With a rumbling roar, a He-25 carrier-based fighter designed and produced by the Heinkel Aircraft Factory soared at an altitude of 1,000 meters, it has a concise streamlined outline, a drop-shaped closed cockpit with good visibility, the front wheels are folded and retracted, and there are only two abrupt objects under the fuselage, the auxiliary fuel tank and the rear wheels, and the aircraft is completely made of gray and white blocky camouflage, and its tactical number is sprayed in a conspicuous position in the middle of the fuselage. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 At this time, under its saber-like iron wings, there was a huge fleet of ships sailing westward, nearly a hundred ships lined up in neat columns, and thick or faint black smoke was expelled from those high chimneys, forming clouds of smoke in the low sky.

It had rained the night before, and even though the smell of smoke was mixed in, the air at sea still felt refreshed. The dark clouds gradually dispersed, the rays of sunlight sprinkled through the clouds, and the weather improved for the ships to sail, but on the command ship of this large fleet, the atmosphere was extremely solemn, but this kind of stormy division was not something ordinary people could detect......

Admiral von Dalwig, the steady and cautious Admiral von Dalwig, commanded the Allied convoy from the European continent to the Azores, while the 49-year-old Prince Adalbert, the third son of Kaiser Wilhelm II, accompanied the fleet to the Azores in his capacity as Inspector General of the German Navy, and was to visit and comfort the front-line soldiers on behalf of the German royal family.

The ultimate line-up of "Royal Glory" includes 35 combat ships and 54 non-combat ships, and the proportion and strength of escort ships make the voyage feel full of difficulties and dangers. In fact, the strategic situation of the Allied forces in the Atlantic has changed from "precarious" when the "Frederick-Caesar" fleet sailed to the Azores to the present "victory in sight." The reason why this escort fleet was so bullish was that the four important ships "Deutschland", "Silesia", "Wiecchersbach", and "Alfonso XIII" returned to the front line after completing major repairs, and the supplementary fleet and the escort fleet were close to each other.

As a traditional naval commander, Admiral von Dalwig chose the "Deutschland" as the command ship, and he gave the best commander's cabin on the ship to Prince Adalbert, and committed himself to the senior officer's cabin, devoting himself to this high-ranking and low-level job with abundant energy and steady style. Under his strict requirements, since the convoy was assembled and set off, every ship has carried out the communication silence order to the letter, receiving only radio signals externally, and using flags or signal lights to communicate internally.

In addition to two battleships and two aircraft carriers, von Dahlwig's escort ships included 2 heavy cruisers, 2 light cruisers, 14 destroyers, 4 minesweepers, and 8 large submarine hunters. Because of this, all the officers and men were full of fighting spirit and confidence, and the accompanying crew members were also optimistic about the prospects of the trip.

Among the 54 non-combat vessels, 8 are tankers transporting fuel, carrying a large amount of heavy fuel oil, aviation gasoline and vehicle gasoline; 7 large troop carriers converted from cruise ships were requisitioned, and 4 hospital ships were also used for troop transport, carrying 26 battalions of the German army, 4 battalions of the Irish army, 2 battalions of the Italian army, and 2 battalions of the Austrian army; There were 6 ocean-going tugboats and 29 large and medium-sized cargo ships, carrying equipment, ammunition, food, medicine, and other materials for the combat use of the navy, army and air force. There are exactly 54 cards in a deck, and von Dalwig simply numbers them according to the suit of the cards for easy communication and management.

On the night of his departure from European waters, von Dahlwig received a coded telegram from the commander of the Allied fleet, warning the convoy of the possibility of encountering a strong enemy on this voyage with the code phrase "there may be heavy rain in the next few days." On the one hand, he adopted the strategy of increasing the speed during the day and reducing the speed at night, which correspondingly increased the difficulty for enemy submarines to track the convoy and wait for an opportunity to sneak attack, and on the other hand, increased the intensity of air patrol vigilance by aircraft carriers and carrier-based aircraft, and strictly guarded against surface and underwater attacks by US and British warships.

A whole day passed, and no enemy situation was found around the escort fleet, and on the third day, the carrier-based aircraft on the alert patrol found traces of enemy submarines at sea, and the fleet's radios began to receive radio waves with high signal strength, and as the intelligence from all sides gathered, von Dalvig gradually realized that the attacker he needed to carry might not be a group of submarines or a few attack ships, but an American and British fleet that was not inferior to his own escort ships. To be safe, he could make a tactical retreat to the German General Staff, allowing the convoy to avoid a premeditated interception, and then restart the voyage at another time or break the convoy into pieces, but after a private conversation with Prince Adalbert, von Dalwig decisively abandoned this option, which could have a bad impact on his personal reputation, and continued to direct the convoy to the Azores.

