The matter in Gibraltar was quickly settled, not because Churchill had a better idea, but because no one could have thought of a better way. Pound had the Admiralty make a plan to deploy aircraft carriers west of the Strait of Gibraltar and use carrier-based aircraft to destroy the German forces that dared to attack, but no matter how they were deployed, the aircraft carriers in the war game would never be able to pass the level of land-based aviation -- if the number was small, it would not work, and if there were too many of them, one or more would certainly be sunk by the enemy. Under the premise that the strength of the home fleet is insufficient, it is completely futile to do this, and in the end it can only be reluctantly abandoned.

But Churchill's focus was not on Gibraltar for the time being, even if Spain had agreed to do so, he believed that it would take at least two to three weeks for the Germans to attack, and that the enemy would not be foolish enough to send battleships or landing forces to their deaths until Gibraltar's air power was completely suppressed, and that he had every time to deal with the greater threat at hand.

The Tirpitts is the most imminent threat.

"Our reconnaissance aircraft did not find the enemy?"

"The reconnaissance plane went to the sea area of the battle and conducted a careful search in every possible direction, and found nothing, and of course the reconnaissance plane did not encounter the enemy plane." Tovey sighed, "There are two judgments now, one is that he has returned to the Alta Fjord, and the other is that he is about to head south into the Atlantic. To our disadvantage, tomorrow the weather in the waters off Norway will be very bad and we will not be able to continue reconnaissance. ”

"So we've been disengaging with it for a day and a night?"

"Yes."

"Suppose the Tirpitts kept heading south after the battle was over, where would it be now?"

"It should be about 300-500 nautical miles away from Iceland."

"Tomorrow another day of disengagement, and then they will be within 100 nautical miles of Iceland, but they may still not be detected by our fleet?"

"In theory, so."

"Will the weather improve in the next two or three days?"

"No, the bad weather will last for 4-5 days, and it won't get better until at least the 13th."

Everyone was a little nervous, the Tirpitts had put too much pressure on them, and if they couldn't find their whereabouts through plane searches, it would be a complete disaster once they entered the Atlantic. Although the blockade fleet has moved as fast as possible, it is too difficult to rely on the surface fleet to stop this scourge. Anyone who has ever worked in the Navy knows that it is a miracle to visually spot targets more than 20 nautical miles in such an environment of high winds and uncertainties in the North Atlantic, and that the more distant but vulnerable radars often fail in a variety of unreliable ways when tested by bad weather.

"Let the fleet keep its eyes open and don't let the Germans go." Churchill did not embarrass Tovey too much, and patiently told Pound, "Let the merchant ships currently transporting in the Atlantic speed up a little, and they must be out of the danger zone within a week." ”

"Is the fleet from the United States or Canada going to be postponed?"

Churchill hesitated for a moment and then said: "Set off normally, but keep in daily contact and obey all our dispatches and commands, Great Britain cannot live without these supplies, especially the fuel in them, without which we will not be able to survive even three months." ”

Churchill was telling the truth: Crude oil, for example, had no tankers from the Middle East to the mainland since the blockade of the Indian Ocean that began in late December, and all the crude oil received in January was brought in by tankers halfway through the Indian Ocean blockade. Since late January, no crude oil has arrived in the British Isles for almost two weeks. During the war, Britain's consumption of crude oil was about 1.2 million tons per month, and now although emergency measures have been implemented to save money, the consumption is still close to 1 million tons, and the crude oil reserves of the entire British Isles are only 3 million tons, and the lack of crude oil for half a month means that 500,000 tons of fuel reserves have been consumed, and if there is no crude oil delivered to Great Britain within 3 months, it means that Britain will not have to fight the next battle

As a result, not only did the proportion of tankers in the fleet departing from Canada and the United States increase considerably, but each transport ship was overloaded with its own fuel, so that it could return to North America without refueling when it arrived at its destination -- one of the methods adopted by the British side to save fuel consumption. The Americans are still very interesting, knowing that Britain is in an embarrassment after losing the Middle East crude oil production area, so this time it is directly the refined oil, and even the effort of local refining is saved.

In addition to strict economy, the UK has also urgently launched a coal-to-liquids project - although the UK has also researched and explored this technology, but the technical level is much behind Germany, and no British chemical company would have expected that the day will consider using coal-to-liquids, so this project must now be built from scratch, although it is the highest priority, but it cannot be built in just a few months.

While the British were thinking about dealing with the Tirpitts, the Norwegian cruiser fleet was escorting the captured transport ships slowly towards the Norwegian ports, and after docking, the British sailors on the transport ships would be sent to the prisoner of war camps, and the garrisons in Norway would immediately deploy enough manpower to transport the supplies back through other channels, and the Tirpitz fleet would continue south after a short replenishment.

According to later statistics, the JW-51A fleet set off with a total of 17 transport ships, only the merchant ship that fell behind at the beginning finally crossed the German blockade line by mistake and arrived safely in Murmansk, sending a batch of tanks and planes to the Red Army, but there were no aluminum ingots and armored steel that Stalin urgently needed on the warships, and the remaining 16 transport ships, except for 1 merchant ship with the best luck, finally escaped the pursuit of the German army by night and returned to Jan Mayen Island exhausted. The remaining 15 transports were either sunk or captured by the Germans. In addition to the capture of two 10,000-ton transport ships, the seized supplies included 5,000 tons of aluminum ingots, 4,000 tons of armor steel, and nearly 2,000 tons of canned Spam meat, as well as more than 500 military vehicles of various types, but not a single tank or plane.

After seeing these gains, the Navy command finally calmed down the unhappiness caused by the loss of three destroyers, and under the strenuous efforts of the Chief of the Navy General Staff Flick, Speer promised to increase the number of C-class large destroyers to be built by two more after receiving the supplies.

After a long journey of 48 hours, on the night of 9 February, the Tirpitz squadron, heading south along the Norwegian coastline, arrived about 200 nautical miles northeast of Bergen, Norway, about 400 nautical miles from the Faroe Islands, less than 300 nautical miles from Meenland Islands, and 600 nautical miles from Iceland.

The weather in the Norwegian waters has been very bad in the past few days, although the planes cannot take off to reconnoitre, but the German Navy has deployed a large number of U-boats in the North Sea waters, and they have sent back the news that the British home fleet is pouring out, although the naval command does not know how many blocking forces the British have dispatched, but their judgment is generally close to reality: it is believed that the British side will mobilize 5-6 battleships, 6-8 cruisers, and at least 2-4 aircraft carriers to carry out the blockade mission and jointly encircle and suppress the Tirpits, Given the dire prospect of the German fleet rushing into the Atlantic to break diplomatic relations, they assumed that the British would focus on the vicinity of Iceland - a judgment that coincided with the actual British deployment.

However, accurate judgment does not mean that you have mastered the opponent's operational deployment, let alone the enemy's next move, so for the Tirpitz, the next move must take a little risk.

The cautious Kumetz asked the formation to check again, and after confirming that everything was correct, he sent a telegram to Berlin in accordance with the plan: "The formation has arrived at the appointed position, everything is normal, please instruct." ”

After receiving the telegram, Raeder held his breath, thought calmly for 3 minutes, and made a final decision: "According to the C1 plan, act!" ”

At 0:17 on February 10, Kumets, who had received a return call, issued an order to all ships, including the Hipper and Lützov: turn to the southwest, course 215 degrees, speed 18 knots, and pay attention to anti-submarine. (To be continued.) )