"Let the fighter units patrolling over the fleet disperse! Increase the search range! With the fleet as the center, expand the search in eight directions: due south, due north, due east, due west, as well as southeast, southwest, northeast, and northwest!" It's already a bit overwhelming!
John Cleeves, who was confused, immediately gave the order.
He had a guess that the attack on his fleet just now was not necessarily an anti-ship missile launched by the Tang Empire's fleet.
After all, he is very familiar with the working style of the Datang Group. Under normal circumstances, the Datang Empire will definitely leave some trump cards for itself. This is almost a common practice.
This time, the Tang Empire's trump card... might be air-launched anti-ship missiles! John Cleeves was not pedantic. After he roughly determined that there was no Tang fleet in the suspicious direction, he had similar suspicions.
.
If it was a Tang aircraft that launched the missile, then many questions would be explained: why he could not find the Tang Empire fleet so close to him, and why the naval commander of the Datang Empire was so bold to use his anti-ship missiles
Be the first to attack.
The first question is easy to explain. The enemy sent planes, so of course they couldn't be found. The second question is easy to explain...the enemy's commander didn't send his own fleet at all, so there's nothing involved.
It's a matter of courage. I haven't taken any risks at all, so how can I be so bold?
But following this inference, John Cleeves found that he could not continue the analysis: assuming that the enemy's carrier-based aircraft can launch anti-ship missiles, it would be difficult to judge the location of the enemy's fleet.
He grabbed the report from the submarine force that he accidentally received before the battle broke out. The message said that he saw a plane from the Tang Empire...
What kind of plane is that? What is the other party doing when they take off a plane more than 600 kilometers away from us and nearly 700 kilometers away? This is another confusing question.
How can any aircraft carrier take off and fly its carrier-based aircraft behind it? So two hours ago... the enemy's aircraft carrier formation was still more than 600 kilometers away?
Something is wrong. The enemy's aircraft carrier attack range exceeds 600 kilometers? How is this possible? If it is true, then this battle is a fart?
Thinking of this, John Cleeves suddenly realized a serious problem: Damn it, how could the Tang Empire's fleet determine the position of its combined fleet in this way?
Logically speaking, it is impossible for the other party to determine the location of the combined fleet in this way if it comes from afar. Even if the approximate location is known, constant reconnaissance is required to determine the movement of the fleet.
I changed my route after receiving the telegram from the submarine, but the other party actually launched the first batch of attacks in such a short period of time. This is unreasonable!
There are submarines following their own fleet? It is unlikely... How can any submarine keep up with the formation of surface ships? That means... it is very likely that there are aircraft following them.
But there are dozens of pirate fighter jets patrolling above his head, but they haven't found the Tang plane? Is the other party transparent?
Maybe... that plane is not above the head of his fleet! It may have radar! This is the only explanation John Cleeves can think of!
Thinking about it this way, the radar of the Tang Empire is already small enough to be mounted on an airplane? This is too scary! The other party can monitor its own fleet hundreds of kilometers away, and can easily avoid searching airplanes... Think about it
It feels scary just thinking about it.
The problem now is that even though many things have been guessed, there is actually no way to break the situation. Even if the most conservative guess is used to estimate Tang's technology, the combined fleet cannot lock down the opponent.
He had no choice but to blindly expand his search range in order to discover the enemy's troops as soon as possible. Whether it was an airplane or a fleet, he had to see something before he could make a decision, right?
Thinking of this, he missed the radars of his fleet a little: originally these radars could provide accurate information within dozens of kilometers nearby, and could even detect incoming missiles... But now, all the radars of his fleet are covered in a blur.
Snowflakes, nothing can be seen at all.
"No matter what you see, find a way to report it immediately! No need to fight, just make sure to send the news back!" John Cleeves added a few minutes later.
He did not order the Stukas who had started forming to pounce in the original direction, because it had been proven that there was nothing there. But he could not wait too long, after all, the Stukas did not stay in the air for long, so he
A decision needs to be made as soon as possible.
Gritting his teeth, the commander-in-chief of the combined fleet continued to issue the order: "Let the ground crew hang bombs! Prepare to take off the second batch of attack aircraft!"
He was worried that he would not be able to find the Tang Dynasty's fleet in a short period of time, so he had to prepare for a second counterattack. If the first batch of attack aircraft units ran out of fuel, the second batch of carrier-based aircraft would carry out the attack.
!Anyway, he has enough planes to arrange more batches of attacks.
While John Cleeves was performing various micro-manipulations on the air, the second batch of carrier-based aircraft of the Tang Empire Navy had already relied on its speed advantage to change directions and launch an attack formation.
Under the guidance of the early warning aircraft, they easily avoided the blindly searching United Fleet pirate fighter jets.
The direction in which the combined fleet deployed a large number of fighter jets to search was completely opposite to the direction in which the second batch of attacks by the Datang Empire was launched, so the attack formation of the Datang Empire was still very calm.
There is no way, the technology they possess is far beyond the level of their opponents' guesses, so their advantage can indeed be said to be infinite.
In modern warfare, the advantages of weapons generation differences have begun to emerge. The tactics that rely on military strength and quantitative advantages can no longer make up for the qualitative advantages in naval and air battles.
In the sky, one Harpoon anti-ship missile after another drew out a white track, and a hundred kilometers away. Just like the first batch of attacks, Tang Jun's aircraft dropped all the missiles they carried.
The anti-ship missiles then returned, and on the warships of the United Fleet on the other side, countless sailors did not even know that the enemy had launched an attack on them.
They heard that in the other direction, several warships had been damaged and sunk. But that was just hearsay. They had not seen it with their own eyes, and they could not experience the desperate state.
These captains and their sailors did not even see Dorne's aircraft carrier being sunk, because they were on the periphery of the fleet and in a relatively rear position.
