After the supply ships filled several warships with fuel and ammunition, the fleet set sail.

The two supply ships are now the fleet's greatest reliance, and without their accompaniment, the fleet could run out of fuel at any moment.

Another piece of good news was that a submarine unit of the Imperial Navy shelled the port of Freetown in West Africa at night, leading the enemy to believe that the Tang fleet had dived back to the coast of Africa, or that another Tang strike fleet had entered the Mid-Atlantic. The panic caused by this was not trivial, and the air routes between Europe and Africa were almost disrupted again.

West Francia and Spain had no choice but to transfer their battle cruisers to West Africa.

Ling Wencha and others knew that before the war, the Imperial Navy had recently developed an ocean-going attack submarine equipped with a 150-mm multiple rocket launcher to carry out the task of sabotaging the enemy's ports. Such submarines are equipped in smaller quantities in other fleets, and most of them are allocated to submarine forces deployed in the Atlantic and Africa.

The Imperial Navy's use of submarine forces was different from the independent submarine forces established by all countries in the world in this era, and each submarine force was assigned to each surface fleet for direct command, and the submarine force command was only a day-to-day management and coordination body, and did not directly command operations. One of the main tasks of the submarine force is to carry out operations to break up diplomatic relations, but the main task is to cooperate with the surface ship forces to carry out operations.

This is tantamount to canceling the operational command of the Submarine Command, which makes Vice Admiral Zheng Wendi, commander of the Navy's submarine force, extremely dissatisfied.

According to a telegram from the Navy Command, the submarine force's attack on the port was carried out in order to coincide with the smooth return of the Ling Wencha fleet to its base in South Africa.

It is clear that the command of the Imperial Navy is actively working and acting for their safe return.

This leg of the voyage seemed unusually peaceful, and for a long time the entire fleet did not find any ships. This had to do with the route chosen by Admiral Ling Wencha, with the entire fleet sailing northward along the ocean between the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the African continent, deliberately avoiding the continent's busy offshore commercial routes.

By noon on 22 August, the fleet had sailed to a position about 200 nautical miles south of St. Helena.

Shortly after lunch, an aircraft was spotted in the northwest by the anti-aircraft search radar on the cruiser "Anzhou", which was attacking the rear of the fleet. Rear Admiral Ling Wencha, who hurriedly returned to the bridge, immediately ordered the antiaircraft guns of all ships to be ready to fire at any time, and also ordered the four reconnaissance planes on his two battleships to eject and take off immediately.

Appearing in the rear of the Tang fleet was a sea monster aircraft of the Royal Air Force of West Francia, a biplane seaplane usually used for reconnaissance and anti-submarine missions since Republic 302, of which more than 130 were delivered to the West Francian Navy and equipped on battleships and cruisers for use as carrier-based reconnaissance aircraft.

It is difficult for ordinary people to associate the ugly appearance of the "Sea Monster" seaplane with the "Hurricane" fighter with excellent performance, which is also produced by Dassault. This seaplane, which can be catapulted with a carrier-based orbital catapult, was widely used on large surface ships of the Royal Navy of West Francia and the French African Colonies, but its weak armament (only two British 7.7 mm machine guns) and its top speed of only 210 km/h were the best prey of the Tang aircraft.

The Imperial Navy is equipped with the Wulu GC126 monoplane with much superior performance compared to its rivals: equipped with a Guangzhou General Dynamics 1100 horsepower Guangling Star air-cooled 14-cylinder engine, which can reach a speed of 340 kilometers per hour, a maximum ceiling of 7,300 meters, and a maximum range of 1,200 kilometers. In terms of armament, the Egret aircraft is equipped with one MG20 mm cannon and two 12.7 mm machine guns, and its armament is far more powerful than that of the "Sea Monster".

However, when the Tang plane had just taken off, the "sea monster" had already used a transmitter to transmit the news of the discovery of the Tang fleet to the heavy cruiser "Goks" behind it. The Kraken seaplane was equipped with three pilots, with the pilot in the last row taking photographs and sending wireless telegrams.

The plane took off from the heavy cruiser "Pencent", which was part of the African Fleet, and this cruiser detachment consisting of two heavy cruisers, "Gox" and "Pencent", was supposed to return from Luanda to Freetown, but after leaving Manchurian, it was ordered to Cayenne in South America to strengthen the naval forces in that area.

Because the Lingwencha fleet was sailing to the Cape port in South Africa at this time.

This West Francian cruiser detachment encountered the Tang attack fleet by accident, and soon, the news that the Tang Empire attack fleet was sailing to St. Helena spread throughout the European fleets in this area. Now all the ships of the Royal Navy, West Francia, in the South Atlantic and South American waters, converge towards this area.

Ling Wencha could no longer maintain radio silence, and soon sent a telegram to the Admiralty asking for the current location of the receiving fleet. After learning that Ding Guozhen was leading the fleet from the mouth of the Nanda River to the coast of Dongjiao, he simply turned around and sailed towards the South American seas.

He was going to South America to rendezvous with Admiral Ding's fleet.

After more than an hour of chase and a not too fierce aerial dog, the two Egret planes that took off from the "Anzhou" finally killed the voyeur, and the two reconnaissance planes that took off from the "Sayanling" had an even more unexpected gain: they spotted two "hounds" 30 nautical miles away from the right rear -- the two West Francian heavy cruisers were heading at high speed in the direction of the Lingwencha fleet. Obviously, their whereabouts have been discovered by the other party, and if they are bitten by the opponent, it will be difficult to get rid of their tracking.

The two West Francian heavy cruisers could run at a high speed of more than 32 knots, while the warships in Ling Wencha's hands, except for the two air defense light cruisers, were inferior to their opponents, and the two supply ships, which also had more than half of the fuel, food, ammunition and other materials, could only run at a maximum speed of 23 knots.

"Right hand 15, speed 20!" Ling Wencha simply ordered the fleet to turn around and sail in a southwesterly direction, and intuitively felt that the seas around southwest Africa were now full of danger.

At this time in the port of Luanda, the main fleet under the command of Vice Admiral Phelps, consisting mainly of the battleships "Trident", "Lamilli" and the aircraft carrier "Athletic", also began to prepare for sailing.

The situation is now a bit critical......