As night fell, a large battleship with two chimneys, accompanied by a light battleship and two barges, sailed through the mouth of the Shannon River. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 Unlike the dreadnoughts and battlecruisers that roam the North Sea and often appear in mainstream books and magazines, this huge battleship does not have a spindle-like slender hull, it is broad, full of lines, there is only a twin turret on the front and rear decks, all the secondary guns are placed in the gun frame like a candle on the cake, and the razor-like ramming bow seems to be mighty, but it is not conducive to increasing the speed of the ship.

It was the old man star battleship "Revenge" of the British Royal Navy. It is worth mentioning that its captain is named John Hill and is a member of the Hill family in England.

At the outbreak of the war, this old battleship was assigned to the British Mediterranean Fleet, and after the Battle of Jutland, the battered British Navy adopted a strategy of shrinking its forces from overseas, and the six old ships were transferred back to the mainland from the Mediterranean and Pacific seas, and incorporated into the Channel Fleet. Most of them failed to make it to the First Battle of Flanders, in which the main force of the British Channel Fleet was ravaged by the German capital ships, which gave a glimpse of the striking gulf that existed between the former dreadnoughts and the dreadnoughts. During the Second Battle of Flanders, the entire British Channel Fleet was on standby behind the Strait of Dover, and in the final stage, the German Navy's "Blucher" and "Gloudenz" crossed the English Channel under their noses.

When fully loaded, the draft of the old man star battleship is 8 meters, while the draft of the dreadnought is generally more than 9 meters. At high tide, the channel of the Shannon River downstream of Limelik was sufficient for such large warships, but after low tide there was a possibility of running aground.

The old man star was the first batch of battleships equipped with water-tube boilers, which could provide higher power and greater economy, but after fifteen or six years of service, many of the equipment had seriously deteriorated, and caught up with the British Navy and the Germans to carry out a shipbuilding competition, the maintenance of the old capital ships was put on the back burner, and the extreme speed of the "Grudge" had dropped from the early 18.25 knots to about 16 knots, and although the caliber of the old 12-inch MKVIII naval guns was large, the range and power were lagging behind the times. It was impossible to penetrate the main armor of German dreadnoughts at long distances, and shore support or the best option to use residual heat.

Taking the two protective cruisers that arrived in advance as a reference for sailing, the huge "Revenge" slowly moved along the central channel, and the sound of gunfire and explosions on the shore did not disrupt its rhythm until 9 o'clock in the evening, when it anchored at the scheduled berth, and the ship's four 12-inch main guns pointed domineeringly at the south bank of the Shannon River.

"Seeing the light signal from our troops from the shore, request for continuous artillery bombardment at coordinates 443-374!"

The British troops on the shore were under the command of Duke Hill, and Colonel John Hill naturally had nothing to say, and in order to ensure the correctness of the firing parameters, he personally checked them, and then gave the order to open fire with confidence.

In the distance, Irish-German soldiers remained behind the east-west ridge. After annihilating the vanguard of more than 100 British New Army, they soon ushered in a large number of British regular troops. In addition to the change in numbers, the fighting qualities and experience of these British soldiers were much stronger than those of the previous "chicks", they thought that the few field guns and Vickers water-cooled heavy machine guns for fire suppression, the infantry into the attack wave after wave, after approaching the enemy position, they first used the Lee-Enfield MKI rifle to fire a dense and ferocious array of guns, and then launched a charge, this simple and effective tactic almost broke through the defense of hundreds of coalition soldiers, Fortunately, their reinforcements quickly arrived on the battlefield and consolidated their precarious flank positions.

The second time to repel the British attack, the Allied soldiers were taking advantage of the gap in the battle to evacuate the wounded and replenish ammunition, when suddenly they heard two piercing screams when the air attacked, and then two huge fireballs rose in the field, and the earth trembled visibly with a huge explosion like a landslide.

"Shelling! Enemy shelling! Hide, everyone! Take cover! ”

Several German officers subconsciously shouted, and the German naval soldiers wearing beanie hats quickly stopped what they were doing and hid nearby, while the officers and men of the Irish Volunteers had never seen such a powerful artillery fire, and they were surprised and overwhelmed.

The cloud of smoke from the previous explosion was still rising, and the harsh whistle of the previous one was heard again. Under the stunned gaze of the people, two equally huge fireballs rose in the field a little farther away, and the huge roar was still deafening.

"It's a British battleship...... a German officer frowned, and shouted to the people around him: "Everyone, take cover, the enemy's artillery fire will continue to come!" ”

What followed was a silence that lasted for two or three minutes, not long, but the extraordinarily solemn atmosphere made people feel breathless, and the tension and fear in their hearts continued unabated.

