Sunny day, light wind, ripple microwave. www.biquge.info In the North Sea, the quiet and peaceful weather in the North Sea is less than 100 days a year, and the British living near the sea should have enjoyed the weather, but when they woke up to find that most of the naval ships in the harbor, whether combat ships or auxiliary vessels, had left their berths, they suddenly felt a sense of foreboding. In the aftermath of the Battle of Jutland, many British people hoped that the brave British Navy would turn the tide, but on the other hand, they were preparing for the worst: the victors on the other side of the North Sea would arrive like a storm and destroy the fortresses and ports of the British coast with terrible artillery fire, and the black cross flag on a white background would become a lingering nightmare for the British forever......

On board the departing warships and auxiliary vessels, both regular officers and men of the British Royal Navy and civilians who had been called up to join the Coast Defense Force in wartime, all of them threw themselves into the operation with trepidation and a heavy heart. Facing the rising sun, they raised their eyes into the distance, and some people were constantly hallucinating because they were too nervous, but in fact, there was no enemy ship at the sea level ahead.

According to the deployment requirements of the British Grand Fleet Command, the first alert ships to set sail should arrive at the farthest position 150 nautical miles from the east coast of Britain at about 9 a.m., but due to aging equipment, hasty preparations, insufficient speed, and mechanical failures, only 3 protective cruisers and 8 destroyers arrived at the designated positions on time, and most of the ships were still in the middle of the voyage, making the relatively complete early warning system on paper full of flaws.

The first batch of ships seriously lagged behind the established schedule, and the situation of the second batch of alert ships was not much better, and the old destroyer "Purple Fox" is a typical representative. Back then, it and its ships of the same class were named "30-knot destroyers", and they were the most advanced light ships of the navies of various countries at that time, more than ten years have passed, and 30 knots has long been an unattainable speed, and even maintaining a speed of 20 knots for a long time is very reluctant. Listening to the heavy wheezing sound of the aging steam engines, one cannot help but fear that they may "strike" at any time.

On the observation platform and mast lookout at the top of the bridge of the "Purple Fox", the captain with a white goatee and his childish assistants all observed the sea surface with binoculars. There were a few faint bands of smoke in sight, and below the smoke clouds were faintly discernible ships - lead-gray ships belonged to naval ships, white or black were civilian ships conscripted in wartime according to naval decrees, they were of various types and conditions, some were equipped with radios, some could only be warned by signal flares, although the organization was not very rigorous, but these ships were considerable in number, and they were active in the domestic waters, echoing each other from afar, fully showing the resource characteristics of the British Empire.

"Look, there's something flying in the east!"

The sailors on the mast have both the advantage of being high and far-sighted, as well as the good eyesight of young people. With his reminder, the old captain finally noticed the white flying objects that were different from the clouds and seagulls.

"It's an airplane...... Oh, planes without pontoons, which had to take off from land, could not have flown here from Germany. The captain speculated to himself.

The sailor bowed his head and said to the captain, whose hat brim was flush with the sole of his boot, "You think this is our plane?" ”

"Not sure." The captain replied.

Hearing the two men talking, one of the sailors on the deck looked up and said to them: "I have heard that Betty's battleship was attacked by German planes at Jutland, and that the 'Australia' was hit by a torpedo thrown by them, but fortunately it was not very powerful, and it was able to struggle back to Scarpa Bay, and then, because there was not enough dockyard there, it sailed to Newcastle at night under the protection of a group of destroyers for overhaul." ”

The captain shook his white goatee and replied loudly, "Ho, you've heard all this from the tavern, right?" It's a great place to listen to stories. ”

The sailor replied with a serious face, "I don't think it's a story, sir. Without a secret weapon, how could the German Navy defeat our main fleet, just by storm? ”

The captain said slowly: "That's because they have a very powerful genius, the youngest son of Wilhelm II, Hannibal of Germany." This man planned the Battle of Jutland, allowing the German fleet to concentrate its forces to inflict heavy losses on Betty and then to divide and encircle Jellico. As for airplanes, they are indeed capable of reconnaissance, throwing a few bombs to scare people, but small planes cannot carry torpedoes, and large planes are too clumsy to be suitable for naval warfare. ”

As the two men argued, the sailors on the mast had counted the number of planes: "There were six of them, about the same as the one I had seen in Chatham, but there was a big problem...... If it were our aircraft, it should have spread out reconnaissance, why maintain such a compact formation? ”

These words are like a bucket of ice water, which makes every listener feel like they are empowered. The captain hesitated for a moment, then called out in a hurried tone, "Jim! Jim! Send a telegram now! We spotted a German fleet of six planes 70 nautical miles east of the mouth of the Tyne, flying in the opposite direction to us! ”

By the time the young trainee telegraph operator sweated profusely to send the telegram, the six planes had disappeared from sight.

"That's the direction of the Tyne Estuary!" The young sailor on the mast muttered.

