"Woo... Wu..." The red alarm above the head was spinning and flashing with a scary light. In the narrow passage, navy soldiers wearing white shirts ran quickly towards their combat posts.
On the bridge, the officer on duty stood in his position with his hands behind his back and his chin raised, overlooking the deck of the bow. The sailors quickly put away the clothes hanging on the side railings.
Drying clothes and sheets on warships is actually a naval tradition in various countries: whether it is the era of sailing battleships or the era of ironclad battleships.
It was not until warships had special drying equipment that the practice of drying clothes gradually became less common.
And in order to cooperate with this behavior of drying clothes, Navy warships sometimes use masts to pull up cables, like sails, to dry a large number of sheets and bedding at the same time.
Drying laundry on such a large scale is of course allowed and institutionalized. The captain will declare that day as "laundry day" when the weather is very good, and all officers and soldiers on the ship will wash and dry their clothes to ensure that their clothes are dry.
Fighting at sea for a long time ensures that the clothes are dry and fresh, preventing the growth of bacteria, which is also a guarantee of combat effectiveness.
As for whether to hang bed sheets and clothes on the cannon... In fact, the barrel of the cannon is very thick. Even if bed sheets and clothes are hung on it, words like spreading or spreading are more appropriate.
In fact, during non-combat time, it is not uncommon for soldiers to go to the deck and lie on the gun barrel or bask in the sun on the top of the turret. This does not intuitively reflect the naval combat effectiveness.
So the story that a certain navy officer was drying his clothes on a battleship cannon, which exposed his weakness in military discipline, was seen through by his opponents, and ultimately lost the war, is just for fun, don't believe it.
"How long will it take?" Bernard walked into the bridge, followed by the adjutant. The two of them walked to the officers on duty, and the Commander of the Datang Navy asked anxiously.
"The boiler still needs four hours to prepare...the air force attack force has already taken off." The officer on duty answered his superior's question with some embarrassment.
All naval officers knew how anxious Bernard was. They had been waiting in this sea area for so long that they could hardly lift their heads.
The army fought bloody battles under Beiyuan City. The air force had changed the situation of the war, but the navy, which spent a huge amount of money... had not had time to fire a single cannon from the outbreak of the war until now!
This is simply a shame!
You must know that the cost of building a dreadnought ship in the navy is an astonishing one million gold coins! Thick steel, huge artillery, precision optical sights... If all these things were converted into tanks, they could probably equip several divisions!
In addition, naval warships consume a lot of fuel every time they sail, and they also have to prepare food and supplies. It can be said to be a gold-devouring beast.
But even such a naval fleet often wanders in vain on the sea waiting for orders because it cannot find the enemy's fleet and cannot judge the situation.
"There's nothing you can do, there's no rush." Bernard in turn comforted his subordinates on duty. He walked to his position, and the look on his face seemed much more relaxed than yesterday.
Seeing that his men were a little strange, Bernard explained: "Now that we have found the enemy, everything will be fine. As long as we kill this enemy fleet, we can go north!"
What he has always been thinking about is protecting the navigation in the north and annihilating the fleet of the Mirage Kingdom. As for the fleet that attacked Long Island, he didn't take it seriously at all.
The intelligence department of the Tang Army has long since confirmed that the large warships built by Cyric have been concentrated in the hands of Mirage, and the only threats to Dragon Island are some cruisers and destroyers.
Bernard did not think at all that the three battleships he held in his hands were used to fight enemy cruisers and destroyers. These three battleships are going to face the Mirage Navy's main ship head-on!
This is a collision between giants and giants! He had no interest in playing with the small fish and shrimps in front of him.
"It doesn't matter. If the Air Force can't handle it, we'll clean up the mess!" After saying that, Bernard also looked down at the front deck and watched the sailors hurriedly return the sheets to the cabin.
…
"They have been following us for a while." In the bridge, Cyric's officer stared at the two Flying Fortress bombers in the distance and said with some irritation.
"We have turned twice, and they are still following..." The navy commander of the Gobel Kingdom was also a little annoyed.
This feeling of waiting is really uncomfortable. The opponent is still waiting for death...
"It seems that this kind of plane can fly for a long time..." Cyric's officer walked to the porthole and watched the two planes that once again crossed the entire fleet flying back to the front of the fleet.
What they don't know is that the B-17 Flying Fortress without bombs can indeed fly in the sky for a long time.
