Chapter 41: Fierce Battle in the Strait
"Great! It's so spectacular that it seems to have been seen only during the Battle of Jutland. Lieutenant Colonel. Muller leaned on the observation port of the armored pillbox, watching the exploding British warships twenty kilometers away, shouting excitedly.
"Yes, Colonel. This is the sight that our officers and men dream of seeing every day, the destruction of the British battlefleet, a day we have waited for for far too long. A young German lieutenant commander stood beside Müller and replied excitedly.
"You're not going to be angry that they died at the hands of the Army, hahahaha." Mueller joked.
"I'm afraid your navy will hold a grudge against me for taking your prey. Lieutenant Colonel. ”
"How could it be, our navy raised our hands in favor of this operation, so that we would not be stupid to take our precious warship to fight the British navy hand-to-hand for the sake of honor. Now is the result that our Navy wants the most, we can solve the main force of the British Royal Navy without even a single torpedo boat loss, how can we not be satisfied. What's more, our navy also made a great contribution in this campaign, and our navy completed the command of artillery fire and target determination, so you should say that those British warships were sunk by our army, navy and air force. Hahaha. The lieutenant colonel also said happily.
"Yes, haha, that's right, Siegfried. You are right, I take back what I said earlier, these warships should be the common result of our three armies. Haha, hit again! Müller shouted happily as he looked at the fireball rising from a battleship in the distance.
Muller felt that seeing such a scene was really worth the hard work he had put in in the first few days. Three days earlier, Mueller had received a notice from the General Command of the Campaign to personally go to a temporary station near the position to pick up a batch of heavy weapons.
When we arrived at the station, the train carrying weapons had just entered the station, and this train had five locomotives, and although the goods behind them were covered with a thick camouflage net, Müller recognized at a glance what the huge cargo was. Mueller couldn't believe his eyes. The command actually sent itself four huge K5 (E) 280 mm train guns. It's too exaggerated, those British are enough to deal with with their own artillery, and their task is only to blockade the port, can they use such a terrible cannon again?
After reading the letter written to him by Xu Jun, he realized that the general's final target turned out to be the British naval fleet. In this case, it is easy to explain, I heard that the steel plates of those battleships are thicker than concrete pillboxes, and only this kind of cannon can deal with them. In the letter, Xu Jun also carefully introduced to Muller his plan of action and the possible reaction of the British and how to respond when the time came. This made Müller even more admired the military wisdom of his young commander. He secretly made up his mind that he must fight this battle well, and he must not let the general's hard work be wasted because of his own implementation reasons.
Over the next two days, a huge train cannon with a hydraulic turntable and an equally large number of shells were delivered to Müller. This will put Müller and his officers busy, to set up positions, lay railroad tracks, and lay solid foundations. The installation of hydraulic turntables, the installation of ammunition depots, and the completion of these tasks within the stipulated time, resulted in half the infantry of the corps becoming sappers.
Then the personnel of the Navy also arrived, and the Navy sent a whole regiment of men, led by the Lieutenant Colonel Siegfried who was now standing beside him. Feng. Royan Kram. In addition to target determination, they are also responsible for the command and coordination of train gun firing. What stunned Mueller the most was that the Navy had brought the giant rangefinder used on their ships with them. Muller hurriedly arranged for his crew to take them around the coast, discussing how to choose the location of the observation post, how to camouflage, and so on.
In the end, the legion finally completed all the work within the time specified by Xu Jun. After the position was completed, Muller looked at the large group of train guns of various styles and marveled.
A full forty-six train guns of various calibers were divided into ten groups according to their caliber and firing range, and those huge barrels were majestically raised, and the scene was really spectacular. Most of these guns, with the exception of the K5(E) produced by Germany itself, were captured from the battlefields of France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, but interestingly, they were all French. The caliber ranged from 240 mm to 370 mm, with the majority being more than 300 mm. There are twenty doors of 320 millimeters alone. The ammunition for these guns was also abundant, and in Müller's opinion, even if the barrels were scrapped, they would not be able to finish them.
By order of the general, each gun was equipped with three times as many personnel, and each gun was equipped with a mechanical crane and a special cart for kits, which increased the rate of fire of those guns several times, and some models could now achieve a rate of shelling at the fastest of one round a minute, and even the heaviest three hundred and seventy mm could now do it in two rounds. The navy formed several firing groups of those guns according to their precise calculations, according to the length of time at the rate of fire, and prepared to let them fire in turns when the time came, so that there would be uninterrupted fire projection on the enemy's head. Now it seems that the organization of those navies is really effective.
