At about 4 p.m., the weather began to improve and the winds weakened considerably, which was by no means good news for the fleet, which was sailing more than 220 kilometers northwest of Iceland and was very exposed. The cautious Machar hurriedly sent planes to reconnoiter the enemy's situation, and at the same time quickly took off the Bf-219 as cover, but no enemy troops were found in either the south or the east, and no British planes came to attack him, and he did not suffer until the sun went down at 6 o'clock and the sky darkened again, and his hanging heart was not put down.

In fact, Fraser has been preparing to send a reconnaissance plane, but it was delayed until about 4 o'clock to find a take-off, the slow seaplane is not enough for this job, he directly used the mosquito type, because yesterday's German attack on Jan Mayen Island intelligence misled him, he did not expect the German fleet to run so fast, still focus on the north of the reconnaissance, the result is nothing, but he firmly believes that the Germans will eventually be exposed one day.

In order to compensate for the losses of the previous day's aviation operations, he devoted all his energy to the reinforcement of air power, and since the Skuas had performed best on the first day of the battle, he took great pains to transfer 24 Skuas from the mainland and 12 Handsome Warrior fighter-bombers from the Royal Air Force - his wishful thinking was good, and the handsome soldiers first carried bombs to participate in the attack, and then escorted the Skuas. Since Pound ordered that the Swordfish and Great Mackerel should no longer be used to carry out mortal attack missions, he temporarily transferred two carrier-based aircraft squadrons of TBF (Avengers) - these were originally supplementary units for the follow-up combat missions of the Tejas class aircraft carriers.

Just as he was intensively preparing for the next day's battle, in the other direction, Rear Admiral Hamilton, commander of the E fleet, felt so depressed that he was almost about to spurt out a mouthful of old blood: he received a warning that the W fleet had encountered an enemy in the early hours of yesterday morning, and immediately rushed to the rescue at the highest speed, but when the E fleet arrived at the scene, the sky was close to light, and the German warships had already left, and he only had time to rescue a small number of officers and men who had not frozen to death. In order to prevent the Germans from killing the rifles, he retreated at dawn and prepared to continue lurking in the Iceland-Faroe waterway, but he did not find any enemy situation, and only received the news that the headquarters had failed in waves of air raids.

Admiral Fraser even ordered him to send the carrier-based aircraft on the four escort aircraft carriers to participate in the attack, but he resolutely resisted this dizzy idea, and the lawsuit went all the way to Admiral Tovey, because Tovey protected him, Pound did not express any opinion, and the matter was finally settled. Admiral Fraser was very dissatisfied with this, and he also ridiculed the latter's command ability and command level, and when the news came that a large number of fighters and attack planes had been killed without achieving any substantive results, he felt that Fraser was a fool.

Major General Hamilton had vaguely heard rumors that the Prime Minister had been unhappy with Admiral Tovey's performance and was planning to replace Fraser, a decision he scoffed at. He believed that the best general of the Royal Navy was Admiral Cunningham, and although he suffered a lot of difficulties because of the defeat in the Horn of Africa, this lucky man was lucky enough to save his life, and in his opinion Admiral Cunningham did not make any mistakes in the battle of the Horn of Africa. As for Fraser, he didn't think that a fool who only knew how to execute orders mechanically would be of any level, as could be seen yesterday by the act of giving the Germans a large number of Swordfish, Great Mackerel, and Hurricane to brush up on experience—on which Tovey and his views were surprisingly consistent.

"Sooner or later, these bastards will kill us under the guns of the Tirpits!" After receiving the information that he would go to the Danish Strait to intercept the German fleet, in the commander of the flagship Ramiri, he said indignantly to his staff, "After the two battles in the Mediterranean Sea and the Horn of Africa, the home fleet has such a small number of troops left, and it was only after being kicked in the head by a donkey that warships were sent to the Far East...... It was not enough to send 2 New Mexico and 4 escort aircraft carriers yesterday, now we have to be sent to intercept again, and sooner or later we will be sent away! ”

No one refuted his opinion, on the contrary, this statement resonated with the crowd very much, especially in the afternoon when he resisted the pressure and flatly refused to send the carrier-based pilots into an air raid that was certain to death, his prestige rose to a very high level, and all the pilots were grateful to him - especially when he knew that the loss rate of the attack aircraft units involved in the air raid that day exceeded two-thirds, and his strong resistance to Fraser's unreasonable orders won him popularity.

"Sir, what do you think we should do now?"

"Wait! Wait for the reinforcements to come up. Hamilton said, "When the capital ships in the Far East, the capital ships repaired in the United States and South Africa, and the capital ships supported by the Americans to support us are in place, we will go to encircle and suppress the Germans." The Royal Navy has not dealt with the Bismarck-class, and when we encircled and suppressed a lone Bismarck, we used 6 cutting-edge battleships, 2 fleet aircraft carriers and countless aircraft, and in this way, we also lost a Hood. Now the Germans had not only the Tirpitz, but also a whole fleet, and they did not have enough strength to overwhelm the enemy, and even if they touched them, they would be killed. ”

"But then the Atlantic shipping line will be broken."

