It's better to conquer them than to command the steel torrent

Chapter 249 | God Bless America!
Although a few slow-moving Devastators were shot down, most of the US aircraft managed to break through the interception in an orderly fashion and swarmed toward the Royal Navy fleet.

Faced with nearly a hundred American aircraft, the Royal Navy officers and men could only rely on the cannons on their ships to fire desperately.

One after another, the Destroyers and Defenders moved through the scorching fire, with planes constantly being hit, catching fire, or even exploding and disintegrating in mid-air.

Those are 40mm shells; their destructive power is far beyond that of 12.7mm bullets. If you get hit, you're guaranteed to die.

However, the other planes continued on their way, charging headlong into the dense barrage of bullets towards their target without hesitation.

Before this sortie, the Saratoga and Enterprise had learned that the previous air raid had been largely ineffective, indicating that the British armored carriers were not so easy to deal with.

The American pilots were clearly not very bright, so the carrier-based aircraft units of both ships wisely changed their target priorities, choosing to bomb the thin-skinned and large-capacity targets!

The dive bombers focused their attention on the enemy heavy cruisers, and once they entered their attack positions, they swooped down like falcons.

Whether it's the Renton-class or the Kent-class, the Royal Navy's heavy cruisers have less than satisfactory defensive capabilities, especially the Kent-class, which is so vulnerable that it has been derisively called the 'white graveyard'.

The only acceptable armor on both is the 111mm main armor belt, with the thinnest part of the deck armor being only 35mm and the turret armor being only 25mm. The Defender dive bomber could potentially penetrate its defenses with its 500-pound aerial bombs.

The Cornwall was hit directly by two bombs in quick succession, and three more were hit by near misses. This "two plus three" attack from afar immediately dealt a heavy blow to the fragile heavy cruiser.

Kill her while she's sick!

A few minutes later, three Destroyer aircraft found the right angle and launched torpedoes. At least one torpedo successfully detonated, and the violent explosion caused the Cornwall to capsize and sink rapidly.

At the same time, the heavy cruiser HMS Devonshire was also hit by multiple aerial bombs, and the entire ship was engulfed in flames. However, the aerial torpedoes that struck her did not detonate.

In reality, only a small number of Destroyer torpedo bombers attacked heavy cruisers; most Destroyers chose to attack battleships, which appeared to be clumsy.

The losses suffered by the torpedo bomber squadron were still staggering; it was a mission with a slim chance of survival.

Airborne torpedoes are simply too heavy, and torpedo bombers must slow down and maintain a straight flight after entering the attack route, making them, in some ways, even easier to hit than training target drones.

The fierce air and sea battles turned both sides into madmen!
Lieutenant Jackson, piloting a Defender dive bomber, had just dropped bombs that hit the battleship Rodney, perhaps killing a dozen or twenty men.
The rear gunner cheered loudly, but immediately a tracer round blast destroyed the left horizontal stabilizer, and the hot shrapnel killed the rear gunner and ignited the fuel tank.

"Damn it! You stupid British!"

Lieutenant Jackson's left side was covered in blood. He immediately pulled the control stick hard and found that the plane was almost out of control and the control was very poor. In a very short time, he made up his mind that he would not return and crashed the plane into a light cruiser diagonally in front of him.

God bless America!

The crew members were horrified; none of them had expected that a plane that was almost a fireball would crash into them.
Before anyone could react, the Defender crashed head-on into the light cruiser HMS Sheffield, like a brilliant meteor falling to earth!
In an instant, the splashing aviation gasoline turned the foredeck of the HMS Sheffield into a sea of ​​fire, and the bridge was also affected. The windshield shattered instantly, and sailors covered in flames screamed and rolled around...

The sky and sea were filled with high-explosive and tracer rounds, planes turned into fireballs and plummeted into the sea with trails of black smoke, aerial bombs splashed up columns of water dozens of meters high when they hit the water, and the long, white trails of torpedoes did not dissipate for a long time.

In this sea area, American naval aviators and British Royal Navy sailors engaged in a battle of endurance and courage, neither giving an inch. The air raid from Task Force 2 finally ended at 16:40 PM.

During this time, the battleship California was severely damaged by a salvo and a half from the Lion. A minute later, a series of explosions occurred, resulting in countless deaths and injuries, but miraculously, it did not lose power.

This is not the end of the naval battle; Ernest King's hunt for his adversaries has only just begun.

Shortly afterward, a large number of land-based aircraft that had taken off from several airports on the east coast arrived. Because it was the first time that so many army bombers had been assembled to attack a maritime target, the formation was delayed for more than ten minutes due to navigation errors.

A massive swarm of seventy or eighty bombers, all B-18 medium bombers and B-17 heavy bombers from the Army Air Forces, swept in.

Cunningham's expected Royal Air Force cover arrived late, with more than twenty Hurricane fighters fiercely attacking the bomber formation in an attempt to repel these menacing creatures.

However, it would be naive to think that a 7.7mm machine gun could deal with a true air fortress like the B-17; even if it ran out of bullets, it would only cause superficial wounds.

The American bomber squadron flying over the Royal Navy fleet dropped bombs, unleashing seven or eight hundred aerial bombs on the warships below, like a hailstorm of bombs!
In reality, the accuracy of horizontal bombing was extremely poor, with almost no chance of hitting the target. Of all those bombs, only three or four hit the target directly.

Fortunately, near misses can also cause substantial damage to destroyers and light cruisers. The USS Styx was abandoned and sank due to uncontrollable flooding.

Besides, the bombs and hail were so terrifying that the resulting morale-shaking effect was unimaginable.

Cunningham couldn't forget the horrific scene he had just witnessed, and what worried him even more was that the cover promised by the Royal Air Force was completely ineffective.

Because the Hurricane fighter jets have a relatively short range, their loiter time after flying a long distance is very short, and it seems that these Hurricanes cannot effectively intercept the heavily armored bombers.

The situation suddenly became serious.

The support from the Imperial Russian Navy has arrived, but it is of little use, because the enemy—the American Navy—has more destroyers than they do. Cunningham is worried that the enemy will launch a decisive and fierce destroyer charge under the cover of night.

After careful consideration, and taking into account that the opposing commander was likely a cunning and shrewd individual, Cunningham decided it was not advisable to take any risks for the time being and therefore chose to retreat.

A dozen nautical miles north of the battleground, the Russian Imperial Navy's battleship Catherine, escorted by several light cruisers and destroyers, sped toward them.

The Ivanross got up very early but arrived late.

The fleet traveled a long distance from Murmansk, only stopping briefly at the Faroe Islands in the United Kingdom for supplies, before proceeding as planned to take the North Atlantic route to Halifax.

As they approached, Lieutenant General Rybnikov learned that a naval battle was imminent, and decisively led his fleet to come and assist in the battle.

Commanding the new battleship that had only been in service for a few months, Vice Admiral Rybnikov was in high spirits and ready to show off the glory of the Imperial Russian Navy, because according to the specifications on paper, the Catherine was enough to rank among the top three battleships in the world.

However, what is puzzling is why the Royal Navy fleet turned to retreat.

(End of this chapter)