The Royal Navy heavy cruiser Devonshire, a behemoth with a displacement of more than 13,300 tons, was 110 mm thick with built-in mine compartments to give her perfect protection, and the eight huge 204 mm guns were enough to send enemy ships of her class into icy hell.

Her powerful steam provides 80,000 horsepower, which allows her to perform a variety of jaw-dropping maneuvers like a destroyer and give her a top speed of more than thirty knots.

"It's a perfect cruiser." Captain Cascent, the captain of the Devonshire, looked at the majestic guns under the bridge and sighed proudly, imagining that he was commanding this elite warship to send the damned Nazi warships to the bottom of the sea.

"Captain Cartterson, how far are we from our destination now?" A voice pulled the captain back from his dream.

Feeling a little dissatisfied, the Admiral turned his head to wonder who had broken his dream.

The first thing that caught Cartson's eye was a crisp tawny military uniform, with two neat rows of medals on his chest pocket, a fiery red collar badge, and a beautiful crown and a diamond-shaped star on his shoulders to prove the identity of the uniform's owner.

"Ah, Lieutenant Colonel Sanders, why are you here, is there anything to find me?" Cartelson immediately said with a smile on his face.

"Nothing, Mr. Captain." Sanders knew that his previous question was in vain, and the naval officer didn't listen to anything at all.

"I just wanted to ask when we'll get to our destination."

"Oh, my dear lieutenant colonel, at our current pace, it is estimated that we will be at our destination early tomorrow morning." Cartelson replied with a smile.

"Well, Mr. Captain, you know the importance of our mission, and I hope to be able to land tonight. Will you be able to speed up our advance, will you be able to get to our landing site before midnight today? Sanders frowned.

"It's hard to do, Lieutenant Colonel. You must know that we are now on the edge of the enemy-controlled seas, and we are close to the minefields laid by the Norwegians. I won't be surprised by any trouble here. Cartelson turned to look out the window at the vast ocean.

"If possible, I'm certainly willing to go as fast as I can through this place where danger is hidden everywhere. But the current situation does not allow me to do so. We need to guard against enemy submarine attacks, and intelligence says that the enemy may send submarines to patrol the area. If we were to go full throttle, we would not be able to use our hydrophones, and our own noise would completely drown out the sound of the German submarines.

And the noise of the ships at high speed is very likely to expose our position to the submarines, and we are not worried that any German submarine that is not afraid of death will dare to attack us, but they will lure those damned German torpedo boats and planes over. It would be dangerous to be attacked by torpedo boats and bombers in such a place. I don't want to take such a needless risk with my battleship, so now we can only move at this pace. Cartelson looked helpless.

"But Captain Cartterson, you must understand the magnitude of our mission, and even London takes this operation very seriously." Sanders felt that bringing out the general backing of the mission might add a sense of urgency to the stubborn admiral. But he clearly failed, and Cartelson didn't seem to care about it at all.

"Lieutenant Colonel, I know the importance of this mission, and I know how it will help our empire. However, this is on the sea, not in London. This is my battleship, this is my fleet. You are responsible for your mission, and I am also responsible for my battleship. On land you will be at the mercy of your War Headquarters, but at sea you will be at my command. And the timing of the mission did not specify when and where we had to go, and those who made the plans understood the difficulty of navigating the sea. My task is to get you and your soldiers safely to Norway and then safely back to England. The fleet had to reach its destination safely and covertly, and that speed was the limit of what I could do with this task. I must bring this precious fleet back to England in its entirety, and now the Royal Navy has little more strength to expend. Cartelson said solemnly.

"Ming...... I see. Sanders knew that he could not convince the naval officer, so he had to abandon his opinion for the time being.

"Then I'll take my leave, and I'm going to get my soldiers ready for the landing, and by the way, you said you'd arrive early tomorrow morning, didn't you?"

"Yes, Mr. Lieutenant Colonel, I can assure you of that." Cartterson was very uncomfortable with the fact that the army officer was not only using London to oppress him, but also wanted to interfere in his own behavior against the command of the fleet, and he took up his binoculars and pretended to observe the sea situation, and replied coldly without looking back, adding a hint of impatience to his usual mild-mannered tone.

