"Rat-tat-tat!" A fighter swept over the American Navy's Battleship Maryland. Though compared to the thirty-three-thousand-ton Battleship Maryland, the fighter was no more than a fly, the American Navy officers and sailors aboard the battleship faced it as though a great enemy stood before them.
"Boom! Boom! Boom!" Anti-aircraft Guns fired continuously, shells exploding in the sky and leaving behind clusters of black smoke.
Yet that fighter easily broke through the American anti-aircraft fire blockade.
The Anti-aircraft Guns of this era had no Proximity fuzes. To hit a target, they had to score a direct shell hit. One could well imagine just how abysmal that hit rate was.
Bullets from the German military fighter's aircraft machine guns raked the air-defense positions, throwing up showers of sparks.
Occasionally, American sailors were hit, screaming as they fell onto the deck.
Several fighters launched an attack on Battleship Maryland, immediately drawing all the warship's anti-aircraft fire toward themselves.
Lacking experience in air defense, the anti-aircraft fire aboard these battleships had been deployed poorly, leaving major gaps in their air-defense net. Those gaps would inflict fatal consequences upon the American Navy's battleships.
As the American anti-aircraft fire was drawn away by the German military fighters, German military bombers and torpedo bombers immediately followed up and launched their attack.
A squadron of four Dive Bombers began diving from one thousand meters above Battleship Maryland. Limited by their airframe structure, they could not dive at too steep an angle. Even so, their hit rate was far higher than that of level bombing.
At five hundred meters above Battleship Maryland, the Dive Bombers released their bombs and pulled out of their dives. Four five-hundred-kilogram aerial Armor-piercing Shells arced down toward Battleship Maryland.
"God! Bombs! Take cover!"
The American sailors who saw this cried out, and at their warning,