Sword of Light: Humanoid Self-Propelled Artillery

Chapter 179 Hidden Warships
To be honest, aside from the Japanese's starchy canned beef, this is the first time Wang Gensheng has ever properly eaten beef since he traveled back in time!
There was no other way; the Eighth Route Army had always been known for its hard work and simple lifestyle!
After Wang Gensheng took turns eating a late-night snack to replenish the energy he had lost from swimming more than ten kilometers, the warship stopped at a relatively steep shore with fewer people, as requested by Wang Gensheng.

Wang Gensheng's cavalry regiment of about two thousand men had been waiting there for a long time.

Indeed, when deciding to seize the warship, Wang Gensheng had already made preparations for the successful seizure.

After all, under the current circumstances, the thousand-ton warship that Wang Gensheng seized could not be put to immediate use. Moreover, because the enemy has an air force, if it is not well hidden, it will become a live target for the enemy's air force.

As for when this warship can be put into service, that depends on when we can regain air superiority or when we can get anti-aircraft missiles. Without air superiority, warships are no better than infantry.

In fact, let alone this warship, even the Yamato battleship, from its commissioning to its sinking, had absolutely no combat record throughout its entire lifespan; it was essentially a floating luxury hotel.

It should be noted that the battleship Yamato officially entered service in November 1941 and was incorporated into the Japanese Combined Fleet.

Then, during the Battle of Midway in June 1942, the Yamato, as the flagship of the Combined Fleet, was regarded as a reserve force by Yamamoto Isoroku and watched from a distance without firing a single shot.

As a result, they watched helplessly as their four aircraft carriers were sunk by the US military, and they lost air superiority.

From then on, the Japanese knew how terrible it was to lose air superiority, and became extremely cautious in using the Yamato. They even issued an order that the Yamato should not be used in battle without permission.

In fact, by this time the Japanese had already realized that battleships with their big guns were nothing in front of aircraft carriers. If they had used the money they had spent building the Yamato to build aircraft carriers, the Japanese might have been able to hold out for a longer period of time. But since they had already built them, they couldn't just blow them up!

So for the rest of the time, the Yamato remained anchored, occasionally carrying out missions such as transporting supplies and replenishing troops. It was like a treasure placed on a high shelf, possessing great abilities but having no opportunity to use them.

The peace was shattered in December 1943. The Yamato was attacked by a torpedo from an American submarine near Truk, and was hit by a torpedo at the 165th rib on its starboard side.

Although it didn't cause fatal damage, it still gave the Japanese navy quite a fright. Afterwards, in order to protect this "national defense warship," the Japanese navy specially installed radar on it and thickened its steel plates.

Then came the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944, when the Yamato finally got its chance to go into battle, heading to the battlefield with its sister ship, the Musashi.

Before it could even enter the combat zone, the Musashi was sunk by torpedoes and bombs dropped by US carrier-based aircraft.

Seeing this, the Yamato's morale plummeted, and fearing the same fate, it quickly retreated. In this naval battle, although the Yamato fired some shells, its achievements were minimal, and it even sustained minor damage. Its performance hardly lived up to its reputation as the "world's best battleship."

Then, four or five years later, the Japanese were already at their wits' end, suffering successive defeats on various battlefields. In April, the United States launched the Battle of Okinawa, intending to use Okinawa as a springboard for an attack on the Japanese mainland. If Okinawa fell, the Japanese mainland would be wide open, facing direct danger of invasion by the United States. At this critical juncture, the Japanese naval command made a reckless decision: to deploy the battleship Yamato on a suicidal special attack mission.

They planned to use the Yamato's powerful firepower to break through the US naval blockade, support the Japanese forces on Okinawa, then attack US warships in the waters surrounding Okinawa, and finally have the Yamato beached on the west coast of Okinawa, with its more than 2,000 crew members going ashore to fight the US forces to the death.

So on April 6th, the Second Fleet, with the Yamato as its flagship and ten warships, set sail from Tokuyama anchorage in the western Seto Inland Sea. They had no air cover, carried only fuel for the one-way journey, and like a group of warriors heading towards their deaths, embarked on a road destined for no return.

Early the next morning, a US submarine spotted the fleet southwest of Kyushu Island and immediately relayed the intelligence to the US carrier strike group. Knowing the Yamato's power, the US military was determined not to allow it to pose a threat, and thus dispatched over three hundred carrier-based aircraft, which swarmed towards the Yamato like a dark cloud.

At noon, US aircraft caught up with the Yamato battleship 300 kilometers north of Okinawa, and the battle immediately broke out. US aircraft concentrated their attacks on the port side of the Yamato, and bombs rained down.

At 12:23, the Yamato was hit by a torpedo on the port bow, its speed dropped to 22 knots and the ship began to list to port.

At 1:35 PM, the second wave of US attack aircraft arrived. Two minutes later, the Yamato was hit by three torpedoes amidships on its port side, causing its list to increase to seven or eight degrees.

To make matters worse, a 450-kilogram aerial bomb destroyed the Yamato's drainage valves, rendering it unable to pump water. The captain quickly ordered water to be poured symmetrically into the starboard compartments to restore the ship's balance, but this reduced the ship's speed to below 18 knots.

Immediately afterwards, the warship was hit by two more torpedoes amidships on its port side, further increasing its list angle to about fifteen degrees. At this point, the Yamato's large-caliber anti-aircraft guns were no longer operational due to the excessive angle of inclination.

By 2 p.m., three aerial bombs dropped by U.S. aircraft hit the Yamato's port side amidships, and a torpedo hit the starboard side rib number 150.

Just over ten minutes later, the Yamato was hit by two more torpedoes on its port side, midway and aft, causing it to list at an 18-degree angle. Because the starboard flooding area was already full, in order to maintain balance, they had to continue filling the engine room, rest room and boiler room with water.

At 2:23 PM, the battered Yamato, after being hit by ten torpedoes and twenty-four bombs, could no longer hold on. It listed sharply to port, the forward main gun magazine caught fire and exploded with a deafening roar, and then slowly sank to the bottom of the sea.

The sinking of the battleship Yamato was a major event in the history of World War II. It not only marked the decline of the Japanese navy, but also symbolized the end of the era of battleships and heavy guns.

Therefore, Wang Gensheng did not want the warship he had just captured to follow in the footsteps of the Yamato. A warship of a thousand tons could probably be sunk by a single torpedo!
So after Wang Gensheng directed the captured warship operators to stop the warship, the two thousand or so men of the cavalry regiment immediately began to camouflage the warship.

(End of this chapter)