New World War II Eagle Strikes the Sky

Almost at the same time as the destroyer Yudachi caught fire and exploded, the 356mm main gun of the battleship Kirishima also began to spit flames at the US military. The Japanese army's excellent gunnery performance was exhaustive, and just the first shot formed a stride towards the cruiser Atlanta.The tens of meters high water column stirred up by the giant bomb of the battleship surrounded the Atlanta in the middle.Major General Scott, who was on board the Atlanta, knew that something was wrong when he saw this situation, so he quickly ordered to turn the rudder to dodge.But at this moment, a 356 shell fired from the Hiei directly hit the stern of the Atlanta, and the C turret was completely destroyed. Fortunately, the fire door connected to the ammunition depot was tightly closed.But another loss was far more deadly than the loss of the c turret: the reconnaissance plane carried by the cruiser was hit and ignited a fire.In the dark night, the fire turned the Atlanta into an oversized light bulb.So all kinds of shells flew towards her one after another.

In just a few minutes, the cruiser Atlanta was hit by a 356mm shell and at least 30 rounds of 5-inch and 6-inch shells, and almost all the superstructure of the entire warship was destroyed.The captain died in battle, and Admiral Scott was seriously injured. Before he fell into a coma, he gave the order to abandon the ship. Five minutes later, the cruiser Atlanta, which had been burned to a torch, was hit consecutively by two Type 5 torpedoes and sank into the sea almost within a few minutes.Most of the U.S. officers and soldiers on board were killed in battle, including Rear Admiral Scott, and 93 people are missing.Some witnesses claimed to have seen them board the lifeboat before the warship sank, but no one has ever seen the lifeboat and the people on it.No one knows what happened in this dark night.

When the Japanese warship besieged the Atlanta, the Americans were not idle. The b-17 at high altitude first used searchlights to illuminate the battleship Hiei.Countless shells flew over, and the Hiei was hit with more than 80 rounds. Although it could not penetrate his armor according to the law, her superstructure was also smashed, and all kinds of sighting facilities were almost destroyed. fighting power.But this is not the biggest blow she will bear.

Captain Stern divided the Night Assassin's torpedo planes into two groups to attack the two battleships of the Japanese army respectively. They quietly approached the Japanese fleet from the opposite direction of the US fleet.The sound of the torpedo plane engine was completely covered by the roar of artillery fire at this time.The only thing that could reveal the target were two small searchlights, one red and one green, used to measure the altitude.But these two lights are not too bright, and when they attract the attention of the enemy, the distance is not far away.What's more, at this time, the enemy has to carry out target recognition and judgment, and it is difficult to judge distance and speed in the dark.It is almost impossible to effectively fire and intercept them.

Now Captain Stern personally approached the battleship Hiei with the first team.The Japanese on the ship, who were busy avoiding US artillery fire, knew nothing about their coming.Approaching to a distance of 400 meters, Captain Stern took the lead in dropping the torpedo from a direction at an angle of 70 degrees to the Yuhiei's course.Immediately afterwards, the other four torpedo planes also dropped torpedoes one after another.

Captain Stern, who was the first to drop the torpedo, turned the plane around and began to climb.At this time, he observed 3 violent explosions on the side of the Hiei: 5 of the 3 torpedoes hit, and all of them were on the side of the warship.This blow is definitely enough for this battleship to drink a pot.American torpedoes were a great tragedy until '43.It is completely opposite to the Japanese torpedo that has a bad temper and will explode if it is not done well (the 93 spears are very sensitive, and almost half of them will explode halfway after being shot by the waves), American torpedoes are definitely in the woods that feel super dull.It is not enough to apply the phrase "a needle pierced, I don't know whoops" used to describe Jia Yingchun nicknamed "Er Mutou" in "A Dream of Red Mansions". Neither will feel like super wood.In actual combat, there have been many American torpedoes hitting enemy ships, being knocked into two pieces, and still not losing their temper and exploding. On the contrary, half of the torpedoes floating on the water are often used as lifebuoys by Japanese soldiers who fell into the water.

