Chapter 1962: Above the Strait Three
"If we can send these guys to the bottom of the sea, then in the future, we will have no problem fighting the super dreadnoughts of the Grand Fleet!" Major Norman said. To be honest, these armored cruisers that have disbanded their formation are actually more difficult to deal with than the battleships in the formation. Thus, the most intense cat-and-mouse battle in the entire campaign has been staged!
Unlike the former dreadnought battleships that have been nesting in the Dover Strait for escort missions after the war started, these cruisers fought wits with German submarines at the exit of the North Sea before coming to the Dover Strait, and fought against German auxiliary cruisers in the ocean. Cat and mouse, surviving Bavarian Air Force bombs in the Aegean Sea. The combat experience of the commander and crew is quite rich!
"Damn, those semi-closed turrets are really disgusting!" When another wave of strafing ended and watched the bullets hit the steel baffle on the anti-aircraft gun position and bounced off, the German pilot on the K4 interceptor was quite disgusted. He looked at the artillery positions on the deck surrounded by steel plates with resentment. It has to be said that after being bombed a lot, they also learned how to deal with it. The officers and soldiers on the Drake armored cruiser added defenses to their additional anti-aircraft firepower points and replaced them with new gun mounts. In the face of machine guns and shells falling from the sky, a steel plate with a thickness of 25MM can almost guarantee safety. And the brand-new pedal-powered gun mount makes the speed and pitch angle of the gun more excellent.
What is most worth mentioning is that the anti-aircraft firepower on these cruisers operates under a unified command. Through the range finder and simple fire control on the ship, the gunners adjusted the artillery according to the unified information, and then fired. Although it is very primitive, it is still difficult to shoot down the plane, but watching the dense flames continue to fly close to the plane However, it was enough for the German torpedo bombers to give up the attack when necessary.
However, the sea-to-air is still very passive. After only a few minutes, the equally experienced Major Norman responded. The bomber carrying the bomb first launched a round of low-altitude horizontal bombing, and then the torpedo plane went up again. Those steel plates can stop shells, but they can't stop 250KG bombs, right?
Subsequent facts proved that semi-armor-piercing projectiles are really good for cruiser-class warships. Even though torpedoes are not fatal, bombs thrown at a larger angle from a height of 300 meters are still very effective in delaying and suppressing enemy ships.
After all, the anti-aircraft gun has not yet evolved to the level of World War II, and one of the very direct manifestations is that the elevation angle of the artillery seems not enough.... The maximum elevation angle of 55 degrees is too small for the bomber entering from above the head. The machine gun does not have this restriction, but it is more difficult to shoot down the twin-engine bomber with the 7.7MM machine gun. Because the big guy flying in the air is also barbed!
When the plane dived, it quickly compressed the air, and a harsh sound was transmitted to the surroundings through the friction between the airframe and the air. With the roar of the engine, it was like the shriek of death. The first bomber will drop two 250KG bombs at the Drake in sequence. This armored cruiser with a length of more than 100 meters is as agile as a sea snake. After adjusting its course twice, it avoided the falling bombs. The huge hull drew a serpentine trajectory on the sea surface, but the constant changes of direction and acceleration overdrawn the high-temperature and high-pressure steam stored by the cruiser. When lucky enough to avoid the third bomb, the fourth bomb successfully landed at a position less than 10 meters away from the side string of the battleship's stern!
boom! A huge jet of water surged up beside the battleship, and the falling sea water even wet a large area of the deck. On the surface, this was a failed hit. But in fact, despite the name of the semi-armor-piercing bomb, there are up to 90 kg of charges in the 250KG bomb! Although the battleship cannot be directly shredded like a direct hit torpedo,
However, the shrapnel produced by the rupture of the projectile, driven by the energy generated by the explosion, still caused the armored cruiser to pay a heavy price.
The hull plates with a thickness of more than ten millimeters were punched into a sieve, and a large amount of seawater entered the interior of the hull along the gaps. With the high-speed maneuvering of the warship, the hull plates, which were already close to the limit, finally fell under the pressure of the sea water after the last large increase. The whole body was broken under the impact and collision, and hundreds of tons of sea water poured into it and destroyed the internal structure of the battleship. The drive shaft of the left propeller made a tooth-sickening sound of metal breaking and twisting during the vibration and collision. The unease caused by the shaking and fragmentation forced the British to temporarily shut down the connected power system. And this turned this armored cruiser, which was originally like an agile cheetah, into a lame hyena in an instant!
Then, destruction ensues! The third attacking bomber dived bravely, dropping two rounds of 250KG semi-armour-piercing bombs from a low altitude of 150 meters at close to the extreme speed and the maximum dive angle!
"I can clearly feel the arrival of the god of death. A big guy with a wingspan of more than 20 meters fell almost vertically from the sky. (Line of sight problem, in fact, the dive angle is not large.) I saw two black jets with my own eyes. The bombs fell from the sky. Looking from the position of the front conning tower, these bombs were only the size of rice grains. Two bombs disappeared in a flash. One of them fell between No. 3 and No. 4 chimneys, while the other seemed to be Landed at the stern!" The captain of the Drake recalled the scene at that time.
The first bomb successfully landed between the two thick chimneys of the hull, but unfortunately, this pre-dreadnought armored cruiser was obviously not equipped with a porous defensive structure called chimney armor! Therefore, when the bomb easily smashed through the upper deck, it was a devastating blow to the flue below!
A huge flame rose from the middle and rear of the hull with the sound of an explosion. Countless debris and thick smoke poured out. Nearly 100 kilograms of explosives easily destroyed all the flues under the two chimneys. The exhaust gas and flames spread to other places along the damaged flue, and the exhaust gas pouring into the boiler compartment even caused several boilers to suffocate directly. Although the casualties were not large, the entire warship was lost in a short period of time. Half the boiler!
Another bomb hit near the stern rudder compartment, and the violent explosion directly destroyed the almost defenseless rudder compartment at the rear. At the same time, the violent vibration caused a stern rudder to fall off directly. The swift Drake came to a half-standstill. Before the British could react, two more bombs roared down, one of which almost hit the bow of the ship, and the explosion destroyed several compartments in the bow, while the other bomb landed on the left deck superior!
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