On the fourth day of the grouping and departure, the convoy gradually approached the middle of the voyage. At about 10 o'clock in the morning, a He-25 sent by the "Wiecchersbach" spotted a large enemy cruiser 120 nautical miles in front of the fleet, and about 20 minutes later, the carrier-based aircraft discovered two more enemy light ships, and before they could identify the type of ships, they were attacked by the enemy's carrier-based fightersEight He-25 fighters carried by the "Wiecchersbach" and eight Me-50T fighters carried by the "Alfonso XIII" were divided into two waves to carry out forward 180-degree sector reconnaissance, and the two aircraft carriers put defense first, so that all the remaining fighters were ready to take off, and once they found that the enemy plane was coming down, they would make every effort to intercept it and protect their ships from attack as much as possible.

What was somewhat surprising was that the two waves of more than 30 planes reconnoitred in a large area, and apart from the discovery that one of the enemy's large cruisers was retreating northward at high speed, they did not make any gains, and the light ships and carrier-based fighters that had appeared in the past were as if they had taken refuge in the sea, and even if the Allied carrier-based planes flew to the limit of the radius of activity, what they saw was still a vast sea with nothing to see.

As a result of his duties, and his character, von Dalwig sent a total of 14 telegrams from morning to dusk, constantly reporting to the German Naval Staff, the Operational Command of the Allied Fleet, and the flagship of the Allied Main Fleet the location and situation of the convoy -- not to mention whether the adversary could decipher the contents of these telegrams, as long as they were monitored in fixed bands, the general orientation of the target could be determined with basic radio direction finding techniques.

Von Dalwig, who has been in the army for 40 years and has participated in a series of naval battles such as the Battle of Jutland, certainly does not ignore this detail; two waves of reconnaissance planes in succession have returned in vain; while dispatching aircraft carrier-based planes to carry out medium-range alert patrols in a range of 180 degrees backwards, he also dispatches light and heavy cruisers equipped with carrier-based radars to the periphery of the fleet to set up a floating sea surface guard post. At about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, the enemy was still nowhere to be seen, and von Dalwig, who was becoming more and more anxious, received a secret telegram from the "Hanover," the flagship of the main fleet of the Central Powers; after replacing the spare code book, the flagship did not use the code words again this time, but bluntly said that one North Carolina-class battleship, one Admiral-class battlecruiser, one Yorktown-class aircraft carrier, and one Tejour-class aircraft carrier, together with more than a dozen cruisers and destroyers suitable for ocean-going operations, had been missing for three days, and it was necessary to be careful to guard against enemy attacks, especially beware of night attacks by the enemy.

Seeing the contents of the telegram, von Dalwig's scalp suddenly tingled. On the battlefield of Britain, the German fighters escorting the bombers were often beaten to the ground by opponents who were obviously weaker than themselves, and the Luftwaffe tried a variety of tactics to change this phenomenon, until the later stage of the campaign, when the British home army was depleted of combat aircraft, and the superior Fokker G-51 really became the master of the skies over Britain. This law also exists in naval warfare, such as the Allied Navy's attack on the American and British convoys with two Derlinger-class battlecruisers that are nearly 20 years old. The situation was now reversed, and the powerful and extremely fast American and British fleets lurked somewhere like vicious wolves, and when night fell, they would pounce on the Allied convoy.

Before setting out, von Dalwig and his staff officers had made war games about the various situations he might encounter, and he knew very well that if the American and British fleets referred to by the "Hanover" telegram were really coming at him, it would be more than bad luck to protect the fleet by his own strength. Although the safety of this escort fleet was not directly related to the final success or failure of the Azores campaign, it was closely related to the situation at the front, and he had no reason to abandon this escort fleet in public or private affairs. Recalling this man's usual way of fighting, von Dalwig has reason to believe that everything here has long been in his layout, as a pawn, as long as he does not make any strange moves on a whim, he can share the fruits of victory, and as long as the final result is victory, negligence or misjudgment in the process can be ignored, so when August von Oldenburg returned to Germany, people were praising his bravery in the fight against a strong enemy, as for the "Count of Tirpitz" and the officers and men who were martyred with the ship, with the Supreme Military Council ruling that the commander was not at fault, naturally became a worthy sacrifice, a common loss in war.

After sorting out his thoughts, Admiral von Dalvig no longer hesitated, and he ordered four German ships with radars to defend the four corners of the flotilla, two aircraft carriers to retreat to the left of the rear of the flotilla, and two battleships to the right of the front flank, and six destroyers to form two mobile detachments, which were deployed on the left and right flanks of the flotilla, to prepare for the enemy's attack attempt.

(End of chapter)