On the rising sea, the 16 destroyers moved from east to west in a roughly standard V-shaped array, their speed was very fast, the razor-sharp bow sometimes pressed down into the water, sometimes raised and split the waves, the orange flames in front of the sea faintly reflected the vigorous lead-gray figures, the white light bursting in the sky reflected the St. George battle flag on a white background, and the round pillar of light piercing into the darkness was an excellent navigation beacon for their foreground. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

In front of the sea as the V-word referred, German Vice Admiral Reinhardt-Schell was carefully observing the changes in the situation on the battlefield from his flagship "Deutschland". Actual combat is different from exercises, each side cannot predict each other's movements, and the battle has been carried out so far, the tactical main line and detailed deployment of the German High Seas Fleet have deviated far from the battle plan signed by Kaiser Wilhelm II, and the only thing that remains unchanged is the tactical theme of reversing the overall weakness with local advantages. Everyone knows that the German main fleet is commanded by the cautious and steady Admiral von Ingnoor, but few people realize that the young and promising warship designer of the German royal family is also a discerning and strategic, he is a master of war games, and he is also an expert in tactical theory, and his drill plans are always eye-catching, and his knowledge of various types of ships and technical equipment of the German Navy is unparalleled, and his image and status in the minds of naval officers and sailors are also unmatched, and more importantly, There is no second person who can enjoy the absolute trust and support of the rulers of the empire like him.

Having worked together on the Alsace and Nassau, Schell had a better understanding of the personality and way of thinking of this particular man, and he noticed some changes in the telegraph instructions sent from the "Frederick the Great" after the German High Seas Fleet and the British Grand Fleet entered the waters of engagement. This change is reflected both in tone and wording, as well as in a resolute and resolute position. So, while carrying out these combat instructions, Scheer made some specific arrangements based on his judgment of the battlefield situation, and before the two sides exchanged fire, he was already very clear about the role that his old battleship detachment would play. In order to let his subordinates give up their luck and prepare for a tough battle, he sent a light code signal from his flagship and asked each ship of the 2nd Battleship Detachment to pass it in turn: The battle of Sedang on the sea has begun, and only the side with the fighting spirit to the death can win! May God bless Germany!

The 15 old battleships under the command of Scheer, 5 Wiecelsbach-class battleships were slightly behind due to poor speed, and the second "Prussia" and "Lorraine" of the Braunschweig-class ships suffered some mechanical problems in the process of continuous high-speed sailing, although they were quickly repaired, they were still on the road at this time, and the actual ones that remained in the battle formation were 5 Deutschland-class and 3 Braunschweig-class, from front to back were "Germany", "Silesia", "Schleswig-Holstein", "Hanover", " Pomerne", "Braunry", "Hesse", "Alsace". Under Scheer's foresight, these eight old battleships entered the battlefield in a stepped queue, with a lateral spacing of about 200 meters and a longitudinal spacing of 300 meters, while taking into account the forward firing angle and firing distance of each ship.

Considering that the speed of these old battleships was already much slower than that of dreadnoughts, in order to prevent them from being entangled by enemy light ships, Scheer arranged a considerable avant-garde force in front of the battle column, including 6 Gazelle-class light cruisers, 4 1913 and 6 1911 large torpedo boats, and the British outpost alert ships discovered only a part of this avant-garde detachment through flares and artillery fire. After Scheer led eight old battleships to fire on the British armored cruiser detachment, the four Gazelle-class and three large torpedo boats in the nearby sea continued to concentrate their fire on the enemy destroyers "Garland" and the light cruiser "Careful", while the remaining two Gazelle-class and seven large torpedo boats followed Scher's pre-set instructions to move forward in the dark, trying to avoid the outposts of the British fleet to carry out torpedo attacks on their main fleet. These "sneak attackers" were divided into three groups and rapidly advanced from disconnected areas, one of which was soon confronted by a British destroyer playing the same role. With the help of the light from the center of the battlefield, the German crews discovered that this was a large group of British mine-striking ships, and if they were allowed to continue their way, they would inevitably pose a threat to their own battlefleet, so the captains immediately fired nine torpedoes at the British destroyer fleet at a distance of about 600 meters. At this time, the wind and waves on the sea had begun to affect the normal operation of the torpedoes, and when attacking the light ships, the torpedoes were set at a shallow depth, and as a result, more than half of the torpedoes deviated from the target, but the remaining torpedoes still played a role that the opponent did not expect: two British destroyers were hit by torpedoes on the spot, one of which had two violent explosions in succession, and the hull of the ship sank at a speed visible to the naked eye, and the other destroyer was hit in the amidships, and the violent explosion broke its relatively fragile hull in two, and the surviving crew had to abandon the ship in a hurry to escape.

Under the command of the lead ship, several destroyers in the direction of torpedo attacks turned to search for and attack the attackers, and the remaining destroyers continued to advance at high speed. The previous violent explosion aroused the vigilance of the German fleet, and the two leading battleships fired multiple flares one after another, and the white light illuminated the sea as well as these brave "assaulters". In the blink of an eye, shells of various calibers such as 283 mm, 170 mm, 105 mm, and 88 mm rained down, and the turbulent sea suddenly turned into a pot of boiling water. Due to weight constraints, destroyers are usually not equipped with fully enclosed turrets, some of which are placed in semi-enclosed turrets with open rear, some are equipped with only single-sided gun shields, and some small-caliber rapid-fire guns do not even have any protection, so that even if the shells do not hit the battleship and fall close, they can kill and injure the ship's combatants. Before long, the decks of several British destroyers were covered with blood and casualties, and as they continued to close, the German ships began to shoot their searchlights at the attackers, making their gunfire more accurate.

