Bismarck

The man and the mouse knew this very well, but they kept it to themselves.

Eugen next to him blinked his big eyes in confusion, thinking to himself, could this be the legendary telepathic connection?

Then Top inexplicably received a hint of resentment that he also wanted to eat candy.

But now, the cruel war is still going on.

More missiles rushed in, and even with the interference, one missile after another still passed by the warship's body. Some lucky missiles even hit the warship's hull directly! Amid the tracer of water columns and Gatling guns, every now and then, a loud bang was heard in the blazing fireballs - that was the whine that the warship's steel body could not withstand!

From time to time, there were vibrations from explosions underfoot, and the smell of gunpowder and the sound of gunfire filled the entire command room. Lütjens' face was as gloomy as water. He stood in front of the porthole observation slit protected by the 350 mm thick armor of the command cabin, silently watching the battle between the sea and the air.

In the radio headset placed behind him, the captains of the other three warships were also sending reports on the damage to their warships via the radio - now that all four ship girls have joined the battle, the captains are responsible for transmitting the relevant intelligence exchanges and communications.

However, in the face of the saturation attack, the losses of several warships in just two minutes were already quite serious!

"The Tirpitz was hit by four shells. The front deck, bridge and port deck were damaged. The port main armored area and anti-torpedo TDS were cracked and flooded. Repairs are underway..."

"Top reports that the front bridge, front main turret and rear deck of the Prinz Eugen were bombed. The bridge is on fire, water is entering the rear, and some bulkheads are broken and leaking. At least 27 soldiers were killed... I'm fine, we can still continue to fight..."

"The Zeppelin was hit by two bullets on the bow and side, and three near misses. Part of the underwater hull was flooded, and the port side was tilted three degrees and the longitudinal tilt was five degrees. The cabins are now being sealed, and water is being poured into the rear cabin for rescue... Fortunately, the flight deck has the support of the reinforced beam structure, and after setting up temporary supports, it can still take off and land aircraft..."

The reports from Bonte, Lindemann, and Top on the radio were clearly being heard with gritted teeth, but Lütjens was no longer in the mood to listen to them - just now, with two more loud noises, he could feel that his warship had tilted five or six degrees! In addition to the tilt, the damage control team reported in the megaphone that the bridge had caught fire again, and the fire could not be controlled in the short term. With the missile storm coming, this was not good news!

The infrared seeker relies on heat sources to guide missile attacks. Now the situation of the missile attack is obviously more urgent than before! Not to mention that with the damage to the superstructure, some Gatling guns were also destroyed. Just seeing the chain of fire from his ship gradually turned into short bursts, and sometimes even intermittent, relying on the warship's "tail swinging and sharp turns" to "wipe" the missile barrage, how could the battle-hardened Lütjens not know that the Persian cat under his feet has tried her best to resist this wave of missile attacks.

"Eugen was hit by three missiles, Tirpitz was hit by four, and even Zeppelin was hit by two missiles and three near misses. As for myself and the Bismarck at the forefront..." Thinking about the losses of his fleet, Lütjens' face was still expressionless, but his heart was not at peace. He even stretched out his fingers to count with heartache: "She was hit by at least five or six missiles, and it's only been a few minutes... And this is just a missile attack in one direction, there are two formations on the other side."

Looking up at the dark and nameless night sky, the intermittent chain of fire and the successive release of heat source bombs showed that his flagship had not given up resistance. However, the situation on the battlefield was not optimistic.

"…The firepower and damage on the port side have reached their limit. If the missile comes from the front of us, the jammers we are towing behind us will be useless… In this case, we must turn around, otherwise we will not be able to withstand the missile attack from Iceland in the west…"

He silently calculated the time of the local bomber group and the Icelandic bomber group, and found that the time window was very tight - it was already five minutes past four, but the missile barrage had not yet passed, and the British bombers in the direction of Iceland in the west would enter the bombing range in at most one minute. Even if the missiles took four minutes to fly 30 kilometers, the "window" left for the entire formation to turn was only a short three minutes!

