afterglow

Chapter 484 Chapter Resurrection from the dead? disagreements and disputes

The terrifying big explosion resounded through the sky, and the officers and soldiers on both sides on the shore and at sea were shocked by it, and they looked over there in unison.

The ferocious shock wave spread to the sky and the earth, even overturning the slowly falling flares in the air.

"Oh! God!"

"Maybe we hit its ammunition depot!"

The officers and soldiers of the Australia cheered in unison. They thought that the salvo just now destroyed the ammunition depot of the Yuanxing.

The big explosion in the night caused both the Ming and U.S. armies to misunderstand the situation at the scene. Both sides believed that it was caused by the explosion of the Yuanxing, which was probably more serious than bad.

"Sir! We did it!"

"She was burning! I saw...fire, a lot of fire."

There was great cheer on the bridge of the Quincy, and even the calmest and calmest naval officers could not help but cheer at this moment.

【Picture】

The enemy's heavy patrol has an overwhelming advantage over your own warships, so you must not be reckless.

The retreat order has been issued by the acting commander, and the T-42 Squadron is fighting and retreating towards Savo Island.

Richmond felt it was necessary to gather the fleet. After the fierce battle just now, the positions of the ships were now somewhat loose and deviated.

Since the flagship of the Ming fleet has been severely damaged, the chances of winning this naval battle are much greater. Therefore, it is completely okay to spend a few minutes to reorganize the formation and better prepare for the subsequent battle.

The TF-27 task force did not want to give up when things were good, because the Ming army's aircraft carrier was still intact and could launch carrier-based aircraft for air strikes at dawn.

"Half salvo ready, release!"

Commodore Richmond Turner, who was overjoyed, took a deep breath and ordered: "Each ship turns on its identification lights, reorganizes its formation, and then attacks the cruiser (Qilian Shan)."

"His grandma's!" Xiong Zhuguo stomped his feet angrily, "Tang Xueji's fellow Shao Shao is home! Playing the piano randomly!"

As for the "fire" seen by the officers and soldiers of the Quincy, it was actually caused by the ignition of aviation gasoline leaked from the ship's seaplane. Although several anti-aircraft guns suffered damage, the negative impact was not significant. .

The Landsdale hastily turned on its identification lights and shouted "friendly fire" on the radio. During this period, at least one shell directly hit the side of the front A turret, paralyzing the turret.

"Boom boom boom!"

The officers and soldiers of the latter were still rejoicing that they had successfully struck a Ming warship with lightning, but they turned around and were beaten by their own people.

"Command, all ships will follow our own ship, turn to 315, let out smoke and retreat."

"Hit! Beat the mother-in-law back!"

It is not impossible to take back command now and then change the order, but there is a risk of causing chaos.

The muzzle flash illuminated the blue-black sea surface in a radius of several hundred meters, and three 320mm armor-piercing projectiles headed straight for the Australia, which was more than meters away.

At the same time, the nearby Ming warships loudly inquired in the radio frequency band and continuously sent light signals to the Yuanxing, but there was no news.

One by one, the cruisers and destroyers turned on their identification lights and reduced their speeds uniformly. The US fleet began to gather its troops in an orderly manner. The heavily damaged Salt Lake City sailed alone due east, away from the war zone.

The captain of the Qilianshan, Tang Xueji, immediately took over the command and issued the order to retreat.

In the next few dozen seconds, the available No. 2 and No. 4 turrets also opened fire one after another.

At 5:12, half an hour after being affected by the big explosion, the No. rear turret of the battlecruiser Yuanxing completed preparations for firing.

The Dutch seemed to particularly like to show off their power. Seeing the nearby US destroyers shelling the two unknown ships that were suspected to be Ming army destroyers, the Tromp also turned its guns and fired at them.

As a result, the destroyer USS Drayton (DD-366) mistakenly thought that the two were Ming army destroyers. The neurotic US sailors screamed, thinking that they were about to rush over and launch torpedoes.

The Drayton began to bombard friendly ships, and the normal shells fired from the 127mm naval gun flew towards the bewildered Landsdale.

Xiong Zhuguo was knocked to the ground. Documents, charts, telegraph newspapers and other sundries fell all over his body. Several wounds on his face were bleeding, and his right eye was stabbed by a flying pencil.

It wasn't until a full four minutes later that the Drayton realized that it had done something wrong - it was a friendly ship!

For a moment, the officers and soldiers on the ship were extremely embarrassed and hurriedly ceased fire.

However, at this time, the Yuanxing also noticed a sudden change in the battle situation - many of its own warships were turning and retreating to the west.

On the south side of the battlefield, the McCall and Landsdale, which had mistakenly attacked the Ming fleet without authorization, had now completed a U-turn and planned to return to the TF-27 fleet.

