By the time the Swedish fleet escorted the Irish cruise ship "Long Live Liberty" out of territorial waters, two gray-and-white camouflage-painted battleships were already waiting on the high seas, and the Black Eagle Cross flag fluttering on their masts was all too familiar to Natsuki, and he could accurately tell the model and technical parameters of the two ships by just looking at the outlines. Pen, fun, and www.biquge.info

It's a wonderful feeling of blood and blood!

Two German warships, one large and one small, greeted them with flags and paid their respects to their designers and overseers.

Immediately afterwards, the two battleships lowered a dinghy and crossed the undulating sea to the gangway where the "Long Live Freedom" had been lowered, and several well-dressed German officers boarded the deck, some of Natsuki's faces were only slightly impressed, and some of them were familiar to him as if they were relatives.

"Ha, look, Pete, Gunther, you two look great, real men!"

Natsuki heartily stretched out his hands and patted the two of them on the shoulders one by one. Pete Neuhaus, Gunther Lütjans, two young officers of the German Navy, served as his deputy. The former is slightly older and now holds the rank of lieutenant colonel as deputy captain of the armored cruiser "York"; The latter, born in 1889, was only a year older than Joachim, and was now a naval lieutenant in command of the newly commissioned large torpedo boat G40, an improved version of the 1913 class, capable of assault, anti-submarine, escort, vigilance, and other roles, and was a versatile all-rounder in the German Navy's active ships.

Reuniting with their old boss, the joy of the two shows their heartfelt admiration.

After their pleasantries, the current captain of the York, Colonel Pate Muktar, gave Natsuki a brief account of the next voyage, and the two German warships would escort the "Long Live Freedom" from Swedish waters all the way to Copenhagen, Denmark, with no stops on the way as long as the weather conditions did not change significantly.

The visit to Denmark was mainly a matter of courtesy, the former maritime power had long since been reduced to the last country, and the attitude of the Danish government, parliament and people towards the war was the same as that of the Swedes, who tried to stay out of it, but once made Denmark's prosperous and wealthy geographical location the greatest burden of neutrality, during the war, the Danes walked on thin ice to deal with diplomatic relations with the belligerents, and they were distressed for a long time for the shipwrecked British and German ships that drifted to Danish waters in the naval battle, until the end of the war, they were truly relieved.

Natsuki said to Colonel Muktar, "The only thing that disturbs me is that it seems too much luxury to have a large battleship like the 'York' come and escort her. ”

"Your Highness, it is an incomparably honorable honor for all the crew of the Yorkie to escort you." Colonel Mukhtar turned his head to look at the armored cruiser that was in a stable state of navigation, and said in a slightly lowered voice: "To tell you, Your Highness, the 'York' was damaged in the battle to attack the Gulf of Riga, and after carrying out this escort mission, it happened to return to Germany for major repairs. ”

According to the Colonel's tone, the recent combat experience of the "York" was not so pleasant, but judging from the various information channels such as official announcements, newspapers, news, and radio, the military offensive of the Central Powers against Russia has been relatively smooth. Out of curiosity, Natsuki invited the German officers who boarded the ship to the cabin for tea and a detailed conversation.

In this coolest summer in nearly a decade, the fiery war situation on the Eastern Front attracted the attention of the whole world. After Britain and France withdrew from the war one after another, Russia had no intention of falling in love with war, but the armistice conditions offered by the Allied camp were too harsh, and the tsar was unwilling to cede Ukraine, which is known as the breadbasket of Eastern Europe, and Azerbaijan, which is rich in oil, and the negotiations broke down, so they had to continue to divide on the battlefield. In the face of the combined attack of the German and Austrian forces, the Russian army tried to use the vast forests of Belarus and the river system of Ukraine to block the attack, and at the same time sent a number of infantry cavalry units to the enemy-occupied areas to carry out guerrilla and break engagements, covering the main force and retreating into the Russian hinterland - 103 years ago, the Russians used this strategy against the invincible Napoleonic army, and finally completely defeated this unprecedentedly powerful opponent with the help of severe cold weather.

The Russian Emperor Alexander I, who defeated Napoleon, was himself an incompetent and self-confident man, and was able to defeat France thanks to the courage of the commander-in-chief of the Russian army, Kutuzov. Today's Tsar Nicholas II is mediocre, weak and ambitious, but he does not have the right-hand man of Kutuzov. At the outbreak of the war, the commander-in-chief of the Russian army was his uncle, Grand Duke Nikolai. The Grand Duke was a burly, handsome and personable officer, a career officer who served as commander of cavalry during the Russo-Japanese War and later as commander of the St. Petersburg Military District. In the Tsarist army, the Grand Duke's prestige was higher than that of Tsar Nicholas II, but the main reason why the Russian officers and soldiers admired him was not his talent and merits. The Grand Duke treated his subordinates with such profanity and brutality that he was regarded as the only man in the Russian royal family, and soldiers who had never met him from a peasant family relished his anecdotes as a defender of Holy Russia who fought against the "German gang" and the mediocre and corrupt officials.