After giving the order to counterattack himself, it was his own 210-mm heavy howitzer that fired first. It is true that this kind of cannon can only hit more than 18,000 meters at most in peacetime, but that is under normal circumstances. And the firing range of these cannons can actually reach 22,000 kilometers in the case of strong charges, but artillery is not allowed to use them in this way in peacetime. Because if it were used that way, the loss of the barrel would be too great, and in that case the rifling in the barrel would be bald after a hundred rounds at most. And in the current situation there is not so much to manage, it is worth paying any price to be able to strike at the British Navy.
The first round of covered shooting was really wonderful, targeting destroyers on the periphery of the British fleet. The first attack on these destroyers is to prevent the air forces behind them from being targeted by the British, and by the way, a baseline distance for shelling can also be marked. To Muller's great satisfaction, all six destroyers were smashed to the bottom of the sea by 210 mm concrete-destroying shells, and the entire regiment cheered as the huge fireball rose as the destroyers exploded.
The British battleships began to be shelled by the distance corrected train guns, and the entire British fleet was enveloped in a rain of bullets from the heavy guns, and it seems that at least three British battleships were seriously damaged in the two rounds of shelling, and eight destroyers on either side of the column were sent to the bottom of the sea. Müller was thrilled with his victory, and it was a miracle that the German Army was able to beat the British Navy like that.
"Lieutenant Colonel, why did they stop again?" It was strange to Muller that the British battleship had just started and stopped before it had gone two hundred meters.
"I don't understand, either they think it's enough to move this distance and they're ready to shoot at us, or they have other problems." Siegfried looked at the battleships with his high-powered binoculars, and suddenly he shouted excitedly: "Colonel, look, the Rodney is finished, and we have sunk a battleship now." ”
"What? Let me see. ”
Mueller hurriedly held another high-powered telescope and looked towards the British fleet.
"Oh my God, it's spectacular, this is what you said earlier about the explosion of the battleship's ammunition depot, good fellow, it's terrible. There's no way anyone can survive this explosion. Oh my God, she's turned it over, oh God, it's spectacular, look at that huge pillar of smoke that's a thousand meters high. Really, I can't describe it. ”
The spectacular and tragic downfall of the Rodney left Müller screaming in awe.
"Colonel, the commanding flag on the" Nelson "has been lowered. They were changing flagships, it seems that "Nelson" had a big problem, his rear compartment was smoking, it is possible that we hit her power compartment, if that is the case, it would explain why they stopped again, the flagship lost power and stopped, while the other ships followed the flagship. Hahaha, we're in luck. Now the "Nelson" is finished, and if she does lose power, then she will be no different from a target ship. Now it's up to us which ship will replace her as the flagship. ”
"Which one are you talking about?"
Mueller is still looking for the flag.
"It's been lowered, of course you can't find it."
"Oh, actually, I don't even know it even if I see it. Hahaha. ”
"I found it, it turned out to be the Hood, and yes, she was the only one of these battleships equipped with flagship equipment. ”
Siegfried hurriedly ran to the telephone, picked up the telephone, connected the artillery command post, and then began to give a loud order: "The enemy has replaced the flagship, and now it is necessary to focus on attacking the "Hood", yes, she has humiliated the German Navy for twenty years, and today let her become history. Yes, that's it, the other warships still strike the same, and the firepower attacking the "Nelson" and "Rodney" can be distributed to the other ships, and the focus is still on the "Hood". yes, I saw it, haha, it's spectacular, you guys did a great job, now you know what to do, haha, okay, that's all. ”
The lieutenant colonel put down the phone, and immediately quickly returned to the observation port, leaning on the telescope and looking at the British fleet.
"This, Colonel, what's going on with that group of planes, when did our Air Force arrive."
"Just while you're calling. It's really lively right now. Those fighters only need to entangle the British fighters and attract all the British anti-aircraft fire, so that the bombers below can come out. I think that if those battleships can escape back this time, it will be considered God forbid. Oh, our big guy is speaking again. Mueller chattered excitedly.
I saw a row of tall columns of water rising near the British battleships, and several huge fireballs rising from the decks of those battleships. But this time the focus of the shelling was on the poor "Hood". A whole group of 210-millimeter concrete-destroying shells and other heavy armor-piercing shells of more than 300 millimeters smashed down on the deck of the world's most powerful battlecruiser.
