"Prioritize that destroyer to the southwest. Sink it first, then attack the battlecruiser farther in!" a squadron commander from the German Navy's Carrier-based Aircraft Unit ordered. The radio relayed his command to every pilot's ears.
"Yes, boss!" the pilots answered in unison.
Four carrier-based BF-109 fighters took the lead in attacking the destroyer. Using their aerial machine guns and cannons, they suppressed its anti-aircraft fire, creating an opening for the dive bombers and torpedo bombers that followed.
"Attack!"
Four dive bombers began diving from an altitude of two thousand meters. A piercing howl rose up, as though it would shatter people's eardrums.
"Damn it! German dive bombers! Evasive maneuvers, now!" Lieutenant Commander Yokoi Minoru, captain of the destroyer Asashio, roared.
He knew all too well that these aerial armor-piercing shells possessed fatal destructive power against a destroyer with a displacement of barely 2,400 tons. If they were hit, it would be a dead end.
At an altitude of only five hundred meters above the sea, the German Navy's four dive bombers released their bombs. Four heavy 500-kilogram aerial armor-piercing shells shrieked as they smashed toward the destroyer Asashio.
The destroyer Asashio made a frantic turn, trying to evade the bombs.
However, three of the four bombs plunged into the sea, throwing up towering columns of water. The remaining bomb struck the destroyer Asashio. The heavy bomb punched straight through Asashio's after deck and exploded inside. Its immense power blasted apart the destroyer's stern, and the warship's speed began to fall.
At that moment, two torpedo bombers closed to within just eight hundred meters of the destroyer Asashio and released their torpedoes. Two 533mm Heavy Torpedoes raced madly toward Asashio at forty knots.
The destroyer Asashio tried to evade, but it simply could not. The earlier aerial bomb had destroyed its