According to the current situation, for the German naval fleet, the initiative for the development of the situation on the battlefield was already completely in their hands.

As they had predicted before the war, it would be a one-sided battle with no suspense.

The only question left to solve was how to maximize the benefits of the Third Reich in this victory, but it was also the most troublesome for all the captains.

Because they and their subordinates had been educated and trained in how to defeat the enemy and how to sink the enemy to the bottom of the sea, the problem before them this time was how to defeat the enemy without letting those enemies sink.

At the pre-war meeting, General Lütjans informed all the commanders of the warships about this operation, and emphasized that the victory of this operation would be of great significance for the war, for the navy, and for the Third Reich. The ultimate goal of this mission was not to destroy the British special fleet, but to capture it.

As soon as the commander-in-chief finished speaking, the ornate commander's conference room on the Admiral Scheer exploded. At first, the captains wondered if there was something wrong with their ears, and when they were sure that each other's hearing was not faulty, the captains could not help but express concern about the mental state of His Excellency Commander Lütjans.

Lütjans was either stupid or insane, and either had to be one or the other, for no sober naval officer would have made such a ridiculous suggestion.

For these captains, with careful planning, adequate intelligence support, forces superior to the enemy, and some necessary luck, it was not an impossible task to defeat a British surface fleet. Defeating the enemy is simple, send them all to the bottom of the sea, but the prisoners ...... It's another thing entirely.

It took Lütjens a full two minutes to silence the agitated captains, a rarity in the German Navy, which was extremely disciplined and obedient.

Looking at the expressions of his subordinates full of surprise and doubt, Lu Teyans knew that the battle goal he had just given was indeed too shocking.

Lütjans first reprimanded the captains for their previous rude behavior without the cultivation of officers, and then began to slowly explain to them the reasons why the command had issued this goal.

As a result, he managed to set off another storm in his small conference room.

Everyone was stunned when the captains learned from the Commander-in-Chief what exactly the British fleet was carrying.

Where is a fleet, it is simply the treasury of the British Empire floating there.

Gold, jewelry, securities, various foreign currencies, antiques, works of art, the total value of these goods is incalculable.

According to the preliminary estimates of the High Command, the total value of the gold and jewels alone exceeded three billion pounds, and the amount of securities and foreign currency, although there was no definite information, should not be less than five hundred million pounds.

The value of those antiques and works of art is incalculable, including most of the national treasures looted and stolen from all over the world by the British Museum for more than 200 years.

As for the artworks, they are the private collections of successive members of the British royal family, many of which have never been seen in front of the world. The British royal family's greed for art is as world-famous as the plundering nature of the royal army, and you can imagine how staggering the number of works of art can be.

The Accounts Department of the High Command, despite the overzealous inquiries of the generals and marshals, was unable to calculate the exact value of the treasure, but according to their preliminary estimates, the total value of the goods would be more than five billion pounds.

I heard that the Minister of Accounting had suffered a heart attack and was admitted to the hospital due to his emotions after submitting the above report to the generals and marshals.

One can imagine how shocked the captains of the elite ships of the German Navy would be when they heard this number.

The real purpose of the German Navy's operation turned out to be to snatch the treasure from the British, which made the mood of the captains who had just calmed down excited again.

And Lütjans's words pushed the captains from excitement to frenzy. His Excellency the Great Führer personally ordered that if the German Navy was able to complete its mission this time, 30 percent of the trophies would be reserved for the German Navy as construction funds, and all officers and men participating in the war would receive 1 percent of the treasure as a reward.

Thirty percent of five billion pounds, a full fifteen billion pounds, a figure that would have driven the entire German Navy crazy.

The generals of the Main Command of the Navy probably laughed even when they dreamed. With this money in the Navy, those brand new battleships, destroyers, cruisers, battleships, can be built as much as they want. Gone are the days of Marshal Raeder holding his arms at cabinet meetings and the Army and Air Force to grab budget funds.

The re-emergence of the German Navy in the ranks of the world's navies will no longer be empty words, and the day has finally come for the Navy to turn over.

