The flares hanging under the parachutes continued to emit intense light during the slow descent, illuminating the sea surface of about one square kilometer as if it were daytime, and in the German field of vision, in addition to the old British battleships that had been regarded as the contents of the bag, there were a number of high-speed torpedo boats moving in the opposite direction. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ

Since high-speed torpedo boat units were often involved in combat training in the past, the watchmen on the German battleships and the officers who were the first to learn of the enemy knew of the formidable might of these lightweight opponents. Seeing these off-string arrows rushing wildly, many people suddenly felt a tingling of their scalps, but they were not in a desperate situation, the bridge immediately issued an order to all secondary guns to fire freely without restrictions, and the passage to the rapid-fire gun and machine gun battle positions was full of gunners who carried spare ammunition in advance, and the main guns removed armor-piercing shells and modified howitzer shells.

At this moment, the German dreadnought "Regent Louitpold", flying the flag of the commander of the detachment, was at the top of the diagonal battle line, followed by "Thuringia", "Westphalia", and "Moltke". After easily slopping the only battle cruiser of the British fleet, Funk annihilated the remaining six former dreadnoughts of the British with these four capital ships, and the appearance of a large group of British high-speed torpedo boats changed the situation on the battlefield in an instant. It didn't matter to Funk and his men that these "short-legged" guys had come to a place at least two hundred nautical miles from the British port in this way, but whether they could survive the enemy's ferocious attacks in the following period - from 1904 to 1914, no less than thirty drills were held in the German Navy with high-speed warships attacking the main fleet, and the results of the drills were evenly divided, but from a strategic point of view, A group of high-speed torpedo boats with a total value of less than 10 million marks competed with a single dreadnought and battle cruiser costing 30 or 40 million, and the latter was undoubtedly the losing side.

The failure of the drills again and again caused the battleships and the main reconnaissance detachments of the High Seas Fleet to bear great psychological pressure from top to bottom, and even seriously affected the prestige and morale of the navy for a period of time. The officers and men of the capital ships racked their brains to find countermeasures, and they explored a variety of effective methods at the tactical and technical levels to effectively resist the attacks of high-speed torpedo boats, and applied them to actual combat with the support of the Navy's top brass. Beginning in 1911, as more and more dreadnoughts and battlecruisers replaced older battleships and armored cruisers as the main force, the proportion of high-speed torpedo groups was increasing. In the four large-scale exercises held in 1914, the capital ship formation won three times, and only once was defeated under unfavorable circumstances.

With these foreshadowings, the German fleet that entered the Jutland battlefield was better prepared than its opponents, and the victory was already foreshadowed in daily training.

On this cold and windy night, Felix Funk and his staff officers stood quietly behind the porthole. The four capital ships tacitly reduced their speed to 20 knots and made a synchronized left turn, allowing all the ship's firepower to be unleashed except for the starboard secondary gun. A few seconds later, the British high-speed torpedo boats had rushed to a position about 5,000 meters away from the battle line of the German fleet, and the medium-caliber secondary guns of the German capital ships were the first to fire, and a few seconds later, more than a dozen artillery flares burst into light one after another, the stars dotting the night sky were eclipsed, the clouds floating in the sky reflected a beautiful halo, and the British high-speed torpedo groups jumping on the crest of the waves were clearly presented in front of the German gunners.

More than 30 large-caliber main guns, more than 100 secondary guns, and rapid-fire guns emitted a deafening roar less than five seconds between the front and rear, and this impermeable artillery fire was like a sudden rainstorm, which stirred up countless waves on the sea surface where the British high-speed torpedo boats were located. Under the impact of the waves stirred up by the explosion, the high-speed warships weighing from two or three tons to seven or eight tons are like riders sitting on the back of a bull, even if their balance ability is excellent, they will inevitably be thrown off, some are unlucky and directly knocked over by the waves, some hit the crest head-on and suddenly stall, and some are destroyed by shells or wounded by shrapnel, such a scene can not help but remind people of the battle of the whole row of musketeers against the cavalry in the flintlock era, thrilling, bloody and cruel, And at the beginning of the battle it was difficult to predict which side would be the winner.

