Let. Captain Ronark's reasoning wasn't wrong, let. The battleship Barr was indeed grounded in the rocks at the bottom of the river, and the current situation of this battleship was much worse than he had imagined.

In the forties of the twentieth century, the river engineering technology was still very primitive, and usually the removal of this rock base could only be done by hard chiseling by an excavator or underwater blasting, the former would seriously damage the life of the dredger equipment, and the latter required the employment of professional divers and blasting experts, which was expensive and difficult to construct and very dangerous.

Let. The Barr hit a huge sedimentary rock about half a meter from the bottom of the channel, which could barely be brushed over according to the original draft data, and it is clear that the French contracting company in charge of this section of the channel took advantage of the chaos of the war to submit a false engineering report to the shipyard.

At this time, there is no point in holding anyone responsible, and the question before the officers and men of the Navy is how to extricate this 32,000-ton behemoth from its stranded state.

The double bottom of the battleship was not broken, but the outer hull was obviously flattened, and the bottom rock was high in the south and low in the north with a certain slope, and the port side of the battleship was forcibly raised, causing the battleship to tilt towards the starboard side.

The unsecured material in the bilge was displaced, and the center of gravity was changed by the seawater poured into the cracked outer shell. The starboard bottom of the battleship has been pressed into the silt at the bottom of the river by the weight of the hull itself, and what is more troublesome is that the tilt is slowly increasing as the tide recedes rapidly.

The two tugboats were at full power, the steel tow lines creaked under the tremendous pull force, but the huge hull did not move, as if it had been cast on the bottom of the Loire.

Relying on two tugboats obviously could not drag the battleship out of the trap, and the experienced tugboat yard judged that to drag this huge ship down the reef, it would take at least ten times the current strength, and it would have to wait for the tide to rise and the hull to be refloated before it could be towed.

The next astronomical tide of the Loire will come at about two o'clock in the middle of the night, and the Germans, who are rapidly advancing towards Saint-Nazaire, will not give them this time.

The original draft of the battleship has been reduced to the shallowest level, which can be said to have drained all possible reserve buoyancy, which means that it is impossible for the ship to move another half a minute before the tide rises.

Let. It took Captain Ronak more than ten minutes to figure out the current situation. The Barr had become a lion trapped in a trap, and if he didn't want to become a prisoner of the Germans, he had to make a quick plan to deal with it.

He was responsible for the remaining 260 crew members of the ship, including the shipyard engineers and technicians, the base sailors, and the entire 38th and 39th grades of the Bourmick Naval Academy.

A week earlier, the young men had fled from the port of Brest in a battered brig under the guidance of an instructor, and when they arrived at Saint-Nazaire, they were treated as a burden by the base commander and all of them were packed and thrown to Jean. Colonel Ronark.

Let. Most of the Barr's pre-trained sailors were transferred to the Richelieu, leaving only the engine and stoker of the power system. Colonel Ronark's face did not give the order to abandon the warship.

Originally, the engineers of the shipyard had formulated a blasting plan, they specially drew the location of the explosives on the drawings, and even specially calculated the amount of charge, ensuring that the battleship of more than 30,000 tons could be blown into a pile of rotten iron together with the dock.

Fortunately, as the progress of the project accelerated, the battleship had hope of a normal escape, and the engineers put this violent plan aside.

Previously, the shipbuilding technical director and the first mate had proposed to restart the program, but out of personal feelings, they were allowed. Captain Ronak dismissed it. Until this moment, the admiral still did not regret his decision at that time, he was a naval captain, and he would never tolerate his warship being blown up in the dock, the destination of a warship should of course be the boundless sea, if it could not sink into the sea, it was also a good choice to sink to the bottom of the river, and this is still the river of France, the land of France.

Let. Ronak walked over to his captain's seat and removed the microphone hanging from the communication desk.

"Attention crew, attention crew, I'm Captain Pierre. Let. Ronak. The Admiral exclaimed.