The captain frowned and touched his white goatee, when he remembered that the battlecruiser "Australia" was being overhauled at the Esvik shipyard in Newcastle-on-Tyne, his pupils quickly dilated with surprise, but then returned to his original state: "No, it can't be, their bombs don't pose much of a threat to a 20,000-ton capital ship, unless it's a special bomb with white phosphorus, it may cause a fire in the shipyard and affect the repair process of the battleship...... The Germans came from afar just to interfere with the maintenance of the 'Australia'? ”

While the experienced old captain was struggling, the sailors on the mast discovered a new situation - a gray shadow appeared in the sea ahead, and this discovery immediately made the atmosphere on the ship tense, and everyone thought it was a German battleship, so the shells were loaded into the chamber, the torpedo was fixed, and the whole ship quickly entered a state of imminent battle. It took about a quarter of an hour for them to realize that it was one of their protective cruisers. After a while, the "Purple Fox" chased it to a position seven or eight nautical miles away from it, and the two ships communicated with the signal, this old cruiser was much older than the "Purple Fox", and the condition of the ship was not ideal, and it broke down one after another not long after leaving the port, and its scheduled warning position was still 70 nautical miles away!

The friendly ship dropped its chain halfway, and the "Purple Fox" had almost no way to think of it except to swap places with it. As a matter of fact, the command headquarters set up a cordon considering not only the speed of each ship, but also the effective range of the warship. Compared with the cruiser and the destroyer built in the later period, the "Purple Fox" has a pitifully small radius of activity, and at the beginning of the design, the shipyard made corresponding sacrifices to the destroyer's trial capability in order to meet the rigid requirements of the Admiralty, so when the more excellent first-generation river-class and tribal-class destroyers were put into service, the destroyers built in the early stage quickly withdrew from the subordinate sequence of the main fleet and transferred to the service of the coastal defense force and the strait fleet.

When the "Purple Fox" crossed the friendly ship and continued to move forward, the command still did not respond to its telegram requesting instructions to the first line of warning, and Captain White Goatee and his crew did not know that the six German planes flying towards the mouth of the Tyne River were like lightning bolts through the night, so that the British Admiralty officers and the Admirals of the Home Fleet no longer had any luck with the arrival of this rainstorm, and they immediately reversed the route of the German planes, estimated the general position of the German fleet, and adjusted the combat deployment accordingly- The light ships scheduled for torpedo attacks departed from Roseth and Chatham respectively, the supply ships loaded with fuel were also assembled in the designated sea area to prepare for the high-speed torpedo boats with limited range, and the submarines scattered throughout the North Sea also rushed to the target area at full speed, and the main fleet on standby in Scapa Bay also set off with George V's high hopes formation, but no one informed the old ships and auxiliary vessels used for alert patrols to assemble in the theater of operations. Obviously, they were slow and weak, and could only serve as cannon fodder in the face of the fierce German fleet.

Newcastle's garrison, police, and local officials had been warned before German planes appeared at the mouth of the Tyne, but they realized that they had little to do but pray: the army had no anti-aircraft weapons and could only make do with a handful of machine guns; The police and local officials did not have time to evacuate the people, so they had to avoid crowding in public places; The shipyard with its neat workshops and huge dockyards must be very striking from the air, and the ships under construction, as well as the battlecruiser "Australia" that was docked for overhaul, are like babies in swaddling clothes, no matter how terrible the enemy is, they have no ability to fight back and dodge......

In the afternoon sun, six German planes found the mouth of the River Tyne and traced it upstream, soon reaching Newcastle. They are thin, light and flexible, like spirits in the wind, and they are by no means full of murderous oppression as soon as they appear like cannons or warships.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Newcastle was one of the largest shipbuilding and ship repair centers in England, with convenient transportation and developed industry, among many factories and shipyards, the largest and representative is the Esvik Shipyard, which is one of the two major shipbuilding giants in Britain - Armstrong's largest integrated factory, capable of producing all kinds of naval guns and building various types of ships.

In the Dreadnought era, the Esvik shipyard undertook the construction of the British Navy's Pallerophon-class battleship "Gorgeous", the Orion-class battleship "Imperial", and the battleship "Admiral Latol" (renamed "Canada" after being requisitioned by the British Navy), the "Osama Sultan" (a seven-turret ship, renamed "Aginkut" after being requisitioned by the British Navy) ordered by Turkey, and also built the first battle cruiser "Invincible" for the British Navy. Built by John Brown Shipyard, the Australia would have been a long and arduous voyage from Scapa Gulf to Glasgow for repairs. As a member of the Indefatigable class, the ship has only minor structural differences from the Invincible class, and the Esvik shipyard not only has a suitable dock, but also can provide steel plates, naval guns, and most of the internal equipment except boiler turbines, and is much closer to Scapafolo Naval Base than Glasgow.

(End of chapter)