The Andaman Islands are located on the southeastern side of the Bay of Bengal and are the boundary between the Bay of Bengal and the Myanmar Sea.

At 1:40 a.m., southwest of the Andaman Islands, two destroyers cleaved the waves and cruising on the sea at a speed of 16 knots.

The two destroyers are both Lion-class destroyers of the Italian Navy, named Tiger and Leopard respectively.

At the beginning of March, the German Navy's No. 1 Aircraft Carrier Squadron completed a three-month naval blockade of the Bay of Bengal and was ordered to return home, and the Italian Navy took over from the German Navy to continue the blockade of the Bay of Bengal.

The most important task in the blockade of the Bay of Bengal was to track down Japanese submarines and prevent them from smuggling into the Bay of Bengal through the Strait of Malacca and the Burma Sea, and then into the Indian Ocean to attack Allied supply fleets.

After the Italian Navy took over the blockade mission, it carried out its mission conscientiously, blocking the sea surface of the north and south flanks of the Andaman Islands 24 hours a day, whether it was a sunny day or a storm.

On the destroyer Tiger, the captain, Captain Simone Perrotta, sat in his bedroom, his arms on his desk, a pen in his mouth, and squinted at a photograph of two people on the desk.

In the photo, Captain Perrotta is dressed in a military dress and stands side by side with a glamorous woman in a white wedding dress, with a happy smile on her face.

Now that I think about it, the wedding seems to have happened yesterday, but in a blink of an eye, in less than a month, I will become a father.

Since then, I have to take on the responsibilities of a husband on my left shoulder and a father's responsibility on my right shoulder.

What should I name my child after it is born?

Captain Perrotta thought for a moment, then suddenly laughed self-deprecatingly.

I don't even know if the child is a boy or a girl, and now it seems too advanced to think about this question.

Bowing his head, Captain Perrotta wrote a loving love letter, pouring all his nostalgia for his wife into the letter, and then carefully folded the letter and stuffed it into an envelope, ready to be sent as soon as he returned to the base.

Placing the letter in a drawer, Captain Perrotta grabbed the military cap on the table and buckled it above his head, pushed the door and walked out of the bedroom.

At one fifty-eight a.m., Captain Perrotta walked into the captain's command room and asked the first officer who was on duty for him, "Is there any situation?" ”

The first mate shrugged, spread his hands, and said, "All is well, at least here we are." ”

The two men chatted a few more words, the first mate went back to rest, and Captain Perrotta commanded the battleship to continue patrolling.

Captain Perrotta looked at his watch, it was two o'clock, and there were still three hours before the shift change time at five o'clock.

Time flies by in a boring patrol, and an hour and a half passes imperceptibly.

Captain Perrotta let out a long yawn, raised his hand to gently wipe away the tears from the corners of his eyes, and looked at the others in the command room, all of whom looked dazed and sleepy.

Captain Perrotta gave his men a shot in the arm as he had learned from the old captains.

"There is still an hour and a half before the return home, and the countdown now begins."

The crew heard Captain Perrotta's reminder and their spirits perked up.

Everyone chatted a few words, breaking the dullness in the command room.

Every ten minutes, Captain Perrotta would tell the time.

"It's four o'clock, and there's still an hour before the return flight, so everyone cheers up."

No sooner had Captain Perrotta's voice stopped than a voice came from the microphone.

The sound came from the listening room.

"The listening room reports the bridge, 170 degrees in the direction, at a distance of about five hundred meters, and there is an abnormal sound under the sea, which is suspected to be a submarine."

Captain Perrotta immediately shouted: "Right full rudder, course 170, slow forward."

The destroyer Tiger made a right turn in the water and headed for the direction reported by the listening room, slowing down at the same time.

The distance of 500 meters passed in a flash, and the listening room soon sent another message.

"The sound first gets louder and then disappears, the submarine should be right below us, they spotted us."

"Inform the stern of the ship to prepare for the drop of depth charges."

The destroyer Tiger soon slowly circled the sea, and the mine launchers at the stern made a muffled popping sound, firing depth charges in the shape of gasoline drums into the sea.

With the rumbling sound of the explosion, a thick white column of water rose into the sky, like a blue whale spewing water.

The underwater attack had not yet been confirmed, and the Leopard destroyer's inquiry had instead arrived first.

"We found a Japanese submarine that is attacking, and everything else is safe."

"Simeone, you're such a lucky guy, I hope you can get a result, good luck."

Receiving a message from the Leopard, Captain Perrotta smiled confidently.

The destroyer Tiger was now in a circle on the surface of the sea, dropping twenty depth charges, and then ceased its attack.

