At the start of the war, the Royal Navy had only about 15% of its total naval strength deployed on its own soil, and none of them were capital ships built after the war. Pen ~ fun ~ Cabinet www.biquge.info from the course of the Azores campaign, such a layout played a role in promoting strengths and avoiding weaknesses, so that Britain's most valuable strategic resources in the war stage to avoid the consumption and siege of the Luftwaffe Navy and Air Force, but this move is destined to be a sharp double-edged sword, and its biggest negative effect is to make the British mainland fall into the naval blockade of the Allies. In the early days of the war, the German Navy launched artillery bombardments on British ports and naval bases, including Portsmouth, Plymouth, and Edinburgh, and the British only responded with warplanes and mine-striking ships, which caused a great deal of damage to the confidence and morale of the British military and civilians. After that, the surprise attack of the main fleet of the United States and Britain on the Azores strategically regained a city, but this did not help to alleviate the plight of the blockade and attack on the British mainland, and throughout June, less than 40 merchant ships broke through the naval blockade of the Allies and arrived at the British mainland, and most of them were fast freighters that departed from the Soviet Russian port of Smolensk and arrived on the northern route.

While blockading the British Isles, the Germans struggled to maintain their busy sea lanes to power their war machine, as was the case in the late stages of the previous war, giving the British submarine force the opportunity to show their skills. In the two months following the outbreak of the war, the British Navy sank 133 Allied merchant ships in the North Sea, the English Channel, and the Faroe Islands waterway to the north, with a total registered tonnage of nearly 640,000 tons, equivalent to destroying 4% of the German merchant fleet. Based on the pre-war speed of shipbuilding by the Germans, it would take 10 months to replenish this loss, and considering the large amount of manpower and material resources required to build and repair new ships for the German Navy, the rate of replenishment of lost merchant ships is probably even lower.

Although the performance of British submarines added a bleak background to the war on the home front, the inherent shortcomings of submarines made it difficult for them to directly confront opposing anti-submarine ships. In June, the British Navy sank 61 enemy merchant ships and lost 19 submarines during the same period, 14 of which were sunk or captured by German and Irish ships.

The reason why the "Brave" did not dare to go to sea with great fanfare in the early stage was that the Germans retained a considerable number of large and medium-sized ships in the North Sea, especially heavy cruisers with a standard displacement of about 15,000 tons and a maximum speed of about 30 knots, which posed a great threat to the British large cruisers that focused on breaking up the war. By June, the Battle of the Azores had taken a dramatic turn, with the Allied fleets suffering heavy losses and the German Navy having to send ships from European waters for reinforcements, and the frequency of German battlecruisers and heavy cruisers in the North Sea was greatly reduced.

The three Brave class sailed into the North Sea for their own activities, and with their comprehensive performance, they were able to calmly retreat in the face of a single German light cruiser or destroyer, and in the face of a small German light ship formation.

On the third day of departure from Forth Bay, the Brave under the command of Colonel Louis Mountbatten encountered the fourth prey of the trip, the 2,280-ton German cargo ship Passau, which was still operating in Norwegian territorial waters. The British top brass has always been resolutely opposed to such blatant violations of the Neutrality Act and the sovereignty of neutral countries, but within the Royal Navy, a considerable number of officers have privately formed a consensus that the winner on the battlefield is king, and that methods that can reduce one's own losses and weaken the enemy at the same time are worth trying, as long as they do not cause very bad consequences.

Because of the bottom line, the "Brave" did not sink German ships sailing in Norwegian territorial waters or neutral ships carrying supplies to Germany, but sabotaged them on the premise of ensuring the safety of the crew's lives, a "civilized behavior" that was time-consuming and laborious, and correspondingly increased the risk of accidents.

Unlike the Norwegian ships that succumbed to the threat of force from the British, the German cargo ship "Passau" sent a distress telegram under the guns of the British battleship, and the angry British immediately opened fire on it, and the white flag was hoisted on the flagpole of the cargo ship, but at this time the telegram had already been taken, and the radio crew of the "Brave" quickly deciphered this plain code telegram - "Passau" not only reported the exact location of the enemy ship encountered, but also judged that the other party was a large cruiser of the Brave class!

In public, Colonel Louis Mountbatten was a well-behaved and noble member of the royal family, while on the battlefield he could be a chivalrous nobleman or an unscrupulous pirate. The German cargo ship in front of him exposed his whereabouts, which put all the officers and men of the "Brave" in danger, and he was in no mood to reason with the other side at all, and after ordering a cease-fire, he asked the signalmen to issue Morse codes, limiting the crew of the other side to abandon the ship and evacuate within five minutes. Five minutes later, he did not hesitate to order it to be sunk, and then led the "Brave" to turn around and retreat to the northwest.

Although the European North Sea covers an area of nearly 600,000 square kilometers, in this era of increasingly developed aviation technology, the North Sea is no longer the vast sea of the past. In normal weather, it would be too difficult for a 10,000-ton warship to disappear here. Even though Colonel Mountbatten commanded the "Brave" to change course repeatedly, and more than six hours after sinking the "Passau," the British cruiser's shipboard radar detected an unidentified aircraft. About half an hour later, the lookout saw a twin-engine aircraft with a light gray livery and a boat-shaped fuselage, which from the silhouette was a large German Rw-86 long-range reconnaissance/anti-submarine aircraft. This seaplane has excellent endurance, and it is deployed at German bases in mainland Germany, northwestern France, Ireland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands, and its range of activity basically covers the North Sea, the Baltic Sea and the eastern Atlantic, so the German admirals proudly call it the "Eye of Odin".