Because the fleet is now flying head-on with the Icelandic aircraft, the towed jammers towing the stern have no effect at all. If the fleet cannot be transferred in these three minutes, the jammers can be turned on, and the relatively intact anti-aircraft firepower on the other side of the hull and the starboard armored area can face the missiles, the consequences will probably not be very good!

Lütjens always did what he thought, not to mention that time was running out. The battle-hardened admiral immediately held the porthole with one hand, turned around and grabbed the radio microphone: "Bontay, Lindemann, Top, pay attention, the entire fleet will be ready to turn... We will start turning after the first wave of missiles are fired, and the entire fleet must change its collective heading to the south before the missiles from the Icelandic bomber group arrive - especially you, Bontay, the center of gravity of the Zeppelin is high, you have to start turning in advance..."

Before he could finish his words, a series of explosions resounded throughout the Bismarck battleship. Even with the heavy armor and the support of the entire bridge structure, the command tower was shaking under the violent vibration. Everyone, including Lütjens, fell to the ground under the strong vibration that was like an 8.0 magnitude earthquake, and many people were directly injured!

In the eyes of Bonte, Lindemann and Top, along with the sudden interruption of the radio call, they saw the originally tall silhouette of the Bismarck battleship not far away, becoming fragmented and flying in all directions in the flash of violent fireballs!

Under the barrage of bullets, Bismarck, which was at the forefront to protect the safety of its sisters and had already suffered serious damage to its side close-in defense guns, was hit one after another by several anti-ship missiles in the missile rain of the second wave of bomber brigade from the direction of the British mainland!

Chapter 806: Hurting each other!

Four loud noises erupted one after another, and the superstructure of the Bismarck was suddenly engulfed in flames.

Not only did Lütjens and the staff in the command tower fall to the ground, some even had their heads broken and bloody. Even the battleship Bismarck fell to the ground at this moment and was unable to stand up for a while. Even her figure became a little illusory!

Four anti-ship missiles hit her front bridge and hull in succession. A 150mm secondary gun near the chimney and a 105mm secondary gun next to it had completely turned into a pile of scrap metal still emitting thick smoke. The front bridge that had been hit by two missiles was still tall, but it seemed to be shaky in the thick black smoke. Then, under the bridge, on the port side of the No. 145 main turret near the bow, an anti-ship missile penetrated the 160mm secondary armor on the upper part of the side, above the dome armor that had been thickened to mm, that is, next to the central engine room, the position of the internal isolation armor exploded, opening a huge gap as high as a floor on the side of the entire ship! The warship was moving forward at high speed, rolling up the churning waves, and pouring in from here in an endless stream!

Fortunately, the design concept of German warships is to use multi-layer armor and dome armor to separate the space inside the ship to control the scope of damage. Moreover, as early as after the Icelandic naval battle, the captain, who knew that his own defense was not enough, insisted on improving her. During the nearly five-month overhaul, her dome armor had been increased from the original 80-110 mm to 160 mm thick, and even the internal isolation armor was increased from 30-45 mm to 45-70 mm. With the dome armor and internal isolation armor separating the damaged area, even such damage was only above the dome armor, and some water entered...

Even so, Bismarck felt his head was a little dizzy, as if he had been hit by several sledgehammers in succession.

After all, the bridge is the brain of the warship. If the bridge is damaged, although her actual thinking ability will not be greatly reduced, she will indeed become mentally unstable.

And how could the anti-ship missiles from the other side give her time to recover? !

The warship's stacked superstructures and chimneys emitting 500-degree hot smoke were perfect reflectors for radar and infrared missiles. Now the blazing flames of the superstructures attracted the attention of a large number of missiles.

Although there were not many missiles left in this wave of attacks, under the heat signal of the raging fire on the warship's superstructure, the remaining anti-ship missiles were like sharks that smelled blood, and they pounced on it even more fiercely!

Bismarck, enduring severe pain and dizziness, quickly got up again and continued to operate the Gatling close-in defense gun. At this moment, she didn't even have the time to visit her captain. On the battlefield where missiles were coming, time became more and more precious. Success or failure could even be decided in an instant. She had no ability to take care of others.