Later (that) after repeated experiments, although the problem has not been completely solved, at least, it is finally clear under what circumstances this embarrassing torpedo will explode and under what circumstances it will not explode:

If the hit angle is too positive, and the contact angle with the target is between 80-90 degrees, well, it will basically not explode. If it is 90 degrees, it will definitely not explode, even if the impact force can smash the torpedo, It also never explodes.So if the torpedo you dropped hits the target accurately but doesn't explode, it's probably because you aimed too precisely and hit too squarely.But the hit angle is too biased, for example, the hit angle is less than 45 degrees, well, basically it will not explode.This time, three bombs exploded successfully, indicating that Captain Stern's control of the hit angle was very successful.

Lieutenant General Abe Koki got up from the floor with the help of his assistant. The continuous explosion just now caused the battleship Hiei to vibrate violently. Abe Koki fell to the ground without standing still.

"What happened just now!" Captain Nishida Masao asked, "Let all departments report the damage."

"Sir, the starboard side was hit by 3 enemy torpedoes, water began to flood in, the steering gear was damaged, and the ship's operation became difficult."

Under normal circumstances, Hiei's injury is not irreparable, but this is Guadalcanal Island.Here, there is no more fatal problem than impaired navigation capabilities. If you cannot stay away from the combat range of U.S. bombers at night at high speed, you have to be prepared to be surrounded by U.S. dive bombers and torpedo fleets during the day.

"General," Masao Nishida walked in front of Abe, "Considering the state of the ship, it is difficult to continue to perform the duties of the flagship. General, please move other warships to continue commanding."

Abe also understands that the current Hiei is really not suitable to be a flagship. It has been hit by a mine and it is impossible to keep up with the movement of other ships. Moreover, the radio antenna and signal light system of Hiei are seriously damaged. The conductor caused a lot of trouble.

"Okay, then I will trouble you, Captain." Abe decided to leave the Hiei.

Before leaving, Abe ordered: "The destroyer Teruzuki and the destroyer Akatsuki escorted the Hiei to retreat. The destroyer Yukikaze, the destroyer Tianjin Kaze, and the destroyer Shigure should pay attention to search for possible torpedo boats on the starboard side. (Ri himself never thought They will be attacked by torpedo planes, so I think it was done by torpedo boats.) "Originally, according to Yamamoto's order, once the battleship is damaged and it is difficult to retreat, it should take the initiative to rush to the beach and run aground as a fixed firepower point to continue fighting.But Ri himself was worried that doing so would lead to the final capture of the battleship.The damage to the reputation of the Empire would be too great if the Americans captured an Imperial battleship and put it on publicity.So later this order added an amendment clause, that is: the battleship must be allowed to rush to the beach after it has suffered irreparable damage.But what exactly does this "unrepairable" mean is really difficult to grasp. You must know that the Americans later recovered most of the battleships that sank in Pearl Harbor and repaired them.In other words, these sunk battleships are not considered "irreparable damage".For a battleship, it is really not that difficult to get to such an "unrepairable" state.And it is even more difficult to wash up on the beach after suffering such damage.In addition, Abe was unwilling to let himself become the first commander of the empire to lose a battleship, so he decided to let the Hiei retreat.

Just after the Hiei was attacked, the b-17 above pointed its searchlights at the battleship Kirishima again.

Abe was sitting on a traffic speedboat at this time, approaching the battleship Kirishima, but suddenly saw that it was brightly illuminated, and Abe immediately felt that Kirishima might be unlucky with Hiei.

There was nothing wrong with this feeling. As soon as he saw that the Kirishima was illuminated, Callahan immediately ordered the cruisers to concentrate their fire on the Kirishima.Half a minute later, Kirishima was caught in a hail of bullets.

Seeing the water column continuously rising around the Kirishima, Abe knew that if he leaned on it now, it would be like a long-lived old man hanged himself-he thought his life was too long.

So where to go?The Nagara is of course another option, but when Abe turned to the Nagara, he found that something happened to the Nagara.A 127mm shell hit the Nagara's seaplane launcher, not only destroying the plane above it, but also igniting the fuel on the plane, so the Nagara was suddenly exposed in the night.

