Chapter 700: Attack at Sunset I

readx; "The reconnaissance plane belonging to the Second Air Fleet on the front line discovered the enemy fleet at 3:20 p.m., and according to the intelligence previously exerted by the reconnaissance plane, the enemy fleet that came here had at least two battleships, one of which had been identified as the Tosa, and in addition to discovering an enemy aviation warship, it should be the Dragon Sho in the army!"

After Guan Shijie was promoted to admiral, he assumed the post of commander of the First Fleet, and considering that China's original three fleets have been split and transferred, the Second Fleet and the Third Fleet have actually become empty shelves, and all the main forces of the navy, including the four major battle groups and even the submarine forces, have been transferred to the jurisdiction of the First Fleet. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

The post of commander of the First Fleet is actually about the same as that of the commander-in-chief of the Chinese Navy.

Admiral Guan Shijie personally led the main force of the Navy to land in the Ryukyus this time, and set up the flagship on the Shundi, although China also has a larger tonnage of Yandi-class battleships, but the Shundi was built later, and the design has been taken into account as a command flagship, so the command and communication equipment on it is more complete than the Yandi class, and the Shundi has been the flagship of the Chinese Navy over the years. After Guan Shijie became the commander of the First Fleet, he also set up the flagship on the Shundi.

In the conference room, a rear admiral pointed at the huge chart, pointing and telling the enemy's situation: "According to the report of the Second Air Fleet, the reconnaissance plane sent by the Lushan lost radio contact ten minutes after discovering the enemy fleet, and our side estimated that it should have been shot down by the direct guard plane on the enemy Longxiang." Vice Admiral Chen of the Second Air Fleet has ordered the fleet fighters to be reconditioned and sent a number of reconnaissance planes to the waters northeast of the Ryukyus to search! ”

After hearing this, Guan Shijie looked at his pocket watch, and then said: "In this way, the preparation of the Second Air Fleet is almost complete now!" ”

The rear admiral on the side replied: "According to their report, the rearmament work began at 3:25 a.m., and now it is 3:50 p.m., and it is expected that in ten minutes the first wave of attack aircraft of the Second Air Fleet will be able to rise into the air!" ”

For an aircraft carrier to attack the enemy, it does not mean that it can immediately send out planes as soon as it is discovered, but it requires a period of preparation, and it takes about 40 to 50 minutes to launch a wave of attacks to lift the planes from the hangar, refuel, and reload. And the length of this maintenance time is not uniform, mainly depends on the training of personnel and the design of the aircraft carrier itself, and there can be no other accidents in this process, such as being attacked by the enemy, or temporarily changing the battle plan, this change will often delay the maintenance time to more than an hour, and worse, it will cause a certain amount of confusion.

The attack of an aircraft carrier is very simple to say, just release the planes, but what really affects the combat strength of the aircraft carriers is the time it takes to release the planes. The normal time is 40 to 50 minutes, and if the crew is extremely well trained and the condition of the entire aircraft carrier is kept in the best condition, then it is possible to further compress this time, as was the case of releasing an attack wave in 30 minutes in last year's naval and air battles.

However, this achievement can only be said to be a special case, and the Chinese Navy tried to replicate this achievement in subsequent training, but without exception failed.

"In this case, the Second Air Fleet will be able to launch the first wave of attacks at four o'clock, and the distance between the two sides will be one hundred and fifty nautical miles, and the Second Air Fleet will not be able to launch the second wave of attacks until four o'clock sharp!" Guan Shijie frowned as he spoke: "In this case, even if the second wave of attack groups can attack smoothly, they may get lost in the night on the way back!" ”

After the aircraft carrier fleet is released, it is not only necessary to consider the question of whether it can attack the enemy ships, but also whether it can bring them back smoothly; now aircraft carriers do not have the ability to fight at night, and it goes without saying that the planes will get lost at night, and more importantly, the planes returning after nightfall cannot land on the aircraft carrier. Therefore, after the time has passed 4:50, it is a very risky move for the aircraft carrier to continue to attack, and after a preliminary estimate, Guan Shijie has already determined that the Second Air Fleet does not have enough time to launch a second wave of attacks.