Sanders understood the meaning of the captain's tone, and he didn't want to be bored anymore, so he turned and left the bridge after giving a standard military salute.

As Sanders descended the stairs inside the bridge, he found his lieutenant waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs with several other officers.

"Sir, how is the question?" His adjutant asked.

"We'll land early tomorrow morning, get all the soldiers ready, and after dinner all the officers will come to my room for a meeting to discuss the details of the landing."

"What! Tomorrow morning, don't we need to act during the day? What does this captain think, landing in broad daylight under the noses of those Germans, this is not for us to send to death. The adjutant exclaimed.

"Enough, Captain Willis, you have to watch your tone, you are attacking a senior officer." Sanders stopped his adjutant from complaining, and then he lowered his voice and said, "Let's talk about it in my room, complaining here about the bad impact of a decision made by a senior officer, understand?" ”

"Yes, Lieutenant Colonel." The adjutant nodded in agreement.

Sanderson walked out of the bridge with his men and down the deck towards the officer's quarters at the stern.

"Now I'm really bored, we're just walking back and forth in an S-shape at sea, and I doubt we'll really be able to get to our destination tomorrow morning." An officer said as he looked at a destroyer that was turning in front of the battleship.

"I believe in the captain's words, he should be responsible for what he promised, how to say that the Royal Navy regards honor as life as we do, and he will definitely fulfill his promise." Sanderson also turned his head to look at the destroyer.

Suddenly, a sharp sound of fine reports rang out from the destroyer in the distance, and even if it was so far away, it still sounded heartbreaking.

"What's going on, have you spotted the enemy?" The officers of the army all turned and gathered at the railing of the deck, all looking at the battleship that was screaming wildly.

"Fine, fine, all the personnel are in place, and everyone arrives at their respective combat positions. Fine, fine. At this moment, the first mate's command was heard from the huge loudspeaker at the top of the bridge, and then the Devonshire began to play a deafening battle report.

The deck of the battleship suddenly became hectic, and countless sailors emerged from their large and small hatches, and then rushed towards their respective posts. The anti-aircraft gunners hurriedly took out the shells from the magazines, and then desperately turned the cāo longitudinal wheel, and the dense muzzles of the 40mm anti-aircraft guns pointed straight into the air and searched back and forth for the traces of enemy aircraft. The huge turret of the secondary gun also began to slowly turn, and the muzzle of the gun was pointed in any direction that might encounter the enemy. The sailors shouted loudly to encourage each other, no one asked, no one doubted, everyone was excited to be able to fight, and the Royal Navy maintained their pride and high morale. The entire battleship now resembles an enraged hedgehog, revealing its sharp spikes in all directions.

"Where is the enemy? How I didn't see it. Captain Willis asked Sanders.

"I don't know, I didn't find anything." Sanders also looked puzzled, he looked at the destroyer that had stopped turning and was desperately trying to turn around in the other direction, not understanding what was going on.

"Excuse me, have we met the enemy?" One of Sanders' officers grabbed an old sailor who was running past them and asked eagerly.

"I don't know, you better go to the officer's room, it's not safe on deck. Please let me go, I still have a job, sir. The old sailor struggled to break free from the officer's grasp, and hurried towards the stern.

"He's right, let's go to the cabin, we stay on deck and don't do anything but get in the way of the soldiers."

Sanders led his officers and hurried towards the nearby officers' cafeteria. Sanders noticed that the deck of the Devonshire suddenly began to tremble, and the warship had noticeably picked up speed, and now Devon was trying to turn.

"Now I feel very wrong." Sanders stopped, and the soldier's peculiar premonition of danger made him think that there must be big trouble this time.

"Boom!" A dull explosion sounded not far away, and Sanders quickly turned his head to look at the place where the explosion had occurred. As a result, he only saw a thick column of water fall from the side of the destroyer in front of him, which was turning in a panic, and the hull of the destroyer was obviously twisted by some force and then returned to its original state, but the harsh noise of steel rubbing still clearly reached Sanders's ears. The sight in front of him stunned the lieutenant colonel.

"Is it shelling?" Sanders' eyes scrutinized the nearby sea to see where the shelling was coming from.