The most frightening thing in a night battle is a fire. Once it is on fire, it will be conspicuous. Once it is conspicuous, it will be watched by onlookers, and it will become a magnet for shells.This rule is also valid for Nagara.The 127 shells of the US destroyer ran over with a buzzing and whistling sound like flies seeing stinky shit.As a result, after the Japanese army withdrew back afterwards, the Nagara was hit by 26 shells, and the entire superstructure was smashed.

Fortunately, there is a Japanese warship fighting not far away, well, there is nowhere to go anyway, so I went there.A few minutes later, Abe's traffic boat approached the warship, and in a short while, his lieutenant general's flag was flying high on the mast of this great destroyer, the destroyer Yukikaze.

Just as Abe approached the Yukikaze, Yukikaze's curse worked again, and another team of Dark Night Assassins had already approached the Kirishima...

Kirishima's luck was much better than Hiei's. Only one torpedo hit him, and of course it was possible, well, the possibility was very high, and only one torpedo that hit him exploded.With Kirishima's displacement of 356 tons, an air-dropped light torpedo would generally not cause too fatal damage.In fact, the same is true, at least for now, there is no big problem.The Kirishima even continued to use its 6mm cannon to launch counterattacks at the US ships.She fires far fewer shells than her opponent, and her firing frequency is much lower, but she is also much more threatening than her opponent's 1-inch gun. One minute later, two 356mm shells she fired hit the US cruiser Juno, one of which directly penetrated the armor of the Juno's ammunition depot and exploded inside.The shell detonated the ammunition depot, split the Juno in two, and sank almost instantly into the sea.All the more than [-] people on board were martyred, including the five sons of Thomas Sullivan and his wife in Waterloo, Iowa.Later, in order to avoid such tragedies from happening again, the U.S. Navy specially promulgated regulations stipulating that immediate family members of the same family should not serve on the same warship.

The battle between the destroyers was already extremely fierce: the U.S. destroyer USS Monson recklessly turned on its searchlights to search for the enemy ship, but instead exposed itself. It was besieged by the Japanese army and hit more than 20 guns. The hull was flooded and sank half an hour later.

An accident occurred when the May Rain launched a torpedo to the US military. A 93-type torpedo suddenly exploded during launch, causing a fire on board. As a result, 8 shells were hit by 4 shells, 6 of which were 14 from the US cruiser. Inch shells. [-] minutes later, the Mayrain sank.

Taking advantage of the May Rain being beaten, the U.S. destroyer Patton rushed up and fired 2000 torpedoes at the Kirishima at a distance of 4 meters, but none of them hit. One of the rounds hit part of the waterline, causing massive flooding. The Patton sank 356 minutes later.

Although Kirishima quickly achieved two consecutive victories after being hit by a torpedo, Abe was terrified by the previous torpedo itself.Yong Ye's (that) self-cultivation sentence "Don't destroy the warship" suddenly popped up in his mind.So as soon as he boarded the destroyer Xuefeng, he immediately ordered: "Abandon the bombardment plan and return!"

After Abe ordered the other destroyers except Yukikaze to stop, other ships began to withdraw from the battle one after another.Callahan commanded the US fleet in hot pursuit.In the dark, Japanese destroyers released a large number of Type 93 torpedoes. At 13:0 on 12th, the cruiser San Francisco, which was chasing the enemy ship, was hit by a Type 93 torpedo, and the entire capital of the ship was blown up. At 0:13, the destroyer Fletcher was also hit by a Type 93 torpedo. It exploded and caught fire immediately, and sank a few minutes later. Only two officers and men on board survived.

Concerned about the Type 93 torpedo, Callaghan ordered the pursuit to stop.So this boiling night gradually quieted down.

In this battle, two destroyers of the Japanese army were sunk, two battleships were injured (one was seriously injured), one cruiser was seriously injured, and the other destroyers, the Xuekaze, were damaged to a certain extent.

In the U.S. military, two cruisers and three destroyers were sunk, one cruiser was seriously injured, and other ships were also injured to varying degrees.

Based on the results of the battle at this time alone, the loss of the US military seems to be greater.But this battle is not over yet, because it will be dawn in a few hours!