At 2:42, two bombs were hit by the Chinese aircraft carrier "Guangxi", and a fire broke out on the entire deck. It was still making an emergency turn on the sea, avoiding attacks in the air.

Suddenly, six more torpedo planes rushed into the battlefield close to the sea. The enemy planes slightly corrected their course and advanced forward quickly in the rain of bullets. Three of them were destroyed by dense air defense fire, and three "Swordfish" styles dropped torpedoes on the port side of the warship.

When the torpedo entered the water, it sparked a series of water splashes, and then its thruster stirred up three paths and rushed towards the severely damaged Guangxi. First, a torpedo hit the front of the port side of the Guangxi. The violent explosion caused a flame to spew out there, and the aircraft carrier with a displacement of 30,000 tons trembled violently.

The Hindenburg, located on the left side of the USS Guangxi, saw two torpedoes rushing towards the aircraft carrier. Captain Colonel Holman did not let the warship avoid it. Instead, he ordered the warship to accelerate and used its side torpedo to replace the Guangxi. With two loud bangs, the Guangxi was hit by another torpedo. This time it was at the end of the warship, and a large hole was blown open on the side of the Hindenburg on the other side.

Rolling smoke suddenly emerged from the sea, wrapping the figures of the two warships in. The two steam pipes on the side of the Guangxi were also cut off. A large amount of steam came out of the smoke, forming a large piece of white mist.

At 2:52, several more dive bombers rushed down. Fortunately, this time, perhaps due to the interference of black smoke from soaring into the sky, the enemy plane did not hit the target, and several bombs exploded around the two severely damaged warships.

At 2:55, the sea fell silent. The enemy's attack that lasted for half an hour was finally over. In the sky, fighters were chasing the bombers that were escaping around, while the enemy's escort fighters were desperately intercepting. The "Guangxi" was severely damaged, and flames were rising everywhere on the warship, and the entire warship tilted about 6 degrees to the left.

Several destroyers sailed over and sprayed sea water on the Guangxi with high-pressure water guns to help it extinguish the fire. Fortunately, the aircraft carrier's hangar was equipped with automatic foam fire extinguishing devices, and the fire in the hangar was quickly controlled.

The captain of the "Guangxi" ship Sa Shijun was covered in blood and didn't know where he was injured. However, he ignored it and gritted his teeth and insisted on commanding the firefighting and rescue work of the warships.

However, John Tovey could no longer launch an attack. At this time, the British local fleet had suffered heavy damage in the first wave of attacks launched by the Yanker Austria-Hungarian Fleet.

The biggest mistake the British made in military construction was to establish an independent air force. Since the air force had the priority to develop combat aircraft, this greatly limited the development of naval aviation. In fact, naval aviation, especially carrier-based aircraft aviation, and army aviation, are very different in combat mode, combat goals, strategies, and tactics. Carrier-based aircraft requires combat aircraft to have the ability to take off and land at short distances, so the requirements for aircraft structure and landing gear strength are much higher than land-based aircraft. At the same time, since more aircraft are required to be inserted into not-so-large aircraft carrier hangars, the wings of carrier-based aircraft are foldable.

In addition, carrier-based aircraft troops prefer fighters with simple equipment structures and durable air-cooled engines rather than slightly complex liquid-cooled engines. Of course, these are just some details. In actual combat, there is not much difference in performance of combat aircraft equipped with these two engines in combat. On the contrary, aircraft equipped with liquid-cooled engines have better performance due to their good aerodynamic appearance.

When designing aircraft carriers, the British Navy considered that its main task was to block the German Navy, and it needed to fight within the combat radius of the enemy's shore-based aircraft. Therefore, it paid more attention to protection, and its hangar and flight deck were equipped with armor. However, this also caused a big problem, that is, the armor itself occupied a large amount of hangar space that was not sufficient. At the same time, due to the increase in the weight of the superstructure and the displacement was limited, in order to balance the weight, the hangar could only be designed into one layer, which in turn caused the number of aircraft carried by almost all British aircraft carriers to be seriously insufficient.

In addition, the British had a very strange idea: aircraft carriers are used for attack, and the air defense of aircraft carriers is mainly responsible for the anti-aircraft artillery installed on the ship, which resulted in three British aircraft carriers not equipped with fighter jets at all.

When the Austro-Hungarian mixed fleet flew over the British fleet, in fact, Admiral John Tovey had only two squadrons of fighter jets, one of which was equipped with a hurricane fighter jet with slightly lower performance. During the first attack wave, Austro-Hungarian side dispatched five squadrons, 82 fighters with comparable performance to the British Spitfire.

The result of air combat is self-evident. British fighters fight with fewer fighters. When facing Austro-Hungarian fighter groups that have superior numbers and performance, the fighters escorted by the UK can only parry and are unable to intercept the opponent's bomber formation. Austro-Hungarian bomber formation can calmly conduct formations according to normal training and then organize attacks.

Relatively speaking, the hit rate of dive bombers is much higher than that of torpedo aircraft, and can also pose a fatal threat to aircraft carriers or heavy cruisers with relatively weak protection. However, since the bombs carried generally are 350 kilograms, it still cannot cause fatal damage to heavy armored battleships.

However, the Austro-Hungarian Navy selected its main target on the opponent's aircraft carrier. The first wave of three torpedo squadrons' attacks mainly serve to restrain the opponent's air defense firepower and destroy the opponent's air defense formation. After the Austro-Hungarian torpedo aircraft broke into the outer layer of the opponent's air defense circle, it began to launch torpedoes, which also caused an extremely poor hit rate. 33 of the 36 torpedo aircraft successfully released torpedoes, and 3 were shot down during the attack.

Only three of these torpedoes hit the target, including hitting a destroyer, and the rest were avoided by British warships. However, the attack of the torpedo aircraft disrupted the air defense formation of the British fleet, and at the same time attracted most of the air defense firepower of the British ships, creating conditions for the attack of dive bombers.

Austro-Hungarian dive bombers looking for fighter jets at an altitude of 3,000 meters to 4,000 meters dive down from dense swarms and rushed towards the British warships that were evading torpedoes on the sea.

After the first attack, three British aircraft carriers and two battleships were hit, among which the "Ark Royal" was hit with two bombs one after another. Suddenly, thick smoke rolled on the sea and flames soared into the sky.

Nearly a hundred Austro-Hungarian dive bombers were divided into three batches, breaking into the British air defense circle from different directions, and bombing them in turn, without giving the British any chance to breathe.

As a result, the aircraft carriers of the "Sports God", "Eagle" and "Qiu" were also shot one after another. Now, the British are only left with the "Glory", and the three aircraft carriers of the "Introduction" and "Furious" are still intact, and they are lucky enough to avoid all attacks.

The first wave of attacks by the Austro-Hungarian Navy lasted for 25 minutes. In this short period of time, the British fleet was blown to sink two destroyers, the "Ark of Royal", the "Victory" aircraft carrier and the "Edinburgh", and the "Belfast" heavy cruiser were severely damaged. There were also four aircraft carriers, three battleships, two heavy cruisers and two cruisers, and were hit and damaged.

The plane shines in the first large-scale naval battle since the war begins, showing unparalleled superiority.

The problem is that until now John Tovey cannot know the specific location of the Austro-Hungarian fleet, and only knows that the enemy planes are from the southwest. Before he could come back to his senses, a piece of news that shocked the always calm naval veteran immediately paid: "A large number of enemy planes were found 80 kilometers southwest!"
Chapter completed!