At this moment another dull explosion sounded from the destroyer, and an equally huge column of water rose from the side of the battleship again, and the destroyer was shot out of the water as if a huge hand was holding her from the sea, and the whole battleship turned into an arched bridge in an instant, and then returned to its original state in the next second, smashing back into the water so hard that the splash even exceeded the height of the mast.

"It's a torpedo!"

Sanders finally understood why the ship had turned so panicked, she was dodging the threat approaching from the bottom of the sea. Unfortunately, she discovered the threat too late, and despite her last efforts, she was unable to avoid the catastrophe.

"God, there's a German submarine here!" Sanders exclaimed: "We were attacked by German submarines. ”

He stared dumbfounded at the poor destroyer, which had been torpedoed in half, its stern half submerged in the sea, and the bow part of the ship had been lifted out of the water and continued to slowly rise upward, and now he could clearly see the red bottom of the battleship covered with vines under the waterline. The surviving sailors cried and fell into the sea from the gradually vertical deck, and then were sucked into the hull by the whirlpool rolled up by the ship's hull, and the sailors who escaped the catastrophe were trying to swim out of the wreck, knowing that the next whirlpool would be much larger than this, and that would be the destroyer's last struggle.

Devonshire didn't slow down, she continued her turn, Sanders watched as the destroyer shook violently on the surface of the sea, then sank to the bottom of the ocean with an unbelievable sound of metal twisting and breaking.

Devon raced past the wreck of the poor destroyer, and now she could do nothing to the sailors who were struggling to call for help in the sea, for the underwater demon who had sunk them must still be there watching this, and she could not risk being attacked to stop and save the poor people. The sailors could only desperately throw life-saving equipment into the sea, and shouted loudly to encourage their comrades who were struggling in the water.

"Damn German submarines, these poor sailors, can't we help them." Looking at the tragic scene in front of him, Willis called out to Sanders angrily. But Sanders did not answer his question, he looked at the men and bowed his head silently, his eyes full of hatred and anger, and he secretly swore in his heart that one day he would pay the blood debt to the Germans.

At that moment, two more violent explosions came from the stern direction, almost simultaneously, but to Sanders's surprise, they sounded as if they were coming from different directions.

"Lieutenant Colonel, our other two destroyers, they were also shot." An officer shouted loudly. At some point, he climbed onto the platform of the aircraft's catapult high above the stern, and now he shouted as he pointed to the smoke rising from the two destroyers not far away.

"How did it come to this?" Sanders looked at the two battleships, which were 1,500 meters apart, and muttered.

"It must be so, we must have encountered more than just a submarine, oh my God, we just got into an elaborate ambush circle."

Sanders remembered that his father had told him the same story about his father during World War I, who was a naval officer, and as a result, his fleet was caught in an ambush circle of two German submarines on its way to France, and the entire fleet was sent to the bottom of the sea by the Germans. Every time he talked about that terrible night, the old man's eyes were filled with fear, and then there were old tears, he was the only survivor of the massacre, where he lost all his friends and men, as well as his pride and self-confidence.

Is it your turn now? Sanderson felt his scalp tingle, and the horrific impression of German submarines was ingrained in the minds of every generation of Britons who had gone through that war, including those who had come out in the post-war period.

"It's not the last war, and it's not a merchant ship that has no ability to resist, but now I'm on the most elite ships of the Royal Navy. What happened to my father will never happen to me again. Sanderson comforted himself, but when he looked up at the two flaming destroyers, he couldn't help but start beating again.

The successive blows had already made Devonshire panic, and now that she had lost most of her escort force, and what was even more terrifying was that it had all happened in the space of two minutes, which made the heavy cruiser a little helpless. Those once blood-boiling morale disappeared without a trace in the face of this cruel reality.

Now there are only two options in front of Devon, one is to abandon those people who are struggling and speed up to leave this land of right and wrong. The second option was to lead the remaining destroyers and fight the German submarines to the end, fighting to the death to save their compatriots and the little honor left by the British Royal Navy.

Sanders ran desperately towards the bridge, trying to stop that stubborn Carterson before he could make that stupid decision. Because he already had a faint premonition in his heart of which path the admiral would choose, one that might push everyone to hell.

Sanders felt a strong sense of foreboding in his heart, and what worried him was that this premonition had always been very accurate.

If there's one thing that scares Sanders right now, it's that he's ...... Can't swim.

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