Travel through the Qing Dynasty and become emperor

Chapter 635 The end of the naval battle
The nineteen cruisers had formed a chaotic gourd-shaped occupancy with five ships at the front and the rest chaotically clustered at the rear, while the five battleships in the west sea area formed a small gourd shape with two in front and three in back.

However, at this time, Lukins has not realized his crisis. He is annoyed by the sinking of the Prinz Eugen. Even if he could go to Berlin, he would be punished by the harsh head of state when he went back. Thinking about it further, if the Atlantic Fleet was buried in the Atlantic Ocean, he was sure that Hitler would kill the whole family.

But he is a proud admiral, and his sense of honor does not allow him to shrink back. Therefore, seeing the Bismarck showing signs of failure under the attack of the enemy's eastern fleet, he carefully avoided the artillery fire from the west, While accelerating to approach the Admiral Hipper, it moved from the position of the gourd head to the tail.

There are too many ships on both sides of this naval battle, and the sea has long since lost its tranquility earlier.The sun is getting brighter and brighter.At eleven o'clock, Sa Zhenbing finally realized his first step plan. Ten ships of his main fleet had been inserted into the central part of the big gourd. Of course, at this time the gourd was basically out of shape, and the protruding One of the five Hulutou ships has been sunk, and three of them have penetrated into the center of the cruiser convoy, and the two sides are using various artillery fire to strangle them at close range.And the other ship unexpectedly escaped westward between the Admiral Hipper and the Bismarck, and unfortunately happened at this moment. The freeboard of the Scharnhorst, which was originally not high, was captured Lu Zuo rammed into the middle, and even more unfortunately, the underwater part of Lu Zuo had terrifying sharp corners.Fortunately, the captain of the Scharnhorst ordered a turn as large as possible at the critical moment, which barely avoided the super impact force of the right ship. Even so, the captain still faced the crew on the Luzo They curse loudly.

Even so, the power system of the Scharnhorst can no longer operate normally. After the huge vibration, there seems to be something wrong with the boiler. Except for a large amount of steam, it seems that it can no longer generate power, and can only maintain 3 knots. speed.

Lukins was so angry that he almost fainted. For him, this was undoubtedly the worst day since the founding of the Atlantic Fleet.He ordered without hesitation that if any more warships escaped, the Bismarck could open fire on any defectors. He could not tolerate such deserters.

While he was cursing, he suddenly found that his flagship had attracted almost all the artillery fire, the vibration had hardly stopped, explosions exploded one after another, and the huge Bismarck had become a living target!It was originally intended to cover other warships that had been severely damaged, but now it has become a shield.While he ordered the Bismarck to turn to avoid the artillery fire, he observed the battle situation at sea.

The current position of the Scharnhorst is exactly in the center of the Bismarck and the opponent's group. All the enemy's submarines have formed a fan-shaped encirclement, and dozens of white waves are breaking through the dense battleship group here!

Sa Zhenbing and his subordinates all opened their eyes wide, waiting for the effect of this wave of torpedo attacks.

Of course, after this hour, our own losses were also very heavy. The Kaiji and Huantai were seriously injured and withdrew from the combat sea area, where they saw the British fleet with the Mi Ziqi flag approaching the battlefield.But Jingqing was still trapped in the chaos, and the flames were soaring into the sky, and it seemed to be abolished.In addition to one of the enemy's escaped and two sunk, four of the enemy's ships have been disabled.In terms of the number of ships, the Eastern Fleet is still relatively weak, but overall it is already superior to the other side.

"Boom" several loud bangs shook people's eardrums to burst, and Lukins' body was thrown up by a violent explosion. It seemed that the entire command tower was thrown into the air by the explosion. When his body landed, he had already It passed out. This time, the flagship Bismarck shared a quarter of the dozens of torpedoes, and nearly a dozen torpedoes exploded on the left side of the warship.Once again, this giant ship became the shield of the right ship and fulfilled its duty, but the price was too cruel.

On the high freeboard of the Admiral Hipper, another behemoth, many sailors are jumping into the sea from the right side. Although that is useless, it is better than those idiots on the left jumping in the direction of the torpedo. next move.Three torpedoes accurately hit Admiral Hipper, and what awaited the ship was a sinking process that lasted four to 10 minutes. After only three years of floating on the sea, this world-renowned warship finally to the end of its life.

Just after this wave of attacks, in retaliation, the German frigate dropped more than a dozen depth charges, immediately blowing up two Chinese submarines, and none of the more than 300 people on the two boats were spared.In contrast, China still took advantage of it this time. At the meager price of two torpedo boats, it exchanged for a battleship Admiral Hipper, and the Germans lost a lot.

At this time, the second wave of torpedo attacks also began. The cruiser group headed by the oldest ship Jingyuan also participated in this attack. More than a dozen torpedoes broke through the waves on the sea where golden snakes danced.

