sakura empires unfinished monster

The Attack Continue

Once first carrier division escaped, they reported the success of their mission bringing a smile to hakuryuu knowing that her job will be much easier. The first division definitely lives up to their reputation, being as bold to attack the enemies base in brawed daylight and cripple them to then being able to escape. Although no doubt, the mass produced models nagato talked about probably proved to be a good distraction. As she hummed a tune to herself, her radar suddenly lit up with multiple blips making a grin cross her face. Well well, it seems I've found my enemy, let's not give them time to help out any stragglers. Turning her carrier into the wind, she spotted the deck with 2 fighter squadrons, 3 dive bomber squadrons and 4 torpedo bomber squadrons. A large airstrike of 54 planes. 12 fighters, 18 dive bombers and 24 torpedo bombers were brought up onto her deck from the hanger with fighters in front followed by the dive bombers and at the rear being the torpedo bombers. The roar of engines filled her deck as all 54 planes took off taking 45 minutes to fully launch all planes. Let's see how capable you are Royal navy because you got a surprise coming your way. Laughing to herself she turned away to the North West in order to not be counter detected. Nagato's orders ringing in her mind. Best not get caught, if they don't see me then they'll assume that it was carrier division 1 or 3.

(hey everyone just saying this in advance, if any ship is sunk in the story besides sirens they'll be refloated at a later time so if your favorite character is sunk they'll reappear later on in the story)

It had taken a full hour for hakuryuu's strike to come into radar range of 120 miles. When the lead planes hit the 120 miles, Sheffield's radar erupted into life pointing in the direction of the incoming planes where the blips covered her radar screen. Upon hearing this Sheffield was quick to act by rushing towards her queen. Sheffield: majesty. Her voice sounded urgent which was uncommon for the light cruiser as her normal tone was much more dialed back and void of emotion. Taken aback from this queen elizabeth dropped her cup of tea which shattered on her armoured deck. Q.E: Sheffield? What seems to be the matter? Her voice and facial expression was one of confusion. Sheffield: my radar has picked up multiple contacts and they're approaching fast. Surprised by this news, queen elizabeth shot up from her seat as she heard about the attack from Wales on the base. Q.E: then we must prepare for an attack. Keep a circular defensive position and have all guns ready. Sheffield quickly took her leave to go inform hood, Edinburgh and Belfast as warspite was with queen elizabeth. By the time they got into formation and ready for the attack, the familiar roar of Japanese engines were heard about. Looking up Q.E and all the others could see the fighters circling high above while the dive bombers started their steep dive. Seeing this was all the motivation necessary for warspite, Q.E and hood to conduct evasive manoeuvres. As they performed sharp turns, every gun aboard that could fire on the attackers opened up when they got into range. First to answer was the roar of the 2 pounder, 3 inch AA guns, 13mm machine gun and 40mm bofors lit up the stay with puffs of smoke, tracers and machine gun/shells

During the dive, a couple dive bombers were shot down catching shrapnel from the 3 inch guns, rounds from the 40mm bofors, 2 pounder guns and 13mm machine gun fire. However, most still got through releasing their 500 pound bombs. Being dragged into the bridge by Belfast Q.E had to watch from the heavily armoured conning tower as a bombs bracketed her ship and the others with near misses as sea spray washed onto the deck and causing very minor damage. That was until a 500 pound bomb hit one of her 3 inch guns causing a blazing fire and the gun alongside the ammunition near it to explode causing considerable damage a mid ships. A further 3 bomb hits were scored on her 2 at the rear and the 4th hit the top of her X turret, penetrating the top armour and exploding inside blowing the turret roof off and mangling her gun barrels. Thankfully the flash doors prevented the bomb setting her magazine off but fires burned out of control on her deck as damage control teams tried to tackle them. However, Q.E wasn't the only one to suffer damage. Hood would receive 2 bombs hits, both on the bow while warspite would suffer 3 bombs hits as well with one penetrating her armoured deck before exploding 3 levels down in the heart of her ship setting fires and destroying compartments. Belfast and Edinburgh also came under attack but all ornaments dropped on them missed due to skillful manoeuvreing from the two light cruisers.

By the end of the dive bombers attack, 8 had been shot down by AA fire leaving 10 to return to hakuryuu. As they left 6 fighters followed them to provide escort leaving the remaining 6 fighters to begin straifing runs on the ships. Despite being ineffective as a whole, their straifing runs did knock out a couple machine gun positions and 2 pounder gun Implacements. Softening them up for the torpedo bombers who arrived 10 minutes later conducting an anvil attack. By the time they had began their attack, all fires had been put out allowing damage control to solely focus on possible flooding. Just like the dive bombers, they were greeted by a heavy layer of flak, but due to earlier bomb hits and straifing runs, there were small pauses where the AA fire was lighter due to some gun implacements having been destroyed it rendered unusable. On the run in 3 were destroyed by AA fire leaving 21 to release their deadly payload of type 93 long lance ariel torpedoes. As they dropped, the formation was forced to break formation in order to avoid the torpedoes. But due to the speed and close distance 2 torpedoes slammed into the side of Q.E allowing water to quickly rush in as one of her boiler rooms was destroyed and quickly filling with sea water which drastically reduced her speed to an eventual 10 knots. 1 torpedo hit hood blowing a propella screw off. Warspite got the worst of it though getting 3 torpedoes hit on her port side and a further 2 on the starboard side bringing her to a stop rather quickly. Edinburgh got hit once a mid ships while Belfast got hit on the bow blowing it off completely. The rest had missed. By the time all torpedo bombers had pulled away a further 2 had been shot down with 4 getting damaged leaving with the fighters they left behind a deviststed main force of the Royal navy. Belfast was sinking due to her bow being blown off, warspite was dead in the water leaking oil and sitting low in the water but not sinking, Q.E was listing badly to port while hood was stuck spinning in a circle forcing her to stop her engines. Edinburgh was listing a bit but was fine leaving only Sheffield as the sole undamaged ship of the Royal navy's main fleet.

(authors notes: that's a wrap everyone now remember Belfast will return later on in the story so don't worry about loosing a main character. Hope you had fun and enjoyed the chapter, catch you next time)