During the Second Battle of Flanders, the 2nd Detachment of the German Navy's reconnaissance fleet, with the "De Fllinger" and "Blucher" as the core force, was commanded by Rear Admiral Kenttap. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 infoThe naval commander is of the same age and seniority as Hipper, and his military ability is also very good. The difference is that Hipper is fierce and aggressive, and Kentapp is bold and decisive, but his command style is more cautious. The flagship of the Jutland naval battle, Kentapp sat in the "De Fllinger" as the deputy commander of the reconnaissance fleet, and if Hipper, on the "Seydlitz", lost command for some reason, the reconnaissance fleet would be under the full control of Kentup.

Returning to the waters of Flanders, Kentapp naturally did not want the ships under his command to repeat the mistakes of the "Louis Port Regent", he made full use of the Navy's aviation power, and constantly sent water reconnaissance planes to carry out combat reconnaissance, and at his request, the "De Fllinger" carried an additional Junkers 3-C carrier-based reconnaissance plane, and the "Stralsund" with a catapult device also carried a Junkers 3-C in the stern, and only the "Blucher" could not accommodate catapults and carrier-based aircraft because the superstructure was too compact.

With the information obtained from aerial reconnaissance, Kentap had already grasped the strength and movement of the British light fleet in front of him, and he expected that the other side would attack his fleet, so he made combat deployment in advance, and ordered the two battle cruisers and the light cruiser "Stralsund" to raise part of the ammunition of the small and medium-caliber guns from the ammunition depot to the waiting position next to the gun emplacement, so as to ensure the firing rate of the battle patrol secondary guns and the light patrol main and auxiliary guns during the battle, and replenish the fuel of the water reconnaissance aircraft in advance. This will enable at least one reconnaissance plane to carry out calibration and alert missions in the air at any time during the entire course of the battle. However, Kentapp did not guess that the opponent would use the smoke screen cover in this novel way, and the artificial smoke not only affected the observation and aiming of the German battleships, but also made it impossible for the pilots of the reconnaissance aircraft to carry out accurate calibration, otherwise, with the good vision and calm sea conditions at this time, without the interference of the enemy's large ships, the ferocious artillery fire of the two German battle cruisers alone could make this British light fleet deflated, how could they be allowed to rush under their noses so smoothly?

At this point, Kentapp did not dare to underestimate the enemy, so he ordered the two battle cruisers to turn their front guns to deal with the enemy ships on the port side, and the rear main guns continued to fire at the starboard targets, and the six large torpedo boats accompanying him were divided into two, with three V-shaped boats covering the right flank of the fleet and three G-shaped ones protecting the left flank of the fleet.

Because of the predictable intensity of the battle, all the German warships were equipped with sufficient ammunition according to their design capacity, and the types of ammunition they carried were clearly divided. The "De Fllinger" and "Blücher" each main gun had a quota of 96 rounds of ammunition, half of which were armor-piercing, 12 ordinary rounds and 36 shrapnel rounds. This is an unusually high percentage given the extra burn damage caused by the special construction of the shrapnel shell, which allows Kentap to continue to use the shrapnel to destroy his opponent without hesitation.

After a long period of perilous support, the good fortune of the British Navy's destroyer "Arabian Antelope" finally came to an end, a 150 mm caliber shell penetrated the wall of the ship and drilled into the boiler room, it quickly stopped, paralyzed on the sea, at this time the 800-ton hull had almost turned into a hornet's nest, and the deck was full of mutilated corpses. The badly damaged boilers were impossible to repair, and the fire ignited by the fuel leak was spreading inside the ship, and it was difficult for the friendly ships to be towed away under the brutal fire of the German fleet, and the surviving crew had to abandon the ship. They began to lay down the motorboats and rafts, and the wounded were the first to leave the ship, when a hail of shotguns hit, and the sailors who were concentrated on the side to evacuate were instantly killed and wounded.

Two minutes later, the end of the Oak followed. The twin secondary guns on the starboard side of the "De Fllinger" invariably locked onto it, and the column of water from the 150-mm and 88-mm shells tightly enveloped the thin British destroyer, and then several direct hits were fired in quick succession. Suddenly, there was a coherent, violent explosion from back to front, the dense black smoke and the flash of the explosion completely submerged the battleship, everything was blown into the air, the remnants of the hull sank rapidly, and the sea was littered with floating objects, but there was not a single survivor struggling to survive.

The successive deaths of the "Arabian Oryx" and the "Oak" did not deter the British officers and men from their determination to continue fighting, and the remaining ships rushed out of the smoke screen like arrows from the string. The "Lynx" took the lead, rushing to a distance of about a kilometer, firing two torpedoes first, and then immediately turning right with full rudders.

