"Your Excellency, even so, Bismarck has suffered heavy losses in the battle in the Danish Strait, and she has lost a lot of fuel, and her speed must be affected, and if you extrapolate at 24 knots, it will take them about 70 hours to arrive, which is an ideal estimate, and even less if their fuel reserves and damage control teams are sufficient to deal with the problems they face. We can't afford to drag it out. ”

Yarlin thought for a moment, looked at the chart in front of him, and began to speculate in his mind, after calculation, he roughly calculated the theoretical golden time of the royal fleet, which would be their last chance to intercept Bismarck!

John. Tovey nodded, agreeing with Yarlin's idea, "Order that as soon as the weather permits, launch an air attack on the Bismarck, be sure to delay her for a few days, and wait until our large forces arrive, even if Bismarck is a mature ship spirit, what if Bismarck is a mature ship spirit, the wheel battle is enough to exhaust Bismarck and her contractor, as long as Bismarck can't materialize the ship, she is the lamb we stay." ”

Arrin said that he understood, and after recording this in his notebook, he turned to John. Tovey said, "Your Excellency, I will convey this order immediately, and there is a high probability that there is a third battleship in the German fleet......"

"Oh?" John. Tovey frowned, and in surprise he opened the precious telegram he had placed on the table, and looked at it carefully, and when he saw the last page, he saw something that he was puzzled about, and that was a puzzle about the German fleet......

Perhaps for reasons that even the pilots themselves were unsure, this was specially appended at the end of the message, and because of the low visibility, the pilots did not seem to observe the whole fleet, and in addition to the still uncertain number of submarines, the pilot's report was accompanied by a large number of words that seemed to indicate that there seemed to be a third battleship in the fleet.

"It doesn't seem that she is very far from the position of the Bismarck, but in that weather, the pilot can only rely on perception to make vague judgments, and the convenience of visual observation is lost, and we have hardly obtained a single picture of the battleship, but the Bismarck and the Prinz Eugen can already be confirmed, which is the judgment of Vice Admiral Somerville......"

"He thinks that this ship should be a supply ship, and it is even very likely that it is the supply ship Altmark, which escaped from us in the first place."

Yarlin added that he seemed to have sent a long telegram explaining this, but the telegraph room was in the process of translating, so I took the first telegram he sent first.

"Altmark?" About this supply ship, John . Tovey was so impressed that at about 17 p.m. on December 17, 1939, three huge explosions woke Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, from the vast twilight, and under the watchful eye of the British cruisers Cumberland, Ajax and Achilles, the invincible German pocket battleship Count Speese slowly collapsed at the mouth of the Platte River.

The ship's commander, Count von Langsdorf, knew that there was no hope of breaking through and chose to sink himself, and he himself committed suicide three days later with a gun, and the sinking of the Count Spee was a heavy blow to the cruising operations of the large surface ships of the German Navy, and they had reason to be encouraged by this.

But the accomplice of the Count Spee, the supply ship Altmark, is still at large, and it was the fuel provided by this super transport ship that allowed the sea giant to commit murder at sea, and after more than a year, it was this supply ship that provided Bismarck with a huge boost, this time I see where you escape!

In fact, while pursuing the Earl Spee, the British Navy had been trying to hunt for the Altmark, a transport ship with more than 300 British sailors captured by the Earl Spee, but the cunning Altmark managed to hide in the South Atlantic for two months, and only when it was convinced that the British search fleet had left, did it try to return to Germany at high speed.

The meteorological conditions at sea were favorable to the Germans, so much so that the Altmark was spotted by British ships on 14 February 1940 when it sailed into Norwegian territorial waters. At that time, the Norwegian authorities, under the special flag of naval auxiliary vessels, applied for immunity, and the latter, believing it to be true, did not inspect it as was customary, so that the ship returned to Germany with a swagger.

"I didn't expect that after more than a year, I appeared on the Atlantic Ocean again, and I also awakened the ship spirit ......."

John. Tovey nodded, a little anxious, he walked back and forth, touched his somewhat sore right arm, and muttered to himself, "If it's really that supply ship, maybe a doubt in my heart can be solved, why that long string of breadcrumbs suddenly disappeared can also be explained, they are not repaired by the damage control team at all, but use the spirit of the Altmark to complete the repair work, the fuel leak on the Bismarck is much more serious than I thought, The severity even forced them to use soul steel for repair. ”

"Hmph, the amount of soul steel excavated is very limited, even us, the soul steel allocated to our navy is only a few thousand units, the Germans are really betting this time......"

"In this case, everything can be explained, although they lost a lot of fuel in the Danish naval battle, but after the rendezvous with Artmark, the loss of fuel was replenished to a certain extent, but in order to prevent us from completely sinking the Bismarck in the Atlantic, they gave up the operation to break the diplomatic relationship, and swaggered towards the position of St. Nazaire."

The Germans, who had sunk four of our ships at the same time, also knew for sure that we would sink Bismarck at all costs, and this created a good condition that while our entire fleet was looking for traces of Bismarck, one of their warships, which had been hidden, went deep into the Atlantic, sank the Black Pearl, and possibly even obtained the Philosopher's Stone. ”

"What a good plan, using three warships as bait to hide their true purpose......"

"But didn't you take into account the number of the royal fleet?" John. Tovey sneered, his eyes filled with angry flames.

Yarlin, tell the staff officers that some of them are busy......

Yarlin nodded, and said excitedly, "Your Excellency the Commander means, are we going to act too!" “

"We can't, George V must stay at the site of the Black Pearl and wait for the follow-up personnel to conduct a thorough search of this area, but the other warships will look for the ghost warship that may have been loaded with the Philosopher's Stone."

"We can't leave anything to chance."