombs, and even the Zero type came over and threw out the two 60 kg bombs that he carried with him, sweeping away the resistance on the deck.

The U.S. Navy is not yet a veteran of World War II, and its anti-aircraft firepower has not yet been as thorough as it was later, and although the Japanese have not yet launched suicide attacks, many Japanese pilots at this time are veterans of air combat with the Vanguard.

Even though the elite pilots of the Japanese at the beginning were wiped out by the vanguard army, the Japanese quickly paid attention to the echelon of reserve pilots, and replenished them in time, and the total number was much more than the original. Subsequently, the Japanese and the vanguard army continued to fight sporadic air battles, and a new group of air combat elites grew.

Although the fighters were still deflated by the vanguard because of their performance, the initial attack on the Americans still showed the true colors of the elite pilots of the HNA and quickly caught the loopholes in the US air defense network.

Even though the Iowa-class battleships were equipped with powerful anti-aircraft firepower, the cruiser and destroyer air defense systems were outdated. Moreover, the entire air defense network lacks the cooperation of the system, and even if there is sometimes a burst of firepower, but soon an air defense blank zone appears in a certain direction.

After all, a cargo ship is a cargo ship, and the cooperation of so many fleets is also a problem.

The sound of a huge explosion of three cargo ships being sunk by Japanese bombs used to interfere with the shadow of oppressive death loomed over everyone's heads, and even the navy soldiers were a little panicked. Many of them are in the first place in war, and their minds are blank, and they will only shoot mechanically at any air target that stimulates their nerves.

Even in the latter part of World War II, Americans had many such incidents.

Now there are only Japanese fighters in the air, and there should be nothing wrong with that. However, their firepower was concentrated on the 99 ship explosion and even the ultra-zero fighters with slightly thicker armor swaggering in the air, but they ignored the 97 ship attack that came out of the smoke of gunpowder against the sea.

The Type 95 torpedo streaked a white line on the surface of the water, which finally stimulated the American GIs' retinal nerves, but they could only watch as the torpedo crashed through the air strikes of a destroyer and two cargo ships into the port steel armor of the battleship Iowa.

"Boom!" With a loud bang, a large hole appeared on the port side of the battleship Iowa after the earthquake, and the sea water poured into a whirlpool in circles.

"Boom!" There was another loud bang, and less than eight hundred meters away, the Brooklyn-class light patrol St. Louis was also hit by a Type 95 torpedo.

The Brooklyn-class of treaty light cruisers could not compare with the thick-skinned flesh of Iowa, and the 800-kilogram Type 95 torpedoes dropped by a single 97 ship attack were enough to kill it.

In a loud explosion, the entire hull of the ship fell again as if it had been lifted to the surface of the water by an invisible hand, and finally a loud sound of steel tearing through the entire battlefield.

The entire battleship broke in two, and in a few minutes of cries and diving, it quickly rolled up the floating heads and floating objects around it and sank to the bottom of the sea.

On the surface of the sea, only a large area of oil stain with flames remained, which proved that there was a ship of about 10,000 tons just now.

Reality is sometimes more exaggerated than fiction, and the Japanese did not expect their torpedoes to be a meritorious starter, although the other 5 torpedoes dropped by air, except for one that sank a 7,000-ton cargo ship, there was no success. But these two torpedoes have already earned their battle success.

"All of them!" The Iowa's anti-aircraft fire was in full swing, constantly sweeping towards the culprit 97 ship attack, and the anti-aircraft fire of other ships also encircled it in the fire circle.

The Americans' immediate retaliation soon plunged the three 97 ships into the sea, forcing these crispy ships to retreat. And the shells of the 127-mm high-level dual-purpose gun behind him continued to chase after the fierce bombardment.

But the Americans' proximity fuses, which remained in secret factories, only began to be mass-produced, and were not used with the appearance of the Iowa-class battleships this time. This greatly reduced the power of large-caliber anti-aircraft guns, and the probability was not much stronger than directly hitting Japanese aircraft.

The Japanese fighters had already been tempered by the vanguard army and were accustomed to swimming in the rain of bullets, and the bombs were constantly dropped while the anti-aircraft fire was focused on the attack of the 97 ships.

The Iowa was hit by a 250-kilogram bomb again, and although it didn't hurt its bones, the scarf on the deck swept by the bomb's blast wave and the billowing black smoke rising from the hole still made it look very embarrassed.

"Hold on, our plane is almost there!" Major General Fletcher organized people to put out the fire, closed the adjacent compartment passage, and plugged the loophole left by the torpedo attack, while loudly cheering up the panicked American GIs around him.

The American aircraft carriers are coming this way at full speed, and the planes above have already begun to take off and fly towards this side.

But no sooner had the loudspeaker than the loudspeaker next to the conning tower sounded before it was drowned out by the roar of a nearby column of water that rose above the chimney.

"Fantasy-class battleships?" Someone pointed to a huge floating figure on the sea in the distance and exclaimed.

Due to Meng Xiang's promotion, the name of the fantasy class is more famous than the original Yamato class of the Japanese.

The American reinforcement planes had not yet arrived, and the Japanese battleship formations arrived first.

Fletcher's eyes narrowed, and he shouted, "Full speed!" Watch out for shelling! ”

He knew that the shell just now was just a test shot to determine the coordinates. The Zero two-seater observation plane in the air must have sent the correction data back.

It might have been better to turn immediately, but the Iowa-class battleships had destroyers next to them that had torpedoes and air defense nets at their side, and a sharp turn could easily injure them, so now there was only the way to dodge.

He seems to have been a step late in the order to fight back, and it is the usual practice of the Americans to protect themselves from harm first.

"Whew!" A low locomotive whistle was accompanied by a loud explosion, and the Iowa dodged the bombardment, but a 460mm high-explosive bomb landed on a guarded Mahan-class destroyer, the Ramson, and smashed it directly into the sea.

"Boom, boom!" Five of the nine 50-diameter 406-mm guns on the Iowa fired at the same time, as if to vent all the frustration of the previous air fighters.

Unfortunately, even with the help of radar, their return fire was still somewhat deviant and did not damage the Hyuga in the slightest.

Then they received a second salvo from the Yamato-class battleships at a distance of 21 km.

The level of radar of the Japanese was far inferior to that of the Americans, but the level of control of naval guns was not low. Shooting at a distance of about twenty kilometers was not difficult for them.

Of course, naval battles required a bit of luck, and the Japanese were unlucky in the second salvo, and the Iowa was only scratched on the conning tower.

The 445 mm conning tower on the Iowa was swept away by an armor-piercing bullet, and Major General Fletcher's face was blackened and white, and even the blood on his forehead where he had lost his hat was completely ignored, but he looked at the gap and continued to shout: "Boom back, bombard with our cannons!" ”

Iowa's nine cannons roared together.

The entire battlefield stage began to give way to a gladiatorial battle between two steel giants of the sea.

!~