In an instant, the dense explosion of water completely covered the 260-meter-long and 40,000-ton battlecruiser. When the water fell, the battlecruiser, which was said to be the most elegant in the world, had become unrecognizable. Her thin part was only more than 30 millimeters, and the thickest horizontal armor was only more than 70 millimeters, how could it be able to block the bombardment of those heavy armor-piercing shells that fell vertically. The ship's superstructure was blown to pieces, and three of the four 380mm turrets she was proud of were overturned, and the entire battleship was transformed from the pride of the British Navy into a floating pile of burning scrap metal in an instant. Before she could play her role, the newly appointed flagship was ousted by German artillery.
In just fifteen minutes, all the battleships of the British fleet received terrible blows, one battleship was sunk, two flagships were completely deprived of combat effectiveness, the destroyers lost seventy percent, and the entire fleet had completely lost its command.
Without a commander in charge, the captains began to think about preparing to escape. Now they don't care about any honor, they just want to get their ships out of this trap, this trap, this shelling hell as soon as possible. The remaining warships began to increase their horsepower, abandoning the two flagships that were still burning and a colleague who was now crawling with the bottom of the ship full of overboard crews, abandoning the small boats of the civilians, braving the shells of various calibers that were still falling, and the huge columns of water that were constantly rising around them, and began to flee towards the other side of the channel.
But they were still a step late, and with the roar of engines coming from the sea, the last escape door of the main fleet of the British Royal Navy's home fleet was tightly closed.
The captains of those warships were horrified to see at least hundreds of German bombers in the sea in the distance, most of them medium-sized HE111s, and many of them JU88s, in a neat formation against the sea, rushing towards their sideboards. The captains could clearly see through the binoculars that the bombers had gray torpedoes hanging from their bellies.
This is no joke, their battleships, although the armor is thick enough, cannot withstand the continuous bombardment of so many torpedoes.
They hurriedly called the air force fighters to intercept the bombers, but the escort wing over the fleet had long been scattered by those German fighters, and was now flying up and down with those German fighters in the rear of the fleet. And the fighters over Dunkelke were entangled in the air by the German fighters there, and now it seems that they are too busy to take care of themselves, and there is no time to care about these naval warships.
Now all they could rely on was their own anti-aircraft guns, and the captains of the ships were as confident in their own anti-aircraft guns as their fallen commanders.
The Royal Navy's usual rigorous training finally saw the effect at this time, and the remaining destroyers rushed to the front of the battleship array on their own without command, and then began to shoot desperately at the sea in the distance, preparing to use a dense barrage to intercept the German bombers rushing towards the sea like madmen.
But they forgot one thing. The reason they have survived until now is that they had been on the right side of the fleet, and the huge battleships covered them with their hulls, so the Germans did not shell them. Now that they themselves rushed from the back to the front, then, of course, the Germans were not welcome. Two minutes later, the remaining six destroyers were covered in a mass of shells of various calibers, and the luckiest of them was only thirty seconds longer than their colleagues. With the destruction of the destroyer fleet, all that was left between the battleships and the German bombers was a large mass of floating debris and oil, burning life-saving equipment, and hundreds of British sailors struggling in the water.
The battleships could now only return fire with their own anti-aircraft guns, but to the dismay of the captains, they had only now discovered that most of the anti-aircraft guns mounted on deck had been damaged or destroyed by shrapnel as a result of the previous German shelling. Now a battleship can organize less anti-aircraft fire than a destroyer.
Those German bombers suddenly dispersed in formation at a distance of three thousand meters from the battleship. They split into small formations, and then each chose a British battleship for the final charge.
The British battleships also began their final struggle, firing at the bombers with all the weapons they still had at their disposal.
The group of bombers led by the bomber swayed back and forth to dodge the shells and bullets of the British, and the bombers that were hit by the bomb would continue to drag their smoking bodies towards the target as long as they had not yet plunged headlong into the sea.
When the planes in the first row dropped a batch of torpedoes in front of the British battleship, they would immediately pull the planes up with ferocity, then turn the nose and fly in the direction of the coast, making way for the bombers behind.
The Germans now had little to aim, they had woven a net out of a sufficient number of torpedoes, and in such a dense net of torpedoes that the British battleships would not even have a chance to dodge, and no matter how much they struggled, the battleships could not escape their final fate.
As those huge columns of water rose from the waterline of the British battleships, the Battle of the Strait of Dover also entered its most **.
The pride of the Royal Navy is gone;