At this moment, several sailors standing on the deck of the USS Arizona saw the raging fire sealing the exit hatch, burning the steel plate at the exit and deforming it. There were bursts of violent coughing from inside.
"Quickly put out the fire and save people..."
Several sailors shouted, knowing that more than a thousand people were barricaded below the bilge.
The sailors put out the fire as quickly as possible. The water cannons sizzled on the red hatch. White smoke and mist rose more than ten meters high. Most of the ship's hull was burned. Explosions were heard one after another from the inside. The fire in the crew passage It was temporarily suppressed by water cannons, but as the battleship shook violently, the fire continued to rekindle.
At the critical moment, Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Foco, who had been stunned by the shock wave in the explosion, woke up, directed the sailors to put out the fire, and called on sailors from several other destroyers to climb over through chains to join the rescue. Finally, the hatch was opened The fire was brought under control.
"Cough cough cough..."
The fire was temporarily suppressed by water cannons, but the smoke in the cabin increased. The crew members trapped inside coughed loudly and tried their best to escape.
The hatch burned by the fire was red and deformed and narrowed, forcing the crew to run out one by one, unlike during the exercise, when more than a dozen people could run out at once.
At this critical moment, Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Foco fully demonstrated his commanding skills. He took the trumpet and shouted accurately in the cabin, lined up, and quickly filed out one by one.
Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Falco was the senior commander of the battleship Arizona. He knew that there were more than 1,200 people trapped in the bilge at this time. Those who escaped first must rush to the deck quickly to provide relief to those behind. Leave enough room for people to escape.
Under the orderly command of Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Foco, the sailors in the bilge stabilized their emotions. Prior to this, everyone had gone through many escape drills, and no panic or stampede occurred during the escape.
During the escape process, many people screamed as soon as their hands grabbed the hatch, but they couldn't care less at this time. Compared with escaping for their lives, the injuries to their palms were negligible.
Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Foco ordered the escaping sailors to quickly take up positions as machine gunners to defend against bombers in the air, and to closely monitor and guard against enemy torpedo planes. The remaining men immediately extinguished the fire to prevent it from rekindling.
This escape passage was filled with the smell of burnt human bodies.
Suddenly, a sailor standing on the side of the ship saw a Type 97 torpedo plane repeating its old trick. It flew over their heads, drifted and turned one kilometer ahead, then quickly dropped in altitude and rushed straight towards them. He even You can see the white band with the sun flag painted on the head of the Japanese pilot in the cockpit of the Type 97 torpedo plane.
"Torpedo machine!"
the sailor shouted at the top of his lungs.
Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Foco calmly ordered: "The machine guns block the attack route of the torpedo planes."
"The hull is tilted severely and the machine gun angle is not enough, sir!" the machine gunner replied loudly.
The hull of the ship was tilted, and the machine gunners could barely shoot in the air, but they were unable to shoot on both sides to resist the enemy.
Everyone could only watch helplessly as the torpedo aircraft continued to descend and lowered the torpedo pylon under the belly of the aircraft, ready to be launched at any time.
Seeing the torpedo machine coming towards them, most of the sailors showed panic on their faces and stopped putting out fires, preparing to retreat immediately when the enemy launched torpedoes.
Without the suppression of the water cannon, the fire on the hatch rekindled, blocking the people inside again.
At the critical moment, an SBD Dauntless dive bomber with its fuselage on fire and black smoke collided head-on with the Type 97 torpedo plane. Both aircraft exploded violently and fell.
It turned out that this SBD Dreadnought was driven by Second Lieutenant John Ford and Signal Corpsman Sean Pierce. They had just been severely damaged in a fight with the Zero. Both of them were surrounded by fire and could not parachute to escape, so they crashed into the aircraft. A torpedo plane died together with the Japanese, temporarily resolving the crisis on the battleship USS Arizona.
Seeing that the threat of torpedo planes had been temporarily eliminated, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Foco, the crew did not dare to relax and continued to put out the fire. They knew that disaster could happen at any time, and everyone continued to pour water on the cabin door desperately. , once again suppressed the fire and covered the sailors' escape.
Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Foco had already seen that this giant ship could not be saved, but everyone in the bilge must be rescued before he could order everyone to abandon the ship and escape for their lives.
At this moment, several more Japanese Type 99 bombers formed a formation and flew over [Battleship Avenue], constantly adjusting their altitude and angle.
"Hurry up……"
Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Foco knew that the situation was critical and loudly ordered the sailors to shoot for defense and urged the fire to be controlled.
Even in the face of a big cake, the Japanese attack was carried out in an orderly manner. The bombing area was clearly layered and the connections between the units were orderly. This also fully reflected the Japanese's meticulous and rich techniques and tactics.
This kind of technical and tactical balance of offense and defense can not only achieve bombing without blind spots, but also avoid blind throwing and waste of ammunition, and can also cover each other.
Looking at the horizontal bombers flying over, Zhou Zhihan knew that if it was attacked again, the [Arizona] would fall into catastrophe, so he pulled the lever and faced it.
Immediately, three Zeros were in hot pursuit.
Even though the American warships on the water were in chaos and thick smoke was billowing on the water, which affected his vision, Zhou Zhihan could still see that the crew of the USS Arizona was carrying out a life-and-death rescue operation.
