The bottomless ocean has been the best place to bury tragedy and ugliness since ancient times. As long as a person or thing disappears into the depths of the waves, it will seem to evaporate out of thin air, forever silent in the cold darkness that the sun cannot reach. Since the beginning of the Age of Discovery, I don't know how many lives and wealth have been buried in the Atlantic, and when the time entered 1939 AD, the dead underwater necropolis welcomed a new batch of visitors at an explosive speed.

After a night of chase, a total of 10 British merchant ships were sent into the sea by German warships and submarines. Counting the 4 merchant ships that were destroyed and captured by the Scheer before dark, the fleet from Canada lost another 14 ships! By the early morning of September 13, only four merchant ships remained in the HX-07 convoy of 37 merchant ships and three warships. The British lost not only a fleet of 180,000 tons, but also more than 200,000 tons of much-needed war goods, including as much as 150,000 tons of iron ore and coal.

"Shire, 5,200 tons; Minas, 3,700 tons; White Sands, 12,000 tons ......" In the spacious and bright deck cabin, the seafaring officer of the Scheer was jolting in his logbook, recording information about the British merchant ships that he had sunk the previous night. Jack, an English sailor with a thick gauze wrapped around his chest, sat in the cabin with a languid expression at the moment; He was asked to confirm the names and tonnage of the British merchant ships that sank in the flames based on the battlefield photographs provided by the Germans. Soon, a long list was made. Compared with the unilateral estimates of the Germans, the information provided by Jack undoubtedly greatly increased the accuracy of the report.

See Jack's pale face with a hint of hope. The burly German navigator glanced at him and said without concealing his contempt: "Don't worry, we will send you to the ship of the neutral nation as soon as possible." In fact, we don't want to detain you on board at all: because not only can you do nothing. It would also waste precious fresh water, food, and medicine on our ship! After returning home, I hope that you will be able to use today's experience to tell the people around you that any force that dares to infringe on Germany will be punished with the most severe punishment! ”

The black clouds have dispersed, the waves have subsided, and a corner of the sky is faintly visible in the sky. Seeing a rare opportunity, Captain Cranke immediately ordered the release of a seaplane and went to the surrounding waters to carry out reconnaissance. In order to encourage the officers and men of the navy to sink as many British ships as possible. At the beginning of August, the German Navy devised a well-established incentive measure: all officers and men participating in the war were given allowances of varying weights according to the objective results of the battle and the amount of personal merit. At this time, if one or two more fish can be found in the HX-07 fleet. It's the best situation.

Just as the Scheer was preparing to wipe out the remnants of the enemy, a new slaughter began in the southeastern ocean more than 400 nautical miles away.

According to the information provided by Heydrich, there is also a fat fish in the convoy that recently crossed the ocean. The HX-11 flotilla led by the light cruiser Aurora. He had already left Liverpool late at night on September 5. Less than 40 percent of the 35 merchant ships were loaded with cargo. Most of the rest were all ready to be loaded in the United States. Although the United States was meticulously implementing the neutrality law at this time, non-war items such as grain and cotton were not within the scope of the neutrality law embargo. The mission of this British fleet was to exchange the cargo of the dozen ships for enough American agricultural and sideline products to ensure the supply of the tables of the British people on the island during the war.

However, the task of the British was not destined to be successfully achieved. The headquarters of the German Navy, which received this information, immediately dispatched troops to carry out a focused search in the sea area where the convoy was very likely to pass: except for six submarines. Also included is the Deutsche Pocket Battle Cruiser. At 10 a.m. on Sept. 13, the Deutsche lookout spotted an anomaly 27,000 meters away: shortly after Captain Otte gave the order to approach. The shadow of the ship on the sea quickly increased from the original one to a dense chess cloth like a group of stars!

Seeing that a German armored ship appeared in front of him, Rear Admiral Merry, who commanded the fleet, turned pale in an instant. The escort ships under his command are all equipped with anti-submarine as the only task, and it is simply difficult for a strong man to conduct artillery battles: the three armed tugboats are only equipped with 2~3 102 mm guns, which can only ensure the suppression of submarines, and there is no chance at all against the armored ships with capital ship-level firepower. And the Goddess of Dawn, which he was riding, was also an out-and-out weak chicken in front of the opponent - this light cruiser only had 6 152mm guns, while the opponent was 8 283mm heavy guns, and the firepower of the two sides was a whole order of magnitude apart!

After ordering the disbandment of the fleet, after a short struggle and hesitation, Merry finally gritted his teeth and made a choice worthy of his military status, that is, to rush towards the enemy at full speed with the only destroyer in the fleet. Merry understands that if she escapes from the war, then even if she can save a life, she will spend the rest of her life behind bars. In contrast, an honorable death in battle may have been a better ending, at least for the sake of sacrificing his life for his country, and the Admiralty would treat his widow and children well.