And the one percent bonus made the morale of those captains rise to the peak, even if 50 million pounds is evenly distributed, each person can get at least two or three thousand pounds, not to mention that those captains know that this bonus cannot be distributed equally, and it is realistic to distribute the bonus according to the size of the rank in the army.

Even so, the captains estimated that their soldiers would have received no less than a thousand pounds each.

This was enough to make the sailors ecstatic, knowing that this was not a small amount in 1940. In the German countryside, a small man with a thousand pounds is enough to buy a good farm or a herd of good breeds.

Although the salary of the German Navy is quite good, it is still a luxury in the eyes of ordinary sailors to save such a sum of money.

The situation of the conference immediately began to turn around, and all the German naval officers had only one word left in their heads...... "plunder".

In any case, the treasure must be snatched from the British completely, otherwise the bonuses, the funds, and all that are all empty words. The Führer's promise stirred up the hearts of all the captains, and they now knew that they could only achieve those wishes by their own efforts.

Now, in the eyes of these captains, capturing enemy ships is no longer an impossible task, but a task that must be achieved.

So, this group of drooling naval officers got together and carefully discussed how to achieve this goal, and the collective strength was completely reflected at this time, especially under the impetus of those real money, the thinking of those officers became particularly keen, and the loopholes in the plans of the command and the naval command were found, and many ideas came up with by the captains.

The end result was the first blatant military plan in the history of the German Navy for the purpose of robbery.

So far, the plan has entered the most critical link.

Although the first action did not achieve the desired effect of the German Navy, it did not cause any special problems for the continuation of the plan, after all, the captains were well prepared for any contingencies when planning the details of the operation.

The German fleet had intended to disrupt the British fleet formation with a sudden artillery attack, and then send out all sorties to deal a fatal blow to the enemy's disorganized fleet.

Now it seems that the British Royal Navy did have something to be proud of, and although the fleet was taken by surprise, it still maintained a neat formation, and the purpose of the Germans was not achieved.

It may sound a bit comical to ensure that the long-range shelling of the British fleet would not cause fatal damage to the battleships, but it is true, the horizontal armor of the cruisers was almost defenseless against the large-angle shelling of German large-caliber artillery, and the steel plate of only 30 millimeters was as fragile as a piece of paper in the face of hundreds of heavy armor-piercing warheads.

In order to protect the German treasures on the ships (the money had already been transferred to the German treasury by the captains), the German Navy took great pains to fill all the guns with ordinary grenades instead of armor-piercing shells during the first shelling.

Although the kinetic energy left behind by the grenades flying over a distance of 15,000 meters is still terrifying, as can be seen from the fate of Orion's tail tower. But after all, those British battleships were not unarmored merchant ships, so as expected by the German Navy, these non-armor-piercing grenades did not cause any major damage to those ships.

Now the battle has entered the white-hot stage, and the fleets of the two sides have finally begun to engage in close combat.

The Gnesenor fired first, at a distance of less than seven kilometers, and the trajectory of the shells was already almost horizontal. Indeed, Gneisenau was conducting a flat fire, targeting the York, the flagship of the British fleet.

The Scharnhorst opened fire on the Gnesenor, also targeting the poor flagship. In the next moment, the bridge of the York exploded in front of the German naval officers and sailors, and the huge steel building with a height of four stories turned into a huge ball of fire, and the German sailors could clearly see the smoke and flames from the explosion, and the bridge of the York was projecting huge pieces of steel into the air and what was suspected to be the twisted and struggling British officers and soldiers.

The first flat fire attack of the German Navy was formidable, and the York suffered a heavy blow just a second before it was ready to fire at the German fleet.

Under the carefully aimed salvo of two elite German battleships, her bridge was completely destroyed.

Eight heavy armor-piercing shells hit the building directly, turning it into a pile of twisted, burning metal wreckage.

The compass bridge and the armored main gun command post on the top floor had been blown away without a trace, and the battle bridge on the lower floor had been torn in half, half twisted and sticking out of the ship's broadboard, and the other half had collapsed into the navigation bridge on the next floor.