Grand Duke Nicholas's anti-German sentiment is well known, he believes that only by completely smashing Germany, redividing it into small states, and allowing them to live happily without quarrel, can the whole world have hope of living in peace, but the firm war stance did not make Grand Duke Nicholas a hero like Kutuzov to turn the tide, and the inefficient system of the Russian army was exposed in the war: the command structure at all levels was ineffective, there was a serious shortage of weapons and ammunition, and logistics and transportation were like a disaster. Beginning in June, the Russian army began to retreat on a large scale, and the German-Austrian army entered the Ukrainian hinterland almost effortlessly, and occupied a number of strategic towns in Belarus.

In the military operation against Tsarist Russia, the German army did not attack with all its might like in France, and only fought deep into the Russian border with the 8th Army Corps under the command of Hindenburg and Ludendorff, as well as the 5th Army Corps of Crown Prince Wilhelm and the 1st Army Corps of the veteran Crook. According to Natsuki's understanding, on the one hand, this is because the German top brass believes that the Tsarist Russian army is already vulnerable, and with Austria-Hungary and Ottoman Turkey joining forces, one hand is enough to knock the Russians to the ground, and there is no need to mobilize the army. On the other hand, the vastness of the Russian territory and poor transport conditions are a huge challenge for the logistical supply of any army. You must know that there are only 1,000 kilometers from Berlin to the heart of France, and the whole territory is full of railways and road networks, from Berlin to Kiev there are 1,200 kilometers, to St. Petersburg you need to trek nearly 2,000 kilometers, there is only one railway line through the whole journey, and the sandy road is a disaster in the rainy season.

As the Germans moved into the heart of Belarus and Ukraine, the drawbacks of long supply lines became apparent. Under these circumstances, Moltke Jr., the chief of the German General Staff, proposed a "coastal advance strategy", hoping to make the German army advance all the way north along the Baltic coast, coerce St. Petersburg, the capital of Tsarist Russia, and force Tsarist Russia to accept the armistice conditions proposed by the Central Powers.

Kaiser Wilhelm II praised this strategy and immediately approved its implementation.

On the Baltic coast, the Russian army has abandoned Lithuania and set up a new line of defense in Latvia, which is closer to the Russian hinterland. Crown Prince Wilhelm's legion, which carried out the coastal advance strategy, soon entered Latvia, but the land transportation conditions here were comparable to those of forested Belarus, and the German army advanced slowly and had to be careful to guard against Russian cavalry attacks. Therefore, Moltke Jr. proposed that the German Navy and Army launch a landing operation in the Gulf of Riga behind the Russian defense line, which could not only put the Russian defenders in a situation where they would be exposed to the enemy, but also quickly advance the German front to St. Petersburg for hundreds of kilometers, and if the landing operation went well, the German army could also consider launching a landing operation in Estonia or even St. Petersburg in the next step.

With the existing resources and combat experience of the German Navy, the "coastal advance strategy" with large-scale landing operations as the breakthrough point had a very high chance of winning in the war games, but when it was put into practice, the German Navy encountered a thorny problem -- in order to land in the Gulf of Riga, it must first deal with the Russian naval forces entrenched there, destroy or severely damage its combat ships, clear the minefield obstacles, and then cover the landing force to go ashore.

At the outbreak of the Great War, the Russian Baltic Fleet was dominated by the quasi-dreadnoughts "Emperor Pavel I" and "St. Andrei", the old battleships "Glorious" and "Prince", as well as 6 armored cruisers, 4 protective cruisers, 36 destroyers and large torpedo boats, 11 submarines, and 6 minelayers. But the fleet was not really ready for war, not to mention the fact that the German navy could quickly deploy ships between the North Sea and the Baltic Sea through the Kiel Canal, and the commander of the brave and warlike Russian Baltic Fleet, Admiral von Essen, who was of German descent, never took the initiative to attack Germany at the strong request of the British, and his decision was undoubtedly wise, even during the period when the main German fleet went north to the Faroe Islands, the German Navy retained a fighting force sufficient to deal with the Russian fleet on its own soil, As long as the Russian fleet dared to come, without even using battleships, a large group of high-speed torpedo boats and powerful naval aviation would be enough to send most Russian ships to the bottom of the sea.

It was precisely because the Russian fleet did not take the risk that it now had the opportunity to make a strong resistance to the German navy in the Gulf of Riga, and the German navy did not underestimate the enemy this time, and Reinhardt-Schell personally led the main force of the high seas fleet to cover up. In addition to the "King", "Caesar" and many other main dreadnoughts, the old aircraft carrier "Bismarck" and another auxiliary aircraft carrier "Göttingen" were also brought. On the first day of the attack on the Gulf of Riga, German carrier-based aircraft were the first to discover and attack the two battleships deployed by the Russian Navy -- the "Glorious" and the "Prince" -- both of which were damaged by bombs dropped by German planes, but the Russian Navy officers and men reacted very quickly, and they quickly drove the two old battleships to the shallow water near the shore defense batteries in order to run aground the ships when the situation deteriorated, and at the same time used small ships to pull up mine protection nets around the "Glorious" and "Prince". By the time the German carrier-based aircraft attacked again, the Russians had already organized a rather stubborn anti-aircraft fire using naval guns and shore defense guns, so that the German naval aviation could not further expand the gains of the war.

(End of chapter)