At the same time, Zhou Zhihan also saw two Type 99 bombers flying towards the oil depot at Pearl Harbor.
Zhou Zhihan took a breath. He knew that shortly after the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States was still able to severely damage the Japanese fleet at Coral Island and Midway Island in a short period of time. The Japanese did not blow up the oil storage tanks of the Pacific Fleet during the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. There are direct reasons.
If the USS Neosho oil tanker is bombed, it will cause the seawater in Pearl Harbor to burn. Then once the oil storage tank is bombed, it can directly wipe Pearl Harbor off the map of Hawaii. The power of its explosion is no less than The Saint-Pol refinery at Dunkirk, the entire Pacific Fleet would cease to exist, and the U.S. Navy would not have the strength to enter the Pacific for at least a year and a half.
This is a dilemma for Zhou Zhihan.
Guarding the USS Arizona, the oil depot may not be saved, and it is hard to say whether one of his fighter planes can defend the USS Arizona. After all, the Japanese can launch attacks at will from high, medium, and low altitudes.
Once the oil storage depot was bombed, the entire Pearl Harbor would be immediately razed to the ground, and all the battleships, including the people he rescued from the Arizona, would also die.
After a brief consideration, Zhou Zhihan decided to save the people first. He couldn't just watch these 1,200 people being buried alive under the water. He couldn't just die without saving them. As for the oil storage tanks, he could put them away first. At this time, the entire Pearl Harbor The smoke was billowing, and it was not easy for the Japanese to locate the oil storage tank at once.
Wildcat No. 214 made two consecutive jumps to accelerate, easily getting rid of three Type Zeros, and quickly flew up to meet five Type 99 high-altitude horizontal bombers.
After learning the lesson of being almost shot down by Nishizawa Hiroki and Iwamoto Tetsuzo, Zhou Zhihan will never slow down easily now and let himself fall into a passive situation of being beaten.
Saving people is important, but the prerequisite is to save yourself first, otherwise everything will be nonsense.
Seeing Wildcat No. 214 approaching, the five Type 99 high-altitude bombers immediately changed their formation and formed a dense formation. Concentrating firepower to suppress Wildcat No. 214 was the best choice.
Wildcat No. 214 opened fire in advance when it was seven hundred meters away from the bomber group, immediately suppressing the Japanese. When did the range of American fighter planes become so powerful?
The squad leader shouted: "Disperse..."
But it was too late. The nose of the bomber flying in the middle was hit by a shell. The pilot was killed on the spot. The nose of the bomber sank and hit the sea.
The remaining crew members parachuted immediately. As for where they landed after parachuting, or how miserable they would be if they were caught by the Americans, that is a matter for the future. Human nature is that when encountering danger, the brain will subconsciously issue life-saving instructions. .
Everyone is afraid of death, and the Japanese are no exception. The reason why the kamikaze teams in the later period were "not afraid of death" was because once they took off to carry out a suicide attack, they had no way back - they had no fuel to return.
As for some people later saying that when a kamikaze pilot performed a suicide mission, the cabin was welded shut and the landing gear was lost, that is all nonsense.
How could a fighter jet using gasoline and simple electronic equipment easily use electric welding to seal the hatch? It would take a lot of effort. Doing that will hurt the morale of the pilots sitting in the cabin.
How can a landing gear that can automatically fall withstand the takeoff of a fighter jet?
No parachute and no oil for the return journey is the correct solution.
Seeing that the companion in the middle was shot down, the remaining four bombers immediately spread out to both sides to bomb other battleships.
Anyway, Pearl Harbor is full of prey. If the USS Arizona cannot be sunk or cannot be bombed for the time being, we can bomb other warships first.
So there was a scene where Wildcat No. 214 was flying over the USS Arizona, but not a single Japanese bomber was flying in. Even the three Zeros that had just been following and chasing were turning to attack other targets during the pursuit.
The Japanese pilots are not fools. Even the two top aces Tetsuzo Iwamoto and Hiroyuki Nishizawa can't beat them together. They just went up to die in vain. Today they have gained a huge harvest. Everyone wants to go back and enjoy the fruits of this victory.
After escaping misfortune twice in a row, the sailors on the Arizona raced against time to rescue the crew in the bilge and continued to use high-pressure hoses to suppress the fire that kept rekindling.
Although they knew that the battleship was no longer safe, the crew members were still reluctant to leave their old friends who got along day and night, and still tried their best to save the battleship with most of its hull on fire.
Knowing that time would not wait for me, and with the thick smoke billowing from the bilge, the sailors escaped in an orderly and fast manner. In a moment, another two to three hundred people escaped. Those sailors who were not injured after escaping immediately joined the battle, and the injured ones People moved ashore.
The sailors of the USS Arizona all knew that hundreds of people came out in a short time, all because of the protection of the No. 214 Wildcat hovering and guarding in the sky.
Seeing that the Arizona was temporarily safe and the sailors were evacuating in an orderly manner, Zhou Zhihan was worried about the time bomb of the large oil storage tank, so he pressed the lever and flew towards the oil storage tank at high speed.