At the observation post on the bridge, the observers scrutinized the surface of the sea with binoculars, but found nothing they were looking for, such as large swaths of oil, corpses, or other submarine debris.

Perrotta asked the listening room, which said it had no more unusual sounds.

"Damn, this guy ran away."

Perrotta cursed under his breath, losing a win, and he was in a bad mood.

The destroyer Tiger, under the command of Captain Perrotta, reluctantly made another circle on the sea before leaving and sailing east.

By this time the sky had begun to light up, and the stars had gradually withdrawn from the canopy.

Captain Perrotta was annoyed by the loss of a battle when he suddenly heard a report from the observation post.

"Fleet to the east, fleet to the east, about 6 nautical miles, course 260, speed 25 knots, number 4, no, it's 6, oh my, it's 8 ships. Eight warships are approaching. ”

"Make a U-turn, full right rudder, head due west, full speed ahead." Captain Perrotta first turned the ship around and moved away from the unidentified fleet, then contacted the destroyer Leopard and reported his findings.

The observation post sent another message.

"It's a Japanese warship, it's a Japanese warship, they opened fire."

Almost at the same time, the destroyer Tiger was surrounded by a white column of water.

The battleship passed through the rain of bullets, deftly completed the U-turn, accelerated urgently, and fled to the west.

Captain Perrotta did not forget to look out of the bridge as he directed the battleship to flee.

White columns of water rose one after another, and his gaze fixed on the thickest of them.

This water column can only be made with at least 200 mm caliber naval artillery shells.

Among the warships behind him was at least one heavy cruiser of the Japanese Combined Fleet.

The destroyer Tiger fled in an S-shaped route on the surface of the sea, and the communications room urgently sent a report on the enemy situation back to the fleet base.

Along the way, Captain Perrotta found that there was less and less water around the battleship, and he seemed to be moving away from the range of fire of the Japanese fleet.

If you hold on for a while, you and your subordinates should be able to escape, and when the main force of your fleet leaves the port, you must come back and follow the main force of the fleet to teach these bold Japanese a hard lesson.

Captain Perrotta secretly made up his mind, but he didn't know that not far away in the sea, a periscope slowly turned, and the eyepiece locked tightly on his battleship.

When the Tiger destroyer completed another U-turn to the right, two ripples appeared silently on the sea surface directly in front of the periscope, and rushed straight to the starboard side of the Tiger destroyer.

A terrible siren sounded into the bridge: "Torpedo found on starboard, torpedo found on starboard······"

"Left full rudder, left full rudder."

Captain Perrotta glanced at the sea on the starboard side, and soon saw two deadly ripples, and then issued an evasive order.

The battleship swerved to the left, and one torpedo swept across the sea behind the stern, but the other torpedo hit the Tiger destroyer amidships.

White water splashed into the sky, almost encircling the stern of the destroyer Tiger.

A strong concussion was transmitted from the hull of the ship into the bridge, and Captain Perrotta's body shook, and he hurriedly grabbed the railing so that he did not fall to the ground.

The enormous force of the torpedo almost blew the destroyer Tiger in two, and tons of seawater poured into the hull from the blast vent, and the hull tilted irrepressibly to the right.

"Abandon ship, abandon ship."

On deck, the sailors hurriedly threw the lifeboat lifebuoy into the sea, then jumped into the sea and swam away from the battleship.

Captain Perrotta mingled in the crowd, wearing a lifebuoy on his body, and only after swimming a distance that he thought was safe did he look back at the warship behind him, but all he saw was the endless sea, and the destroyer Tiger had sunk to the bottom of the sea.

My beloved battleship, just sank.

Soon, another destroyer appeared in his sight, and on the stern flagpole of the battleship, a red and white plaster flag was waving in the wind.

The Japanese destroyers extended a hand of friendship to the Italian sailors who had fallen overboard, lowering the rope ladder and letting them aboard.

After boarding the Japanese battleship, Captain Perrotta, who had escaped and ascended to the sky, looked at the Japanese sailors around him who were staring at him with loaded guns and ammunition, and a terrifying thought suddenly appeared in his heart.

Will he and his subordinates be sent to Unit 731 for human experiments?

······

At noon that day, Chen Dao and Mandolfil had lunch together in the restaurant of the Prince Eugen, when they suddenly received a notice.

"Did the Japanese fleet break into the Bay of Bengal? Why did they appear at this time? Chen Dao asked suspiciously.

"Is the Japanese fleet the second group of guests you have invited? They seem to have arrived a little earlier. Mandolfil asked.

"Guests? Are you kidding? How could I invite such a guest? Are they the typical uninvited guests, or the undesirable kind. ”