Closely guarded by two destroyers and four patrol gunboats, the damaged super-dreadnought "Emperor" slowly sailed towards Scapa Bay, looking at its lonely back, and the officers and men on the ships still heading towards the battlefield were in a very complicated mood, and they felt that they might envy their colleagues on the "Emperor", after all, they no longer needed to be frightened by such an unpredictable combat operation. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

As the cause of the explosion of the "Emperor" was not yet certain - and it could not even be completely ruled out that it was an internal explosion without external factors, Sir Bailey decided to adopt a strict anti-submarine escort formation, and he recalled all the light cruisers and destroyers that had searched for traces of German submarines and deployed them around the capital ship one by one. The capital ships were changed from three columns to two, the old and new battleships were still one column, the longitudinal spacing between the ships was shortened to 400 meters, and the column composed of five armored cruisers was disbanded, with the "County Canafon", "Roxboroughshire" and "Natal" forming an avant-garde formation, and the "Devonshire" and "Argyllshire" serving as the rearguard.

Compared with the battleship groups with complex formations, these five armored cruisers placed under the unified command of General Thorpe have been old partners for many years, and almost from the time they were completed and put into service, they were incorporated into the cruiser detachment to which the main fleet belonged, and the officers were familiar with each other and had a high degree of tacit understanding of various tactical orders. After receiving the flagship's order, "County Canafon", "County Roxborough", and "Natal" quickly moved forward and lined up in front of the group of battleships with great force, but they were not the real spearhead of the fleet, and two or three thousand meters in front of them, four destroyers and one light cruiser had already set up a fan-shaped outpost.

According to the British Royal Navy's tactical tutorials, Sir Bailey's fleet formation has been one step closer to being "invulnerable", and can simply become "watertight", but the update of these theoretical tutorials is obviously not as fast as the development of weapons technology. In the case that the vast majority of ships have already arrived at the designated battle position, only 39 minutes have passed since the explosion of the "Emperor", and the bow of the armored cruiser "Natal" suddenly exploded, and it also appeared below the waterline, the explosion sound was dull and powerful, and the waves stirred up were not high, but the battleship was like being slammed by an invisible heavy hammer, and there was a very strong vibration on the ship. A few seconds later, with a deafening explosion, a blazing fireball rose into the sky, and the smoke of the flames almost instantly swallowed the front half of the battleship, and then, the continuous explosion finally evolved into a very terrifying scene: the deck of the "Natal" was full of soaring tongues of fire, where the flames flashed, countless fragments and intact and incomplete human bodies flew in the air, the bridge, chimney, and mast collapsed like a house made of cards, and the solid and thick hull began to become fragmented, black, gray, White and white smoke erupted from various cracks on the deck and hull, and the smoke and dust soon wrapped the entire battleship, like a huge curtain, covering up this unsightly human tragedy......

On those ships that were relatively close and had an unobstructed line of sight, the British crews looked at the standard displacement with amazement1. The 350,000-ton armored cruiser was devastated by the death of war, and people didn't even have time to think about how to save their comrades in distress, it was already wrapped in the smoke and dust from the explosion, and any damage management emergency measures would not help. On those British warships that were a little far away and could not directly see the scene of the explosion, the officers and men of the Navy who did not know what was going on widened their eyes in astonishment, and the column of smoke formed by the explosion finally rose to a height of several hundred meters, and even in Scapaflo, thirty nautical miles away, people could probably see this huge shadow that meant death!

In less than two minutes, the explosion on the sea stopped abruptly, the wreckage of the "Natal" was still swirling in the terrible smoke and dust, and the destroyer, the armored cruiser on the side, and the battleship behind it did not appear to be unusual, except that it was destroyed by such an explosion without warning - no one could see the white trail of torpedoes, no one saw the periscope sticking out of the water, no one saw any trace of the enemy, "Natal" The tragedy seems to be because the gates of hell suddenly opened!

"It's an anchor ......"

The stunned Sir Bailey on the Thunderbolt, the ice-hearted Betty on the Irish, and many experienced officers and non-commissioned officers in the fleet finally came to their senses at this time, but their awakening did not mean the end of the nightmare, and the real nightmare had just begun.

After a while, the sea breeze slightly blew away the smoke and dust, and the "Natal" that reappeared in sight was only half of the stern, and the destroyer "Millbrook" turned around and sailed towards it, ready to search and rescue the survivors on the ship, and in order to avoid the wreckage of the "Natal", the leader of the old battleship column "Republic" first turned slightly to the right, because "Millbrook" appeared in front of the bow, the Edwardian VII-class battleship adjusted its course to the right again, and after a while, the "Republic" There was a sudden explosion on the starboard front of the ship, this time the column of water stirred up by the explosion rushed to twice the height of the battleship's mast and swept the two British sailors into the sea, and the violent concussion also knocked the captain Colonel de Waal down the gangway leading to the bridge observation platform, breaking his left leg on the spot.