The sea breeze was whistling, the machinery was roaring, and just when the other party was still 20 kilometers away from him, a sharp and strange harsh sound suddenly appeared in Merry's ears. This feeling is like standing in front of an oncoming train, terrifying, depressing, and heart-wrenching. He had participated in the Battle of Jutland, and his body trembled, as if something that had been sealed in his memory had broken through the ground again; He suddenly raised his head, and sure enough, several black objects in the shape of wine bottles appeared in the sky, and they were swooping down on him with the force of a wild lion and a furious tiger!

"It's really a battleship-class large-caliber shell!" Merry exclaimed, her expression full of shock and fear. In a few breaths, the originally calm sea suddenly exploded, and four majestic water columns tens of meters high were set off in the thunderous roar. Looking at the heavy snow foam that collapsed, Merry realized that he was already 80% likely to be here today. His only hope was to close the distance between the two sides to within 10 km before his cruiser suffered heavy damage, so that the 152 mm main guns on his own battleship would have a chance to exert their power and knock out the fire of the enemy's secondary guns. If so, then the destroyer, which is speeding at 36 knots at the moment, has a chance to launch a successful torpedo assault.

"The enemy ship began to turn right!" Suddenly, the watchman's report came from the interlocutory. Merry was shocked, and hurriedly grabbed the binoculars and looked at it, and saw that the side profile of the German battleship in the distance was indeed slowly narrowing. Seeing this, Merry's body shook as he leaned against the bulkhead of the 25-millimeter-thick command tower, his face full of frustration and despair. Obviously, the commander of the German battleship had already seen through his idea of close combat, and the maneuver he took at this time was precisely to re-distance himself from himself!

As a new ship that only entered service at the end of 1937, the fire control level of the Dawning Goddess is undoubtedly much higher than that of the old cruiser Hawkins, which was built during the last war; It stands to reason that she should have sufficient capital to be competent for long-range artillery combat. However, this matter, which seemed to have no suspense, was defeated by the main gun she was equipped. This is not to say that the MK-XXIII 152mm L50 gun itself is inferior, the key point is that shells of this caliber class are fundamentally unsuitable for long-range engagement.

According to ballistics, small-caliber shells are inherently inferior to large-caliber shells in terms of velocity. After disemboweling, the latter can maintain a stable trajectory for a long distance, while the former cannot fly far, and the trajectory will deviate significantly due to severe stalling and insufficient inertia. Although many ways were thought of to delay the stall of the shells during the war, the effective range of small-caliber shells was still far from being comparable to the visual distance of 25~32km on the sea surface due to their inherent disadvantages.

Today, the maximum effective range of the 152 mm armor-piercing projectile that can really ensure the stability of the trajectory is about 13km. If the engagement distance exceeds 15 km, there will be a large irregular deviation in the actual landing point of the shell. And shooting in this case is almost no different from wasting shells.

In addition, using this level of artillery to carry out long-range combat is also a waste of its own rate of fire and projection. Because the artillery will have a process of calibration when shooting at long-distance targets at sea, that is, according to the position of the water column stirred up by the previous round of shells, the firing parameters of the next round will be corrected; The time between the discharging of the cannon and its fall into the sea near the target was not a blink of an eye.

Normally, a 152-mm shell would have to fly for nearly half a minute to attack a target at a distance of 13 km. This means that no matter how well trained the gunner is, the rate of fire of the gun will not exceed 2 rounds per minute until he finds the right target. However, the actual maximum rate of fire of the 152mm gun can reach 6~8 rounds per minute! And what is this not a great waste of the rate of fire and the amount of projection? In addition, due to the low kinetic energy of small-caliber shells, the scale of the water column stirred up when falling into the water is far less intuitive than that of large-caliber shells, which undoubtedly limits the accurate judgment of the observers on the landing point of the shells, thus further prolonging the tragic calibration time of this slow-speed shooting!

It was precisely because of this series of unfavorable factors that Fang Yan made the German Navy abandon the caliber of 6 inches (152 mm) from the very beginning and directly equip the Königsberg-class cruisers with 210 mm guns. After all, the trend of future naval warfare is that the distance of engagement is getting farther and farther away, and the use of 6-inch guns that are neither air defense nor capable of fighting enemy ships at a distance is purely self-inflicted. However, in order to save money after the war, Britain could only use cheap cruisers with 6-inch guns to maintain sea traffic, which doomed it to the fate of being hung after the end of the war! (To be continued.) )