American: "Oh God! It's simply amazing, the Germans occupy the sky, the sea and the bottom of the sea! ”

Englishman: "Oh God! It's terrible, the Germans are everywhere! ”

These people, huddled around the portholes of the cabin of the German cruiser "Frenburg", expressed their opinions, and seemed to have forgotten their situation because of the strange scene outside.

Outside the porthole, a blue-gray "seabird" slowly lowers its altitude and then begins to glide across the water; A few blackened "big fish" surfaced in the cold a few minutes earlier, and then German sailors continued to crawl out of their "fish backs".

During the first search in the morning, reconnaissance aircraft No. 2 spotted the British cruise ship "Newfoundland", while Ensign Schwer and his reconnaissance aircraft No. 1 found nothing.

Three German submarines cruising nearby had just arrived to join the formation, and another task of the raid formation was to feed the German submarines in the Atlantic, so that they could lurk here for a longer period of time.

At this time, the speed of the entire formation had slowed down, and the submarine leaned next to the battleship like a little dolphin waiting to be fed. The long fuel pipes replenished the fuel to the submarine, food and spare parts were also hoisted onto the submarine through cables, and finally, the sailors carefully transported the most needed thing of the submarine - torpedoes to the submarine one by one.

After a brief morning tea, Schweil and the other pilots set off again.

Schverer was more looking forward to discovering something than he had been on his first departure, but the sea was calm and empty except for a few low-flying seabirds.

Helpless to helpless, boring to boring, Schwell still carefully piloted the plane while observing the sea in front of him, while the co-pilot Schneider observed the sea surface on both sides of the plane through a telescope.

"Schneider, look in front of us, I seem to see a ship!" When a black spot and a faint black smoke appeared in the distance, Schweller suddenly became excited, but there was no way to see what it was with the naked eye at this distance.

Schneider leaned half of his body out of the cockpit and looked ahead with a telescope, and he quickly shouted:

"Cruiser, that's a light cruiser!"

"British?"

"Uh...... That's right, the cruisers of the British! ”

"Send a report to the formation!"

Schneider had just begun to tinker with the transmitter when he heard Schwell shout:

"Wait! There seems to be something far behind it! ”

The two of them watched in amazement as more and more black spots appeared under the clouds, and the wisps of black smoke seemed to increase.

"That's ......"

At a distance of 60 nautical miles to the southeast, the Hipper's formation, which had replenished the submarines, began to move forward again.

On the "Elector", the officers were busy calculating and marking on the charts.

"A large convoy of transports!" Hipper stared at the empty sea ahead, a smile creeping up his cheeks.

"27 freighters of all kinds, 5 British light cruisers, 5 British destroyers, this is a school of big fish!" A rear admiral next to him looked excitedly at the report sent back by the No. 1 reconnaissance plane.

"So we're going to have a fishing net for them, a huge fishing net!"

Hippert called the communications officer on the side, "Inform the Second Submarine Formation in the Atlantic, and ask Major Dönitz to send all the submarines deployed in this vicinity to cooperate with our operation!" Also, contact General Lawx's raiding formation, ask them where they are now, and inform them of our findings! ”

"Yes!"

The Communications Officer walked away briskly.

The battleships of the Hipper's formation began to turn, the huge bows of the battleships cut deep openings in the sea, and the submarines that had just left after replenishing fuel rejoined the formation, and they were towed by the battleships and swooped down with the Hippel formation towards the British convoy.

In the sea under the wing of reconnaissance aircraft No. 1, the huge British fleet was also turning.

On the British light cruiser "Moray Eel", the commander of the special transport fleet, General Lennon, looked at the German plane hovering overhead with a melancholy expression, and the Admiralty had already informed the other British ships on this route of the encounter with the German fleet of the cruise ship "Newfoundland". Lennon immediately decided to switch to another route, but he did not expect to be targeted by German planes so soon.