The night sky flashed red in the direction of the Shannon River, and a moment later a terrible scream struck again, the loud explosion and the violent vibration it caused were even more so loud than before, that the shells were no longer a kilometer away, but so close that it was terrifying. The flames of the explosion instantly illuminated the ridges, but few people dared to raise their heads to look at this strange landscape!

"Evacuate, we'll be blown up here!"

The shouts of terror caused an uproar among the Irish

"Calm down! Stay calm, everyone! Stay where you are, run around and die faster! ”

The last sentence clearly served as a deterrent, but the front was now two or three kilometers long, and further afield, the commander of the Irish Volunteer Army had retreated with his soldiers without authorization

Only about a minute later, another round of British shelling thundered and inflicted tangible damage on the Irish-German joint combat forces

Under these circumstances, a rigid stay in place would inevitably incur heavy casualties, and if the entire line was retreated, the consequences would be equally unimaginable if it was attacked by the British during the retreat

After consultation with the three main commanders, the Irish Volunteers retreated to a regrouping area five kilometres away, leaving the German Marines behind

More than 3,000 Irish Volunteer soldiers, including those who came in with subsequent reinforcements, scrambled to retreat to the rear, looking like a scene of ebbing tide

As the German commanders feared, and as they had already encountered in France, the British resumed the attack with only five rounds of heavy artillery bombardment, twenty rounds of large-caliber grenades, and three or four battalions of infantry. Without the 200 German infantry, the British would have pursued the retreating Irish Independence forces, and they would not only have been able to thwart the Irish offensive on Limerick, but would have even had the opportunity to win a strategically comparable victory at the Battle of Cork.

In Pikini, north of Amiens, three battalions of German marines were beaten by the British, killing and wounding. Although only a few of the German naval infantry had lived through the battle, their accounts made their comrades feel that it was a good time for revenge. They fought and retreated with a calm mindset, inflicting considerable casualties on the British troops who were eager to break through, and giving the Irish time to reorganize their defenses in the rear. The new front of the joint operations forces was more than ten kilometers away from the banks of the Shannon River, which was already beyond the range of the main guns of the British battleship, and friendly troops deployed in the surrounding area also rushed to support. The two sides fought until dawn, but the British failed to achieve their intended intentions, and the coalition forces did not launch a tactical counterattack due to the astonishing power of the British battleships' artillery bombardment on the opposite shore, and also suspended the offensive on the port area of Limerick.

The land battle around Limerick was deadlocked, and the "Revenge" was stationed, and the British laid two mine nets around it, and ambushed more than 20 high-speed torpedo boats in the hidden channel upstream - after the outbreak of the war, the Prinz shipyard, which was famous for its manufacture of small submarines and high-speed speedboats, was taken over by the British authorities and switched to the production of submarines and high-speed torpedo boats for the British Navy. Due to the lack of raw materials and the sluggishness of the workers, the production speed of the shipyard was much slower than before the war, not a single submarine was completed in these three months, and only 17 high-speed torpedo boats were completed and delivered.

Deployed to the lower reaches of the Shannon River, the Revenge became a lure for German ships, and at the same time, a British fleet of more than a dozen ships arrived in the southern waters of Ireland, with six old battleships forming the main force of the fleet. They are three old man-class ships - "Glory", "Ocean" and "England", two Dreadnought-class - "Resistance" and "Discord", and one London-class - "Queen". The six British battleships had a standard displacement of 84,000 tons, much more than the combined tonnage of the two German battlecruisers, they were armed with 24 12-inch guns, half the German 16, and the number of ships outnumbered the nearly 3,000 of the two German battleships with 4,000 men, and even the British themselves were pessimistic about a possible head-to-head battle between the two sides, despite the fact that these figures seemed to be superior. You must know that in the Battle of Jutland, 9 British former dreadnoughts with the strongest combat effectiveness fought against 4 German battle cruisers, and as a result, the flagship "Edward VII" was killed in seconds, and the entire detachment was almost powerless, and in the first Battle of Flanders, the British Channel Fleet met with 20 old battleships, and was actually beaten by two dreadnoughts and two battle cruisers of the German Navy. Although it is confirmed that only one British battleship was sunk by the German battleship, throughout the whole process of the naval battle, this German battle cruiser with fierce firepower, fast sailing speed and thick armor has always been a battle flag, which not only boosted its own fighting spirit, but also tried its best to suppress and disturb the morale of the opponent.

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