"This is an aerial photograph of Saint-Nazaire, and the most conspicuous thing about the rectangle is the Normandy dockyard, which can accommodate 80,000 tons of ships, and is famous for the construction of the giant ship Normandy! According to the information we have, the Germans have taken full control of the dockyard and is ready to use it to repair German naval ships! ”

In a sturdy underground bunker near the pier in Plymouth Harbour, a group of navy officers in white uniforms faced a square cloth screen, the darkness of which resembled that of a movie theater, except for the unpleasant smell of smoke. With the introduction of the baritone, black-and-white photographs continue to be shown on the screen, with various lines and contours that are very different from the usual angle of view.

"According to the description of the rangefinder officer and several crew members of the George V, four or six shells hit the German flagship Bismarck in the artillery battle that day, including our 1-inch shells, and according to information from our intelligence officers from France, the Bismarck had an external overhaul of the port side of the ship after arriving in Brest, which was the side of our fleet in the battle! Based on the above situation, we believe that it is possible that the Bismarck will sail to Saint-Nazaire for maintenance in the near future! Even if it doesn't in the near future, the Normandy dockyard is the only large dock that the Germans can use on the Atlantic coast, and if their capital ship is damaged, unless they venture back home, Saint-Nazaire will be their only option! ”

After the introductory sound fell, the lights in the room came on, and people's eyes had to spend a ** time adjusting to the change in light. And after that, an old officer wearing a vice admiral's epaulette collar badge walked to the screen and turned to face everyone, and said sonorously:

"Ladies and gentlemen, the Normandy dockyard at Saint-Nazaire is more important to the Germans than any other dockyard has ever been, and it is the same to us! In the past few months. They greatly strengthened the defenses of Saint-Nazaire. It is estimated that no less than 40 anti-aircraft artillery batteries and several fortified artillery regiments were deployed around this port, and with the superiority of the Luftwaffe in western France, it will be difficult for us to destroy and destroy it by conventional forces! In fact, the Royal Air Force has lost nearly 40 per cent of its strength in the past week, if our Atlantic routes continue to be threatened. These losses cannot be remedied for a long time! ”

Currently in the UK. These pessimistic statistics remain relatively secretive. In other words, with the exception of a small number of senior commanders and dignitaries, ordinary civilians and officers and soldiers did not know that the British Air Force had suffered such heavy losses, which directly led Britain to fall back to the terrible situation when France had just been defeated and millions of German troops had gathered across the English Channel. If the Germans had had the courage to fight the Battle of Britain again, they might have learned the lesson that they would have been able to seize air supremacy with the help of new equipment and numerical superiority. And then the resumption of sea lion combat operations. The British should be rejoicing because Adolf. Hitler and his leading generals had already set their sights on the East - and in the eyes of most of Germany's top leaders, the rising red giant was never a diminished threat to Germany!

"Now, our submarines and reconnaissance planes are closely monitoring the situation in Brest, our main fleet is ready to stop the German fleet sailing, and our new plan for the Saint-Nazaire and Normandy dockyards is to attack from the sea with light ships!" The 4th destroyer fleet will be the main force in this operation, and our cruisers will be responsible for providing fire cover! It is a great honor that the commander in charge of this assault will be the brave and resourceful Louis Brown. General Mountbatten! ”

As usual, the room resounded with warm applause, which is directly related to popularity, and the person who stepped into the front desk under the gaze of the people was a well-built, handsome rear admiral, with a black and bright head, and a face full of European aristocratic temperament, which not only fascinated the opposite sex!

The two officers duly brought a simple moving blackboard, on which hung the battle instructions that had been prepared long ago, depicting the French coast under Nazi Germany with black lines, and the thick red lines representing the British Navy's course of action.

"Gentlemen, our plan is actually very simple, we currently have a number of older destroyers and ** boats, their old hulls are no longer suitable for ocean-going operations and the requirements of dealing with German submarines, but they can still reach more than 25 knots when the boiler turbines are running at full capacity! Therefore we intend to fill their ships and compartments with **, equipped with a special time-delay fuse, and after breaking through the German perimeter sea defenses in Saint-Nazaire, the light ships will directly hit the Normandy dockyard on the harbor side, enough ** will make it impossible for the Germans to use it for a long time! At the same time, we will also send a group of special forces to carry out the boarding operation in the harbor on the 6th on the warship, to destroy the various facilities of the dock from the 6th, and after the operation is completed, they will be withdrawn to the sea with the participating destroyers! If the German fleet learns the news and sails out of Brest, we will meet it with the main forces of the Home Fleet and the H Fleet, and the fighter group of the Navy's carrier-based aircraft unit and the 2nd Air Defense Group of the Air Force will also fully cooperate! ”

"I have a question!" A lieutenant commander stood up and said: "The Germans must have set up a ** formation outside the port of Saint-Nazaire, how can we enter the outer harbor through the ** formation?" ”

Mountbatten waved his hand, "Go straight through!" ”

The audience wrote surprise on their faces.

