"Boom!" The 610-millimeter oxygen torpedo slammed into the side of the British destroyer at a rapid speed, and the sea surface within a radius of tens of meters instantly exploded: cascading waves rolled and sang, as if thousands of snow lions and dragons roared and rushed in all directions. At the same time, a dazzling red-purple flame burst into the sky, like a rainbow of lightning that pierced through the entire sea and sky; The British destroyer was instantly cut in two by the fierce and incomparable explosion wave, and the steel was shattered and scattered, and it disappeared completely into the sea in less than two minutes!

"Hooray!" Seeing this, the German officers and men on the S-103 torpedo boat thundered with joy, and they clasped hands tightly with their comrades in front of them, and their faces were full of excitement and excitement. Without any damage, he actually sank a British destroyer with a tonnage of at least 15 times his own in a one-on-one battle! If it weren't for witnessing the destruction of enemy ships, they would not have dared to imagine such a victory!

In the navigation command room, the German commander Anderson was overjoyed; Taking advantage of the long range, high speed, and inconspicuous track characteristics of the oxygen torpedo, he really completed the surprise attack in one fell swoop. His own warship fired a torpedo at the British destroyer from 13,000 meters away, and in order to confuse the opponent, he kept moving forward after firing the torpedo in order to close the distance and wait for an opportunity to attack. And the British, who were completely unaware of the performance of German oxygen torpedoes, really fell into this trap and always engaged the enemy at high speed in their original course. Eventually, the unsuspecting British battleship crashed headlong into the course of the torpedo it had fired, and the power of the 490kg ******** wiped everything out in an instant.

"It's a pity that the attack on the S-104 boat was not successful, otherwise we would have been on a par with the heroes of Scarpa Bay." Seeing another British destroyer still alive thousands of meters away, Anderson said with some regret. At this time, nearly three minutes had passed since the explosion of the previous British destroyer, and according to the time calculation, it was only possible that the torpedo of the S-104 boat had missed the target.

For this case. Anderson, however, was not too disappointed. Because firing a torpedo at a long distance is inherently difficult to hit: in addition to the fact that the distance, speed, and course of the target are not easy to accurately grasp, the torpedo itself also has errors similar to the dispersion of artillery shells. At a distance of 13,000 meters, this 610-mm oxygen torpedo directly from a Japanese cottage can achieve an error of 300 meters. Considering that the length of a destroyer is about 120~130 meters, it is reasonable that the S-104 boat failed to hit the target with two torpedoes.

"Sir, what are we going to do now?" Ensign Captain Benck was the first to recover from his ecstatic state of mind. Said to Anderson in a reverent tone. No matter what strategy the person in front of him adopted, being able to sink a British "big" ship without any damage in an absolutely inferior situation is in itself an extremely astonishing achievement! If it weren't for the success of the previous surprise attack on Scapa Flow, which was too dazzling, today's battle would have been enough to boost the morale of the navy!

Anderson pondered for a moment, then whispered softly in his analysis: "The sudden explosion of that British destroyer will inevitably alert the other British destroyers. Even if they had no way of knowing how we sank the destroyer, they would not continue to sail in a straight line that was vulnerable to torpedo attacks. This makes it difficult for us to replicate our previous successes. His eyes flashed, and after a moment, he said categorically: "Order, S-105 and S-106 boats are moving forward at full speed." A round of torpedo fire was carried out on a British transport ship in the distance! ”

The letter flag rises and falls, and flies in the wind; Under Anderson's command, the two S-boats, which still had torpedoes, were no longer clumsy, and the three high-horsepower diesel engines were running at full strength, and the speed of the battleboats increased from 36 knots to a mythical 43 knots in just two minutes. The most important reason why the German S boats did not have full speed was to prolong the approach time between the two sides, so as to stabilize the opponent and make the torpedoes they fired in advance have the possibility of hitting. If the S-boats rush too bravely as soon as they come up. So much so that before the torpedo reached the British destroyer's approach, it was already only a few thousand meters away from the enemy; Then the British destroyer will inevitably change course on its own initiative. to circumvent the best lightning strike route for the German S-boats, so that all efforts will be lost.

Now, however, the two S-boats, which do not target British destroyers, no longer have any scruples in this regard. Sailing at super-high speeds, their bow lifted up from the water, and sped forward like a racing boat in a roaring cannonball. The gunners on the British destroyers watched in amazement as the boats marched forward. The impact point became scattered and offset: not only because they were shocked by the exaggerated speed of their opponents, but also because they had never been trained to shoot at a moving target at such high speeds. Coupled with the small size of the opponent, the British gunners had no sense of hand when they fired: they could usually guarantee a steady hit from a distance of 4 kilometers, but at this moment they were a little unable to get closer to within 3 kilometers.

