After being hit by five bombshells and being hit by a wounded American bomber, the old ship, which was more than 15 years old, returned to the sea, with more than 1,200 crew members sinking with it

The two aircraft carriers with the best overall performance of the High Seas Fleet, the "Xianghe" and "Zuihe", were also besieged by a large number of US aircraft, and the former was hit by a number of bombshells, triggering a fire at the oil depot, and eventually causing the main ammunition depot to explode and sink into the sea, with as many as 1,422 crew members killed and missing. Although the latter was not so unlucky, under the frantic attack of the US planes, it was still hit by seven bombshells and seven torpedoes, and completely lost its combat effectiveness; although the German officers and men on the ship tried their best to rescue them, they were unable to return to the sky after all, so they had to evacuate in tears, and only 10 minutes after all the surviving personnel were withdrawn, the "Zuihe" aircraft carrier followed in the footsteps of her sister in an earth-shattering explosion

In addition, the two Zeppelin-class aircraft carriers were also attacked by US aircraft, but because the US planes had lost most of them under the fire of hundreds of German fighters and powerful shipboard anti-aircraft artillery at that time, and the German-designed warships had always been excellent in resisting sinking, so although in the end, even a number of American pilots were killed and crashed into enemy ships, but these two aircraft carriers were spared. However, the Zeppelin aircraft carrier was severely damaged, the flight deck was severely damaged, it lost the ability to take off and land aircraft, and its speed dropped to 29 knots. Fortunately, Wegener was more fatal, if he hung up, it would be a big problem, and the other aircraft carrier was only slightly damaged, and after emergency repairs, it could also be used for its own planes to land and replenish, because at this time, 33 of the hundreds of German fighters left behind were also shot down, so the German pilots did not want to abandon the plane and parachute, although the hangar and deck may be a little more crowded than before

Compared with the huge fleet of planes that the US forces attacked the German rearguard fleet, the fleet of planes that Wegener sent out to attack the US fleet was much smaller, both in terms of the fleet's anti-aircraft artillery fire and the number of fighters left behind. The U.S. fleet was outnumbered by the German rearguard fleet. Especially in the former, the gap is at least twice as much. In addition, the total number of aircraft carriers of the US military is as high as 11, and even if a few are killed, they can still maintain a strong attack capability. This is fundamentally different from the German Navy, which had only 6 aircraft carriers in total. Therefore, even if it was calculated by the enemy at the beginning. Spruance remains confident of victory. However, to his puzzlement, the enemy fleet did not immediately pounce on his own fleet

"What do the Germans want to do? Lure our fighters out and engage them in order to avoid being hit by our anti-aircraft fire? But they don't come to attack our warships. And how could our fighters abandon the protection of anti-aircraft artillery fire and engage them outside? Are the Germans too naïve? Spruance said with a puzzled expression.

However, it was obviously more beneficial for the US military to drag it out, so Spruance was not in a hurry, but the German planes soon made a move, but instead of rushing up, only one squadron of German fighters broke away from the group and pounced on the ships on the periphery of the US fleet from an altitude of several thousand meters, and the US anti-aircraft gunners immediately entered the combat state as if they were facing a great enemy, but the large-caliber anti-aircraft guns on the US perimeter air defense auxiliary ships only fired the first round, and the enemy planes turned around and flew back. As a result, this round of attacks by American anti-aircraft guns all failed

"Are the Germans kidding us?" As soon as Spruance had this rather ridiculous thought in his mind, he saw several destroyers in the distance suddenly rise with billowing smoke, and columns of water continued to splash high on the nearby water. Since the US Navy had already suffered more than one big loss before, Spruance almost immediately understood the truth, "My God! How did the secret weapon of the Germans follow the same? ”

Those German fighters just dropped the world's first anti-ship missile HS293, compared with history, thanks to the help of Sino-German technical exchanges, this missile is equipped with a better rocket engine, which can provide more durable power, making it a missile in the true sense of the word, unlike the rocket engine that mainly relies on inertial gliding and can only work for 12 seconds as an auxiliary power as in history. This can theoretically greatly increase the range of the HS293 anti-ship missile, but due to the limitations of guidance technology, the range of more than 10 kilometers has no practical significance, so the German engineers chose to change the shape of the HS293 anti-ship missile, no longer like a small aircraft, but closer to the later generations of air-to-ship missiles, the size and weight are significantly reduced, the flight speed is much faster, and the probability of being intercepted by the enemy's close-range anti-aircraft guns is much smaller.

In addition, the weakness of the HS293 anti-ship missile in the history of fear of electronic interference has also been greatly improved, and this improvement has also made the HS293 anti-ship missile not like in history must be shot out of the hit or miss before the second one can be dropped, otherwise they will interfere with each other, so it is possible to send multiple planes to fly in at the same time to drop missiles to attack, and the effect of actual combat is naturally many times better. Although too many of them will still have some effect, so the maximum attack size of each batch can only be one flying squadron, but it is much better than the previous design.

However, due to technical limitations, the HS293 anti-ship missile still uses the same radio remote control technology as in history, and the distance between the aircraft and the missile to maintain contact is only less than 10 kilometers, and it is often closer in actual combat, so the aircraft must also follow after the bomb is dropped, and the pilot will manually guide it, so even if the German aircraft is carrying a missile, it must also fly into the effective range of the enemy's large-caliber anti-aircraft guns, although it only needs to enter the limit range for a short time. It takes no less than 10 seconds for an anti-aircraft shell to hit, and generally it is too late to quickly exit the dangerous airspace without being shot down by an anti-aircraft shell, but this feeling of walking a tightrope is also quite exciting

Although there were still many flaws, the success of the development of this secret weapon still made Wegener excited, and after accumulating more than 100 rounds, he was impatient to take them all into actual combat. Since the HS293 anti-ship missiles are relatively light and small, and they cannot directly threaten the aircraft carriers, the main target of this attack, without destroying some of the air defense auxiliary ships on the periphery of the US fleet, and tearing up the defense circle, their mission is mainly to deal with those US destroyers and light cruisers with smaller tonnage. Although the initial combat failed to achieve a terrifying hit rate of more than 90% as in the test, it still made a good start, sinking 5 American destroyers with just one squadron of carrier-based fighters, in addition to 1 hard-hitting destroyer and 1 light cruiser (to be continued......