"What about the First Air Fleet, how long will it take for them to adjust and release the first wave of attack aircraft!"

The major general said: "The First Air Fleet launched a land bombing of Ryukyu Island at noon, the first wave of aircraft has just returned, and the second wave of aircraft has not yet returned, and now at this time they still need to empty their decks to welcome the return of the second wave of land bombers, and only after they have accepted the return planes can they reprepare the attack aircraft group, and it is expected that this time will reach about 4:30." ”

Four thirty o'clock was not a long time, and although it was about twenty minutes earlier than the time required for the second wave of the Second Air Fleet, it was still not sufficient, because the First Air Fleet was almost two hundred kilometers away from discovering the established area of the Navy, which was much farther than the Second Air Fleet, and this one round trip was enough to consume the twenty-minute time advantage.

As for the Songshan in the Third Air Fleet, Guan Shijie did not ask, because the Third Air Fleet was farther away, and the Songshan in the Third Air Fleet was responsible for the air defense cover of the entire landing force and the First Battle Fleet, and could not be taken out to attack.

After this discussion, Guan Shijie found that although the enemy fleet had been discovered, it could only launch a wave of attacks, and the next was the night, and after the night general, he said, "This naval fleet is very likely to take advantage of the urgency to approach his own side and launch a night attack."

Under such circumstances, Guan Shijie said: "Let the First Battlefleet prepare for night battle!" ”

This time, the goal of the Chinese Navy was to land in the Ryukyus, so it could not retreat without permission, and at this time, the four battleships in the First Battlefleet also showed their greatest role, that is, to cover the aircraft carrier and the enemy in hand-to-hand combat in night battles, rain and fog and other weather.

However, just when Guan Shijie ordered the First Battlefleet to prepare for a night battle, Vice Admiral Liao Hui, the commander of the First Air Fleet, had already given the order to attack, although the two aircraft carriers under the First Air Fleet had sent two waves of attack groups to bomb the Ryukyus, and at this time it was also just accepted the return of the first wave of aircraft, and according to the convention, it should be the time to empty the deck and prepare to accept the return of the second wave of aircraft. However, Vice Admiral Liao Hui was unwilling to waste the opportunity to attack this fleet.

"Let the Huangshan continue to empty its deck and prepare to receive returning fighters, and the Taishan will speed up the preparation work and strive to release the first wave of aircraft within 20 minutes." After saying this, he added: "Well, time is limited, try to prepare dive bombers!" Also, contact the Second Air Fleet and ask them to provide an air rendezvous point! ”

Vice Admiral Liao Hui, as the oldest qualified aviation general in the Chinese naval aviation, came into contact with naval aviation earlier than Chen Shaokuan, and was one of the earliest carrier-based aircraft pilots in China, and then served as captain in the Navy's first modified aircraft carrier, the Taishan, and then successively served as chief of staff of the First Air Group and commander of the Second Air Group, participated in the Sino-Chinese naval battle in 1923, served as director of the Aviation Department of the Admiralty in the mid-twenties, and then transferred to the First Air Fleet as chief of staff, in last year's naval battle, As Guan Shijie's deputy, he participated in and commanded the sea and air battles throughout the whole process, and was promoted to lieutenant general after the war. After the establishment of the three major air fleets, Vice Admiral Liao Hui was also appointed commander of the First Air Fleet.

Liao Hui knew better than Guan Shijie that the position of his fleet was too far, and if he waited for the second wave of attack planes to return before preparing and departing, it would be too late in time. Now the only way is to let the Huangshan empty the deck and accept the planes, and at the same time the Huashan prepares some planes to take off, and in the process, the second wave of aircraft groups for subsequent land attacks will return one after another, and only some of them can land on the Huangshan first, and a few of them are circling and waiting for landing, this time will not be too long, at most twenty minutes is enough.

