Chapter 1,168 The Main Battle
Chapter 1168 The main battle
Less than a second later, a huge pillar of fire rose into the sky from the middle of the hull! Countless fragments were thrown into the air in the firelight, and the billowing smoke formed a slanting smoke column blown by the sea breeze. Seeing that this poor light cruiser is hopeless!
The rest completely entered garbage time, with the two British battleships happily ravaging the poor German light cruiser. And when Betty's Tiger and the New Zealand behind it finished dealing with the approaching destroyers, they also aimed their guns at Rear Admiral Bodick's fleet. All the Rear Admiral could do was smoke to protect themselves!
"Let the destroyers go up and kill them!" Thomas obviously had no intention of letting his opponent go, and a group of destroyers rushed forward under the cover of two light cruisers. And at this moment, the Hipper fleet, which had been holding back, finally took action!
The huge artillery was aimed at the target not far away. The seaplane had already approached the British fleet and reported the British position to the fleet. The rangefinder at the top of the mast was staring at the old enemy like the eyes of a giant! The longbow in his hand had been raised, and when the red artillery indicator light came on, the first round of devastating projectiles began!
The fire suddenly shone on the sea in the distance and joined together! The salvos of as many as 64 heavy guns from 8 fast battleships instantly formed a dragon of flames swaying on the sea, and dozens of tons of shells flew out of the gun barrels almost at the same time! These rains of destructive bullets flew towards the unprepared British fleet in the distance at more than twice the speed of sound. The British retinas were shining with orange spots from artillery fire! An expression of fear and disbelief appeared on the British face! At this moment, at least 70% of the British naval officers and soldiers were stunned!
"This is at least the strength of two battleship squadrons! God! We are finished!" A panicked British officer pointed at the jumping flames in the distance and said loudly, but soon the noise of the shells falling into the water overturned his exclamation. Completely covered up, within tens of seconds, the entire British fleet was surrounded by water columns and flames! Even in the presence of sea fog, the artillery shells fired by the German fleet at a distance of 12 kilometers still maintained good accuracy!
The Reputation and Repulse, two at the back, were first surrounded by the firepower of the four battlecruisers of Hipper's fleet! Moltke and von der Tann dealt with Reputation, while the other two battlecruisers dealt with Reputation! Almost every 15 seconds, a round of shells fell. Before the two queens could find the corresponding target, the reputation was hit first!
A 12-inch shell hit the front of the hull of the Reputation. The 405KG armor-piercing projectile easily tore through the 4-inch armor belt on the front of the Reputation. It also tore a whole steel plate next to it from the hull! A huge hole appeared at the waterline, and hundreds of tons of seawater quickly poured into the two sealed cabins. At almost the same time, a 350MM shell hit the prestigious main armor belt. At a distance of 12 kilometers, and at a not very good angle, the Queen's 330MM thick armor belt could not block this shell. ! This shell hit the transition area between the main armor belt and the upper armor belt.
The thickness is about 10 inches.
I saw a sudden flash of fire on the hull of the Reputation, and then a stream of white steam mixed with black smoke spurted out from the breach. Even ten kilometers away, Moltke could still observe the continuous explosions on the Reputation. In the scene, the shell exploded after penetrating the bomb delivery channel at the lower part of the gun gallery, but the remaining fragments still penetrated several cabins and blew several steam pipes at the back of the gun gallery to pieces! The shells in the secondary battery area were detonated, and large flames and high-temperature and high-pressure water vapor quickly spread inside the hull. The entire middle of the battleship was like a volcano ready to erupt, constantly spewing steam and fire.
And soon, under attack from the Goben and Seydlitz, the Counterattack's situation became even worse. After all, it was facing 16 350MM heavy guns! When Moltke and Vondertann shot the third shell on the front of Reputation's No. 3 turret, the two German battlecruisers had already hit their opponents four times!
Four hit bombs were evenly distributed on the nearly 190-meter-long hull of the Reputation. One shell hit the bow, adding 800 tons of displacement to the battleship. One shell hit the No. 3 turret, directly in the two guns. There is a hole in the middle of the cannon! A violent explosion swept across the entire turret, instantly killing more than 60 Royal Navy officers and soldiers. And completely destroyed two artillery pieces, but fortunately there was no ammunition at the rear of the turret, and the fire door leading to the ammunition compartment was also closed. The third shell hit the superstructure of the hull, igniting a fire, and the fourth shell hit the stern of the hull, bringing 700 tons of water to the battleship.
But the worst thing was the battleship Balem, which was fired at by the two Bavaria-class battleships Weimar and Braunschweig! To be honest, the Queen Elizabeth-class battleship is at most the same level as the Helgeland-class fast battleship, and one level behind the Bavaria-class. And this time you, the poor Balem, are still one against two... This battle situation has doomed the fate of this battleship!
The two German battleships that had participated in the Thunder-Serbrus operation performed fairly well in this battle. During the seventh and a half salvo, the Weimar was the first to clamp the target. And the ninth and a half salvo successfully hit a shell in the middle of the hull of the Balem! This gun successfully punched a bullet hole with a diameter of 800MM in the 330MM thick side armor division. The molten metal formed a radioactive metal jet around the bullet hole. Then the shell with a broken warhead once again penetrated Balem's dome armor and directly blew the boiler condenser on the port side into pieces. Countless fragments jumped and collided inside the hull, and destroyed a condensate tank next door. After losing enough condensed water, the power of the Balem directly dropped by about one-third!
A shell from the Braunschweig was fired from the horizontal direction. Although it did not penetrate the upper part of the dome armor as the main horizontal armor due to the angle problem, the violent explosion still cut off several power transmission lines near the place where the bomb was hit. A quarter of the entire battleship was instantly plunged into darkness.
As the saying goes, misfortunes never come singly. When the two battleships entered the effective firing stage, the two battleships poured down more than 12 tons of ammunition per minute! The Balem struggled hard between the water columns with flames and thick smoke all over its body. From the time the first shell hit, in just 5 minutes, this poor warship had been hit 7 times!
Here comes the second update~~~! Please subscribe and reward~~~!