At the same time as the two sides fought for the first time in the Indian Ocean, the British and German navies also launched a years-long war in the North Sea and the waters near Britain over the breaking of diplomatic relations and counter-breaking diplomatic relations! It may not be as exciting as the confrontation between the main ships, but this kind of war is more hidden, and at the same time the impact is more far-reaching!

At the beginning of the war, a hunting group composed of more than 50 German submarines entered the waters around Britain, and many submarines even ignored the British mine array and chose to pass directly through the English Channel, and what is even more unbelievable is that they actually succeeded! Not a single submarine was lost because of mines! And the reason for this result is that a German submarine sailing in the English Channel strayed into the British mine array and encountered multiple torpedoes, but there was nothing at all!

"Their mines don't seem to explode ....... Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 info" the captain wrote in a telegram to headquarters. (This is a historical fact, and the torpedo problem of the United States in World War 2 is very big, and the mines of the British in World War 1 are also very unreliable, at least before 1917, and the British mines are reliable because they got German mines, studied it, and the information comes from the Fearless Sea.) ）

And it is for this reason that the subsequent submarines chose to pass through the English Channel and launched their own hunting journey on the west coast of England. Caught off guard, the British merchant ships suffered heavy losses in the first place, and more than 350,000 tons of merchant ships were destroyed, which happened when German submarines had little actual combat experience.

And the British have never encountered such a large-scale submarine to break the diplomatic operation, there is no precedent to follow, there is not enough technical support, there are no reliable mines, there are no reliable depth charges, the hydrophones are also very backward, there is no escort system, in short, there is no plan and plan, let alone enough technology and troops. When the wolves hunted in the icy waters, the British were completely caught off guard.

War is the bloodiest and most intense means of human beings, so people will always set various rules to make war less terrible and bloody. And these rules can still be used in the beginning, for example, the submarine breaks the relationship, according to the capture law, the submarine should be warned before the attack, and then let the other side release the dinghy to divert personnel. This would have been a very gentleman's approach, and the German submarines did exactly that in the beginning. But soon, when the British took advantage of this rule, the situation completely changed!

Second Lieutenant Campbell, the captain of the British Q-1 submarine hunting ship, first invented a camouflage submarine hunting tactic, they would disguise the submarine hunting ship as an ordinary merchant ship, after the German submarine surfaced, they would not fire, and even make panicked feints, such as personnel running back and forth, putting down the dinghy to prepare for evacuation, when the submarine approached the ship ready to be executed, the hidden artillery of the camouflage submarine hunting submarine would suddenly attack the submarine that was close at hand! And this tactic clearly irritated the Germans! Such a very petty approach would naturally invite retaliation from the German submarine forces!

After successfully taking the head of one submarine and damaging the other, Campbell retaliated on his fifth safari, and after successfully attracting the attention of a German submarine, Campbell repeated his old trick by lowering the dinghy again and making a very hasty feint under German shelling. But when he opened the hidden artillery again and prepared to attack, two torpedoes that suddenly appeared in the water blew the Q-1 submarine hunter to pieces in a matter of seconds!

Subsequently, another German submarine surfaced and slaughtered most of the people who fell into the water with its 105mm guns and the submarine that was on the task of luring the enemy! "Go back and tell your heads! You broke the rules first! "After leaving behind several personnel who participated in the naval battle for the first time and a lifeboat, the two German submarines sailed away.

(Camouflaged submarine hunters are also a historical fact, and Captain Campbell in this article is indeed a man, and the results are brilliant.) This dude sank 3 submarines. In fact, the efficiency of this camouflage submarine hunting tactic is not high, and a total of 15 submarines have been sunk in history, while camouflage submarine hunting has sunk 24 ....... ）

The most basic trust between people is broken, and the rest is even lower than each other! From then on, most German submarines did not warn of attacks on British ships, and directly used shelling or torpedoes to send them into the water. And the British, in retaliation, also began to kill submariners. As a result, the battle between the breaking of diplomatic relations and the anti-breaking of diplomatic relations became even more bloody and cruel!

However, the difference is that this time, the Americans did not side with the British, although the trade between Britain and the United States continued, but the US government refused to use its own ships to transport supplies to the Entente, at least forbade entry into the war zone, and in this case, without the influence of the United States behemoth, the German submarine attack range is larger.

In terms of tactics, with the help of Prince Ruprecht, German submarines established a basic coordination mechanism, several submarines worked together in a certain area of the sea, and when one submarine found a fleet-level target, it would notify the other two or three submarines in the exhibition area to act together. The so-called large number of people and great strength, three submarines armed with 105mm or even 150mm guns even faced the destroyer head-on together! More firepower than destroyers!

The effect of submarine warfare made the entire German Navy very excited, and almost all of the remaining resources were spent on submarines, except for the capital ships that had been completed and had already started! More submarines are being built at the Blom-Forth shipyard, the Kiel Naval Shipyard, the Royal William Shipyard, and the Germania Shipyard! In the first month of the war, more than 15 new submarines were put into service, making up for the loss of 5 submarines for various reasons!

Although the war had just begun, and the British suffered heavy losses, for the British Empire, which was used for tens of millions of tons, it was not broken, but as time went on, the entire Britain fell into a situation of shortage of resources, and even the British Grand Fleet became an existing fleet in a sense because of the fuel problem! Two years after the war was underway, the British had no better reserves of materiel than the Germans.

In the case of oil, after the end of 1914, Britain had less than 2 weeks of oil reserves (less than 3 weeks in history!). Some oil storage bases only have 3 days of fuel reserves! So much so that the destroyers of the Grand Fleet were required not to exceed 18 knots at maximum speed! Battlecruisers and other capital ships could not exceed 17 knots! (The all-time low fuel reserve base was only at the level of 6 days, and the destroyer's speed was indeed limited to less than 20 knots.) This is the truth, and the information comes from the Sea of Fearless. Of course, that's an afterthought, so let's not mention it for now.

There are some things these days, and there will be fewer updates, 2 more--! Thank you for your understanding--! (To be continued.) )