Lennon felt that since the German planes appeared here, the German fleet must be not far away, and was heading here. How could these poor light battleships in his possession be a match for the German battleships, so he decided to lead the fleet and flee to the nearest port, which had just been turned to the Icelandic port of Seysfjörður on his orders.

In Lennon's opinion, there was still a naval fortress and a small British fleet, at least not as unsheltered as it was on this sea. But thinking of the tortoise-crawling speed of the old transports in the fleet, he doubted that the fleet would be able to reach the port before the German fleet caught up.

After the increasing losses of British merchant ships at sea and the air raids and shelling of many traditional shipyards by the German Navy, the British had to put these slow, old, inefficient boilers and polluting grandfather-class freighters, half of which were even old steamers with sails and boilers.

Having received the new movements of the British, Hipper's officers quickly calculated the result: if both sides maintained their current speed and course, in about eight hours the British fleet would be within the maximum range of fire of the raiding formation.

Vice Admiral Hipper raised his hand and looked at his watch, which was 10 a.m., which meant that at 6 p.m., the distance between his formation and the British fleet would be reduced to 12 nautical miles. However, there was not much time left for the reconnaissance planes to conduct a calibration, and although the two seaplanes could take off and land on the sea after dark, they could not see the impact point clearly in the dark.

"It's a pity that the speed of our battleships is like this, if only we could slow down the advance of that British fleet!" Hipper lamented that if he had commanded the same previous battlecruisers, or if he had an aircraft carrier in his formation, even if it was just a seaplane carrier, he would not have to catch up with the British fleet until dark.

Unfortunately, his two reconnaissance planes or the only cruiser could not hinder the advance of the British fleet, and after dark, the destroyers and cruisers of the British fleet were able to threaten Hipper's battleships with their torpedoes, and the transports were likely to escape to the port of Seysfjörður at night.

The expressions of everyone in the command room suddenly became solemn, and it was a very depressing thing to let such a group of big fish slip out of their hands.

Lieutenant General Hipperr carefully looked at the chart, which covered an area of 100,000 square kilometres and was currently garrisoned by British troops. It is sparsely populated and inhabited by fishermen, and although there are many ports in Iceland, only the eastern port of Seysfjörður has more formal fortifications.

"Is there any movement on the combined Anglo-French fleet in Plymouth Harbour?"

Weather permitting, German airships flew over Plymouth Harbour every day to conduct reconnaissance, and if there was a single warship missing in the harbor, they reported it to the German Admiralty, which in turn informed the commanders of the fleets as soon as possible.

"Report to the Commander, the weather conditions in the English Channel are terrible, and the Admiralty has informed us that our airship cannot be dispatched today!"

Hearing this, Hipper's face did not have a look of displeasure, on the contrary, he secretly felt happy, because some of the main forces of the British and French fleets were likely to take advantage of this weather to leave the port, and if they came for their own formation, their warships and submarine forces had every chance to attack the British and French fleets in an ambush.

"And what about General Lawx's second raid formation?"

"They will enter the Atlantic Ocean tonight!"

"Send a message to the High Seas Fleet Command and General Lawx asking the 2nd Raid Formation to go straight to the port of Seysfjörður in Iceland to meet us, and at the same time ask the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Submarine Formations in the Atlantic to keep a close eye on the sea conditions near the British Isles!"

Shortly after Hipper's order, a telegram from the second submarine formation in the Atlantic made everyone see a turnaround.

After the British fleet turned to Iceland, they unfortunately encountered two submarine "shark hunters", the U-039 and U-027 submarines of the second German Atlantic submarine group.

The captain of the submarine U-039 happened to be the commander of the second submarine formation, Major Dönitz. After the Hippert formation informed the submarine force of the specific location of the British convoy discovered by the reconnaissance plane, Dönitz was pleasantly surprised to find that he was on the new course of that fleet.

