Empire Conquest
Chapter 362 - 358: Pursue to the Bitter End

Chapter 362: Chapter 358: Pursue to the Bitter End

One must say, Spur’s decision had largely saved the 17th Special Mixed Fleet, or at the very least, it saved the carrier "Fenjin."

This time, the attackers were not fighters, but torpedo bombers and bombers!

The first to be attacked was not "Fenjin," but "Wasp," which was behind "Fenjin."

Before dawn, the 17th Special Mixed Fleet had turned eastward. Normally, the flagship leads, so "Wasp" was actually to the west of "Fenjin."

Two squadrons of "Wasp" and four squadrons of "Flying Fish" concentrated their attack on this carrier.

At this time, the F4Fs that had taken off in an emergency played a crucial role.

Before Liangxia Navy’s Attack Aircraft Group arrived, or more precisely, before they launched their attack, the group of F4Fs intercepted the first two "Flying Fish" Plane Groups.

Out of 16 torpedo attack aircraft, only 5 escaped, and the other 11 were all shot down.

Even those that escaped hastily dropped their torpedoes.

The 8 F4Fs that had taken off in an emergency from the "Fenjin" arrived, helping the "Wasp" to intercept a squadron of "Wasp" and a squadron of "Flying Fish."

Although only 3 "Wasp" and 4 "Flying Fish" planes were shot down, they successfully forced the other enemy planes to drop their ammunition and abandon the attack.

However, the F4Fs from the "Fenjin" were not rescuing the "Wasp," but their own mother ship.

While the F4Fs from "Fenjin" intercepted the low-flying "Flying Fish" Plane Group, the second "Wasp" squadron arrived and launched a high-altitude surprise attack.

Due to coordination and command issues, nearly all the F4Fs were at low altitude at that time and therefore unable to intercept the dive bombers coming from high altitude.

Only one "Wasp" was shot down by high-altitude guns, and the other 7 all entered the dive bombing phase, with 5 successfully dropping their bombs.

At that point, "Wasp" created a miracle of sorts.

With rapid, fox-trot-like agile turns, the carrier of over 20,000 tons miraculously avoided all 5 bombs that came smashing down!

Although one "Wasp" pilot claimed to have hit the "Wasp," according to the escort battleship’s observations, the dive bombers’ air bombs all fell near "Wasp," the closest nearly brushing past it.

However, dodging those bombs had used up all its luck.

About 3 minutes after the "Wasp" Plane Group arrived, the last "Flying Fish" squadron arrived, commanded by Zhu Huasheng.

Because of a minor engine problem with his aircraft, Zhu Huasheng took off last, and so the "Flying Fish" squadron he commanded was also the last to attack.

For this reason, a squadron leader from the 4th Wing had to be responsible for leading the earlier attack.

One must say, Zhu Huasheng continued his good fortune.

At the time his Plane Group arrived, the F4Fs that were previously at low altitude were climbing, attempting to intercept dive bombers that simply could not be intercepted.

Furthermore, the nearby Newland battleships were all firing at the high-flying dive bombers.

After all, the threat from the dive bombers was too great.

At that time, the gunners of the high-altitude guns on the escort battleships likely mistook the low-flying "Flying Fish" for escort fighters.

The key point was that 3 "Flying Fish" Plane Groups had been intercepted before.

That was a total of 24 torpedo bombers!

Anyone who understood aerial combat knew that the attack on a carrier is mainly carried out by dive bombers, with air bombs being more effective at crippling a carrier.

An air bomb weighing 250 kg or 500 pounds could render a carrier combat ineffective.

Clearly, air torpedoes might not achieve the same effect.

Moreover, the bombing accuracy of dive bombers was higher than the hit rate of torpedo attack aircraft.

When 24 "Flying Fish" from 3 squadrons arrived, that was already quite significant.

But no one expected that there would be a fourth "Flying Fish" squadron.

There was no helping it because Liangxia’s 41st Special Mixed Fleet had first attacked the 16th Special Mixed Fleet, leaving main ship-borne aircraft to be torpedo bombers.