"I believe that now everyone already knows that we have met the big . Trouble, let's. The grounding of the Barr was serious, and we have tried all means to get out of this situation, but unfortunately to no avail.

Now, as captain, with the authority conferred upon me by the French Republic, I order all men to evacuate the ship immediately. I hope that at this critical moment, everyone will maintain the honor and quality that a French naval soldier should have, obey the command of the officers beside him, and evacuate in batches in an orderly manner.

Although it was a short time, I am very happy to be able to serve with you on this battleship. The Barr is a great battleship, and I'm sorry..."Let. Captain Ronak's voice choked a little, and he raised his hand and rubbed his eyes.

"I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to drive her into battle with the enemy, and if I did, I'm sure she'd be able to beat the Germans' wrecked ships to the ground. Unfortunately, we have to give her up now, but I'm still proud to be her first and last captain. Although we lost let. Barr, but France has not yet lost, and we can continue to fight in order to make . The Bar, for the sake of France, for the honor of the French Navy, we will fight the enemy to the last breath, and the final victory will surely be ours. Good luck to all of you and long live France. ”

Let. Ronak turned off the microphone, and the bridge was silent, and the slogan of Viva de France could be faintly heard from all over the battleship.

"Have the boatswain lead the damage management squad to the engine room of the first ship to stand by and prepare to open the submarine valve." Let. With no expression on his face, Ronalk turned his head to Lieutenant Colonel Bertichick and gave the order.

"Understood, leave it to me, Captain, I'll take care of this myself." The deputy captain took a deep breath and then saluted the captain.

"Thanks, Berdychik, I owe you a favor." Let. Ronak solemnly returned the military salute, then walked into the commander's lounge at the back of the bridge, turned and locked the door.

The French naval officers and sailors assembled on the deck in a neat procession, and they began to sing the Marseillaise in unison, not knowing who was leading. The sailors laid down the four lifeboats they were carrying on the battleship, each full of forty-five men, and it was clear that they could not take all the crew members at once, and the officers decided to transport half of them first, send them ashore and then turn back to meet the other half.

The sailors knew that the captain had decided to sink the ship in the Loire, and although they felt sorry, it was also a matter of no choice, and they were convinced that the captain had made the right decision, and could not leave this powerful warship intact to the German invading army.

Some of the officers regretted that the battleship did not carry the main gun ammunition, otherwise they could have relied on the heavy guns on the warship to maneuver with the Germans on the shore, and even if they were doomed to defeat, they could finally detonate the ammunition depot and make the warship completely destroyed.

The first wave of lifeboats took away one hundred and thirty officers and men, and the students and engineers of the Naval School were left behind in the second group to evacuate, watching the sailors row the lifeboats slowly around the square island of St. Nicholas and then disappear from view.

But then the cadets and engineers stood on the deck and began a long wait, and a full half an hour passed, and none of the four lifeboats were returned. Something was clearly not right, and the rest of the battleship began to get nervous.

Let. The huge hull of the Barr was still lying at an angle in the center of the river, and it was not obvious that the battleship had sunk on its own, and the sailors on the deck believed that the captain had ordered someone to open the submarine valve, and that the lower compartments should have been filled with the murky waters of the Loire by this moment.

But these people all guessed wrong, let. The Barr had not been able to sink at all, and Lieutenant Colonel Berdychick was in the bilge, furious at the absurd scene before him.

Whether it is a civilian ship or a military ship, it will be installed with a submarine valve, which refers to the main valve on the ship's seawater main, and the ship needs to pump a large amount of seawater when sailing, which is used to adjust the ballast water tank, cool the boiler, and fire and clean.

Seawater is poured into the seawater main pipe from the submarine door under the ship's side of the ship, which is usually located near the side of the power compartment, and then distributed to the required branch pipes, and the valve installed on the seawater main pipe is the so-called submarine valve.