"Broken?" Hamilton smiled slightly, "What if it's broken, it's only 30-40 days, and Great Britain won't be able to hold on to this little time." In addition, even if the Germans were allowed to fight, how many merchant ships could they sink in a month? 400,000 tons or 500,000 tons? -- Less than a month's worth of ships for the Americans, those freewheels are very cheap! But warships are different, a battleship can't be built in 2-3 years, this month we have lost 150,000 tons of warships one after another, it is difficult to build so much tonnage in a year, not to mention the officers and men of the navy above, how many years do they have to be trained to become an army? ”

Everyone was silent, because everyone understood that Hamilton was telling the truth, and the tragedy of last night was still vivid: the two New Mexico-class battleships were all American Navy, and theoretically there should have been more than 3,000 officers and men, but in the end, there were only more than 300 survivors salvaged, and many of these 300 people needed to be amputated because they had been immersed in the icy sea water for too long, and some of their limbs had died and needed to be amputated. Thinking about the fact that Admiral Cunningham was forced to jump into the sea after the defeat in the Horn of Africa, and finally returned to his homeland after a lot of hardships and broke his leg, I don't know how lucky he was. In the final analysis, everyone is not afraid of death, but afraid of needless death.

But now that Churchill and the Admiralty had ordered it, Hamilton had to carry it out, and he had already figured out that if Admiral Tovey was dismissed at the end of the campaign, he would choose to resign altogether—he had done enough for Britain and the Royal Navy that it was time for him and his family to think about it.

On February 15, it was another early morning, the weather was slowly improving, and the center of the North Sea Fleet was more than 550 kilometers west of Iceland and less than 300 kilometers from Greenland, but Machar was not worried that Greenland would be unfavorable to him, there was a lot of ice and snow on it, not to mention planes, and there would not even be a few living people.

At 6:05, the first wave of Ar-272s was dispatched on time, focusing on searching south, and then successively released covering fighters and He-218s with ammunition reconnaissance, the fleet was still moving southwest at a speed of 25 knots, because of the possibility of enemy interception at any time, Machar narrowed the distance between the two formations to 15 nautical miles, so as to facilitate nearby support.

At the same moment, Fleet E, which had arrived at the designated position, also began to catapult reconnaissance planes, but Hamilton could only use the slow walrus; Ten minutes later, Icelandic land-based reconnaissance planes took off at the same time, and since there was no trace of reconnaissance to the northwest and north, the focus of today's search was to the west, and Fraser deployed the fastest Mosquito reconnaissance plane in this direction.

At 7:05, Ar-272 received alarming news: an enemy fleet was spotted about 250 kilometers to the southeast, including 2 battleships, 4 light aircraft carriers, 3-4 cruisers and 6 destroyers.

"Yay! The dive bombers retracted and assembled, and the attack planes were ready to sortie! Mashal shook his fist, "Kill them all!" ”

However, the good times did not last long, just after 12 Bf-219s covering the He-218 fleet took off, at 7:28, the Mosquito reconnaissance plane appeared in the sky above the North Sea Fleet, and the escort fighters quickly shot it down, but the fleet still intercepted the telegram sent by the British, and the faces of Mashal and Richthofen instantly became gloomy - the position of the fleet was exposed!

Faced with the Icelandic Air Force to the east and the enemy aircraft carrier fleet to the south, the North Sea Fleet was now cornered, and the time was only half past seven, at least 10 hours before dark, and Mashal anxiously asked everyone: "What now?" ”

Ozawa gave a piece of advice: "The whole fleet should speed up and move westward in a straight line, widening the distance between the fleet and Iceland, and pulling as far as it can, and the enemy aircraft group will not reach the airspace over the fleet until an hour at the earliest, and the distance between the fleet and Iceland can be completely widened to more than 600 kilometers by using this time!" ”

Richthofen nodded, the most dangerous thing now is to be attacked on both sides of the east and south, and one must be killed first, and the enemy aircraft carrier formation that is closer is obviously a greater threat, he thought about it and suggested: "Defeat him quickly, at least the 4 light aircraft carriers must be eliminated, and the two enemies must at least kill one way first, so that today's battle will be easier!" ”

Both Ozawa and the Japanese advisory group agreed, and the decision was quickly fulfilled: Richthofen gritted his teeth and took out eight more Bf-219s to cover the Ju-98 attack aircraft group and attack the enemy fleet, leaving only 16 Bf-219s over the fleet for cover, and the second batch of direct cover planes was to be released at about half past eight o'clock, bringing the total number to 28 - that was all the fighters available to the fleet.

The toughest test of the tsunami plan has finally arrived...... (To be continued.) )