Empire Conquest
Chapter 96 - 92 "Canglong" End of the Road

Chapter 96: Chapter 92 "Canglong" End of the Road

The first warship to be sunk from the Mobile Fleet was neither the "Chicheng" nor the carrier, but the "Sanwei" Light Cruiser, which had been accompanying the "Jiahe."

In fact, this light cruiser could be said to have been incredibly unlucky.

After the battle erupted, the leading "Typhoon" fighters first attacked the "Jiahe," apparently deeming this carrier to be of the greatest value.

Why?

On the flight deck of the "Jiahe," a tidy row of Zero Fighters was parked, and the damaged section at the front of the flight deck was covered with a tarp.

Moreover, all the fighters were parked at the rear of the flight deck.

From a distance, it looked like they were preparing to launch ship-borne fighters.

As a result, the first wave of Dive Bombers, while attacking the "Chicheng," also besieged the seemingly most threatening "Jiahe."

It must be said, it was a grave injustice!

At that time, the Zero Fighters that landed on the "Jiahe" were actually damaged, and because the hangar was severely damaged, they stopped on the flight deck.

At this time, the "Sanwei" cruiser, guarding the "Jiahe," became an easy target.

The reason was simple; its powerful anti-aircraft firepower posed a serious threat to the Dive Bombers, with at least two "Wasp" aircraft shot down by the cruiser’s High-altitude Guns as they approached.

After the third "Wasp" exploded in midair, two squadrons of "Wasp" turned their assault on the "Sanwei."

Unfortunately, the "Sanwei" had no business sticking its neck out.

Although it was built to the standards of a Heavy Cruiser and was originally planned to return to the shipyard at the end of the year for modernization, substituting its five triple-turret 155 mm guns for twin-turret 203 mm guns and being upgraded to a Heavy Cruiser, the tense situation caused the Saiyi Navy to postpone this modernization work.

As a result, the four "Zhenming" class ships still retained the status of light cruisers.

It was for this reason they were assigned to the Mobile Fleet to assist the Fast Battleships and provide anti-aircraft cover for the carriers.

Let’s not forget, the 155 mm main guns of these four light cruisers could elevate up to 75 degrees and could be used as High-altitude Guns due to their dual-purpose design.

In fact, it was this that made the "Sanwei" the target of concentrated fire.

With main guns serving as anti-aircraft guns and being so massive, it looked like a ten-thousand-ton giant warship. Wasn’t that the legendary "Anti-Air Cruiser"?

Under the successive bombings of more than a dozen "Wasps," the "Sanwei" took four bombs within five minutes.

As a result, at 2:14 pm, approximately one minute after the "Chicheng" was hit for the first time, the "Sanwei" was blown in two by a massive explosion and disappeared from the surface of the sea in less than a minute. Of the more than nine hundred officers and crew aboard the ship, only four survived.

However, the sinking of the "Sanwei" ended up saving the "Jiahe."

When the "Sanwei" came under attack, the crew of the "Jiahe" suddenly realized—or perhaps it was a coincidence—the tarp covering the damaged area at the front end of the flight deck was blown away by a strong gust, revealing the bomb-ravaged hangar and immediately curbing the enthusiasm of the two squadrons of Dive Bombers.

According to rumors afterwards, more than a dozen officers and crew of the "Jiahe" received special commendation for promptly untying the ropes that secured the tarp.

Subsequently, the crew of the "Jiahe" continued their efforts, sending some scrapped aircraft tires to the flight deck and igniting them to feign severe damage, successfully deceiving several subsequent waves of Attack Aircraft Groups. By the end of the battle, they had not faced any significant attack.

According to the battle report from the "Jiahe," during the course of this battle, the ship only suffered machine gun strafing and a few crew members working on the flight deck were injured.

Certainly, the officers and crew of the "Jiahe" could not have expected that their self-preservation efforts would lead another carrier to the guillotine.

This was the Canglong.

At that time, the Canglong was actually quite far away, about thirty kilometers southeast of the Jiahe, basically with no chance of being the first to be struck.

Not to mention, the Special Mixed Group’s Attack Aircraft Group would have certainly focused its attack on the two thirty-thousand-ton giants, with no reason to disperse their precious forces. Besides, the Special Mixed Group’s Reconnaissance Aircraft had not detected the two carriers of the Second Air Corps before launching the attack.

For that reason, when arranging the anti-air defenses, the Second Air Corps had contributed two-thirds of its Zero Fighters.

At that time, only two Zero Fighters were hovering above the Canglong.

In addition, there were four ship-borne bombers that had taken off in an emergency.

The ones attacking the Canglong were the dive bombers from two squadrons that had decided that the Jiahe had been heavily damaged and wasn’t worth attacking anymore, and thus they turned to fly away.

To be exact, it was one of the squadrons, eight Wasp dive bombers.

But that alone was not all.

The fatal part was that two of the three Typhoon fighters that had completed their strafing and had not been shot down were heading this way. It was these two fighters that first spotted the Canglong and called the bombers behind them, and then rushed forward without hesitation.

These two Typhoon fighters not only promptly shot down the pair of ship-borne bombers that came to cover the fire, but also drew away the only two Zero Fighters. Before turning away, they also acted as dust collectors for the high-altitude gun bullets, causing the fast battleship, the Zhenming which was covering the Canglong, to waste quite a lot of ammunition.

As a result, when the eight dive bombers swooped down on the Canglong, they were neither intercepted by fighters nor fired upon by high-altitude guns.

This was practically a textbook dive bombing attack!

The hit rate was terrifyingly high.

Eight bombs dropped, five hit!

Of course, this also indirectly showed that the pilots of the Empire’s Navy were of very high caliber, and the arduous training before the war had not been in vain.

It was during this attack that the Wasp earned the nickname "Hellhound," because the whistling sound it made while diving resembled the roar of a ferocious dog from hell.

The key point was that it took five bomb hits in just over a minute!

Had the intervals between the hits been longer, such as taking a hit every few minutes, the carrier might have been saved, but taking so many hits in such a short period of time meant certain demise. Not to mention the fires caused by the explosions, which were impossible to extinguish.

Let’s not forget that carriers are full of a variety of flammable and explosive materials.

At 2:24 PM, the Canglong broke in two amidst a massive explosion.

The ship’s bow, which amounted to about a quarter of the vessel, sank quickly, and the remaining part also sank below the surface before three o’clock.

As the Captain had not issued the order to abandon ship, the majority of the officers and men had no chance to evacuate.

In the end, only just over a hundred officers and men survived.

Whether considering the time of the explosion or the time of sinking, the Canglong was the first carrier of the Mobile Fleet to be lost to battle.

As for the reason behind the massive explosion on the Canglong after it was hit, it has always remained an unsolved mystery.

The swift sinking of the Canglong after the explosion saved its sister ship, the Feilong.

At the time, it was only after observing the massive explosion on the Canglong that the Feilong, more than ten kilometers away, detected the approaching Wasp Plane Group, which was the other of the two squadrons, and then called several nearby Zero Fighters for escort.

Otherwise, the Feilong might have followed in the footsteps of the Canglong.