This time, only five or six minutes elapsed between the explosion of the "Republic" and the doom of the "Natal", from which all possibility of accidental accidents could be ruled out, and the result of the reasoning of normal thinking suddenly made everyone feel a desperate horror: the fleet had broken into a mine array laid by the Germans!

"This ...... How can it be? ”

Sir Bailey, who was in charge of the new flagship, looked incredulous, but the fact was that the enemy had put mines, a typical defensive weapon, into fleet operations, and with such remarkable results. So, exactly when and in what way did the Germans lay how many mines? The answers to these questions were unknown to Sir Bailey at the moment. The tonnage of the old battleship "Republic" is only 3,000 tons more than that of the armored cruiser "Natal", and its protection capability is far inferior to that of dreadnoughts and super-dreadnoughts. Thinking of the terrible scene of this fleet being wiped out in a mine array, a deep chill suddenly swelled up in Sir Bailey's back, and he hurriedly ordered "the capital ships to stop advancing".

After a while, the signal line of the "Ireland" raised a signal flag in accordance with this order. In addition to light cruisers and destroyers, which could maintain speed, 15 large ships immediately carried out this order. In order to subdue these behemoths of hundreds of pieces of equipment to the will of their operators, and to save them from a precarious fate, the ship's officers and sailors in charge of the power facilities went all out - they had to change the propellers from forward to reverse in the shortest possible time, thereby reducing the ship's stop-and-stop distance, a process that was not only complicated, but could also cause serious technical damage to the engine system if not only carelessly.

From the moment the order was given, Sir Bailey, who was shouldering the heavy responsibility, stood motionless on the bridge observation platform of the "Thunder". Under his gaze, the 15 10,000-ton battleships clumsily and struggled to slow down, the waves of the hull gradually decreased, and the amplitude of the flag fluttering also quietly weakened, and at the end, all the large battleships stopped, and the white steam released to reduce the pressure of the boilers filled the sky over the fleet, and in a trance, people seemed to be in a fantasy......

Looking around, except for the slowly tilting "Republic", the rest of the large ships were safe and sound, Sir Bailey's tense nerves finally relaxed a little, and he instructed the communications officer: "Send a report to the fleet headquarters quickly, we have entered an enemy-laid mine array about 30 nautical miles southeast of Scarpa Bay, please send minesweepers to relieve the distress as soon as possible." ”

Since the outbreak of the war, the British Navy has deployed various alert ships around Scapa Bay, including light cruisers, destroyers, gunboats, torpedo boats, armed tugboats, and minesweepers, to carry out combat patrols at different levels, forming a relatively complete defense system. For more than a week, especially after the Battle of Jutland, the threat posed by German submarines increased dramatically, and they lurked, snooped, and attacked in the surrounding waters, so that British ships traveling to and from Scapaflo Naval Base had to be on their guard, but these dangerous hunters had only two weapons - torpedoes and deck guns, and it was technically feasible for submarines to lay mines, and the problem now was that most submarines were small in tonnage, and only a small number of mines were not only useless, but also increased their own safety risks.

Since no mines laid by the Germans or attempts to lay mines were found near Scarpa Bay, the British side quickly adjusted its defensive deployment, and some minesweepers were sent to the vicinity of the Thames estuary to clear the mines laid by the German ships -- only a dozen hours after the British declared war on Germany, the German Navy's minelaying ships appeared in the British coastal waters, and although they could not escape the pursuit of the British patrol ships, the mines they laid sank a British protective cruiser the next day. It also became the first active ship lost by the British Navy after the start of the war; A part of the minesweepers went into the search for German submarines, trying to catch the underwater "poachers" with minesweeping nets. As a result, less than a third of the minesweepers are still carrying out minesweeping tasks with dedication and dedication, and they have never carried out alert patrols in an area so far from the main waterway.

On this sea filled with artificial smoke, the large ships of the British fleet stopped moving. In order to ensure the safety of these important ships, Sir Bailey did not let them withdraw from the minefield in reverse, but ordered the ships to measure the depth of the water and lower the main anchor to wait for the arrival of his minesweepers before retreating.

A fleet that has lost momentum has basically lost most of its combat capability. Fearing that the German fleet or submarines would take advantage of the attack, Sir Bailey ordered the three seaplane carriers to send more aircraft to carry out the alert and extend the cruising range to the limit of the range, but the so-called house leak happened to rain overnight, and the ship was late and encountered a head wind, which is often the case, the alarm that the escort ships found the traces of the German submarine in the nearby sea almost stopped Sir Bailey's heart beating, and then, a light gray hard airship suddenly floated out of the southeast cloud height, This kind of aircraft with extremely high endurance can carry several hundred kilograms of bombs, and when used to carry out reconnaissance missions, it is equipped with a high-power radio station in order to report aerial reconnaissance information to its own command in a timely manner, and during this period, the ceiling of any aircraft cannot reach the maximum flight altitude of the German zeppelin, and the air defense weapons that are still in the initial stage are effective in firing high altitude, and they do not have the ability to shoot down high-altitude flying objects.

(End of chapter)