Munitions Empire-Chapter 1171: The Battle of Levounion 1091
Very soon, Shen Haifeng, the admiral of Mirage Country’s navy, stopped worrying about Tang Army’s battleships, because something even more troublesome appeared in his field of view.
That’s right, the Tang Army’s carrier-based aircraft had arrived! They were already close to the battlefield, and after forming their formations, they immediately stormed onto the scene!
Dozens of Stuka Dive Bombers took the lead, plunging one after another from the sky towards the Mirage Country’s battleships lined up in formation.
The commanders on the Mirage Country battleships immediately found themselves in a dilemma: they didn’t know what to do…
If they continued their offensive against sea targets, they couldn’t allow anti-aircraft gunners to commence aerial defense operations. But those monstrous main guns, with calibers over 350 millimeters! Could anyone even stand near them when they fired?
The massive muzzle flashes and deafening noise would make it impossible for the anti-aircraft positions on either side of the battleship to operate. The soldiers manning these positions had to plug their ears and move far from the guns.
However… the design of many Mirage Country battleships placed two turrets at the front, one in the middle, and two at the rear…
This design allowed the Mirage Navy to fit in one extra main gun turret per warship but also meant that most of the ship’s anti-aircraft systems were crammed around these main gun turrets.
In theory, this issue could have been addressed during construction or retrofitting by installing turret-like shields over the anti-aircraft guns to dampen sound and shockwaves, enabling these weapons to function alongside the main batteries.
But, regrettably, Mirage Country battleships had no such luxury, no matter from what angle one looked at it.
Most of their anti-aircraft guns were only equipped with basic shields, and the vast majority of both the anti-aircraft cannons and heavy machine guns were simply bolted onto the decks without any protection whatsoever.
These temporarily-mounted anti-aircraft guns were unusable while the main guns were firing. But if they stopped shelling to focus on anti-aircraft defense, what would’ve been the point of throwing these heavily armed Mirage battleships headfirst at Tang’s battleships? To get pummeled?
Stuka Dive Bombers screamed downward, forcing the Mirage Navy fleet into even more frantic serpentine maneuvers. Shen Haifeng, disregarding his own safety, rushed out onto the unprotected open deck. He looked up at those aircraft diving like flies and fumed with frustration, at a loss for words.
Even though these naval Stukas lacked the terrifying sirens often attached to them, their dives still generated unnerving sounds. The roar of their engines combined with the air splitting around them created an atmosphere of sheer terror.
What’s worse, Mirage Navy forces, caught off guard, hadn’t prepared adequately for aerial defense: Anti-aircraft gunners had been searching through the dark night for phantom "meteors" all evening. How sharp could their reflexes possibly be now?
Curiously, on the Goblin battleship, sailors were just being shoved onto the deck by their officers to man the heavy machine guns and anti-aircraft guns when the battleship’s main guns suddenly roared to life.
Six massive 460-millimeter-caliber guns thundered, and the fresh batch of sailors who had just reached the deck instantly lost all hearing.
They stumbled and collapsed on the deck, clutching their ears in agony, rolling on the floor. For them, the entire world had been reduced to a single, incessantly droning noise.
Because of poor coordination, these anti-aircraft gunners became sacrificial lambs. The Goblin battleship quickly ceased firing its main guns and shifted its focus to aerial defense.
The Shen battleship followed suit: Shen Haifeng had no choice but to order a halt to their shelling and directed all attention toward anti-aircraft combat instead.
The promised airplanes from the Army did finally arrive on the battlefield minutes later, but their impact was embarrassingly negligible.
Shen Haifeng did spot a few Zero Fighters, but these reinforcements were now being mercilessly hunted down by aircraft resembling the Stukas, their wings bent upwards in the same fashion.
The incoming planes couldn’t even approach his fleet, let alone provide cover. Shen Haifeng could clearly see a Zero Fighter being chased by a Pirate Fighter, dancing left and right in a futile attempt to escape. After barely surviving for over ten seconds, it trailed dark smoke as it plunged into the sea and exploded.
The entire battlefield resembled a hunting ground, with Tang Army’s planes acting as predatory hunters, and Mirage Country’s Zero Fighters akin to hapless sparrows in a dense forest.
They frantically took flight, fluttering wildly across the sky, disoriented in their attempt to escape. One crack of gunfire later, a stricken lifeless body would plummet cleanly from the heavens.
Shen Haifeng detested describing his allied planes as such, yet he couldn’t think of a more fitting analogy to vent his frustration and disappointment at their supposed reinforcements.
Weren’t you here to support me? Wasn’t your mission to cover my fleet? How on earth can you not even get close to us?
As he wrestled with his string of questions, seven or eight Zero Fighters had already been shot down. The remaining Mirage planes, in pitiable straits themselves, were barely hanging on.