Taking advantage of the messy artillery fire of the British ships, the German S-boats made a sharp assault at a speed much faster than the torpedoes. Due to the lack of skills in the doppelganger. The destroyer Dragonfly was able to catch up with the S-106 boat, while the S-105 boat, which was attacking from the other side, was unhindered and headed straight for the British convoy 15,000 meters away. Seeing this, the last destroyer in the British fleet was finally unable to show its calmness; She quickly changed course and sped towards the incoming enemy ships. Based on the previous explosion of the Shepherd, the sailing of the remaining two British destroyers became cautious. Even if they had to reshuffle the shooting parameters, they had to change course to ensure their own safety.

However, this move of the British to make up for the defeat of the sheep was another fulfillment of the German attack. Because the target of the German S boats has changed from British destroyers to merchant ships, and the maneuvering of the British destroyers has affected their shelling accuracy, which has further reduced their interception efficiency against German S boats.

At a distance of 7 kilometers from the British merchant ships, the blocked S-105 boat launched a torpedo attack that had been prepared for a long time by itself. The two heavy torpedoes swam in a straight line at a speed of 2 meters underwater, and they quickly staggered the British destroyer in front of them, which was struggling to dodge, and rushed towards the merchant ship in the distance. Although this distance is still somewhat remote, the ultra-high speed of the oxygen torpedo makes up for it to some extent. Less than five minutes later, the center of the British flotilla of four merchant ships suddenly rushed into the center of a rushing wave that seemed to be an upside-down waterfall: in the red light that suddenly illuminated the surrounding sea, the half-broken propeller was faintly thrown into the sky tens of meters high, and then disappeared into the billowing black smoke, and there was no trace of it.

"Despicable Germans, you must pay for today's great crimes!" The lieutenant commander of the British fleet let out an angry roar, his eyes almost bursting with fire. With 3 1,400-ton destroyers against 4 100-ton torpedo boats, the result was that one destroyer and one merchant ship were sunk, and the other side is still unscathed! Even if all these evil German dinghys were sunk, they would be far from being able to compensate for the huge losses they had suffered. He immediately ordered the battleships to turn to full speed in pursuit: by this time the German boats had run out of torpedoes, and the transport ships would soon be able to sail into the territorial waters of the Netherlands, which was an opportunity for him to save face.

However, the fast German S-boat is the essence of the mystery of running away after loading. The German sailors carried several smoke canisters to the side of the ship where the guns of the British destroyers were pointed, and in an instant large clouds of bright yellow smoke quickly rose on the surface of the sea. As the smoke cleared, the British rangefinder's good vision was destroyed and could no longer provide accurate information to the gunner. Seeing this scene, the enraged British lieutenant colonel couldn't help but smash the telescope in his hand: this piece of smoke undoubtedly ruined all his opportunities, and the speed gap between the two sides was as high as 7 knots, how could he catch up?

"Sir, why don't we try our luck with a torpedo salvo?" A staff officer suggested. The current German torpedo boat was less than 3 kilometers away from her, and while she had not yet run far, a salvo of eight torpedoes had a good chance of getting a hit. However, the staff officer's suggestion of feeling good about himself was immediately scolded by the lieutenant colonel commander: "You idiot! The Germans were faster than our torpedoes, and we launched them to prepare to blow up the fish? The lieutenant colonel glanced at the smoke and dust in the distance with resentment and reluctance, and said slowly: "We can't catch up with those despicable Germans anymore. Order the Dragonfly to follow the ship back. ”

Along with the transmission of radio waves, the S-103 boat, which retreated first, also received the attack results of the next two friendly boats. After a brief period of euphoria, Captain Anderson keenly discovered the shortcomings of the S-boat under his command: although her indicators had reached an extremely astonishing height, there was an obvious drawback in the system integration: the number of two torpedo tubes did not match the ultra-long range of the 610 mm oxygen torpedo.

If you want to attack from a long distance, too low a torpedo density will not guarantee a hit, and if you want to close the distance as a submarine attack, the torpedo has a range of up to 20 km. Thinking that this S-boat was a product launched by Wilhelm Shipyard, Anderson couldn't help but sigh secretly, compared with today's German shipbuilding giant Brom-Foss, Wilhelm Shipyard does have a big gap in terms of concept and integration.

"The British are too stingy, why didn't they form a large merchant fleet to go to the Netherlands?" Anderson complained to himself. If the target was 40 instead of four, he would have fired torpedoes at the dense merchant fleet from a distance, instead of risking the British destroyers. But Anderson also understood that such large British fleets would only appear in the main shipping lanes of the North Atlantic, and that the only ones who could catch such big fish were large surface ships and submarines with considerable range. (To be continued.) )