With the maneuverability of German fast ships, projecting torpedoes from this distance could not guarantee a single hit, but the move of the "Lynx" was obviously not a hasty and chaotic battle, but a strategic rush. A considerable part of the attention of the German fleet had to turn to the torpedo track that appeared on the surface of the sea, and the officers and men in the lookout positions quickly calculated the appropriate evasive routes, and the two large battle cruisers took the lead in turning the rudder, and the accuracy of the ship's guns depended to a large extent on a stable firing platform, and when the battleship was in a state of rapid turning, the gunners had to re-aim, and they also had to estimate the advance of the firing position according to the non-linear movement of the ship, which was difficult to imagine.

Ignoring the dense shotgun fire of the German fleet, they deftly avoided the many torpedoes fired by the German large torpedo boats, and rushed straight to a position six or seven hundred meters away from the German fleet to fire torpedoes at close range, and 18 terrifying 533-mm torpedoes flew quickly towards the German ships......

The German pilot, who happened to fly over this area, described in his report: "The sea surface seemed to be a group of skiers passing through a field after the snow, and we could clearly see roughly parallel and unequal stitches, and my observers and I were stunned, thinking that our fleet would be dealt a fatal blow, but we were surprised to see that all the German battleships, including "De Fllinger" and "Blucher", were turning at full speed, and they were moving fast and agile like a school of barracudas. I believe that they were flexible enough to avoid the torpedoes fired by the British. Most of the torpedoes eventually missed, but one hit the port side of the "De Fllinger" and one hit a large torpedo boat of the class of 1911. The torpedo that hit the "De Fllinger" exploded on the spot, and the torpedo that hit the torpedo boat turned out to be a stink bomb, what a blessing. After the explosion, we saw that the "De Fllinger" was unharmed, and it was still firing heavy artillery fire, but the alarm had not been lifted, and another group of British battleships had rushed closer. At a distance of less than 500 meters, they fired about 20 torpedoes, and the German battleship writhed like a dance, dodging one torpedo after another, and the process was much more thrilling than dancing. This time the "De Vellinger" was not beaten again, a torpedo boat stepped forward to block the torpedo for it, and the violent explosion caused the brave frigate to sink in less than a minute, fortunately, many of the crew jumped into the water to escape, and then were quickly rescued by our own battleship. Another torpedo boat made the same brave move to protect the "Blucher", it was slightly more lucky, the torpedo only blew up its bow part, and it was able to withdraw from the battle under the tow of its companions, while the British ships that were stranded on the battlefield due to malfunctions were not so good, and our battleship disposed of them in three or two strokes like a rat caught in a rat trap.

As the German pilots observed, the "De Fllinger" that was hit by the torpedo was safe and sound, not because the British Navy's new torpedoes were not powerful enough or there were technical problems, but the problem was in the depth of the torpedoes - because it was necessary to deal with the enemy's large torpedo boats, when the Harwich fleet attacked, the destroyer's torpedoes were set to a depth of 2 meters, and the position 2 meters below the waterline of the "Deflinger" was still a key protection area, protected by armor about 11 inches thick and double mine protection compartments, The enormous force of the torpedo tore a crack in the armor belt, penetrating the mine protection compartment and the fuel tank, causing some fuel loss, minor hull leaks were quickly controlled, and only some overly sophisticated optical equipment was damaged by the violent vibrations of the explosion. It sailed at a constant speed, and there was no fire on the ship, like a terrible rhinoceros, which was indifferent to the full strength of its attackers.

Determined to get out of the battle after this largely unsuccessful torpedo attack, Brigadier General Tierrit led the remnants of his ships to retreat at full speed in the direction of Harwich Harbor, as the mast-mounted lookout reported the discovery of another German fleet of similar size in the southern sea.

Brigadier Tillit knew that the British Navy's vigilant and armoured cruisers had exchanged fire with a German fleet led by two Moltke-class battle cruisers, but he was not sure if this was the German fleet, so he sent an order to the "Daring": "Conduct combat reconnaissance to the south...... If possible. ”

In the battle of attacking the German fleet, none of the ships led by the "Daring" sank, only two destroyers withdrew from the battle due to injuries, and the remaining ships still had the opportunity to reload the torpedoes and attack again, but seeing that the "Lin Xian" team was no longer able to continue, Colonel Hocklis, who commanded the battle on the "Daring", also knew that the strong attack was hopeless, and decisively led five destroyers to the south.

The German fleet that appeared in the south at this time was indeed the 1st detachment of the German Navy's reconnaissance fleet under the personal command of Vice Admiral Hipper, but according to the pre-war arrangement, he ordered the sailors to simply camouflage the two Moltke-class battle cruisers, covered the muzzles of the middle barrels of the triple turrets with gray canvas, and only fired the main guns on both sides when attacking the British light ships that came to reconnoitre, which looked like a battleship equipped with four twin turrets from a distance, creating the illusion that the "Seydlitz" was back in battle sequence.

As for the additional German cruiser, the British would have consciously associated it with the second ship of the Flinger class, the "Luzzo". The construction of this formidable battle cruiser began a few months later than the "De Fllinger", and the British did not know the progress of its construction. In fact, it is currently undergoing sea trials in the relatively safe southwestern waters of the Baltic Sea, and normally it will not enter service until the end of October.

(End of chapter)