Empire Conquest
Chapter 95 - 91 "Chicheng" Annihilation

Chapter 95: Chapter 91 "Chicheng" Annihilation

At 2:10, the Chicheng suffered its first hit.

Although fierce and the dense fire from the high-altitude guns had shot down three dive bombers, the fourth Wasp dropped a bomb that hit the Chicheng accurately.

This ordinary 250-kilogram air bomb dealt a fatal blow to the Chicheng!

The critical issue was that the hit was incredibly precise.

It struck right on the middle elevator of the flight deck!

Moreover, the Wasp’s bombing altitude was less than 500 meters, with a bombing speed exceeding 500 kilometers per hour. Although the Wasp was hit by high-altitude gunfire right after dropping the bomb and then crashed into the sea, killing both pilots, this kamikaze style of attack completely obliterated Chicheng’s last hope and took hundreds of Saiyi Navy officers and soldiers down with it.

With enough speed, the air bomb, after smashing through the lift deck, also pierced the hangar deck and subsequently penetrated two more decks.

Finally, the bomb detonated inside boiler room number two.

If the Chicheng were likened to a person, then this bomb was a Dum-dum bullet!

The fierce explosion not only destroyed boiler room number two and dozens of adjacent compartments, killing hundreds of officers and soldiers, but also caused the keel to break, tearing a thirty-meter-long hole under the water on the left side of the hull, leading to the flooding of one-third of the compartments on the left side.

It was already very fortunate that the Chicheng didn’t break in half right away.

With such severe water ingress, the Chicheng was definitely doomed.

A single bomb caused such massive damage, largely due to the modifications completed on the Chicheng last year, or rather, related to the carrier’s initial design.

Originally, Chicheng had three layers of flight decks, more precisely, a three-stage staggered flight deck with a double-layer hangar at the back. It was only after commissioning that it was realized this clever design was meaningless, and it returned to the shipyard four years ago for a comprehensive overhaul.

During this overhaul, the main change was to level out the flight deck, set up a semi-enclosed hangar below, and add a very small island structure forward on the port side. An annoying funnel was also placed on the side, bent downwards to eliminate smoke interference with the deck.

Additionally, an elevator was installed in the middle of the flight deck.

The purpose of adding this elevator was to increase the dispatch and recovery speed of the ship-borne aircraft, shortening the turnover period between the flight deck and the hangar. Don’t forget, under the previous design, ship-borne aircraft could take off directly from inside the hangar; the top layer of the flight deck was mainly used for recovering ship-borne aircraft.

However, the installation of the elevator during the remodeling inevitably compromised the overall strength of the flight deck.

Moreover, the deck of the hangar below the elevator was not reinforced!

Perhaps the engineers thought that since they had already followed the Bulan Royal Navy in reinforcing the flight deck, they did not need to reinforce the hangar deck as well. Besides, the structural strength of the elevator itself was not low, essentially adding a protective top plate above the hangar deck.

Of course, it was also definitely related to the severely excessive displacement.

After this improvement, Chicheng’s standard displacement exceeded 36,000 tons. The already not very robust propulsion system was not enhanced, and the speed decreased from 60 km/h to 31.2 km/h, certainly necessitating efforts to reduce tonnage.

Regardless, just one bomb ended the Chicheng.

Although the Chicheng did not sink immediately after the bombing, and the crew did not give up and were still making desperate rescue efforts, from the damage to the hull, particularly the substantial water ingress in many compartments, even without subsequent attacks, the Chicheng would definitely sink.

Indeed, the negative impacts of the modification cannot be ignored, including an increase in draft which considerably reduced reserve buoyancy, i.e., weakening the resistance to sinking.

Furthermore, the usage of armored flight decks raised the center of gravity, reducing the stability of the hull.

In summary, from the start of its conversion from a battlecruiser, the design of Chicheng had many issues, some of which were irreparable or unsolvable through modifications. These issues had not emerged previously because the ship had not been tested by fire; this time, they were fully exposed.

Of course, similar fatal flaws existed in almost all Treaty Type carriers, perhaps even more severely.

The Chicheng, having not sunk immediately, instead became a magnet for bombs and torpedoes.

Merely three minutes later, at 2:13 p.m., Chicheng was hit again.

The impact point was in the rear part of the flight deck, which punctured the flight deck, but did not break through the hangar deck. It exploded inside the hangar, destroying half of the hangar and blowing away several High-altitude Guns arranged at the rear of the ship, substantially reducing the rear hemisphere’s high-altitude firepower.

At 2:17 p.m., Chicheng endured the fiercest attack.

Led by Major Shenpu, squadron leader of the First Squadron of the Shipborne Air Force Wing, twenty-two Flying Fish divided into two Plane Groups, attacking simultaneously from both left and right sides, with at least seventeen dropping torpedoes within a thousand meters of Chicheng.

Subsequently, at least seven torpedoes hit Chicheng.

Without a doubt, this was a fatal blow.

Not to mention a carrier, even a thick-skinned battleship could not withstand the onslaught of seven warheads of air torpedoes, each weighing over two hundred kilograms!

According to tests conducted by the Imperial Navy, an air torpedo nicknamed "Dart" could sink a Destroyer with a single hit.

In the next three minutes, Chicheng was hit by two more 250-kilogram bombs.

Although these two bombs exploded inside the hull, aside from killing and injuring hundreds of officers and soldiers, they did not cause more severe damage.

By 2:20 p.m., the officers and soldiers on Chicheng had essentially given up trying.

At the same time, hundreds of kilometers away, the Ling River sank.

Under the captain’s forceful orders, including Lan Yun, officers and soldiers of the Mobile Fleet Headquarter boarded transport boats and left the flagship that was about to sink.

Ten minutes later, around 2:30 p.m., the Captain of Chicheng issued the order to abandon ship and also ordered to open the keel floods gates, letting the battleship sink by itself.

Following this, the officers and soldiers of Chicheng began the evacuation, boarding lifeboats heading to the approaching Light Cruiser.

This massive warship still stubbornly floated on the surface of the sea.

It was not that it would not sink, but rather that the sinking was not so rapid.

However, for the officers and soldiers of Chicheng, this was not a bad thing.

Because the warship did not sink immediately, there was ample time to organize the evacuation of the crew calmly and to provide assistance to the injured.

After struggling for over an hour, around 4 p.m., Chicheng was finally completely swallowed by the sea.

According to the battle reports later disclosed by the Saiyi Navy, out of approximately seventeen hundred officers and soldiers on Chicheng, fewer than five hundred made it back to their homeland alive, although some died onboard other ships; about a thousand perished or were lost with Chicheng.

Most of the deceased were personnel from the engineering and navigation departments.

However, Chicheng was not the first Saiyi carrier to be destroyed in battle.