Chapter 1770 The Battle of Angstrom (8)
“Alas, there is little point in continuing the fight. We can’t win, or in other words, the Imperials have their backs backed by orbital defenses, so there is no way they can lose. We We shouldn’t fight this battle and waste those precious battleships.”
Hearing this, the deputy next to Mogaro whispered:
“My lord, if we don’t fight, We can't explain it to the Black Heart King. We still have tens of thousands of soldiers. If we get close to the Tiao Gang, we can send the fleet under the firepower of the orbital station. Don't you see so many fighter jets? Landing craft and jumping torpedoes only have a hit rate of 16% at most, so they may not be able to win even if so many people are killed.”
Seeing the fearful look in his deputy's eyes, Mogaro realized that he was fuming pointlessly. He was always known for his calmness among the Red Pirates, so he took a deep breath and shook his head.
“The Black-Hearted King underestimated his opponent. He placed all his bets on Endymion, but ignored this. Although we have been prepared for possible surprise attacks by the empire, we still did not expect Angosto. Mu couldn't even hold on for a day."
"Then sir, what should we do now?"
"What should we do..."
Mogaro looked at the chaos. The battlefield situation map, his brain tried to find a way in the large amount of data, even though he realized that there was almost no possibility of a comeback.
Similarly, on the bridge of the Eternal Loyalty, watching the enemy's space hulk become useless, Soshyan also realized that his opponent had no chance to make a comeback. The empire was already invincible in this naval battle.
This battle was not only a tactical or strategic victory. For Soshyan, who had not commanded a large-scale naval battle for a long time, he also gained many new feelings and experiences, especially in this battle The key role played by massive fighter planes gave him vaguely new ideas about naval warfare tactics.
In fact, the empire is not without aircraft carrier tactics, but there have always been several contradictions. For example, the range of the empire's existing fighter planes cannot exceed the range of the main gun of the battleship - or not by much.
In addition, the Imperial ships place great emphasis on sturdiness, so that in order to cause effective damage, fighter planes must launch attack waves in sufficient numbers, and the Empire's largest aircraft carriers, such as the Emperor-class battleships, generally only It can carry 6 fighter squadrons, and the limit is only 8. Even a modified special-purpose aircraft carrier flagship, such as the Mars-class battlecruiser Jupiter, can only carry 12 after canceling the macro gun deck in the front half of the hull. It’s just a squadron of fighters, and if such a number of fighters wants to defeat a large cruiser or even a battleship, it is far from enough. After all, it is limited by the number of flight decks, attack waves and other issues, and there are absolutely no fighters that can be put into combat at the same time. Less than this amount.
And once the number of fighter planes reaches a certain scale, their dispatch and command will also become a severe test. After all, artillery bombardment is a relatively static combat method. Only shooting parameters, energy output, etc. need to be considered, but fighter planes are A dynamic weapon, the status of each formation may change at any time and at any time.
This series of factors has made aircraft carrier tactics not the main force in the empire, and it is also the reason why the Red Pirates have no preparation for this. In fact, Soshyan had no knowledge of Angstrom's defense aircraft group before witnessing it with his own eyes. , simply thinking it might cause some trouble.
Of course, there are some special factors that can play such a huge role this time, such as defensive operations, and Angstrom has built a large hangar on the satellite, which is equivalent to having a huge capacity ship in the fleet. The almost unsinkable aircraft carrier, coupled with the powerful data processing capabilities of the sages of the Mechanicus, allows the fighter formation to be dispatched in the most effective manner, but this does not mean that the sages of the Mechanicus are excellent commanders. official.
In fact, the fundamental purpose of the weapons of the Mechanicus is to help the Mechanicus better seek knowledge and "correct" their own truth, and serve the omniscient Ohm Messiah, so no matter how powerful and rich the weapons in their hands are , to a large extent, it is also designed to protect oneself, explore adventures, and solve academic conflicts and research problems. Most of them include self-defense and experimental elements, and there is a relative lack of consideration for systematically participating in large-scale, long-term, and repetitive wars. The result is that the Skitarii and Mechanicus fleets are strong on paper, but overall remain an elite experimental force that lacks uniformity. Not only does it lack consistent weaponry, but it may also be difficult to command in large-scale battles. The sages are at odds with each other and it is difficult to coordinate them. To make matters worse, the sages have relied on a large number of transformations to have the powerful command ability to control the entire Skitarii Army Hongzhi and even the entire Forge World Fleet. This seems to be a matter of course. A good thing, however, with this extremely intensive mechanism that lacks a chain of command, once the commander is beheaded or encounters something that cannot be handled, the entire army will not have any means to deal with it.
Just like if Soshyan hadn't been in charge this time and let the Mechanicus deal with the invasion of the Red Pirates, then they might just mechanically send out all the power they have, and deal with the sudden The hulks that appeared were unprepared, and if the enemy stayed away from the orbital defense weapons and just bombarded the satellites from a long distance, they would just sit there and have no choice.
But even though many of the special conditions in the Angstrom naval battle cannot be replicated, it still gave Soshyan a lot of inspiration and allowed him to start thinking about the possibility of new naval tactics. Although traditional shelling and gang-hopping tactics seemed to be able to solve the problem Some enemies, but you may not encounter opponents that are difficult to handle with both tactics.
In addition, Reza's Deadly Goshawk fighter jets and Ghost boats also left a very deep impression on Soshyan. The Deadly Goshawks are still in the experimental stage, but their combat effectiveness is already considerable. Especially for opponents who like to use subspace power on a large scale, the anti-interference ability is simply perfect, but it is not without its shortcomings. For example, according to Sage Reza, they are quite expensive, just the thin layer outside the body. The total value of the expelling coating is more than that of a Leman Russ, and once they enter and exit the atmosphere, the coating will be consumed. In addition, those who do not come into contact are rare, and they also need to be able to receive fighter pilot training. That is rare. The level has risen to a higher level.
However, this kind of fighter plane may still work wonders at critical moments. Soshyan is considering whether to order a batch from Reza, but this will have to wait until the expedition is over.
"I expect that the enemy may retreat, but I cannot let them go so simply. I order the cruiser formations on both sides to be ready to speed up and contain the enemy at any time."
Deployed in Soshiyan When preparing to start the final stage of pursuit, the commander of the Red Pirates once again made a move that surprised him.
"The enemy ship suddenly accelerated and approached."
A bridge officer shouted loudly in the communication. Soshyan immediately enlarged the battlefield monitor. The red dot marked the enemy ship, and the cold blue marked the satellite and The defense facilities of the Mechanicus, golden light illuminated the positions of the Imperial and Mechanicus ships.
You can see several obvious bright spots quickly approaching the Liuli 3 satellite. Judging from their size, they are at least light cruisers.
“They are—”
At the same time, the Red Pirates’ capital ships all turned, the furnace-sized gun barrels rotated and found their targets, and the charged light spear turrets flashed like torches. .
(End of this chapter)