The Australia was caught off guard and was hit directly by two artillery shells in a short period of time. A water bomb penetrated the rear of the hull. A large amount of seawater poured into the propeller main shaft tunnel through the hole.

Amidst the clicking sound, the lights in the Yuanxing's internal cabins turned on one after another, and the backup generator immediately shut down and disconnected from the power grid.

"Report!" A captain rolled into the command tower, "Commander, the call is coming!"

"They're coming towards us!"

Tang Xueji decided to lead the fleet to avoid the edge for the time being. He would first retreat to the northwest to reorganize the formation, and then depending on the situation, he could turn around or simply wait until daybreak to let the aircraft carrier teach the US fleet a lesson.

The explosion of the ammunition supply ship not far away did affect the Yuanxing. The ferocious shock wave shattered most of the bridge windshield and caused the power supply system to malfunction and trip, but this did not damage the armor box and main structure.

Xiong Zhuguo's face was covered with bright red blood. He covered his right eye with his hand, and blood continued to flow from his fingers, which was very hideous.

As everyone knows, the Yuanxing is fine at all.

Therefore, Commodore Richmond's lowest expectation is to repel the Ming fleet and seize control of Iron Bottom Bay, allowing the US military on Guadalcanal to seize the time to repair Richard Airport, thereby protecting the fleet from disaster air attacks.

Therefore, Xiong Zhuguo could only let nature take its course at this moment, and also changed the course, sending out light signals while continuing to shoot at the Australia.

At 5:20, the Drayton had ceased fire and hurriedly informed the Tromp of the situation, but the latter continued to shell.

"Watch out for torpedoes!"

The power of the twin 150mm Bofors naval guns is not comparable to that of the single 127mm naval gun. The unlucky Landsdale was hit by four 150mm normal bullets in succession, and the superstructure was beyond recognition.

She was forced to release the smoke screen and turn away, while the Dutch fought harder and harder.

On the Quincy at the front of the fleet, Richmond finally figured out what was going on in the firefight behind the fleet.

He shouted angrily: "What are those Dutch people doing? Make them cease fire, now!"

A destroyer simply fired a flare, illuminating the sea area, and the Tromp, who had just woken up from a dream, stopped firing. The Landsdale had been severely damaged, with more than 200 tons of water taken in, multiple boiler steam pipes leaking, the ship's speed was greatly reduced, and a rough estimate of the casualties was as many as 40 people.

Then, an angry Richmond asked another destroyer, the USS McCall, "Has your ship been attacked by friendly fire?"

Although the McCall was also attacked, the number was small and the damage was minor. She then responded "confirmed".

At 5:31, another 320mm shell hit the Australia, detonating the ammunition magazine under the two forward turrets A and B.

The violent explosion instantly killed most of the people in the turret and forward cabin. The bow of the ship was blown off, and the Australia became a headless ship!

Fortunately, the large influx of seawater extinguished the fire caused by the explosion, and the fire did not spread. The Australia, which completely lost its combat capabilities and had a speed of only 9 knots, had to slowly turn around.

Quincy's intelligence briefing reported: "Sir, it is confirmed that the Chinese fleet is still retreating and approximately six to seven torpedo tracks have been observed."

The current situation is a dilemma for Commodore Richmond. The Yuanxing, which was previously mistakenly thought to have been severely damaged, actually came back to life, and fired a series of cannons to knock the Australia out of the battle. In addition, the Ming fleet is retreating westward, and one of the tactical objectives of the TF-27 fleet has been achieved.

It's just that there is less than an hour left before dawn, and the aircraft carrier in the Ming fleet will soon be able to launch carrier-based aircraft.

He tilted his head and asked, "Can fighter jets be launched from Richard Airport to cover us?"

The U.S. military on Guadalcanal is working day and night to repair the airport runway. Yesterday evening, the Ming army fleet started repairs as soon as the shelling stopped.

The commander of the air force immediately replied that it was okay, but there were only a dozen fighter jets that could be put into combat, and it was not recommended to place hope on them.

"The Chinese have advanced to the west of the airport, and they are only separated from the airport by the Longa River."

"We should get out of here, the airport could fail at any time."

The Quincy's staff members all felt that they should not stay here to show off, and it would be better to escape in time.

After weighing the situation, Brigadier General Richmond issued a retreat order.

At 5:45, the sparse shelling from both sides finally stopped, and the ripples caused by the last shell falling into the water gradually faded away, and the naval battle was completely over.

The TF-27 fleet uniformly turned on the identification lights, organized the formation, then turned to the southeast and returned to New Caledonia at a speed of 21 knots.

As for the Australia, which was severely damaged and could not keep up with the fleet, it could only ask for luck.

Amid sporadic shell explosions, the Guadalcanal Air Force took off six P-36 fighter jets in the rising sun. They were responsible for monitoring the movements of the Tianshi Youyuan.