Seeing dozens of missiles coming towards her, she felt a little desperate.

Even though she had known about the existence of missiles, all previous battles had been artillery battles, and she was used to that rhythm. Suddenly, she had to fight missiles, and she couldn't adapt very well for a while.

However, just when Bismarck was feeling a little discouraged, Tizi and Eugen suddenly appeared beside her.

"Sister Bismarck! Let me help you!"

"Sister, I'm going to interfere. You have to hold on."

Two more chains of fire appeared at the positions of the remaining machine guns on the port side. And beside the two warships behind Bismarck, one large and one small, infrared heat source bombs were suddenly thrown out one after another like fireworks. And in the electromagnetic space that cannot be seen by the naked eye but can be received by the radio receiver, two strong electronic interferences also appeared instantly.

The incoming anti-ship missiles began to sway under the Bismarck's heat source and jammer signals. Some missiles even turned their warheads and passed by the Bismarck. The slightly "smarter" missiles were also caught in the aiming circle of the three Gatling guns.

"Are you...are you all right?"

After recovering, Bismarck looked at the missiles exploding one after another in the sky under the strafing of Gatling tracer bullets, and was a little dazed.

"Tsk, stupid sister, let me take care of you first!"

The arrogant Queen of Loneliness in the North curled her lips and rolled her eyes at the missiles filling the sky - the Gatling gun in her hand blew up two more missiles, and she even cleverly blew up a missile that should have been able to pass by her - the exploding missile dragged over two missiles that were originally swaying.

"Eh? Sister Tizi, your idea is pretty good!"

On the other side, Eugen instantly felt that she had mastered a new level of posture, and then, determined to become the shield of the fleet, she followed suit and "detonated" a missile flying to the other side.

"Wait! Eugen! That's the direction of your real body!" Looking at the direction of several missiles that were taken away, Bismarck was instantly frightened - to be honest, given the distance between her and him, the missile would only fly for another 20 seconds at most!

"Ah?!" Eugen panicked.

Then he dropped the Gatling gun in his hand and disappeared from the spot like a panicked little rabbit. Then, a tongue of tracer fire appeared in the direction of the Prinz Eugen heavy cruiser.

Although, it seems a bit hesitant to say...

At the same time, in the smoke-filled bridge of the Bismarck battleship, Lütjens, with a broken forehead and blood all over his face, stumbled to his feet.

Looking at the smoke billowing and the messy bridge, Lütjens covered his forehead and clenched his teeth. He held the chart table and moved his already unstable body to the side of the microphone. He opened the microphone cover to confirm that the microphone was intact. The admiral held the window and opened his voice, which had become a little hoarse because of the smoke of war and the suppressed anxiety in his heart:

"Attention, all fleets, attention, I am Lütjens... As soon as this wave of missiles passes, turn immediately! Head due south, starting from the Zeppelin..."

Bismarck, who had blown up another missile, was the first to hear the hoarse but firm voice of her captain coming from the bridge behind her. It was the voice that she would hear only in dire situations. Moreover, she heard her captain's voice even now, when the battle was in full swing and the situation was so critical that even she was finding it difficult to cope. Moreover, she also felt the look of her captain in the command tower, his face covered in blood but full of determination as he gave orders.

Although this scene has been seen many times in the crises of previous naval battles, but...

In fact, every time she felt that she was about to give up, she could always see her captain's determination to persevere to the end no matter how great the difficulties were. And, similarly, every time, it was the captain's determination that supported her to continue fighting - until she defeated the enemy and won!

"My captain, let your battleship win the victory for you this time!"

For some reason, the softest part of his heart softened instantly, and Bismarck even suddenly felt so moved that he burst into tears.

After receiving the captain's order, she gathered her thoughts and started to move forward. The unsinkable battleship, which was burning with raging flames but barely ensuring the safety of the core area, with its bow cutting through the waves, faced the surging sea breeze of the North Atlantic Warm Current, dragged by the scorching smoke and flames, and turned her iron body with a displacement of more than 50,000 tons, which had already taken on water and tilted seven degrees to the left.