"The destroyers that are ready to enter the port for ramming operations will be reduced as much as possible, including the removal of **, some of the ship's guns and even the armor plates, the fuel will also be maintained at the minimum to ensure the operation, and the personnel will be equipped to a lower standard! In this way, we estimate that the draft of these destroyers is shallower than the depth of the German anchor ** - according to our aerial reconnaissance, the Germans did not deploy drifting mines, and the magnetic ** should account for a significant proportion, so we will also degauss the destroyers participating in the operation. This is also our important secret weapon against German magnetism! Have more questions? ”

Mountbatten's last sentence was resounding, perhaps because he usually gave the impression that he was reliable, or perhaps because the battle situation no longer allowed people to hesitate too much, and the officers' next questions were only related to some details of the operation, and the whole battle plan was quickly determined. The exact timing of the implementation depends on the preparation and the weather!

In Plymouth. The refurbishment of the ships was quickly carried out under intense and secrecy conditions, and six decommissioned destroyers built in the early stages of World War I were sent to the dockyard for complete refurbishment, but unlike other modernized modifications of older ships, they were less technically demanding, could be operated at a certain course, and were easy to control. Boiler piping cleaning and instrument tuning are the most important projects. Under the hard work of the workers. The entire renovation work was completed in just three days, and the personnel transferred from the ships were reassigned to the ships, and subsequent voyage surveys showed that the destroyers, with a displacement of just over 1,000 tons, were fully capable of meeting the minimum requirements of the combat plan.

At the same time as the destroyer underwent modification. Eleven older ** boats in service with the Shore Alert Fleet were also assembled, and these ships, which were originally powered by coal-fired boilers, were planned to be fitted with more powerful and smaller internal combustion engines. However, due to the change in the main architecture of the design power system, the project was expected to take two weeks, and shortly after they began to be modified, news came from French waters: the German heavy battleship "Bismarck" left Brest and headed south under the escort of an Admiral-class heavy cruiser and many destroyers and ** boats. As a situation that coincided with one of the speculations of British naval intelligence, the Naval Operations Department became more and more convinced that the German battleship had been damaged in the battle, but propaganda warfare was not their concern, and how to trap that formidable German battleship was their first goal at the moment.

With the old destroyers in place and the refit of the first boat in progress, the British Naval Operations Department in charge of the operation immediately made a decision: to mobilize 10 active ** boats to replace the previous old ** boats to participate in the operation. Although the displacement of these dinghies is only two or three hundred tons, after being loaded with ten tons of high-spirited **, they become a powerful "giant **".

At the no-go docks, not everyone was clear about the objectives of the operation, but as preparations progressed, a heavy atmosphere had long been enveloped here, and the arrival of hundreds of heavily armed Navy 6 Squad soldiers added to the mystery of the operation. During this period, the Luftwaffe also carried out two threatening air raids on this port in a row, many oil depots and ammunition depots in the port were destroyed, and the large ships anchored in the port even lit fire twice to prepare to leave the port to evade, but the strict air defense system of the military port finally protected most of the ships here, and only one destroyer scheduled to go to Saint-Nazaire was damaged in the air raid!

After the Germans took the lead, the scheduled date of action of the British Navy was also reduced to a very small range, and under the guidance of **experts, the whole box of fierce ** was loaded onto the destroyers and **boats that were about to ram the operation, and when the dark and windy night came, a large number of ships quietly sailed out of Plymouth Harbor!

France, Saint-Nazaire military port.

As the giant ship "Bismarck" sailed into the even larger Normandy dock, the overhaul work was quickly carried out day and night, and after more than half of the seawater in the dock was pumped out, Zhang Hainuo also temporarily moved his command post to the shore. Since the famous "Channel Rush" of the German fleet, the British have suspended all their routes in the Atlantic - the only exception that has led to another major naval battle between the British and German navies since 1916, and the sinking of the "Hood" immediately announced the failure of the British Navy's strategy of luring the enemy, and in North America, Africa, and Southeast Asia, large quantities of cargo were piled up in the docks and warehouses of the ports of Britain and its allies, and a large number of ships and tens of thousands of sailors were forced to stay in the harbors. The British were in dire need of these important strategic supplies, but they could not assemble a convoy large enough to escort the convoy, because resisting a submarine attack and fighting Bismarck were two completely different concepts, not to mention the two fast and ruthless battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, which were eyeing Brest. "The standard gauge steel has arrived. According to the engineers' expectations, the entire repair work will be completed in 8 to 10 days, and we will replace several damaged anti-aircraft guns by the way! Once the Bismarck has completed its repair work, the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau will sail together, patrolling the Atlantic route between North America and Great Britain. And the Bismarck and Zeppelin will be on standby in French ports! Furthermore. Graff. The Admiral Spee will patrol the route between Gibraltar and the United Kingdom alone! ”

