Chapter 254: It’s Different Now

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The fighters and bombers in the sky were like vultures that had smelled a rotting corpse. The battleship Malaya, which had originally been maintaining a speed of over 15 knots, began to list at a visible rate after the explosion. Thick black smoke poured from its superstructure, and its speed suddenly dropped. It seemed as if it could no longer move at all.

The midship section of the warship, which had originally been bristling with anti-aircraft guns like a hedgehog, now had very little return fire. A great fire had started, sending up thick, rolling smoke that blotted out the sky. The Royal Navy ensign of the once-invincible British Empire was burning fiercely in the flames. Sailors were running for their lives everywhere on the warship.

This one bomb had directly pierced the warship’s horizontal armor plate amidships and had then tumbled down into the ammunition magazine of one of the ship’s 76mm secondary guns. The shells stored in this magazine had cooked off, destroying the nearby compartments. The powerful impact had taken out one of the Malaya’s boilers.

Seawater poured into the ruptured compartments, and the entire Malaya began to list. However, the battle-hardened British naval sailors were struggling to save their warship. This level of damage was not yet enough to take the life of a battleship with a full-load displacement of 33,000 tons.

On the bridge, the captain of the Malaya, his head bleeding, finally climbed up from the floor. He looked around. Everywhere were sailors and officers, lying on the ground and groaning. Of course, more people had climbed up on their own and were dizzily trying to figure out what had just happened.

“Contact the damage control officer! I want to know the extent of the ship’s damage! Send someone outside to see what happened! Send a telegram to the Eagle. Tell them we’ve been hit and need more air cover,” the captain commanded as he got to his feet.

A staff officer looked at him in horror, then immediately turned and called to the surrounding sailors and officers, “The captain is wounded! Get a medic, quick!”

“I’m fine!” the captain roared. “You go down yourself! Go to the midship section and check the damage for me! Immediately! At once! Go!”

The staff officer nodded at attention and hurried out of the bridge. A soldier ran in, flustered, and stood at attention beside the captain. “Reporting to the captain! The midship has been hit. This vessel is sinking.”

“Have the damage control officer start patching the leaks now! Emergency repairs! Quick!” the captain’s face changed drastically upon hearing this, and he hurriedly commanded. “Order the watertight compartments on the port side to be flooded! Correct the ship’s list!”

In the sky above, the German pilots were climbing again to regain altitude. The brief exchange of fire just now had completely demonstrated the absolute qualitative superiority of the German aircraft. They had shot down seven of the British Gladiator fighters that had been attempting to interfere with the Stukas’ bomb drops in one go, making up for their earlier losses.

“It seems next time we don’t need to be in such a hurry to drop our torpedoes. Their planes are no match for us. They can’t do anything to us even when we’re carrying torpedoes, Captain!” the wingman said, shouting into his headset as he climbed.

“Shut up! Watch out for those cruisers! Anti-aircraft guns! My God!” the commander of the Fw-190 formation said, carefully maneuvering his plane to dodge the shells from the British warships as he climbed. “Order the brothers to form up! We’re going to give them a real taste of what’s to come!”

“Number 4, Number 4, pull up! Number 9, don’t get entangled anymore! Pull up! We’ll form up at high altitude and then dive again!” the wingman repeated continuously in the headset.

A Gladiator fighter, its eyes red with bloodlust, climbed rapidly after a Stuka, sticking to its tail and firing continuously. But the German naval fighter pilots were clearly not going to miss such a good opportunity. Two Fw-190s that were climbing broke off and, in mid-air, tore the crazed British plane to pieces.

“Hey, that battleship is on fire! See it?” a fighter pilot said, glancing down from below the clouds and exclaiming.

“The Stuka brothers hit it! The Stuka brothers hit that battleship!” another voice also said in the headset.

“Maintain formation!” the commander of the Fw-190 formation said, glancing at the smoking Malaya. “Help the Stuka group with their tails! Then we’ll dive and drop our bombs. The British planes were in chaos just now. We’ll take advantage of the chaos and continue the attack.”

On the carrier HMS Eagle, the commander of the Royal Navy’s southward-bound 1st Task Force lowered his binoculars, glanced at the captain of the Eagle beside him, and sighed. “How many Gladiator fighters are left? Scramble all the ones that can fly now.”

“Scramble all fighters!” the captain commanded loudly. “Have the Swordfish take off too! Don’t load bombs. They are to provide anti-aircraft cover for the entire fleet! Quick!”