Her starboard side is still basically intact, she can still continue to fight!

Although there were still a hundred heavy bombers due west on the starboard side after he turned, and there were also about sixty carrier-based attack aircraft in front of him, but now that the Allied escort fighters in the sky had gradually retreated, Zeppelin, with her remaining but assembled fighters, had begun to engage the carrier-based attack aircraft in front - from the tactical consideration of cutting off the opponent's pincer attack, the carrier-based attack aircraft were undoubtedly much easier to deal with than the heavy bombers with densely packed self-defense machine guns!

At this moment, in the cold wind, there were only a few missiles left from the first wave.

........................

As the last missile dropped by the 100 bombers from Iceland fell into the sea, the scarred Evil Spirit Fleet, together with the air force carrier fighters that had been frustrated for a long time, used their still working main guns and anti-aircraft guns to fire VT fuses at the carrier attack team to vent their anger. Then, they began to count the battle losses and carry out emergency repairs.

The statistical results came out very quickly, but the situation is not very optimistic...

The Bismarck, which had been stuck in the C turret before, was hit by fourteen "Bat" anti-ship missiles with a charge of up to 454KG in this missile attack by more than 105 aircraft from three groups of aircraft! Except for some 50 anti-aircraft guns and 37 anti-aircraft guns with shrapnel armor that can still be used, the main body of the superstructure was almost blown into an empty shell, and the anti-aircraft guns and close-in defense guns of the Phalanx also suffered heavy losses. The raging fire has not been controlled even now! Moreover, although most of the bombs hit the superstructure, some missiles and even near misses still exploded in the hull. The violent explosion damaged the hull and the armor, and even the TDS hidden deep underwater suffered certain damage in the fierce bombing.

In the later period, in order to protect the formation during the Icelandic bombing, Grape turned on the jammer at an excessive load, but the damage was not much better than her sister - she was hit by ten anti-ship missiles, and in the subsequent attack of the ship attackers, she was hit by an airborne torpedo in order to protect Eugen. Her entire hull deck was also blown to pieces, and a group of generator rooms were flooded and unable to work due to lightning strikes, which made her damage control work somewhat difficult. Moreover, even after reverse flooding and damage control, it had already shown a three-degree roll and a five-degree pitch, and the stern even sank by more than one meter and nearly two meters, and the speed dropped to 30 knots. In fact, if it were not for the large number of compartments and inner armor structures unique to German battleships - the original (historical) design was 45- mm, but after the Icelandic naval battle a few years ago, it was strengthened to - mm like her sister, and it could also act as a longitudinal structural wall to block a considerable amount of shrapnel and water ingress outside the core area. When the hull was flooded and sinking, and the dome armor had been "submerged" below the waterline, the water ingress of the Grape might have been even more serious!

In the middle of the two older sisters, Eugen, who was also desperately helping his sisters to attract firepower and act as the shield of the fleet with red eyes and gritted teeth, was hit by four missiles and two near misses in this sea-air battle! Under the powerful force of these 454 kg missiles, the two front main turrets were damaged and stuck, and the hull, deck and superstructure suffered extensive damage. Even the water ingress caused by underwater vibration caused Eugen to tilt six or seven degrees, almost losing its combat effectiveness!

The only thing to be thankful for is that after the previous great breakout, Eugen was modified in the Kiel Naval Shipyard, which not only increased the fuel load but also strengthened the defense. After paying 2400 tons of weight, her main armor increased from 80 mm to 100 mm, the dome armor increased from 30-40 mm to 80-90 mm, and the innermost defense of the underwater TDS increased from 20 mm to 30 mm. At the same time, the expansion of the TDS volume also increased the fuel reserve by 700 tons. Even the main turret of Eugen, which originally required manual operation, was equipped with a chain-based automatic loading system. In this way, although the full load displacement increased from 18000 tons to 21000 tons, the hull's defense, structural strength, and artillery firing rate all reached a higher level. Perhaps it was because of this, coupled with the fact that the anti-ship missiles had a relatively low trajectory and poor effect on the waterline and underwater compartments, that Eugen was able to barely keep up with the fleet after such a tragic attack.

