Empire Conquest
Chapter 83 - 79: The Wasp’s Stinger

Chapter 83: Chapter 79: The Wasp’s Stinger

From a distance, those Dive Bombers plummeting from the sky, set ablaze by Anti-aircraft Guns from Fighters or Battleships, looked like fiery meteors descending from the heavens.

If there truly were deities living in the skies, perhaps this was their heavenly fire punishing the Saiyi Navy!

For Jiang Haiyang, sitting inside the Dive Bomber, the experience after commencing the dive was far from comfortable.

Because the first and the second squadrons were delayed by a few minutes to circumvent the Fast Battleship and attack the desperately fleeing carrier, it gave the third squadron a chance to seize the initiative.

Including the deputy squadron leader, the third squadron comprised a total of five Dive Bombers.

It was probably an attempt to draw away the anti-aircraft Fighters and eliminate the Fast Battleship, which was like an obstructive Tiger, and so the third squadron began their dive early under the direction of the deputy squadron leader.

This wasn’t being adventurous; they were becoming cannon fodder.

The greatest advantage of the Dive Bomber is the increased hit rate and penetration power achieved through an almost vertical dive with the use of aviation armor-piercing bombs equipped with delayed fuses, ideal for targeting Battleships and carriers of such large size. In simple terms, diving and bombing could impart a higher velocity to the bombs, allowing them to pierce the armor deck and detonate within the hull.

Of course, dive bombing was an activity that required highly advanced techniques.

After years of arduous exploration, the elite pilots of the Imperial Navy, like Jiang Haiyang, had finally devised a set of effective bombing tactics and techniques—key being that they could be taught and mastered by other pilots through study and rigorous training.

First off, the diving entry height must not be less than 1,500 meters, and for main battle Ships with thick horizontal armor, it would be best to reach 2,500 meters. Only with sufficient entry height could the bombs acquire the necessary high speed during the dive.

If the height was insufficient, then the bomb’s velocity at the time of release would not be enough to ensure penetration of the ship’s armor.

Second, the dive angle should optimally be controlled between seventy and seventy-five degrees.

The dive angle couldn’t be too small; this was easy to understand because if the angle was too shallow, the projectile’s travel distance—or trajectory—would increase, leading to a larger margin of error in the point of impact, and the velocity at the end point would be reduced, both affecting the bombing effectiveness.

If the dive angle was too steep, it would be extremely difficult for the Dive Bomber to level out of the dive.

Lastly, there was the release altitude, or pull-out height. This varied with the Dive Bomber’s performance and the pilot’s personal capacity, so it couldn’t be generalized. However, for an average pilot, the pull-out height should be controlled to be above 800 meters.

The five Dive Bombers entered the dive at a height of less than 2,000 meters and at an angle of less than sixty degrees.

What was even more deadly was that because the target was a comprehensively retrofitted Fast Battleship with horizontal armor that was definitely over one hundred millimeters thick, the bombs had to be given sufficient initial speed to smash through the horizontal armor and deal a heavy blow to the Battleship.

Don’t forget, the original striking target was the carrier, not the Battleship!

Not to mention that the Saiyi Navy’s carriers didn’t have armored decks, even the carriers of the Bulan Navy’s armored decks couldn’t compare to the Battleship’s horizontal armor in thickness.

As a result, the 250-kilogram aviation armor-piercing bombs carried by the Dive Bombers were all set with delays designed for targeting carriers!

What does that mean?

The fuses were set to detonate too soon!

For targeting main battle Ships, the delay would have been longer.

The fuses were already set before takeoff and couldn’t be altered mid-flight.

Therefore, the only option was to make the aviation armor-piercing bombs "fly" at a higher speed!

To achieve the sufficiently high bombing velocity, and since the dive angle wasn’t steep enough, the five Dive Bombers didn’t slow down after entering the dive.

The first three were shot down by the ambush of Zero Fighters before they could drop their bombs.

The last two released their bombs at an approximate altitude of 700 meters but couldn’t level out in time; one was shot down by Fighters, while the other was shredded by Anti-aircraft Guns.

All ten pilots aboard the five Dive Bombers were heroically sacrificed.

However, these five dive bombers had also wiped out the last few fighters, more accurately, they had lured the last few anti-aircraft fighters to low altitude.

All these Zero Fighters came from the east, most likely the anti-aircraft fighters from other carriers.

When the bombs detonated near the fast battleship, sending up a column of water over one hundred meters high, Jiang Haiyang reached the dive entry point.

"Long live the Navy, may the Empire last forever!"

The machine gunner and navigator in the back seat shouted.

He was correct to do so because if he didn’t shout now, once they began the dive, under the immense G-force, it would be good enough if one could stay conscious, let alone shout.

Jiang Haiyang didn’t shout; he needed to devote all his effort to controlling the dive bomber.

With just one bomb and only one chance, there absolutely could be no mishaps!

Having lived for over forty years, perhaps it was all for these few seconds.

As the nose dipped, the carrier on the sea surface became clearer, more specifically, its contours emerged, and the glare from the flight deck was somewhat blinding.

It was the seawater splashing onto the deck from high-speed sailing.

Soon, Jiang Haiyang had the carrier lined up in his sights. After a while, he heard the distinctive screech of the "Wasp" as it entered its dive.

An experienced pilot can judge the dive speed by the pitch of the screech and thus accurately time the release of the bomb.

Without a doubt, Jiang Haiyang was such an experienced pilot.

Though in comparison to the carrier, weighing tens of thousands of tons and over two hundred fifty meters in length, the dive bomber, not even three tons and with a wingspan of just over ten meters, seemed as minute as a mosquito before a colossal beast, under Jiang Haiyang’s control, this bomber was more like a Bumblebee with a stinger.

It was precisely for this reason that this dive bomber, which went into mass production in the year 97 of the New Calendar, was named "Wasp".

The key was that Jiang Haiyang knew this bomber like the back of his hand.

After a few seconds of violent shaking, the force transmitted from the control stick suddenly disappeared, and the dive bomber entered a relatively stable phase.

Jiang Haiyang had been waiting for this moment!

When the dive speed exceeded four hundred and fifty kilometers per hour and the dive angle was around seventy degrees, the "Wasp"’s stability would suddenly increase and maintain for a few seconds.

No one could explain this phenomenon.

Even the engineers who designed the "Wasp" didn’t understand; they could only attribute it to a combination of various factors.

If one could control it well, releasing the bomb during these seconds and keeping the release altitude between five hundred to eight hundred meters, one could achieve the ideal bombing precision.

In the bombing competitions held by the Navy, Jiang Haiyang had set a record that had not been broken to this day.

He had hit a target with a diameter of ten meters with three bombs in a row, three times.

What does this mean?

In combat, it would equate to a one hundred percent hit rate against battleship-sized carriers.

Let’s not forget, no carrier flight deck is less than twenty meters in width.

Of course, this was just a theoretical outcome.

"Zhu Huasheng, I’ve avenged you!"

Murmuring this in his heart, Jiang Haiyang firmly pressed the bomb release button at the top of the control stick.

Feeling the fighter tremble slightly, Jiang Haiyang then pulled back on the control stick and simultaneously pushed the throttle to its limit, controlling the dive bomber as it pulled out of the dive.