In the traditional sense, the submarine valve is opened and self-sinking, not just turn on the switch on the valve as everyone imagined, but use a tool to unscrew the sealing bolt that fixes the valve, so that the seawater can pour directly into the cabin through the main pipe, because the submarine door is at the bottom of the ship at depth, so the water inflow and water pressure are very huge, and once opened, it cannot be closed again.

In order to avoid sucking the sediment from the bottom of the river in the shallow water, civilian ships will also set up a high-level submarine gate, but the battleship situation at that time was special, and the position of the ship's side close to the water surface was generally equipped with armor belts and lightning protection compartments and other devices, and it was rare to enter the shallow water to sail, so usually only the bottom submarine door was set up.

The problem is with the submarine door, let. The seafloor of the Barr was located on the starboard side of the battleship, and because of the roll of the hull, it had been completely pressed into the silt at the bottom of the river, and all the water intakes were blocked by the river mud.

Lieutenant Colonel Berdychick had no idea of such a thing at this time, and he directed the sailors to remove the bolts from the submarine valve, and as he had seen in the information, the river gushed out of the crack in the valve, and the pressure of the water was so great that the entire valve flew off the pipe.

The co-captain immediately led the sailors to retreat, but while they were still struggling to climb the gangway, the water gushing out of the pipe became smaller and smaller, and finally stopped, and the river water that poured into the cabin was not even up to a person's knees.

The lieutenant colonel and his men looked at each other, completely unaware of what was happening, and they turned back to the bilge, dripping knee-high sewage to the submarine valve, wondering what was wrong.

"It's the rest of the river water in the pipes and compartments, and it looks like the seawater pipes are blocked by something, and I can't do anything about it." The shipyard's engineer stood in the water, spreading his hands and expressing helplessness.

"We're going to find a way to get the water in, you don't want to see this ship fall into the hands of the Germans." The lieutenant colonel said loudly.

"This hull is a five-centimeter thick steel plate, and there is a waterproof compartment outside, and we need explosives." The engineer said, shaking his head.

"But we didn't, because of the wise Jean. Captain Ronak did not agree to our suggestion. ”

"There should be another way, you're an engineer, or you should discuss it with your colleagues." The lieutenant colonel asked.

"If I can't think of it, they can't help it either." Engineers are confident in their professionalism.

At that moment, the lights on the roof of the chamber began to flicker intermittently, and after a violent flash, all the lights went out, and the bilge was plunged into darkness.

"What's going on!"

"Don't panic, it should have tripped."

"Stand still and don't move."

"Isn't this thing going to work properly for once?"

"Who's carrying the flashlight?"

"I have matches."

Amid the jumbled shouting, several sailors turned on their flashlights hanging around their necks.

"All follow me to the deck and come back when the circuit is repaired." The deputy captain ordered.

"Head, don't you need to leave someone to guard it?" A sailor whispered to his squad leader.

"Guarding what? Just this pool of dirty water? So the mouthy guy got a slap in the head.

Lieutenant Commander Bertichick returned to the bridge from the officer's passage, and he was about to make a detailed report to the captain about the current situation, but knocked on the captain's lounge for a long time, and there was no response from inside.

The vice-captain, who noticed that the situation was not good, hurriedly called out to a few sailors, and used a crowbar to pry open the door, and as the vice-captain expected, what appeared in front of everyone was the captain's stiff body.

Let. Instead of opting for a pistol, Ronak stabbed himself in the throat with a short sword, like a medieval French knight, sealing his oath with his life.

It can be seen that he died very painfully and slowly, perhaps this is a kind of punishment for himself, the admiral did not leave a suicide note or anything like that, and on the desk is a photo of him with his wife and daughter, and the smiling family in the photo has been soaked in blood.

Regardless of the final outcome, history will record his name, let. Colonel Ronalke with Jean. The battleship Barr, together, has become inseparable.

PS: Finally caught up, 4,000 words chapter, thank you for your understanding. (To be continued.) )