However, thanks to everyone's efforts, the Zeppelin aircraft carrier, which actually had the most vulnerable survivability in the entire fleet, was hit by only four bombs in this missile saturation attack, and none of them damaged her most vulnerable waterline structure and chimney structure! Her main structure did not suffer greater damage, and the water intrusion into the hull and the fire in the hangar were all within the controllable range - it was also thanks to the fact that at this time the hangar was empty with only a dozen "empty" planes that had basically run out of fuel and ammunition after landing, and had no time to refuel and reload for a while, so the fire caused by the explosion was within the controllable range from the beginning. But despite this, there are only 38 planes left in the entire fleet that can be used - and even among the planes that can be deployed again, there are a large number of planes that need to be repaired immediately!

Looking at the heavy losses in the battle, Lütjens, whose forehead was already covered with bandages, was silent for a while.

Although according to the intelligence collected previously and the battle reports of the Norwegian Air Force, the aircraft dispatched by the Allied forces this time were the upper limit of the aircraft they could concentrate on attacking during this period of time - in other words, in the next five hours or so, they should not encounter another large-scale air raid of this scale again.

but……

However, military orders are as heavy as mountains. Not only have my superiors ordered me to break out of the encirclement at all costs, but the battle has been fought till now and there is no way of retreating!

…………and…………

At this moment, in the command room of the equally battered battleship Tirpitz, the lonely Queen of the North, who was grimacing in pain with wounds all over her body, finally got her chance for revenge!

After more than forty minutes of flying and searching, the missiles she guided finally found their target.

She had just finished a naval battle and returned to the command cabin to continue guiding missiles. On the one hand, she began to regroup the missiles that were scattered in the sky due to the performance limitations of the inertial gyroscope. On the other hand, as an electronic warfare expert, she was not limited to the maximum search distance of seven or eight kilometers of the missile-borne radar cricket, but gave full play to her talent for "passive radio monitoring."

"Sister always says that missiles need high-altitude pilot bombs or something... But even if the radar search distance is not enough, I still have a way!"

Tirpitz opened her search senses, leaned against Lindemann in her hamster cloak, and gritted her teeth as she accepted his comfort - although it was not known whether she was in pain or angry, she was definitely in a bad mood and wanted to get revenge on Tovey!

Moreover, radio monitoring and positioning is a very useful talent for her - as long as the missile's altitude is raised to more than 1500 meters, it will be able to receive radio signals over a wider range!

Even though, for ordinary electronic instruments, such a signal is very weak. However, Grape is not only a ship girl, but also a very smart hamster!

For her, it is not necessary to rely on the strength of the signal. It is enough to look at the direction where the signal is most concentrated!

She doesn't care how big your fleet is, but as long as it's the flagship, it must be the one with the most concentrated radio communications, right?

Anyway, the distance is not far, and the overall situation is head-on. Even if the missile takes a detour to search, the range is enough!

Isn’t it just a little over 200 kilometers?

Tizi, who was leaning against Lindeman, curled his lips slightly.

And in her perception based on the missile search radar, it seemed that among the dozens of large and small warships scattered over hundreds of nautical miles on the sea, there was a direction where the radio communication signals were quite dense.

Especially, this was when the air raid had just ended, a large number of planes returned, and the operations had to be rearranged and adjusted!

Moreover, according to the triangulated positioning between the missiles divided into several groups in the sky, the distance is not far!

........................

"What was the result of the air raid? Any news?"

In the command post of the Lion-class battleship Vanguard, Tovey was staring at the complicated line chart on the chart table.

"Not yet... The formation we sent to provide additional reconnaissance and gunfire just took off. It will take about half an hour to get there."

The vanguard standing by flipped through the notebook in his hand and answered.

"Half an hour? Now I just don't know how much loss Lütjens and his men have incurred..." Tovey was deep in thought, tapping his fingers on the table a few times. "We can no longer rely on our outermost destroyer patrol ships. The cruiser's cordon is ahead of us, and they will start fighting in about an hour and a half. I have no idea what to do unless I get the exact information from that old devil Lütjens..."