Moreover, as long as their fleet is found, the Datang Air Force can take off more planes and keep tracking and monitoring them.
As long as it doesn't get dark and the weather doesn't change, you can keep tracking like this until the end of time.
Just as the officers and soldiers on the battleships preparing to attack Dragon Island looked angrily at the two planes in the sky, two more Flying Fortresses came from a distance.
Soon there were four planes in the sky, flying back and forth around the fleet, like flies hovering over a corpse.
This tortured the Cyric fleet for more than an hour, and suddenly a black spot appeared on the horizon in the distance.
These black spots were densely packed and rushed towards Cyric's sneak attack fleet. As they approached, these black spots turned into "swordsman" shaped aircraft, forming a formation that covered the sky and the sun.
"Here we come!" Cyric's naval commander, who felt that he was fully prepared for a battle, saw the Tang Air Force attacking like a swarm of swarms. He only said this word and his whole body froze.
He had only heard of things like airplanes. When he heard about it before, he didn't realize how terrifying this weapon was.
But when he saw the fleet of planes appearing in front of him, he realized that these things called planes were really desperate.
"Let all the soldiers on standby get their weapons and get on the deck! Find your own position!" The commander-in-chief of the Gobel Kingdom Navy was already pale at this moment.
While issuing the order, he looked at Commander Cyric beside him: "Have your directors considered this situation?"
Even old-fashioned ironclad ships have Maxim heavy machine guns on the deck equipped for small targets. These machine guns are not set up for anti-aircraft purposes, but they can play some anti-aircraft role.
But obviously, it is not a good idea to rely on these Maxim machine guns for air defense, which do not even have anti-air sights or tracer bullets to correct the trajectory.
It's a pity that Cyric's sneak attack fleet only has these weapons, so they have to think of some more ways to increase some anti-air firepower.
As a result, in the battleship's cabin, soldiers with no other tasks took out the individual weapons stored in the weapons room and hurried to the deck.
Cyric Type 1 rifle! This is what they can find. In order to survive, they could only stand on the deck, aim at the dive bombers that had begun to climb in front of them, and prepare to use their rifles to decide life and death.
"Damn it! Turn! Let the fleet turn! We can't wait to die here!" Cyric's commander finally came to his senses and shouted hysterically.
He didn't think at first that this sneak attack on Long Island was just a waste of time. He thought it would be difficult for the enemy to find his fleet, so he thought he could approach Dragon Island at night and then bombard Tang's important oil and gas facilities.
Then through chaos and high speed, he quickly escaped, completed the mission and became Cyric's savior...
Although he had wavered when the airship force was wiped out, the subsequent order asked him to continue performing the mission. He was unable to do so and had no other choice.
At this moment, he finally realized that this operation was probably just a death attempt, a reckless experiment with no results!
"Turn!" The commander-in-chief of the Gobel Kingdom Navy also felt that continuing to move forward was simply risking death, so he also ordered: "Turn all warships! Cover each other! Until they leave the battlefield!"
Above the sky, through the windshield, the pilots of the Tang Army overlooked the fleet on the sea below them. The rapid steering made the white waves on both sides of these battleships no longer symmetrical, and all the battleships in the entire fleet began to draw a beautiful arc on the sea.
"Start the attack! Cut in from the tail! Dive! Dive!" In the communication channel of the first batch of attacking Stuka dive bombers, the commander loudly issued the attack order.
These Stuka dive bombers, which had removed their siren devices, fell from the clouds one after another, pointing their noses at the huge targets on the sea.
In their sights, the target that was originally only the size of a sesame seed gradually enlarged and gradually became the size of a willow leaf.
Immediately afterwards, these willow-leaf-sized targets continued to grow larger, and even the pale yellow color of the deck wood could be distinguished.
The turret bridge chimneys on the battleship began to become clearer, and the trajectory of the tracer bullets fired by the Stuka, which was the first to dive in front, was also clearly visible.
"Chug, chug, chug!" As the distance got closer and closer, the pilot of the Stuka dive bomber also pulled the trigger, and the cannons on the wings also began to roar.
The sailors on the other side's deck suddenly fell on their backs, and the soldiers holding rifles ran away. How could anyone care about the plane rushing down?
"Stuck!" Already quite close to the battleship, the pilot threw out the 500-kilogram bomb mounted under his belly. Its huge missile body was supported by the bombardment rod, separated from the aircraft, avoided the propeller in front, and rushed towards the battleship on the sea.