In the admiral's temporary office, Schubert, chief of staff of the fleet, held a document and reported to Zhang Hainuo the new phase of the battle plan -- although the overall plan was well understood, Zhang Hainuo still needed to constantly improve and perfect it.

Behind the neat and tidy desk, Zhang Hainuo, who was in the middle of his temples, asked, "Did the Air Force send today's aerial photos?" ”

Schubert replied truthfully: "Not yet, we have already asked the command about it." The plane carrying the intelligence appears to have landed at a military airfield near Lorient due to a mechanical failure. General Hantesko promised that the report would be delivered to Saint-Nazaire within two hours! ”

"Mechanical failure?" Zhang Hainuo's explanation for this (.2.) There was no obvious dissatisfaction or disappointment. At this stage when the technology is at a high stage, the mechanical reliability is far less than in the future, which reminds him of the poor Tiger and King Tiger tanks in history. Remembering the Russian T-34, something else very important was remembered.

"It's the ground. General, do you have any other instructions? ”

"Oh, can you help me get through to the SS command, I'm going to talk to SS General Hans. Lord Lomeister calls directly! ”

For this request, Schubert was obviously surprised, but he still said positively: "Okay, general, I'll do my best!" ”

Although the telephone has been a few decades ago, and it has been relatively common in war and life, the telephone network in this era is far from reaching, especially the remote phone calls across several countries can not be reached anytime and anywhere. After waiting for about a quarter of an hour, Schubert reappeared with good news: "General, the phone is connected, and we will transfer to you immediately!" ”

After a while, the phone on the desk rang, Zhang Hainuo picked up the microphone, his voice was a little distorted, but after a few simple greetings, he still judged that the other party was his combat partner for many years through his tone and diction habits.

I haven't seen you for nearly a month, Li Ming simply entered the topic: "Remember what I told you last time in the swimming pool of your apartment, how is that thing?" ”

"You mean red cans?" He asked in a cryptic language that the two had agreed.

"Well, red can number 58! Any news? ”

The other party said without a pause: "The good news is that our man has already obtained the manual, and the bad news is that he is very skeptical about the authenticity of this thing, and he thinks that those barbarians can't make such a simple and reliable thing!" ”

After years of tacit understanding, Li Ming immediately heard the meaning behind these secret words, and he said in disappointment: "That's really bad! If we don't take measures sooner, we will definitely suffer in the competition! ”

"Don't worry too much, we're trying to get more detailed information, and preferably get a real guy back! In addition, our technical experts are also conducting in-depth research on the instructions we have received earlier, and we hope to get good news soon! ”

"I hope so!" Li Ming said, "Time is running out! ”

The other party said cryptically: "Time is indeed running out, in fact, your victory indirectly prompted its progress, just wait for the south to end, he can concentrate all his energy in one place!" ”

"Everyone can only do what they can, and we are no exception! Either way, old friend, I hope you'll continue to pursue this matter! Respond one day earlier, lose one less point! ”

"I will!" There was a pause, "Oh, wait, we just intercepted a confidential piece of information, which is required to be verified first, but I don't think there's time left, four hours ago a large number of British ships left Plymouth, and their whereabouts are unknown!" Old friends, the British do not want to destroy our fleet at all times, and you should be especially vigilant about this! ”

"A large fleet of people leaving port?" Li Ming was stunned for a moment, the German navy top brass naturally did not underestimate the British navy's determination to fight to the end, and for this reason, submarines and reconnaissance planes were specially dispatched to guard near the main British ports, but today neither the naval command in Berlin nor the integrated command in Brest came with similar information, and the SS used another spy network to obtain information about the enemy!

Although it was a bit sudden, Zhang Hainuo immediately sensed the seriousness of the situation, and he immediately ordered the port and the fleet to be on alert, and at the same time notified the naval units stationed in Brest to be on the same alert in the form of a secret telegram, in case of a sudden attack by the British!