Discovering that his own fleet had withdrawn westward to the waters near Cape Espanyol to regroup, Zhou Changfeng quickly called the artillery command post and ordered Zhu Lizhuo to immediately command the 1st Marine Brigade field artillery group to increase the attack on Richard Airport. The intensity of the bombardment.

The latter replied in embarrassment: "Jun Zuo, you have to think clearly. There are almost only two base shells left. Don't you keep them to support the front line?"

"Keep half of it and fight out the rest first!" Zhou Changfeng ordered decisively.

After hanging up the phone, he then said seriously to the naval liaison officer on the side: "Don't worry about the enemy fleet, ask the aircraft carrier to maintain air strikes on the airport, do you hear me?!"

In order to reduce the transportation pressure during landing operations, all ammunition has never been carried at one time, otherwise it would be too bloated.

In a standard campaign ammunition, the suppressed artillery unit will be equipped with twenty bases of ammunition. Taking the 112mm howitzer as an example, each artillery has one base of 80 rounds, and twenty bases are up to 1600 rounds.

In actual combat, due to the consideration of the speed of the troops, only a quarter is usually carried - that is, five base 400 rounds of artillery shells per artillery, which is enough to cope with three days of high-intensity battles or ten days of medium-intensity battles.

This standard seemed a bit extravagant and wasteful to Zhou at the beginning, and it would not consume so much if it was used sparingly. It should be noted that when the firepower preparations were made in the early stages of the Battle of Berlin, the average daily firing volume of Soviet field artillery was only more than a hundred rounds.

"Boom-boom-boom-"

The number of originally sparse explosive sites increased, and the density of bomb drops suddenly increased, which disrupted the plans of the aviation team at Richard Airport.

They originally planned to launch eight to ten more dive bombers to bomb the landing area of ​​the Ming army's ground troops, but the risk of forced takeoff was too high due to artillery fire interception. In the end, only five SB2U Defenders successfully took off.

These bombers headed west, diving and dropping bombs on the supplies that had not had time to be unloaded and were still piled on the beach.

This move was attacked by the air defense battalion, and the deployed 20.8mm anti-aircraft guns began to focus fire on these incoming enemy aircraft.

"Five, height one thousand two thousand, slant range two thousand one." The soldier holding the optical rangefinder reported loudly.

Each team is responsible for their assigned targets, and streaks of light are like arrows piercing the blue sky, chasing the rapidly diving enemy planes.

"Boom!"

A 250-pound aerial bomb roared down, submerging a landing craft in smoke and flying dust, and splashing water splashed down.

Then another bomb dropped, accurately hitting a large pile of wooden boxes filled with food.

In an instant, all kinds of cans were flying in the sky, the flying flour formed a large cloud of white smoke, and countless rice fell like rain.

"Dong dong dong dong——"

Hot empty shells flew out of the ejection window one after another. The anti-aircraft artillerymen struggled to shake the hand wheel and control the expensive Type 20.8 and mm anti-aircraft guns to adjust the pitch angle and rotation. The fire whip closely followed the movement of the enemy aircraft.

The enemy plane injured by the tracer blasting bomb burst into flames, dragging slender black smoke towards the sea in the distance, and two umbrella flowers bloomed in mid-air...

At the same time, nine Type 37 warships belonging to the "Liang" team launched by the Tianshi Youyuan discovered the slow-sailing Australia while searching the waters east of Guadalcanal.

They immediately launched an attack and dropped bombs in turn. Australia used the remaining four-banger bombers to fight back, but to no avail.

Such a warship that even has its bow missing and sailing at a snail's pace is not much different from a training target ship.

3月24日8：32，又被命中5枚250㎏航弹的澳大利亚号倾覆。

After the heavy cruiser HMCS Canberra was sunk last year, the Royal Australian Navy has since lost all its capital ships.

A little later, the second wave of aircraft launched by the Amaichi Ugaki suddenly received an order from the torpedo planes to change their targets while tracking the TF-27 task force.

Zhou Changfeng has been urging the fleet to maintain pressure on the US military airport on Guadalcanal to prevent it from being used again.

However, Xiong Zhuguo believes that this is not a top priority. He believes that the only mobile force available to the US military in the Southwest Pacific is this fleet, and we must seize the time to weaken them. When they are far away tomorrow, they will not be able to carry out air strikes.

Moreover, the heavy cruiser Salt Lake City had been wounded in the battle, so now was a good time to take advantage of his illness and kill him.

The two sides argued endlessly. In the end, the captain of the Amaichi Ugaki was worried that the two would not be able to get off Taiwan, so he took the initiative and secretly changed the order - the dive bombers continued to track the US fleet, and the torpedo bombers returned to attack the airport.

(End of this chapter)