The wide terraces on either side of the bridge that jutted out of shape had been distorted by the tremendous force of the explosion, and the two on the side of the battle bridge had simply been torn off the bridge, where the complex steel tubular bridge support structure was now exposed.

However, the thick steel pipes no longer seem to be able to play any supporting role, because the internal structure of the bridge has already been completely destroyed at the moment when those armor-piercing shells hit, as evidenced by the collapsed bridge.

Although it is true that the bridge protection of the cruiser class was a little too thin in the face of large-caliber armor-piercing shells designed to deal with the side armor of battleships, even the Germans themselves did not expect such a result, so the morale of the German Navy reached its peak at that moment.

The York, which had been decapitated by the German Navy in the first turn, roared and continued along its original course. Since the last command issued by the bridge was to turn to the right, the turbines, who did not know what was happening above, continued to carry out this order.

The York's turret was ready for final firing before it was shot on the bridge, and the gunners, who were also unaware of the situation, fired the first British naval return fire of the battle at the German fleet.

But despite the excellent training and experience of the British gunners, the first and only salvo of the Yorke in the naval battle was frustrating.

The four 203-millimeter shells plunged into the water five or six hundred meters away from the target that the gunners were aiming at, and although they also stirred up huge columns of water tens of meters high, they were of no use other than a little ornamental value.

Frustrated, the British gunners wanted to continue firing the next round of shells, but strangely enough, the artillery command post never sent the corrected target parameters.

The violent concussions felt in the turret at first indicated that the ship had been shot, but no one knew the extent of the damage and no information had been sent from the bridge, which really worried the sailors who were in the closed turret.

But in the next second, the German Navy used a large-caliber shell to free the soldiers from their anxiety.

With a loud bang, the York's 203mm MKII Type A main turret became a hell of steel shards and scorching flames.

The weak protection of the MKII turret has never ceased to be criticized since the day of its inception, but the British Admiralty bureaucrats have shown no interest in remedying this Achilles' heel.

The British Navy finally paid the price in blood, as German shells entered the turret frontal and easily penetrated the 25 mm thick frontal armor, and then passed through the entire gun chamber and exploded in the gun commander's command room, and the gunners did not even have time to scream before they became a charred corpse with many holes.

Due to the loss of the York's cāo column, she slowly turned around in front of the German fleet, exposing the entire side of the hull to the two German battleships.

The Scharnhorst seized the rare opportunity to cleanly take out all of the York's front main guns with its two forward main turrets. The Gnellenau wasted no time in starting to dig holes in the York's remaining superstructure.

While two terrifying German battleships were gleefully ravaging the flagship of the British fleet, Germany's newest heavy cruiser, the Prinz Eugen, was confronted with its first crisis since its birth, caused by the two British outpost destroyers.

The British destroyers HMS Defender and HMS Pleasant were two D-class destroyers of more than 1,300 tons, and they were tasked with anti-submarine missions during this transport operation.

They were originally designed as destroyers for anti-submarine purposes, and the British Admiralty did not expect them to fight against large German warships.

This time, they were put on the front line of the large surface fleet operation, because when they found that the German battleship appeared in front of them, the distance between the two sides was less than five thousand meters.

The Defender and the Pleasant were in a completely difficult situation, and it seemed impossible to turn around and escape in front of the German battleship, and rushing to exchange fire was no different from suicide.

The captains of these two destroyers were not lacking in courage, let alone cowards, and the phrase that the Royal Navy would never fear any enemy had been ingrained in their minds over the years. They were all willing to sacrifice their lives for the sake of Britain, for the honor of the Royal Navy, and for the final victory.

But the current situation is just too special. Shooting was also in vain at this distance, and neither of them expected that the two 120 mm forward guns on their respective ships could do any damage to the broadside armor of the Scharnhorst-class battle cruisers of about 350 mm.