The result was that 8 "Flying Fish" approached the "Wasp" very smoothly.

Because they were avoiding the bombs dropped by the dive bombers, the officers and soldiers on the "Wasp" also failed to notice the torpedo bombers flying close to the sea surface.

At a distance of less than 1000 meters from the "Wasp," the eight "Flying Fish" dropped their torpedoes in succession.

At that time, Zhu Huasheng personally saw that at least three air torpedoes hit the "Wasp," and all the hit points were on the left rear side of the battleship.

With this, the attack by the 41st Special Mixed Fleet was declared over.

It was 12:40 at the time.

On the "Fenjin," when Spur received the message sent by the Captain of the "Wasp," he closed his eyes, and Tanimoto was dumbstruck.

After coming to his senses, Tanimoto also quietly breathed a sigh of relief.

In this wave of attack, there wasn’t a single escort fighter!

Looking back from an after-the-fact angle, this wasn’t surprising.

Don’t forget, Tanimoto had previously envisioned deploying the ship-borne aircraft that had recovered from the 16th Special Mixed Fleet immediately.

At that time, he hadn’t thought of providing escort fighters for the Attack Aircraft Group.

Bai Zhizhan had clearly made the same choice.

It could be said this was also the luckiest aspect.

If there had been escort fighters, even just four "Xiaotians" could have engaged the F4Fs that hurriedly took off from the "Wasp," ensuring the first two "Flying Fish" squadrons to arrive could launch their attack smoothly, and the other squadrons could then target the "Fenjin."

In that case, the "Fenjin" would have definitely been doomed.

Judging from the attack on the "Wasp," aside from being extremely lucky to avoid all the bombs, the flying skills of Liangxia’s ship-borne aircraft pilots had not diminished.

With eight torpedo bombers dropping their payloads, three hits were scored, and out of seven bombers, five successfully completed their dive and bomb release.

This operational efficiency was certainly not bad.

Of course, luck is something you can never count on.

Had the "Fenjin" been the target of the attack, it was possible that all five bombs would have hit.

Key question was, where were Liangxia’s 41st Special Mixed Fleet’s fighters?

Even under normal configurations carrying fighters to cover the Heavy Cruiser squadron, Liangxia’s 41st Special Mixed Fleet should still have at least 24 fighters.

Subtracting the 16 for air defense, there were still eight available to be deployed!

Where were those eight extra fighters?

Could they, too, have been used for air defense?

If so, then the battle reports sent by Major Clark and Major Dutte were mistaken, and they might not have inflicted heavy damage on the two carriers of the 41st Special Mixed Fleet as they claimed.

With this thought, Tanimoto was startled.

If the battle reports were incorrect and neither of the two carriers of the 41st Special Mixed Fleet was severely damaged, even if only one retained its combat capacity, it meant Bai Zhizhan still had another chance to launch an attack.

The attackers on the 16th Special Mixed Fleet had already returned.

As the attack was launched a bit later, Major Dutte’s Plane Group had not yet returned.

Calculating from the time, Bai Zhizhan would most definitely seize the opportunity to attack first!

When the next attack was initiated, he would surely deploy a sufficient number of fighters, at least eight, and eight torpedo bombers and bombers each.

As long as there were fighters providing cover, with the quality of Liangxia’s pilots, eight bombers could sink the "Fenjin."

With Bai Zhizhan’s style of leaving no stone unturned, he would probably send out attacks continuously, adding two more squadrons, to ensure the sinking of the "Fenjin."

If that were the case, the "Fenjin" was almost certainly doomed!

Tip: You can use left, right keyboard keys to browse between chapters.Tap the middle of the screen to reveal Reading Options.

If you find any errors (non-standard content, ads redirect, broken links, etc..), Please let us know so we can fix it as soon as possible.

Report
Follow our Telegram channel at https://t.me/novelfire to receive the latest notifications about daily updated chapters.