Chapter 384 The Royal Ark Was Blown up and Sunk

"Boom!" The land collapsed and the ground shook.

A two-and-a-half-ton bomb contains two tons of explosives! When it exploded, the power was sky-high.

In the huge explosion, the air wave devoured the sailor next to him for the first time. He didn't even feel the pain, and was torn and carbonized at this moment.

The landslides and the ground cracked, the ground shook and the mountains shook, and the entire Ark Royal aircraft carrier shuddered tremendously in this explosion.

Yes, it is trembling, this is simply the power of heaven and earth!

The heat wave of the explosion emerged from the gap that had just been smashed, and flew to a place more than ten meters high on the deck. Taking the bomb explosion point just now as the center, dozens of meters of steel around it, at this moment, I felt thousands of meters. The high temperature of 100 degrees, so the steel is melted and easily broken.

If you look from the outside, you can be surprised to find that when the explosion occurred, the entire Ark Royal trembled violently, and then, from the middle, broke apart.

Just break!

The huge bomb that exploded in the middle tore the inner deck, tore the side of the ship, and expanded outward from the location of the explosion. Those steels were broken one after another!

The middle part was broken, and the two sides started to rise.

Although the Ark Royal is an aircraft carrier, in this era, it must be very sad to not pay attention to armor protection.

Therefore, when the Royal Ark was designed, it was specially strengthened. For example, it adopted a monolithic hull structure, from the keel to the hangar deck and the flight deck, all included in the hull. The flight deck is a strong deck, all the key parts have been strengthened.

Almost the same as the battleship, key parts such as the lower hangar deck, gasoline tank, ammunition depot, and power compartment are all covered with 89 mm thick armor, and a 114 mm thick armor belt is laid on the side.

As for the flight deck, although it is wooden, there is also armor underneath.

In this era, wooden flight decks are the mainstream. However, the deck material is not all wood, but a wooden deck is covered on a layer of a few millimeters of thin steel plates, and there are steel brackets under the thin steel plates.

Seen from above, it is made of wood, while below, there is still steel support, otherwise, it will definitely not be able to support the weight of the aircraft.

As for why the steel plate is not fully used as the flight deck, it is mainly due to the limitation of tonnage.

Historically, changes did not begin until the next level of the Ark Royal, the Radiance-class aircraft carrier.

Rear Admiral Reginald Henderson, then the third sea secretary in charge of armaments and naval auditor at the time, believed that the German and Italian bombers would carry at least 500 pounds of armor-piercing rounds, so the indicator of the aircraft carrier's flight deck defense was Set to defend against 500-pound armor-piercing rounds.

It is a pity that the United Kingdom, which is financially strapped, simply cannot afford an aircraft carrier with a large tonnage. It is even more impossible to manufacture a comprehensive armored aircraft carrier on an aircraft carrier of more than 20,000 tons.

As a result, in order to ensure the stability and defense of the aircraft carrier, the attack power has become something that the Glorious Class has abandoned. There are only 36 aircraft, but the protection is quite strong, and the armor weight of the flight deck has reached 1,500 tons.

The current Ark Royal has a total weight of only 2,850 tons of armor. Moreover, these armors are mainly placed on the broadsides to withstand the possible blows of battleships. After all, the guns of battleships rarely hit the top, mainly hits side.

And now, the Ark Royal can't even withstand a 500-pound bomb, let alone a 2,400-kilogram bomb!

The pride of the Royal Navy, the most advanced aircraft carrier, the Ark Royal, was hit by a huge bomb dropped from a high altitude. Even if the bomb did not explode, the impact would have caused structural damage to the Ark Royal. Serious damage, not to mention now, the huge explosion, so that the Royal Ark, in an instant, became two paragraphs!

The fire was spreading rapidly, and the entire hangar area turned into a sea of ​​fire in an instant, with explosions one after another.

Although the Ark Royal is in the refurbishment period of returning to port, he carried a large amount of ammunition when he went to sea last time.

Any ammunition, as long as it is on the warship, will hardly come off, it is too troublesome, and now the Royal Ark carries 72 457.2mm torpedoes, 360 500-pound bombs, 300 250-pound bombs, 576 100 lb bombs, 800 20 lb bombs and 720,000 rounds of 7.7mm machine gun rounds.

The fire spread to the ammunition area in an instant, and the ammunition was quickly ignited.

Most of the sailors live on the shore. During the mooring of the warship, no one wants to continue to sleep in the dark cabin. However, on the current Ark Royal, there are still more than 200 sailors who stayed behind.

These sailors have almost no chance of life.

The space on the aircraft carrier is limited, and the wide deck occupies all the space, leaving only a corner of the bridge. Most of the soldiers' living quarters are below the hangar.

When the air defense siren sounded, they quickly got up from their bunks and ran outside. Unfortunately, before they ran out for long, they heard a terrible crash, an explosion, and then the ship began to capsize!

The Royal Ark, which was blown into two sections, flooded into a large area in an instant, making it impossible for many officers and soldiers to evacuate. Seawater poured in and drowned many sailors.

Not all sailors can swim, and, in this case, even if they can swim, I am afraid they will not be spared. When the sea rolls in, it will be submerged directly from above, hold your breath, even if you can swim. Dozens of meters, may not be able to swim out!

When the explosion happened, Phillips almost witnessed the whole process. He watched the bomb penetrated from the deck more than ten meters away from his feet, and the splashed deck wood hit him. Then, in the violent explosion, the terrifying hot air flow directly hit him!

His body was instantly lifted by the blast of air, and an exclamation came from behind: "General!"

The captain of the Royal Ark, Colonel Mond, woke up earlier. His room was on the bridge. When he found Phillips going down for a walk, he was on the bridge to prepare for the sailing plan.

As a result, the air defense alarm and the bombing of the warship caught him off guard. When the air wave blew Phillips away, he could see clearly.

Ark Royal, it's over! As the warship was hit, it began to tilt rapidly, and his body slammed heavily on the wall on the side here.