Major Dönitz's second submarine squadron was deployed primarily in the Atlantic Ocean northwest of the British Isles, with U-039 and U-027 being the two northernmost vessels in this formation. Their hiding place was 150 nautical miles from the Icelandic port of Seysfjörður, from which the British fleet could reach that port in just over 10 hours.

A day earlier, Dönitz and his submarine had sunk a Norwegian freighter in the area, coming from the direction of Iceland. Although Norway was currently a neutral country, their ships had rarely appeared in this area since the war, and the ship looked like it was loaded with heavy cargo, so Dönitz boldly ordered the submarine to surface, captured the 3,000-ton freighter with all British sailors and carrying iron ore, and after leaving the sailors with a lifeboat, Dönitz calmly ordered the ship to be sunk.

The British fleet was still at the forefront of a light cruiser, and the commander on it cautiously adopted the "Z" anti-submarine route, but the British obviously did not know the truth of a foot high and a magic high, and Dönitz and his captains developed a two-boat and multi-boat flanking tactic, and this ordinary anti-submarine navigation had lost its effect in front of them.

But Dönitz wasn't going to sink it, the real big fish was still to come.

About a quarter of an hour after the British cruiser in front passed, the British fleet appeared in the sight of Dönitz and others.

"Sure enough, it's a cautious guy, the pathfinder ship and the fleet are so far apart!" Dönitz looked coldly at the British ships through the periscope, if it weren't for the notification of the Hipper's fleet, he would probably have sunk the cruiser in front just now, and the British fleet behind would have escaped without his knowledge.

"Torpedo No. 1 ready, torpedo No. 2 ready, determine the boat!"

"The ship has been confirmed! Nearest ship! The distance is 810 yards and the launch angle is 79 degrees! ”

Dönitz and his U-039 were aiming at an old freighter of about 8,000 tons, and the guy was moving slowly at 14 knots like the entire fleet, and the escort warships circled around the sheep like anxious hounds, but the sheep were always sheep, and their tails could not run fast.

"Torpedo No. 1 fired, torpedo No. 2 fired!"

When the two torpedoes trailed towards the British freighter with a long white trail, the sailors on it had to scream and look for life jackets and lifebuoys, the clumsy freighter had no way to avoid the attack of the torpedoes at such a distance, and their little hope was that the Germans would miss or malfunction.

Unfortunately, the skilled sailors of Dönitz did not fulfill the wishes of the British, and with two loud bangs, the British freighter and most of the sailors on board were sent into the sky.

Just half a minute later, the U-027 also fired its own torpedo at another British freighter. Perhaps it was loaded with light cargo, or perhaps it was originally a shallow draft, and the torpedo actually passed through the bottom of the freighter with a sail mast, which frightened most of the British sailors to their knees and thank God for his protection.

After firing the torpedoes, both U-039 and U-027 folded their periscopes and disappeared into the water, while the British warships searched back and forth on the surface in vain. Although the British Navy had already begun to research various weapons against German submarines, this could not be done overnight, not to mention that their own resources were already greatly strained.

Faced with this situation, General Lennon was taken aback, knowing full well that he had encountered more than one German submarine, and that these submarines were hiding under his own fleet. As soon as they reload their torpedoes, they will again surface to attack their own ships. In desperation, the general had no choice but to order the fleet to turn again.

However, the aging British cargo ships could not even outrun the German submarines that surfaced, and Dönitz and his two submarines followed the British convoy closely, constantly looking for opportunities to fire torpedoes at the freighters. For Dönitz, it was not the most important thing how many British freighters were sunk now, when his submarines and torpedoes appeared in the north, the British fleet had to turn south to evade, and so on, and the end result was that the British fleet could only go around in a big circle over and over again on the sea, and the British warships pounced on the German submarines again and again, but there was nothing they could do about the submarines that immediately dived into the water.

The game didn't end until four hours later, when Hipper's formation arrived, at 2 p.m., leaving Hipper's time to many, much more.