On the Huashan aircraft carrier, it was busy at this moment, the logistics staff of the First Carrier-based Wing were on the deck, in the hangar, nervously busy, part of the plane was transporting the plane back to the hangar, and part of it was refueling and reloading the plane that had just returned home, and the pilots who had been fighting for several hours were seizing their precious time to rest at this moment, because it would not be long before they would return to the blue sky.

The ground crew struggled to push the bomb carrier, the young face was full of sweat, and the bomb carrier in his hand was a huge aerial bomb, which was a whole circle larger than the common 250 kg aerial bomb of the Chinese Navy and Air Force, and look at the logo on this aerial bomb, which was printed with HCZ350M2; This number may not be very clear to outsiders, but people who have a little research on the equipment of [***] can see that this is a special 350 kg aviation armor-piercing projectile for naval aviation, and it is also the second 350-kilogram aviation armor-piercing projectile of all in the navy, the H on it represents the navy, CZ represents the armor-piercing bomb, 350 represents the weight of 350 kg, and M2 represents the second bomb of the same type and level.

China's 350-kilogram aviation armor-piercing bomb actually began to be developed only last year, to be precise, it began to be intensively developed after the outbreak of war at the end of last year, and the reason why the navy began to develop this 350-kilogram aviation armor-piercing bomb after the outbreak of the war is because in last year's battle with the Navy, although the carrier-based aircraft of the aircraft carrier made great contributions and sank the capital ships of the Honda. However, it was also revealed that although a large number of 250-kilogram aerial bombs equipped in the navy can effectively threaten the deck superstructure on the enemy battleship, it is difficult to penetrate the main horizontal armor on the battleship, and in the naval and air battle last year, the hit rate of the Chinese dive bomber group was very high, reaching about 35 percent according to the statistics after the war, but although a large number of hit bombs can damage the superstructure on the battleship, they can rarely penetrate the horizontal armor of the battleship. Even if a few of them pierced through the armor, they were unable to deal significant damage due to insufficient charges.

In this case, the Aerial Bomb Section under the Department of Ship Administration immediately tendered for a larger caliber and larger charge of aerial bombs, and the original design target was 500 kilograms, but it was quickly rejected, and the reason for the rejection was not that the technology for developing 500 kilograms of aerial bombs was not enough, in fact, in terms of the technical capabilities of China's current major defense enterprises, it was quite easy to get an aerial bomb, and the reason for the real opposition of the Aviation Division was very simple, that is, the main dive bombers equipped in the Chinese Navy were limited in bomb load. At the beginning, the design goal of the B6 dive bomber was only to be equipped with 250 kg of bombs, even if there was a part of the design margin, but it was impossible to say that it was directly doubled, even if it was the subsequent improvement of the B6C carrier-based dive bomber, it could not carry 500 kg of aerial bombs for long-distance attacks, which insisted on carrying it, it would squeeze the fuel space, resulting in a decrease in range and greatly affecting the mobility of the B6 bomber.

Therefore, the weight of 350 kg was chosen, which increased a certain amount of power without excessively affecting the range and maneuverability of the carrier-based aircraft.

In just a few months, this aerial bomb was mass-produced and equipped on various aircraft carriers, and it did not take long for B6 dive bombers carrying 350 kilograms of aviation armor-piercing bombs and B5 torpedo planes carrying aviation torpedoes to take off from Huashan one after another.

Due to the tight schedule, there was no time to prepare for more planes to take off, so the attack aircraft group sent by the Huashan added up to only 18 planes, and most of them were bombers, and only two fighters served as escorts. They also had to merge the attack aircraft of the Second Air Fleet and form an attack wave to attack the fleet, otherwise the bombers without fighter escort would go on an offensive mission alone, and the result would be very tragic.

At 4:15 p.m., the planes sent by the First Air Fleet and the Second Air Fleet had already converged, and immediately formed an attack group of up to 100 planes and flew toward the direction of the fleet.