Chapter 327 Tactics

A few minutes later, the fighter planes pressed down on the German fleet.

Qin Chuan was somewhat unbelievable about the tactics of the British fleet. It was still the same as before, that is, to attack at a lower altitude along the blind spot of the warship's anti-aircraft guns.

Under normal circumstances, the last attack had failed and paid a heavy price, so the British Air Force should have changed its tactics in a targeted manner.

But they didn't... maybe it was because they didn't know what tactics to use, or because the British were too traditional.

Then Qin Chuan found that the British tactics had actually changed. They concentrated their fighter planes to attack the stronger fleet, the First Fleet.

This strategy was correct. The British also found that there was a reason why the German warships had no air defense blind spot, that is, to separate the two fleets to cover each other.

Then...

If the fleet is divided into two teams to attack the two fleets at the same time, the two fleets can perfectly play the air defense capabilities of the secondary guns.

But if the fleet only attacks one of the fleets, especially the one with stronger combat effectiveness, it means that only the weaker fleet can play a role.

This idea is very good because it weakened the air defense capabilities of the German fleet by half in the first place. Especially if the battleships "Richelieu" and "Strasbourg" were damaged, then the German army would only have one battleship "Dunkirk" and it would not be able to play a role because of the attack, so the result of the British fighter planes attacking the German fleet would be completely different.

However, the British army did not expect that... the German fleet "Richelieu" was only slightly injured, and the German fleet's air defense capabilities were increased in addition to tactics, and the use of "proximity fuze" shells.

So, one fighter plane after another dived down, but was destroyed in the air and fell into the sea.

Of course, this tactic of the British army still played a certain role... Even if the Second Fleet had the battleship "Richelieu", its anti-aircraft firepower was not enough to destroy all the British fighter planes in the air.

So the First Fleet was heavily bombed, especially the battleship "Dunkirk"... There were fighter planes and bombers flying around everywhere, and every figure passing by would sound a series of machine gun sounds and explosions, accompanied by vibrations from the sea water.

With a loud bang, a bomb exploded at the stern of the Dunkirk, causing the entire ship to shake violently. The No. 5 turret was surrounded by a ball of flames, and bullets and shells were still flying towards the warship in the air.

A few times, Qin Chuan even thought that the warship he was on was going to be smashed or blown to pieces, but it continued to sail as usual, making snake-like maneuvers with a ball of flames and black smoke, while the anti-aircraft equipment on the warship continued to shoot into the air... French warships are stronger than expected, especially battleships.

Of course, battleships are not so easy to sink, Qin Chuan is a bit unsophisticated.

With a "boom", a bomb hit the front of a destroyer on the left. The bomb may have penetrated the destroyer's ammunition depot, causing a violent explosion. A huge fire erupted violently from the hull into the air. The powerful shock wave set off heat waves and seawater rushing towards the "Dunkirk", but slowed down the fire in the No. 5 turret.

But the destroyer... was still moving forward in inertia with a raging fire, but the front soon sank like a rock, and the soldiers on the destroyer sank with it. Only a small number of them were able to escape and be rescued, and more people were trapped under the deck and sank with the warship.

Several torpedo attack planes dived towards the "Dunkirk".

As mentioned before, the "Swordfish" torpedo attack plane is a biplane propeller plane, which makes it very conspicuous among the enemy fleet, and because of its slow speed... the maximum speed is only 222 kilometers per hour.

In fact, what is more important is that the German battleship "Bismarck" was damaged by this torpedo attack aircraft, so the German Navy is very familiar with this torpedo aircraft, so they immediately aimed their anti-aircraft firepower at them.

"Huahuahua" a burst of bullets went by, and two torpedo attack aircraft were hit into a ball of fire and fell into the sea on the spot.

The other four torpedo aircraft broke through the firepower network under the cover of other fighters, and then dived down again to reduce the altitude... Torpedo attack aircraft have high requirements for launching torpedoes, such as altitude and speed, otherwise the torpedo will malfunction due to too much impact.

It is precisely because of this that pilots driving torpedo attack aircraft often jokingly call British pilots using their lives to crash enemy warships.

Then the torpedo aircraft leveled at low altitude... This is also a necessary action, otherwise the torpedo will not be able to hit the target due to the wrong angle.

After that, they launched the deadly torpedoes... White trails went straight to the flank of the "Dunkirk".

Qin Chuan only heard someone shouting: "Torpedo, full left rudder!"

A torpedo exploded under the machine gun fire, and two torpedoes passed through the stern of the ship due to the maneuvering of the "Dunkirk".

Another torpedo hit the hull directly, and there was a huge explosion. The warship was like being hit hard by a big hand, and then it shook back. Qin Chuan was almost thrown to the ceiling. Fortunately, he held the guardrail tightly and was not thrown out.

One staff officer was not so lucky. He was thrown out of the window by the reaction force and fell on the front armor more than ten meters away. Qin Chuan looked out and saw that he had fallen on the shell of a shell. I am afraid that his spine was broken into two pieces.

However, the "Dunkirk" can still continue to sail.

The French warship has done a good job in underwater protection:

First, the main armor belt extends 2.5 meters underwater with an inclination angle to minimize the threat from underwater.

Secondly, the lower part of the armor belt adopts a mine-proof wall (actually a reinforced hull), a mine-proof compartment, a fuel tank for indirect protection, an armored partition wall, and multiple armored partitions combined with watertight compartments.

Again, a thick layer of foam rubber is filled between the hull and the mine-proof wall, which can effectively reduce and buffer the impact caused by torpedo and mine explosions.

These protections enable the "Dunkirk" to continue to fight, but the speed is reduced because the hull is flooded.

At this time, another battleship, the Strasbourg, made a wise decision... Seeing that the Dunkerque had become the main target of British fighter planes, it took the initiative to distance itself from the Dunkerque.

Once the distance was pulled away, the Strasbourg could use its secondary guns to provide cover for the Dunkerque.

At the same time, German Air Force fighter planes also appeared above the fleet.