In the previous chapter, it was the Moltke and not the Goeben that remained in the waters of the Faroe Islands with the Funk battle fleet. Pen~Fun~Ge www.biquge.info "Goben" had been heavily torpedoed in previous naval battles and should return to the mainland with the main fleet for overhaul. Corrected.

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Located in the south of Strammer Island, Tórshavn is a medium-sized harbor with a population of more than 10,000 and good geographical conditions. On the night of November 25, 1914, when the large torpedo boat V-188 of the German High Seas Fleet encountered the British fleet in the waters south of the Faroe Islands and was quickly sunk, the three German dreadnoughts "Regent Louisport", "Westphalia" and "Thuringia" docked at the dock on the east side of Tórshavn, and one German light cruiser, three large torpedo boats, and six transport ships docked in the harbor.

German Rear Admiral Felix Funk commanded the battle fleet aboard his ship, the Regent Louitpold, while Natsuki was on shore at the Faroe Islands Theater Command. Although the telegram sent by V-188 was incomplete, it at least gave its commander a basic understanding of the attacking British fleet, knowing that the other side had at least one battle cruiser and three former dreadnoughts, and these key words clearly pointed out the situation: the core of the British fleet that appeared in the southern waters of the Faroe Islands was a support fleet from the port of Clyde in northwest Scotland, and when the naval battle of the Faroe Islands was in full swing, A German submarine had seen the British fleet of one Indefatigable battlecruiser, three Edward VII-class dreadnoughts, and a dozen light ships about 110 nautical miles south of the Faroe Islands, but they would not have been able to enter the battle at full speed. Later, the British main fleet collapsed, and only a small number of ships were evacuated, and this British support fleet did not appear on the battlefield, presumably choosing to preserve its strength when the overall situation was decided.

As we all know, the British Navy's Indefatigable class battle patrol has beautiful paper data, which is fundamentally vulnerable in fleet warfare, plus the prototype ship Invincible class with similar performance, the six ships built and put into service have sunk five ships one after another, and the last one is funded by the Australian government, one of the members of the British Commonwealth, and the ownership belongs to the Australian Navy's "Australia".

As for the Edward VII class, which was the most powerful in the pre-dreadnought era, it has been reduced to an "obsolete ship" since the day of its birth. In the First Battle of Flanders, the British Channel Fleet was beaten by two main dreadnoughts and two battle cruisers of the German Navy, and the comprehensive gap between the old and new warships at the tactical level was, as Sir John Fisher, the founder of the British Dreadnought, said, "an era"!

The various fortuitous factors that may arise in a complex environment make night battles uncertain, and this is true for land battles as well as naval battles. Therefore, while discussing countermeasures with Natsuki, Funk proposed to leave the three dreadnoughts in Tórshavn. The pier on the east side where they are moored rests on a huge breakwater more than 1,000 meters long and 100 meters wide, making it an ideal shooting cover for both long-range artillery battles and close-range combat. The light cruiser "Cologne" moved from the west berth to the entrance of the channel, and with the coordination of three large torpedo boats, it guarded the anti-mine and anti-submarine nets outside the channel to block possible torpedo attacks from British mine-striking ships.

In addition, Tórshavn faces the island of Knoll to the east, and the distance between the two is only five kilometers in a straight line. The island, which is about seven kilometres long from north to south and one to two kilometres wide from east to west, acts as a second natural barrier beyond the breakwater, and the German Navy has deployed radio-equipped lookout posts on the island. Whether the British fleet entered the narrow sea between Strammer and Knoll Island, or chose a firing position east of Knoll Island, their position was unobstructed to the German lookouts on the island.

General Funk's suggestion seems to be well-reasoned, but Natsuki's opinion is diametrically opposed. After the German fleet entered Tórshavn, the ship's communications department detected a strong radio signal, which was most likely a British spy who was lurking there to send information about the German fleet to the British Navy. The British fleet that appeared in the sea near Sood Island should know that its opponent had three dreadnoughts and one battle cruiser, and the British fleet in the away position would definitely not take any advantage, so they were likely to learn from the tactics and tactics adopted by the Japanese Navy in the Russo-Japanese War, first using lightning strikes to attack the main German warships in Tórshafen, and then using large warships to cover light ships to forcibly lay mines outside Tórshabour, so as to blockade Funk's battle fleet in Tórshavn. It then covered the landing of the British landing force far from Tórshavn.

After listening to Natsuki's analysis, Funk didn't squeak for a long time. The German Navy did not have minesweepers in the Faroe Islands, and if these three dreadnoughts were really blocked by the British with mines, they could have repeated the mistakes of the Russians in the Russo-Japanese War. With this in mind, he decisively took Natsuki's suggestion and immediately sailed away from Tórshavn with the battle fleet that had left the port earlier, and together with the battle cruiser "Moltke" and the light cruiser "Rostock" who had left the port earlier, he took the camera in the open sea northeast of Knoll Island.