(The British were always fond of grading the warships of other countries by their own standards, and in their eyes the main guns and defense classes of the Scharnhorst class were only battlecruisers, while the Germans did not think so, and they classified those two ships as battleships.) To be honest, I also think so, these two battleships should actually be regarded as the earliest high-speed battleships. So in this book, the two sides will call these two warships differently, the author's words. ）

Now the only thing that could pose a threat to those two battlecruisers was the eight 533-mm torpedoes on the destroyers.

However, although 5,000 meters is an extremely close distance for naval artillery warfare, it is still a little far for firing torpedoes.

It's not that the torpedo range can't be reached, it's that this distance really can't guarantee the hit rate of the torpedo.

Both captains had the belief that they would fight for the British Empire to their last breath, but they preferred to inflict more damage on their enemies before they died.

Just as the two captains were hesitating, the order of the flagship arrived, and the flagship ordered them to attack the German fleet and fire torpedoes at the Germans.

The flagship's order strengthened the captain's resolve, and after exchanging views with each other at the signal, the two destroyers sharply increased their speed to the top speed and rushed side by side towards the German fleet.

Just as they began their final assault, the Prinz Eugen and the Admiral Schell, who followed closely behind, appeared in front of the British fleet.

But this could no longer shake the resolve of the two British destroyers.

The Defender and the Pleasant had increased their speed to an astonishing 35 knots, and the waves stirred up by the bow splashed onto the deck. None of the British sailors expressed any opinion on the orders of their captains, and they remained calmly at their posts with their commanders, their eyes fixed on the German fleet, their eyes full of firmness and contempt for the enemy, and the conviction of death in the assault on the formidable enemy.

But the interceptor fire they had expected from the German fleet did not show up for a long time, as if the Germans had not discovered them at all.

Perhaps the attention of the German fleet was focused on the cruisers behind, and perhaps the Germans did not pay attention to the surprise attack of their two destroyers.

It's a bit of a deception, but it's not a good thing for them, and the captains hope that this will continue until they reach the range, and maybe they'll be able to make a successful attack.

But the two destroyers found that their targets had already crossed their own course and would not be able to reach the best angle of attack without changing course.

And at this time, the Prinz Eugen appeared in front of the two destroyers with the swaggering skull flag.

Almost without much thought, the two destroyers switched their targets to the brand-new German battleship in front of them.

Maybe it's because she's in an easier position to attack, maybe it's because she's a worthy target, maybe it's because she's a new ship, and sinking her would be more demoralizing to the Germans, maybe it's because Prince Eugen's livery is so attractive, maybe it's for the arrogant pirate flag, maybe it's ......

No one could know what was really going on in the minds of the two destroyer captains at the time, but all that could be known now was that the two captains had made a fatal mistake, they had chosen the most terrifying opponent and provoked the most terrifying enemy.

The destroyers had successfully narrowed the distance between the two sides to a thousand meters, and the Defender and the Pleasant saw that they had reached the attack distance, and the two destroyers made a beautiful cross rotation with a dozen steering wheels, and the tail of the destroyer suddenly drew a rounded double S track.

At the moment when the destroyer leaned towards Prince Eugen, sixteen 533-mm torpedoes were fired out of the torpedo tubes, and then plunged headlong into the sea and rushed towards the German battleship.

When the torpedo was fired, the two destroyer captains breathed a sigh of relief, the German heavy cruiser was finished, and no ship could dodge the concentrated attack of 16 torpedoes at this distance.

Probably because the offense was going so well, they suddenly felt that there might be something else they could do. So the two guys, who were carried away by the blood, gave up their plans to retreat and continued to rush towards the Prince Eugen, and they probably wanted to shell Prince Eugen at close range.

It seemed that the German fleet had only realized the threat of the two British destroyers at this time, and the interception fire finally appeared around the two battleships.

The fierce artillery fire blew up countless large and small water columns around the destroyer, and the two small battleships began to avoid the orbit, and they flexibly shuttled through the German artillery fire, so that the German Navy was choked by the fact that while avoiding the orbit, the two destroyers actually used their four poor 120 mm guns to continuously return fire at the German fleet.

The Prinz Eugen was still the same, and she continued to swagger across each other's lines directly in front of the two destroyers.