Just when the British crew spotted the German reconnaissance plane, the rear radio equipment on the ship received a strong encrypted code, and the British tried to use radio blocking means to interfere with the opponent's radio communications, but the German reconnaissance plane continued to send telegrams on the spare frequency, and unrelentingly tracked and monitored the "Brave," and continuously reported its whereabouts to the command.

If the Brave had been carrying a water reconnaissance plane, even a Walrus with only two small-caliber machine guns, the captain of the ship, Colonel Mountbatten, would have sent it into the air to deal with the abominable stalk, because the assault ship was like an assassin, and at worst it would have been exposed to the sun. The Royal Navy's engineers equipped the Valiant with advanced but expensive radar equipment, and for the sake of construction cost and ship layout, they abandoned the traditional configuration of carrier-based aircraft, which seemed to be a technical advance, but it showed its fate on the battlefield!

Time passed minute by minute in the torment of the British, and the distance between the "Brave" and the British coastline was getting closer and closer. Towards dusk, it had sailed to the north-east of Scotland, just over an hour's flight from the Forth of Forth, and once it entered the minefield there, even the entire German High Seas Fleet could only stare dryly. Of course, when night fell, the "Brave" could naturally get rid of the surveillance of the German reconnaissance planes, and then Mountbatten could either lead the ship into Forth Bay to rest for a while, or he could take the opportunity to sneak away at night and thus confuse the German navy.

It was at this time that the shipboard radar of the "Brave" discovered that two uninvited guests had arrived in the southern sea, and they happened to block the British ship's return route to its home port in Forth Bay. Captain Mountbatten ordered the ship to adjust course and sail straight to the nearest British coast, while preparing the entire crew for battle.

About twenty minutes later, the lookout on the mast of the "Brave" reported to Mountbatten that, judging by the ship's mast observed at sea level, it was estimated that they were two German light cruisers.

Standing on the bridge of the "Brave", the British coastline against the setting sun to the west, and the two German battleships speeding in to the south. Continuing westward, it would soon be possible to reach the port of Peterhead, where the coastal defense facilities would discourage the German cruisers, but if the "Brave" entered the harbor for a while, and the German bombers deployed in the Faroe Islands would certainly come to attack the next day, and the air defense facilities in the port of Peterhead would not be enough to protect the "Brave", if bombs continued to fall overhead, and more German warships arrived outside the harbor overnight, the fate of the "Brave" would probably be very bleak.

Another option for Colonel Mountbatten was to have the Brave sail north along the British coastline, into the Bay of Mali, the Cromerdy Bay or the Bay of Donoch in the north-east of Scotland. Although it was closer to the Faroe Islands, there was plenty of space for the "Brave" to hide from the bombing of German planes, and the German ships chasing after it were at best loiting outside these bays, and the "Brave" could contain several times the number of German naval ships for a day by staying for a day.

If he did not want to be trapped in the bay of northeastern Scotland, Mountbatten could take a risky move, which was to head north, wait until dark, throw off the enemy ships behind him, and make a big circle at sea, so as to return to his home port of Forth Bay, which is currently the safest naval base on the British mainland, the last bastion of effective naval aviation defense, where British ships can be well supplied and well maintained, and can enter freely, not easily intercepted by German ships.

About an hour and a half before night fell, the flamboyant Colonel Mountbatten made a decision that surprised his officers slightly: turn south and meet the two German cruisers for a moment.

The distance between the two sides quickly narrowed, and each other's silhouettes gradually became clear in each other's line of sight. The two German battleships, led by the Gloudenz-class light cruiser that participated in the last major war, were only half the tonnage of the "Brave", with a design speed of 28 knots, and the actual speed was increased to 30 knots after modernization, and it was equipped with four twin 150mm naval guns - there is intelligence that the Germans replaced the old naval guns of 45 times the diameter with new naval guns of 60 times the diameter when modernizing them, and if the information is true, the effective range of this Gloryenz-class may be the same as that of the "Brave" The 50-fold diameter 203-mm naval guns were almost the same.

The German battleship in the rear looked slightly larger in front of it than the friendly ship in front, and the British crew carefully identified it as a Fiona-class light cruiser. This light cruiser, designed and built by Ireland with a standard displacement of 6,000 tons, has set an unprecedented record in the history of world navies - the same type of warship is equipped with the navies of seven countries.

Since it was favored by the top echelons of the Irish, German, Austro-Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Ottoman, and Latvian navies, political considerations were by no means a key factor. Superior comprehensive performance, good maintainability and appropriate cost performance make it well received by users, but "standardization" has also caused some drawbacks, the first of which is that its technical confidentiality is not ideal. On the battlefield, the more the opponent knows about a weapon, not only will it be difficult to play its original role, but it may also fall into the trap tailored by the opponent.

(End of chapter)