At this time, black smoke billowed on the surface of the sea, and the five-hour naval battle was so tense that people could not breathe. The already exhausted Chinese sailors hardly noticed this wave of torpedo attacks that could kill them.

At this level, the two sides are completely mechanically firing, moving shells, and adding coal. The two sides on the sea are intertwined, and the enemy and the enemy are indistinguishable.The smoke of gunpowder has already blackened the flag.

The sound of machines was rumbling in the sky, and the aircraft clusters of the two sides were also fighting together. The Lanxiang fighters faced the Ju87 Stuka attack aircraft. The two sides were evenly matched in terms of aircraft performance and piloting skills. A parked plane fell from the sky dragging black smoke and plunged into the icy sea water.But this is a naval battle after all, and the final decisive force lies in the duel of warships.

Just as the torpedo group was moving rapidly towards its target, a change occurred. After struggling for more than 30 minutes, the Admiral Hipper slowly sank to the bottom of the water. The water current on the sea surface was completely disturbed, and all the fragments of small objects not far away, corpses and moving torpedoes were all sucked into the bottom of the sea by this huge vortex.The remaining torpedoes also deviated from the original channel, and only one hit the cruiser Lüzo at the end of the queue.For this medium-sized cruiser, a [-]-inch torpedo is fatal, and his partner, the Blücher, did not perform his duty of protection at all. After a futile burst of machine gun fire, they gave up their efforts and watched Watching the torpedo explode on the bow of the Lu Zuo, the huge waves set off almost swept all the people on the front deck into the sea.Fortunately, this torpedo did not hit a vital part, but hit the ram.

It was already 1:14 in the afternoon.

"Retreat!" Lukins, who had come to his senses, saw that the situation was over, so he had to grit his teeth and make this decision. The enemy had won overwhelming victories on both the east and west sides. One battleship was lost, and six to eight cruisers had been lost. Except for two battleships, Baiyun and Feiyun, which were severely damaged, one cruiser was sunk, and five or six were seriously injured, the rest of the other warships were also fierce. fight.

Today's strength comparison is that battleships are five against six, cruisers are pitiful against ten, and the flagship Bismarck has hundreds of bombs on it, and it is already crumbling at sea.

And on the far sea, although the cunning British and French warships are still watching from a distance, God knows when they will come and suddenly throw themselves into the battle of beating the dog in the water.

The British are undoubtedly cunning. In contrast, the French have more than enough heart and power. With the strength of their mosquito ships, if they want to join such a large-scale naval battle, they can only serve as cannon fodder.

Lukins saw the weak area in the northwest, and after hesitating for a long time, he ordered the entire fleet to advance at full speed to the northwest!
Amidst the sound of rumbling guns and explosions, the remaining five battleships of the Atlantic Fleet spewed black smoke and rushed to the northwest with full horsepower, while the dozen or so cruisers that surrounded the battle group also began to break through frantically.

"Damn, it's not so easy to run away!" Sa Zhenbing spat hard, and immediately ordered the carrier-based bomber fleet and torpedo fleet to rush over to intercept, and the submarine formation released the third wave of torpedoes.

As a result, the remnants of the Atlantic Fleet were blocked by bombs and torpedoes and could not speed up at all, so they had to turn around and fight again with the Chinese warships that rushed up.

At nearly three o'clock in the afternoon, the fleets of the two sides got closer and closer, gradually forming a circular war zone. During this hour, one battleship on each side was seriously injured. The German ship was Blücher, and the superstructure was hit. During the battle, a chimney was destroyed, and a large amount of smoke and dust could not be dissipated due to the damage of the pipe, so that the full-speed march had to be stopped, and the ensuing artillery fire immediately ignited the superstructure, and the entire ship had lost its combat capability. Unable to bear the high temperature, he had to jump into the sea to survive.The Chinese Dongyun was accurately hit in the abdomen by a torpedo. Fortunately, the explosion of the torpedo did not completely destroy the armor, but the bottom ship had a large degree of water ingress. After some self-rescue, it was hit by a shell again. The rear deck was detonated, some shells were detonated, and the rear deck was almost completely destroyed.

The two ships withdrew from the battle one after another, and were towed by British and French warships to the north and south sea areas respectively.They finally fulfilled their responsibilities as allies a little bit.

In addition, three more cruisers were sunk on the German side, and the largest number of cruisers has become single digits, while the Singapore fleet still retains [-] cruisers. In terms of battleships, only the flagship Bismarck and Tipinitz remain in the Atlantic Fleet. However, the Chinese side has an absolute advantage, and the balance of victory has been greatly tilted towards Sa Zhenbing.

"Retreat! Bastard, retreat at full speed!" Lukins' voice had become hoarse, and he certainly didn't want to bury his old bones in the Red Sea.

After being hit by more than a dozen shells and torpedoes, the Bismarck fled in a panic to the northwest with the few remaining warships dragging long black smoke.

(End of this chapter)