"How about letting the reconnaissance plane leave the replenishment formation and go ahead?" The vanguard suggested after thinking about it.

"Forget it. I specially sent the reconnaissance plane and the supplementary firing team together to cover the reconnaissance plane. Otherwise, if a plane goes over, it will be killed if it encounters the Zeppelin. Besides, the reconnaissance can continue while the supplementary firing is going on..." Tovey thought for a moment and shook his head: "Forget it, an hour is enough to adjust the deployment... To be honest, even though the anti-ship missiles were so fierce before, I was not sure."

Qianwei didn't say anything, but just nodded. However, after nodding, his expression suddenly froze.

Seeing the look on his secretary's face, Tovey's heart skipped a beat: "Vanguard, what's wrong?"

"Commander, something happened to Senior Warspite! They encountered a German missile attack in the Bay of Biscay. Two of the three aircraft carriers were damaged, and even the Rodney sank..." The stunned vanguard was stiff for a long time before he lowered his head and reported this somewhat frustrating news to Tovey: "Now they are not sure they can escape from Kumets. They can fly at 30 knots, while Nelson can only fly at 23 knots..."

"How...how could this be possible?!" Upon hearing this news, Tovey couldn't help but slam his head and said, "Then why did the air raid fleet report that the German fleet was still capable of fighting? And that it was badly beaten?!"

"Yes, this airstrike involved 360 aircraft and nearly 700 missiles..." Qianwei thought for a long time, but still couldn't figure it out. She even muttered in her heart: Is it because she has too little combat experience? Is the difference between training and actual combat really that big?

"...It must be the comprehensive protection designed by the Germans - this thing may not be able to defend against battleship bombardment, but it is very good at defending against missile attacks, bomb strikes, secondary guns washing the deck and so on!" The experienced Tovey quickly thought of the crux of the problem.

However, just as she changed her mind, her forward perception had already reported the danger to her!

"Missiles! German missiles! The kind that travel at a speed of 750 kilometers!!"

As soon as the vanguard's words came out, the faces of everyone in the British fleet's command cabin, including Tovey, changed instantly.

"Hehehe... You need to use your brain when fighting! I just got hit by ten anti-ship missiles, and I just know where they hurt the most - the bow and stern waterline! The bow deck! The stern steering gear! The bridge control tower... British, just wait and see!!"

On the missile console, Tirpitz, who relied on the perception of anti-ship missiles to launch the attack, had a look of satisfaction on his face as he gritted his teeth. Like a missile knight, he drove forty anti-ship missiles and surrounded the five confused battleships on the sea from three directions like a pack of wolves!

Those originally tall and mighty Leviathan beasts were as helpless as lambs in front of anti-ship missiles...

Chapter 807: A bold plan

Half an hour later, the radio operator of the Vanguard battleship received a report from the forty aircraft sent out from the two remaining aircraft carriers to verify the results of the battle and "make up the shots". When he saw the report saying that as soon as the fleet entered 20 kilometers, three of them were shot down by a round of high-explosive bombs fired by heavy artillery that was obviously timed. After the attacking aircraft group fired the few anti-ship missiles they had, a dive bomber squadron entered the attack distance to prepare for "make up the shots", but saw that even though the enemy was dragging billowing smoke and blazing flames, it was still able to dodge almost all bombs by "at least 27 or 28 knots of speed", Tovey was completely shocked on the spot.

"How is this possible? With 700 missiles, how can they still be able to fight?!"

"This... Commander, maybe our missile attacks are not as tricky as those controlled by their ship girls? Their attacks just now were all aimed at the bridges, bows, and sterns of our ships..."

The vanguard, who was also covered in wounds, thought about it and then gritted her teeth and told her what she thought was the possibility.

"Maybe..." Tovey nodded, twisting his chin.

After all, we already knew that the Germans were likely able to guide artillery shells, so perhaps guided missiles or something like that might be possible too, right?