Shen Haifeng anxiously watched the battlefield above when, to his horror, a Styx Anti-ship Missile slammed into the bridge of a Cruiser.
Indeed, while these missiles were generally unable to cause catastrophic damage by striking above a warship’s waterline, they seemed to possess a sinister precision, deliberately smashing into the ship’s most protrusive parts!
Components like turrets, smokestacks, command towers, and ship islands… These missiles were inexplicably drawn to targeting the tall structures at the ship’s centerline. Though incapable of outright sinking a vessel, they could inflict heavy damage on a warship’s command system.
After a grueling overnight battle, the Mirage warships hadn’t suffered significant sinkings, but nearly every one of them bore serious damage. While non-lethal on the surface, these damages hampered the fleet’s anti-aircraft operations significantly.
Because of how their layouts were designed, most of the battleships’ anti-aircraft weapons were concentrated near the ship island and smokestack areas, leaving the bow and stern decks clear for main guns.
Yet the Styx Anti-ship Missiles often homed in on these very regions—the ship islands and smokestacks. Though unable to sink the warships outright, they wiped out clusters of anti-aircraft positions concentrated in these areas!
A single hit from a Styx Anti-ship Missile could leave seven or eight nearby anti-aircraft positions inoperable, whether due to fires or explosive shockwaves.
The loss of these anti-aircraft stations created significant gaps in the Mirage fleet’s air defenses. What was once an impermeable web of firepower now contained gaping vulnerabilities.
Soon enough, Tang aircraft identified and exploited these weak points, slipping through unguarded corridors to get within striking range of Mirage battleships. Consequently, Mirage fleet losses began to spike dramatically as Tang carrier-based aircraft escalated their attacks.
In mere minutes, the previously damaged Northern Island Battleship took a direct hit from a 500-kilogram aerial bomb.
The bomb penetrated its deck and exploded at the ship’s midsection. A chain reaction of fires and secondary explosions ensued, and within less than three minutes, the warship split in two from the explosions and sank.
Trailing behind Northern Island, the Great Southern Bay battleship was engulfed in thick black smoke. Its condition was so dire that even Tang Army carrier-based aircraft didn’t bother wasting ammunition targeting it anymore.
As Shen Haifeng watched helplessly, the Wind Rider battleship behind them was sequentially struck by two torpedoes. At this point, he no longer knew what to say.
Just moments ago, he had been brimming with confidence, convinced that the advantage had shifted back to his side. Yet in less than fifteen minutes, the battlefield had once again undergone a drastic and devastating reversal.
Under relentless assault from Tang Navy’s Air Forces, the Mirage fleet had completely collapsed. Forced to prioritize anti-aircraft operations, the Mirage warships only managed two volleys of retaliatory fire before ceasing their bombardments entirely.
Now Shen Haifeng felt utterly foolish, as his fleet surged full speed toward the enemy’s lineup, passively waiting to get blasted to smithereens, volley after volley…
Just as despair weighed down on him so heavily it felt immobilizing, a streaking light suddenly crossed his field of vision.
Before he could react, a violent shockwave hurled him to the ground. The massive tremor from the warship threw him high into the air before slamming him back down onto the deck with brutal force.
A metallic taste rose in his throat, and he nearly coughed up blood. When his adjutant and guards finally helped him back into the bridge, Shen Haifeng dimly realized that one of those missiles that had been tormenting them all night had struck the Shen Battleship’s smokestack, just behind the aft mast!
The explosion had obliterated the anti-aircraft weapons stationed beneath the mast and damaged nearby equipment as well. After an entire evening of lucky evasions, the Shen finally took a direct hit from an anti-ship missile.
Thrown about by the shockwave and now injured, Shen Haifeng received treatment from the ship’s medic while he temporarily left the outside battle chaos unattended.
In those few short minutes he spent recovering, the Prosperous Cloud battleship was surrounded and heavily targeted by two Dongwan-class battleships, leading to its eventual destruction.
Tang Navy shells repeatedly struck the doomed Prosperous Cloud, crippling its propulsion systems, destroying two of its main turrets, and perforating its horizontal armor.
After being hit by six or seven shells, the Prosperous Cloud erupted in a violent, fiery explosion. Its stern rose high before the ship descended into the depths.
By this point, Mirage Country had six battleships disabled, three sunk, and the mere three remaining unable to engage Tang battleships in direct artillery duels due to the consistent need for anti-aircraft defense operations.
However, the Mirage Navy, now completely bloodthirsty, didn’t sit idly by. Destroyers and surviving cruisers, which had always been shadowing the battleship fleet, detached from the main force and recklessly charged toward the Tang Army’s landing zone like madmen.
They knew this might be Mirage Country’s only chance: Only by breaking into the landing zone and destroying enough Tang transports could they possibly thwart the landing operation.
But they quickly discovered that a massive fleet of Tang destroyers was blocking their path!
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These were yesterday’s two updates.