After Funk's fleet quietly left, the only combat power in Tórshafen was the light cruiser "Cologne" and three large torpedo boats. Standing on the hillside overlooking the harbor with the harsh sea breeze blowing, Natsuki's thoughts were surprisingly calm. The upcoming battle seems to be just a confrontation at the level of the detachment, putting aside the simple appearance, the naval war between Britain and Germany has actually reached a crucial turning point, and the strategic significance of the Faroe Islands is even greater than that of Midway and Kuah in the Pacific War in history - if the German Navy firmly occupies this strategic commanding height, it will be a very fatal coercion to the British Navy, and conversely, if the British seize the Faroe Islands from the German Navy, or if the two sides occupy several islands and start a tug-of-war, The North Sea cage, which the German Navy had so easily kicked off, was ruthlessly shut again, and since the Germans had sailed more than three times longer to the Faroe Islands than the British, the war of attrition around the Faroe Islands was clearly more disadvantageous to them.

Therefore, if there is a battle tonight, there will be no loss.

Near midnight, the V-188 large torpedo boat, which had been dispatched for reconnaissance, had been lost for more than three hours, and the fate of more than 80 officers and men on board was unknown. At normal speed, the British fleet heading north should have reached the waters near Tórshavn, but they remained hidden in the darkness and did not reappear. The British may have done so out of tactical considerations, but their delay seemed to have only made the battle more difficult for themselves - at the disposal of the Faroe Islands Theater Command, two German submarines "stained" with British blood, U-37 and U-90, arrived at the Strammer-Noll waterway, each looking for a hidden position, and lurking quietly in the sea near Tórshavn; The old battleship "Brunswick", accompanied by two large torpedo boats of the 1898 class, sailed into Tórshavn from the port of Sørvog on the island of Vogel.

Just after midnight, a group of light surface ships quietly sailed into the Stramer-Noll waterway and headed for Tórshavn in the dark. Compared with the naval raid that took place in Arthur ten years ago, the Tórshavn was black-lit that night, and there were no signs along the coast that could determine the course, which caused great trouble to the British mine-striking ships intent on launching a night attack, and the vigilance of the Germans was far from comparable to that of the Tsarist Russian navy.

At 0:24, the leading British destroyer was suddenly shelled, and the light of the cannon fire instantly pointed out the direction of these British ships, and the British officers and men thought that they had been ambushed by the German fleet, and they were greatly frightened, and they were worried that the fierce artillery fire would send all these lightning ships to the bottom of the sea, but time passed minute by minute, and there was no more cannon fire on the dark and heavy sea, as if the shells just now were just their illusion......

In this suffocatingly quiet and strange atmosphere, the commander of the British lightning strike fleet was under unprecedented psychological pressure, and any decision he made at this time was directly related to the fate of all the lightning strike ships and hundreds of officers and men, and its indirect impact was even more incalculable. Now that the fleet's whereabouts had been revealed, he simply ordered the lead ship to turn on its searchlights.

Except for a submarine that quickly dived underwater, the dark sea was empty.

The British lightning strike ships swooped down on Tórshavn, a few kilometers away.

Despite turning on their searchlights, they had to find out the location of Tórshavn, and by this time, the British Task Force 7, with the HMS Britannia as its flagship, had reached a position about 15 kilometers south of Tórshavn, the main guns of the four large battleships were raised, and three mine-laden destroyers followed the group of mine-strikers into the Stramer-Knoll waterway. If the German battle fleets were lined up at the front, they would be no different from powder kegs placed next to a stove.

But the dreadnoughts and battlecruisers of the Germans did not appear in this relatively narrow waterway.

The British lightning strikers, having long since lost their chance, had no choice but to continue their advance towards Tórshavn, where the tall breakwaters obstructed their view and made it impossible for them to judge whether there were any large German warships in the harbor until they approached. When they were only three or four kilometers away from the port, the other party's searchlights were on, and the strong pillars of light made these British lightning ships have nowhere to hide, and then, a rather accurate artillery fire made the leading British destroyer suffer, it was hit by a large-caliber shell, and in the blink of an eye, it turned into a pile of floating scrap metal.

After the old battleship "Braunschweig" and the light cruiser "Cologne" in the harbor opened fire, three large German torpedo boats in ambush also waited for the opportunity to fire a volley of torpedoes at the incoming British mine-striking ships. Due to the proximity, the British could not dodge at all, and the two destroyers were hit on the spot, and the light produced by the violent explosion could probably be seen on the sea surface more than ten or twenty kilometers away.

(End of chapter)