“Change course. Sail west! Let’s hope the German navy doesn’t have the courage to pursue,” the fleet commander said, looking at the smoking Malaya in the distance, and then added, “Retreat at the maximum speed the Malaya can maintain.”

“Yes, Admiral!” the captain nodded and gave the order. “Signal the escorting warships. In two minutes, all ships will turn to starboard, course due west…”

“In two minutes! Course due west!” the first mate repeated the captain’s command loudly.

“Send a telegram to Great Britain! The Malaya has been damaged. My fleet is abandoning the mission to blockade the German fleet and is returning to base effective immediately,” the fleet commander added.

“Yes, sir!” the telegrapher on the side said, nodding and recording the commander’s order.

“Signal the Malaya. Confirm their damage status. Ask if there’s anything we can do to help…” As he was continuing to give orders, an officer who had been looking into the distance with his binoculars lowered them.

His face was filled with terror, and his voice was trembling. “Sir! The German planes are attacking again!”

“Attacking again?” the fleet commander asked in disbelief, raising his binoculars to look at the sea. In the distance, the German planes were beginning a new round of dive-bombing attacks.

“My God! When did naval warfare become so different from before? How can an air strike from an aircraft carrier carry such heavy bombs? How can it be sustained for so long?” the fleet commander muttered as he watched the German planes.

It had become different. The German pilots in the sky had finally understood what the Führer’s so-called long-range naval warfare was like. The age of big ships and giant guns was ultimately no match for the ravages of carrier-based aircraft. After twenty years of development, carrier-based aircraft finally had the power to challenge the hegemon of the seas. The seemingly hard armor and sharp lances were of no use when a dense swarm of bullets came sweeping over.

“Fighters with their bombs dropped, provide cover! We are approaching these warships at low altitude! We will drop our torpedoes at a suitable position!” the commander of the Fw-190s commanded as he dived. A chorus of “as you command” came back from the headsets.

The Gladiator fighters at low altitude braced themselves and charged up, hoping to interfere with the German planes’ torpedo drop trajectory. But the German plane formation, which now had cover experience and whose morale was at an all-time high, clearly did not fall into a panic again. They attacked the warships through the gaps, from time to time covering each other and taking out British fighters. For a time, the entire sky seemed to be dominated by these grey-camouflaged German fighters.

Soon, the German planes found a gap in the British warships. Two Fw-190s with torpedoes skimmed the water and dropped the torpedoes slung under their bellies into the sea. The propellers at the rear of the two torpedoes churned in the seawater, drawing two straight white lines as they charged toward the British warships in front of them.

It was clear that the British destroyer on the outermost perimeter saw these two deadly things. The entire warship began to decelerate sharply, the entire hull groaning with the stress of the steel. But the destroyer’s efforts paid off. It successfully avoided the two white lines of death. The two white lines in the sea scraped past the destroyer’s bow, passed the destroyer, and continued on toward the distance.

And not far from the destroyer, a huge waterspout shot into the air. A cruiser was turning violently to avoid the Stuka bombers that were diving rapidly from the sky. It had successfully avoided the attack from the sky but was hit head-on by a torpedo that the destroyer had let pass.

The beautiful bow of this light cruiser was hit by a torpedo. A huge explosion followed. This light cruiser was clearly not as tough as the battleship Malaya. After a violent explosion, the entire warship began to sink at a speed that was visible to the naked eye.

The entire bow of this light cruiser had been blown off. A hole the size of a fighter plane was violently taking on seawater. The forward twin-gun turret, due to the huge vibration, was now pointing at its own deck.

“The Penelope! The Penelope has been hit!” an officer on the bridge of the British flagship, the carrier Eagle, screamed like a frightened woman. But he was not reprimanded for his loss of composure. Everyone was looking in horror at the sea not far away. The bow of the hit light cruiser had exploded again. The massive explosion had directly destroyed a forward gun turret. It seemed the ammunition magazine had cooked off due to the fire and vibration.

The British fleet commander, not knowing what to say, suddenly looked at the carrier’s air group commander and asked, “What about our bombers? Have they sent back any news?”

Before the officer could answer, another violent explosion suddenly occurred on the port side of the battleship Malaya not far away. A cloud of black smoke shot into the air from the middle of the Malaya. On the bridge of the carrier Eagle, one could even see many of the warship’s parts flying into the sky with the explosion without the need for binoculars.

The battleship Malaya was finished. This thought suddenly appeared in the minds of all the British naval officers present.