Under the watchful eye of Scheer and his staff, the relatively old British destroyers were bent open and fleshed under the heavy bombardment of old German battleships and old cruisers. In addition to the effects of the rough waves, the gunners of the German battleships were able to aim, shoot and reload as if they were training on a daily basis, and the various rapid-fire guns prepared for close fleet artillery battles were put to full play here. In the process, the British battlefleet, which was within the effective range of the main guns, remained surprisingly silent.

Jericho would rather sacrifice some light ships than waste time on the old German battleship group, but the British destroyer group was in purgatory, and his dreadnought fleet could not escape the entanglement. The lookout post of the "Iron Duke" spotted a large enemy torpedo boat approaching at high speed over the port side of the sea, followed by a torpedo track. At the beginning of the war, the main ships of the British Grand Fleet removed the heavy anti-torpedo nets, reducing the burden and reducing the equipment to resist torpedo attacks, and the interception effect of naval guns on torpedoes was not ideal, and maneuvering and avoiding according to the torpedo track became the most common and effective means of countermeasures. Under the command of Rear Admiral Duff, the "Iron Duke" hurriedly turned to the right, and the "Benbang" and "George V", which were following behind the flagship, also had to make an emergency turn in order to avoid torpedoes. Before the crisis was over, several George V-class battleships in the front were suddenly attacked by German torpedo boats, and these new dreadnoughts, which had the strongest strength at the beginning of the war, turned to the right, and the neat sea battle line was gone.

The meaning of silence no longer existed, and the signal on the "Iron Duke" finally appeared to order the capital battleship to fire, and in an instant, a door 13. The 5-inch large-caliber naval guns let out an earth-shattering roar that had been endured for a long time, and the continuous cannon flames lit up the night sky with dark clouds hanging low and the rolling sea. The searchlights used by the old German battlefleet to guide the shooting turned into a "giant magnet" that attracted heavy enemy shells. The first shell to arrive landed more than 200 meters in front of the "Deutschland", and the piercing whistling suddenly turned into an earth-shattering roar, and the column of water that jumped on the sea exceeded anything the German sailors had ever seen before, and because the shell was filled with a powerful picric acid explosive, this column of water was yellow-green from the root to half the height - the more brilliant the color often meant the more intense the toxicity.

When they were first designed and built, the German Navy's Braunschweig-class and Deutschland-class battleships had first-class defenses, but after only a few years, their high-quality Krupp armor was too thin, and their 40-fold diameter 11-inch guns lagged behind technological advances. Even with twice the numerical superiority, these old German battleships could hardly compete with the British dreadnoughts, and in tactical deduction, close artillery battles at night were the only chance to win other than torpedo attacks, and only a near-face-to-face attack could the 11-inch guns penetrate the 11-inch turret and conning tower armor. In the Battle of Jutland in 1916, a total of 6 old battleships of the Braunschweig and Deutschland-class participated in the battle with the German High Seas Fleet, and these old battleships that slowed down the main fleet did not stand the real test, and the only loss was the "Pomerne", which was sunk by mine in the later part of the battle. In fact, in addition to making up the numbers, they were not useless, these German battleships followed the more successful flat deck design, the freeboard height was increased, the turret seats of the front and rear main guns were 7 meters above the waterline, and they were able to exert normal firepower in rough sea conditions, and under the organization of Tirpitz, they adopted the design of subdivided compartments, and the resistance to sinking and damage was significantly improved compared with the previous large ships.

The first round of shelling by the enraged British dreadnought only created a psychological deterrent to Scheer's old battleship group, and the nearest shell was 100 meters away from the target. Under the steady command of Scher, the German fleet continued to bombard the British destroyer group directly in front of the sea with searchlights, and the dense fire net blocked their progress, with the result that none of the British destroyers could close to the kilometer distance and fire torpedoes. With their bows facing each other, the eight old German battleships avoided the enemy torpedoes one by one with little difficulty, while Jericho's new dreadnoughts nearly collided with friendly ships in the process of urgently avoiding torpedoes. Before they could regroup, only half of the British dreadnoughts opened fire on the Scheer fleet, and none of them hit for ten minutes.

On the cloudy sea, Jericho's 10 new dreadnoughts lined up in a battle line of 6 kilometers in front and behind, which at first glance looked majestic, but the spacing between the ships was not neat, and Jericho was the last thing he wanted to see that the situation had already appeared—because of this torpedo attack by the German light ships, the 2nd Battleship Squadron had distanced itself from the 8 old dreadnoughts of the 1st Squadron in front, and the principle of concentrating forces had been ruthlessly subverted by reality. In fact, if this naval battle had been postponed for two years, the British main fleet would have five unprecedentedly powerful Queen Elizabeth-class battleships, and the three export dreadnoughts of the British Navy - two for Turkey and one for Chile - would also have formed combat effectiveness and been incorporated into the battle sequence, and at the beginning of August 1914 these combat forces did not become a powerful weapon for the commander of the Grand Fleet, Jericho. At the outbreak of the war, the Royal Navy had 41 active and mobilized former dreadnoughts, far more than the German Navy could mobilize older battleships. In the use of these former dreadnoughts, the two adversaries did much the same: the older dreadnoughts were incorporated into the coastal defense alert force, and the newer ones fought with the main fleet. In addition, the British also incorporated a number of quasi-dreadnoughts and old battleships with a slightly slower speed but better firepower and protection into the Channel Fleet, and held the English Channel together with a considerable number of mine-striking ships.

(End of chapter)