Unrestricted free fire is not a blind and indiscriminate fire, but a combat mode in which the gunners directly observe and shoot without being deployed and corrected by the firing command system, so that the firepower output of the warship can reach the ultimate level. Since the formation of the High Seas Fleet, the German Navy, which aims to challenge Britain's maritime supremacy, has held the highest number of live-fire and joint exercises every year, and even the British Navy can only match it. The hard work and the rigidity of the Germans contributed to the rapid improvement of the German navy's gunnery ability, and in the last three Anglo-German naval gunpowder exchanges in 1911, 1912 and 1913, the German warships all achieved a large advantage. In the face of the British high-speed torpedo boat group that launched a cluster charge, the German gunners in the secondary gun position were busy but not chaotic, determining the horizontal firing angle according to the relative orientation of the ship and the enemy boat group, and setting the firing point in front of the front row of warships, even if there was a slight error, it would not hinder the linear coverage of the secondary gun fire.

The ship's main guns, which are usually used to attack medium- and long-range targets, were reloaded with howitzer shotguns to become oversized shotguns, and the twin 12-inch guns of the "Luitport Regent" and the triple 11-inch guns of the "Thuringia", "Westphalia", and "Moltke" fired at a rate of 1.5 rounds per minute and 2 rounds per minute, respectively. This meant that before the British torpedo boat group was lucky enough to rush to a closer danger area and launch torpedoes, the four German capital ships would have the opportunity to fire three to five rounds, which was not a large number in absolute terms, but at a distance of three or four thousand meters, the shotgun shells produced by each grenade shrapnel could cover an area of several hundred square meters, and under overlapping, the killing efficiency of surface coverage could reach a very terrifying level.

A large number of British high-speed torpedo boats did not need to rush to the theoretical killing distance before firing torpedoes, and there were still three or four thousand meters away from the German fleet, and many torpedo boats could not wait to release torpedoes. The accuracy of these torpedoes was of course low in the visual conditions of night battles, but night also provided excellent cover for the torpedo track, and it was difficult for German battleships to evade them as early as they did during the day.

Within a minute and a half of the German fleet's firing, nearly half of the British high-speed torpedo boats were damaged or destroyed, and the surviving torpedo boats were all torpedoed two thousand meters away from the German fleet -- when the last British high-speed torpedo boat dropped the torpedo, the experienced German commander had already ordered his fleet to maneuver at a wide angle, which was also the best way to avoid enemy torpedo attacks in a night combat environment. Among the fleet, the largest tonnage of the "Louis Poel Regent" was shot by a British submarine in the First Battle of Flanders, which almost destroyed the situation of the German Navy at sea, and this time, it took the lead in completing five compass points, that is, 56.25 degrees, which is of course not unrelated to the fact that it was the first to receive tactical instructions as a flagship, and the rudder that was improved by taking advantage of the overhaul also played a certain role. Immediately after that, the most powerful "Moltke" also turned into place, and then two old dreadnoughts built a little earlier.

Whether or not bad luck befell the German battleships had nothing to do with this order, because in the blink of an eye, the sea was full of torpedo tracks. Some German sailors were stunned and speechless when they saw a torpedo dragging a white trail out of the darkness, grazing the stern or slipping over the side of the ship, and then disappearing into the darkness again.

Suddenly, a loud explosion sounded on the surface of the sea with the rumbling of cannons, and a column of rushing water appeared on the left side of the stern of the "Regent of Luitport". Seeing this scene in the flickering light, the officers and men of the other German battleships could not help but be stunned: could it be that this Caesar-class dreadnought had an innate attraction to enemy torpedoes?

Only a few seconds later, another explosion sounded in the array of the German fleet - it was the "Thuringia" that suffered. If the British dreadnought was built at the same time, a torpedo was likely to become a fatal wound, while the German dreadnought was like a heavy cavalry in strong armor, as long as the torpedo depth was not too close to the bottom of the ship, the armor belt and mine protection compartment on the side could absorb most of the power of the torpedo explosion, and the leakage of the ship wall could also be controlled with the help of the subdivided compartment design and good damage management ability.

A dozen seconds later, a series of violent explosions sounded on the sea, first a large torpedo boat was torpedoed in half, and then the powerful battlecruiser "Moltke", which became the third and last German capital ship to be hit by a British torpedo this night.

At the cost of losing more than 20 high-speed torpedo boats, the British Navy sank one German light ship and damaged three large warships. Although the two German dreadnoughts and one battlecruiser that were torpedoed did not lose their ability to sail, the speed of the ship, which had been beyond the reach of the British dreadnoughts, was reduced, and the sophisticated optical equipment was most likely damaged by the violent shock, and even if the ship's gun system remained intact, the combat capability of the ship would be greatly reduced.

Calthorp, who had already been holding a big breath of evil in his heart, would not let it go, and he immediately led six former dreadnoughts led by the "Africa" to turn around, preparing to sink the German battle cruisers with relatively weak defense first, and then clean up the German dreadnoughts that were not in a good situation one by one.

(End of chapter)