If someone had paid attention at the time, they would have found a very interesting sight. The guns that were desperately trying to intercept the destroyers turned out to be all fired by the Gnessennor in front of the Prinz Eugen and the Admiral Schell in the rear. The defensive fire on the Prinz Eugen, which was the target of the British destroyer, did not react at all as if it were asleep.

"Quick, quick, order fire, it's close enough!"

Randolph happily stood on the bridge of the compass and shouted as he jumped to his feet.

"Wait a little longer, get closer, and we'll deliver a fatal blow to these two idiot destroyers."

Feng. Captain Hertz replied lightly.

These two guys, who also felt good about themselves, didn't get into the battleship's well-protected armored conning tower at the start of the artillery battle like the other captains of the battle.

In order to show their bravery, the two men continued to stand proudly on the open-air bridge of the Prinz Eugen, so that the other officers and sailors had to stay with them and risk being wiped out in the open bridge to direct the operation of the battleship.

In fact, the German fleet had already discovered the kind of self-defeating assault that the two destroyers had launched against them.

The reason for the delay in intercepting them sounded stupid, because several warships had misunderstood the allocation of targets, which led them to think that the two destroyers were the targets of the opposing ships, and the result was that none of the two destroyers stopped them until they were within a thousand meters of the fleet.

By the time the German fleet realized this stupid mistake, the two destroyers had already finished firing torpedoes. What is even more ridiculous is that for that stupid reason, not a single battleship paid attention to them, and as a result, not a single German sailor noticed that the British had completed the torpedo attack.

The same was true of the Prinz Eugen, who had focused all her attention on the British cruisers, until she realized that the two destroyers were her target, and she turned her attention away and became interested in them.

In the von. In the eyes of Hurts and Randolph, the actions of these two British destroyers were very interesting, and they dared to launch a provocation against such a powerful battleship as themselves, which really made these two guys suddenly feel a trace of inexplicable excitement.

Since the enemy sent a letter of challenge, they felt that it didn't seem to be in line with the tradition of knights if they didn't accept it, so Feng. Hertz gave the order to annihilate the two arrogant boats with all his might.

In order to give Randolph a deeper impression of the strength of his battleship. Feng. Hertz decided to wait until the two destroyers were close to 500 meters before firing, at a distance where an attack by the Prinz Eugen would tear the two destroyers to shreds in an instant, and that would seem like a great spectacle.

But now Feng. Hertz suddenly became skeptical that his plan would succeed.

He felt that the two destroyers might not be able to hold out close to 500 meters.

Hell, none of the battleships were interested in those two destroyers just now, and when they wanted to clean them up, everyone seemed to be interested in them.

Before, not a single ship fired, but now it's good, almost the entire fleet is firing at those two ships, are they robbing business like this? Feng. Hertz couldn't help but feel a little depressed.

"Captain! Torpedo! A torpedo was spotted on the starboard side, coming straight at us. ”

The first mate, who was looking at the lookout on the side of the bridge, suddenly roared wildly.

"Oh my God, there's that there, too, torpedoes, three. No, it's four-of-a-kind! God, I can't count! The first mate continued to roar there, and a hint of desperation began to appear in his voice.

"Where!"

Feng. Hurtz hurried to the starboard side of the bridge and looked out to sea in horror.

"Where, I can't see it."

"Where did the torpedo come from?"

"Could it be those two destroyers? Did any of you see them firing torpedoes? ”

For a moment, everyone on the bridge ran to the lookout, and they were nervously searching the surface of the sea while screaming and screaming.

In the middle of the bridge, only the helmsman was left alone, holding the steering wheel and crying with a sad face

"Captain! Where do I turn! Give the order! ”

Feng. Hertz and Randolph were now the same as the helmsman, looking at the scene with sad faces, and now whatever they did was useless.

Less than 500 meters from the Prinz Eugen, there were more than a dozen torpedo wakes, the snow-white wakes glittering like diamonds in the afternoon sun, and they were speeding towards the huge hull of the Prinz Eugen.

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